Speaker 1: M m m. You're listening to Playback, a Variety I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio podcast. I'm your host, Variety Awards editor Chris Tapley.
Speaker 1: This week, I'm talking to Boots Riley, the writer and
Speaker 1: director of the film Sorry to Bother You. Boots got
Speaker 1: his start in the music world as part of the
Speaker 1: Oakland hip hop group The Coup. We talked about his
Speaker 1: history and that industry and how it informed his transition
Speaker 1: to filmmaking, among other things. So sit tight, this is playback.
Speaker 1: What's no big deal because we just started to paying
Speaker 1: from what I'm here today with Boots Riley, the writer
Speaker 1: and director of Sorry to Bother You, also a hip
Speaker 1: hop legend I would say from his days as the
Speaker 1: frontman of The Coup. Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. You've been working
Speaker 1: a lot. This is funny to me right now because
Speaker 1: we're redoing what we just did. Why did you tell them?
Speaker 1: Because it's funny, I like to bring it up. We're
Speaker 1: just talking about your nickname. How did you get the
Speaker 1: nickname Boots? Wearing boots at the wrong time, in the
Speaker 1: wrong place in high school? And uh, it was a
Speaker 1: name that I wouldn't answer to for three years. Like
Speaker 1: people would be like Boots, Boots, and I would actually
Speaker 1: ignore them until they said Ray Raymond or Ray Riley.
Speaker 1: I was first known as Ray Riley, Like people thought
Speaker 1: that was my first name, Ray Riley. Would be like,
Speaker 1: what's your last name? Ray Riley, and be like you
Speaker 1: just said it? But yeah, once I started rapping, like
Speaker 1: it was a name that people who didn't even know
Speaker 1: me because of the circumstances that came up and called
Speaker 1: me Boots, you know, like, oh, that's Boots. So when
Speaker 1: I started rapping, I was like, better use the name
Speaker 1: that everybody already knows me by. Well. I love your music, man,
Speaker 1: and I actually want to start there kind of work
Speaker 1: our way into the movie. But you know, you Kill
Speaker 1: My Landlord your debut album. Uh. I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of early nineties music, all of it, you know, hip hop,
Speaker 1: what was going on with R and B rock, It's
Speaker 1: just an interesting clash of genres that was going on
Speaker 1: at that time. So I'd love to talk to somebody
Speaker 1: like you who entered that scene at that time and
Speaker 1: and and just very curious what it was like for you,
Speaker 1: What was what was the music world like for you
Speaker 1: to enter it? In the early nineties coming out of
Speaker 1: film school and kind of what was going on with
Speaker 1: music at that time. M I have to think about
Speaker 1: things in a way I haven't thought about them, So
Speaker 1: I think that you know, at the time, there were
Speaker 1: there were less outlets for people to hear music from,
Speaker 1: so it was important to get into those outlets like
Speaker 1: so you know, even like for for rappers, for hip hop,
Speaker 1: there weren't like venues like whereas like maybe with indie rock,
Speaker 1: you could play these venues, gather up a crowd and
Speaker 1: maybe tour and but a lot of towns and especially Oakland,
Speaker 1: but a lot of towns all over the country. Um,
Speaker 1: what we now consider hip hop venues that do hip
Speaker 1: hop shows, they usually do a lot of different things,
Speaker 1: but they wouldn't have hip hop there because the idea
Speaker 1: was hip hop shows would be too violent, that was
Speaker 1: what they thought or whatever. Who knows, but they weren't
Speaker 1: having them. They just have rock shows there. So we
Speaker 1: didn't have like the ways to like go about it
Speaker 1: in that way. Like we did have an independent hip
Speaker 1: hop movement, but that was just us selling tapes out
Speaker 1: of our trunk, like pulling up on a group of people,
Speaker 1: getting them to play our hape and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and hopefully they dance to it and like it, or
Speaker 1: you give out your tape to the people that are
Speaker 1: popular with big systems, and we would go around the
Speaker 1: country everyone for we go around the country our first
Speaker 1: promotional tour. We didn't have any shows. We just got
Speaker 1: to each city, put up stickers and posters. Asked where
Speaker 1: because there was no like network, you didn't know where
Speaker 1: the record stores were. You ask people where the record
Speaker 1: stores are, because this is like right before sound scan
Speaker 1: jumped off, and even the sound Scan for a while
Speaker 1: was not the independent store. So we asked where the
Speaker 1: record store is, Asked them if we could put up
Speaker 1: our own um, put up our our point of purchase stuff.
Speaker 1: Asked them what parties were going on that night? Go there,
Speaker 1: Go get the DJ to play a song, give flyers
Speaker 1: to everybody. Hopefully we can get on the mic and
Speaker 1: say something, do something and be in in between that
Speaker 1: get people to play the music in their cars. And
Speaker 1: so we did that. You know, we did that for
Speaker 1: weeks and weeks, and that was the ninety three that
Speaker 1: was where and then it was only so we needed
Speaker 1: to get on bet and we were not on their
Speaker 1: radar and we went this is what when BT was
Speaker 1: in in d C still and we went and we
Speaker 1: banged on the door, like literally banged on the door,
Speaker 1: and Um, there was a dude Joe and I'm forgetting
Speaker 1: his name, but he was with the host of BT.
Speaker 1: We don't know who the producers were or anything, and
Speaker 1: we were on wild Pitching. They kind of knew some
Speaker 1: of this stuff, and so we we went and we
Speaker 1: asked for him and we're like, yeah, he told us
Speaker 1: to come here and and uh he came out and
Speaker 1: he was like, what was this all about? And We're like,
Speaker 1: we want to take you to lunch. So we went
Speaker 1: to we spent our per diem. We put our per
Speaker 1: diems together, me pam uh e rock In our road
Speaker 1: manager at the time, check the pharaoh put our per
Speaker 1: diems together, which was like six dollar a day per
Speaker 1: diem or something. And we bought this dude lunch and
Speaker 1: um made friends with him and he played our video.
Speaker 1: Um a lot of that d I Y stuff. I
Speaker 1: mean that probably translates to the film world, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I mean that's how I got it funded,
Speaker 1: how I got people behind it with with the music.
Speaker 1: Was there anything at the time that was there a
Speaker 1: hole you felt needed to be filled? Was there a
Speaker 1: certain was there something that wasn't happening in music that
Speaker 1: you wanted to put there? Oh? Definitely. I. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: I came from an organizing background. I started, UM, I
Speaker 1: have a lot of contradictions. I different times, I was,
Speaker 1: I was doing theater and I was an organizer. UM.
Speaker 1: With that that was helping out the creation of a
Speaker 1: of an anti racist farm workers union in Watsonville and
Speaker 1: uh not in Watsonville and Delano and McFarland. UM. I
Speaker 1: also was also right after that during the same time,
Speaker 1: at the same time was promoted parties, you know, like
Speaker 1: the parties like ladies in Free before ten, you know
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, and uh you know, dress code,
Speaker 1: no gym shoes, you know whatever. UM, all of these
Speaker 1: things kind of converged and I and then I and
Speaker 1: I was going to film school at different times, you know,
Speaker 1: while all of these things were overlapping, and I, UM,
Speaker 1: I saw that, you know, everything that I do is
Speaker 1: about how I look at the world. And I thought
Speaker 1: I didn't think anyone was out there putting out the
Speaker 1: analysis that I was putting out that I wanted to
Speaker 1: put out. So I started doing that, and when I
Speaker 1: decided to do it, I didn't know what I was doing,
Speaker 1: and similar to film, I was like, well, this has
Speaker 1: to be done. What do I need to learn to
Speaker 1: do this? And I knew I wasn't good at rapping
Speaker 1: you know, um radical you know radical organizations. They operate
Speaker 1: off of a philosophy of dialectical materialism, which is one
Speaker 1: of the ideas behind is that everything changes, nothing stays
Speaker 1: the same. Um that even I mean, and this is
Speaker 1: true obviously, even the rocks are deteriorating and changing all
Speaker 1: the time. So with that that everything is changing, you
Speaker 1: also can have something to say or to do with
Speaker 1: how things change. So thinking about that ends up, especially
Speaker 1: for a kid trying to figure out who they are
Speaker 1: and what they want to do, that ends up being
Speaker 1: liberating in the sense that you also, because of that,
Speaker 1: can figure out if you want to get to point
Speaker 1: B or C or whatever that no matter how impossible
Speaker 1: it is, it's really just about having a clear analysis
Speaker 1: of what the obstacles are, figuring out what those steps
Speaker 1: are that you would have to take. You know, like
Speaker 1: if I wanted to go to the moon in three months,
Speaker 1: you know, one of my obstacles would be money, so
Speaker 1: I'd have to get some billionaire to want to send
Speaker 1: me to the moon. You know whatever, I could define that,
Speaker 1: maybe it's almost impossible. Maybe I wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: attain the steps in between. But the first step is
Speaker 1: two correctly define what those steps are gonna be. And
Speaker 1: so I did that with music. I practiced. I looked
Speaker 1: at what other rappers were doing. Sometimes it was you know,
Speaker 1: almost imitating them and figuring that out, figuring out what
Speaker 1: they did with their you know, delivery, figuring out you know,
Speaker 1: and figuring out how, and then practiced. You know, I
Speaker 1: knew that practice was a big part of it. And
Speaker 1: I knew that there's different ways just from organizing. I know,
Speaker 1: there's different ways to practice, Like if I'm talking to you,
Speaker 1: it's different than me like sitting down writing something or whatever,
Speaker 1: or if I'm talking to tend people. All those things
Speaker 1: I applied to doing the music, and I made myself
Speaker 1: get better and um and and and enough to do
Speaker 1: this thing. It wasn't like I wasn't the guy who
Speaker 1: people were like, Oh, you're good, you should do this.
Speaker 1: What are you doing not doing that? You know? People
Speaker 1: were like surprised when I was doing it, similar to
Speaker 1: how they were with the film. Yeah, I'm sorry to throw.
Speaker 1: You probably came in here expecting to start talking about
Speaker 1: the movie and you really but I just wanted to
Speaker 1: get into your because it's it's it's interesting to me
Speaker 1: how it might inform because also, you know, I read
Speaker 1: that you you wrote you taught a course on in
Speaker 1: high school or high school course on persuasive lyric writing.
Speaker 1: Is that true? So I'm curious about that because I
Speaker 1: actually want to know the answer, Like what what? What?
Speaker 1: What is persuasive writing? What? What? What is an example
Speaker 1: of persuasive writing? Uh? What's this? I mean? It more
Speaker 1: is about having a reason you're talking to someone, like
Speaker 1: especially if you're making a piece of art. It's more
Speaker 1: looking at it from the standpoint of, m what do
Speaker 1: you want to say about the world, as opposed to
Speaker 1: that you want to just get to the end of
Speaker 1: the verse and say some cute things. You know that
Speaker 1: applies to film. Obviously you're dealing in theme with with
Speaker 1: with screenwriting. You want to be saying something. Obviously your
Speaker 1: movie is saying something, is saying a lot of things,
Speaker 1: and it's having a lot of fun as well along
Speaker 1: the way. Um, you know, you've got this thing that
Speaker 1: you say every time someone asks you to kind of
Speaker 1: distill it, and I'm just gonna say it for years
Speaker 1: time and not let you say this film is an absurdist,
Speaker 1: dark comedy with magical realism and science fiction inspired by
Speaker 1: the world of telemarketing, which completely undersells or omits any
Speaker 1: of the socio political underpinnings of the film. So why
Speaker 1: is that just to not scare someone away with the
Speaker 1: first Well, here's the thing is that I think all
Speaker 1: of these films are political, even like Skyscraper and Rampage.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen those movies, so I don't know in
Speaker 1: which way they are, but they're all telling us something,
Speaker 1: even when the writer might not be conscious of what
Speaker 1: the but sometimes the writer is conscious because as we know,
Speaker 1: there is and this is for some people who haven't heard,
Speaker 1: this might seem like I'm a tinfoil hat guy. But
Speaker 1: ever after nine eleven, there was an open dialogue between
Speaker 1: the Pentagon and different studios, and not just for films
Speaker 1: about you know, the invasion of of of Iraq. Like
Speaker 1: there's a dialogue that's going on, and some of that
Speaker 1: has to do with how are the how is the
Speaker 1: army being portrayed? How is the you know, like, are
Speaker 1: there some things where you can put in some navy
Speaker 1: seals all those sorts of things. Um, And and that's
Speaker 1: just the more crass stuff. But other stuff is you know, um,
Speaker 1: just the way life is, you know, like what what
Speaker 1: things you're supposed to be be scared of? What things?
Speaker 1: You know? What you know, putting out the idea of
Speaker 1: what most humans want and how most humans act. It's
Speaker 1: all political. So if we talk about my film in
Speaker 1: terms of it being quote unquote political, then what it's
Speaker 1: doing is it's making us think that the rest of
Speaker 1: the stuff is normal. You know, it's making us think
Speaker 1: that the rest of the stuff has no viewpoint. Regarding
Speaker 1: the tinfoil hat comment, I mean, do you do you
Speaker 1: deal with that? Do do do? Do you? I mean
Speaker 1: I was I asked that because I was watching your
Speaker 1: politically incorrect episode from fifteen years right after nine eleven,
Speaker 1: you know, when party music came out, and uh, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to jump through the screen and smack Bill
Speaker 1: Maher around because he was he was so condescending to
Speaker 1: you and the other guests on the show as well.
Speaker 1: Do you deal with that. Um well, I would say this.
Speaker 1: I mean I do sometimes, but then i'm always I'm
Speaker 1: not always, but I'm shown to be right. Like on
Speaker 1: that one, I was putting forward the idea that the
Speaker 1: US got into invading uh Iraq for monetary reasons, and
Speaker 1: they were like, oh, you're crazy this and that, what
Speaker 1: what are you talking about. Then of course it got
Speaker 1: found out. You know, I'm not saying I was the
Speaker 1: only one saying that, but there wasn't anything was considered
Speaker 1: a too radical an idea for people to even discuss
Speaker 1: on Disney owned television. I guess you know. So yeah,
Speaker 1: um so I don't think that normal folks take it as,
Speaker 1: you know, something way out there. I mean, look, there
Speaker 1: was a there were two studies recently done, one by
Speaker 1: Harvard put to me the more telling one was the one.
Speaker 1: I can call it up on my phone because I've
Speaker 1: screenshot at it to show to people. But um uh
Speaker 1: the but where there's a right wing think take that
Speaker 1: did a study of millennials and one of the things
Speaker 1: that came up with made made this think tank up
Speaker 1: in arms, saying, look, this is showing us that you know,
Speaker 1: universities are doing this and that anyway out of those hundred,
Speaker 1: millennials showed one and two believe that we should have
Speaker 1: a socialist world. Um. So often though, writers and artists
Speaker 1: have done everything that we can do to try to
Speaker 1: get out of the real world, you know, like to
Speaker 1: to um separate ourselves from folks. So we've we've made
Speaker 1: ourselves believe that there's nothing that can be done about
Speaker 1: the world and that, and so we sink into writing
Speaker 1: and we're like, we're gonna expose it, which my show,
Speaker 1: which my movie kind of talks about, like we we
Speaker 1: are like, look what we're du is we tell the
Speaker 1: truth and that's our job. That's all we can do. Man.
Speaker 1: So we just tell the truth and you know, it
Speaker 1: gets out there. But that's not enough. And in giving
Speaker 1: us ourselves that excuse, we cling on to the idea
Speaker 1: that we should change what we write about, UM two
Speaker 1: because everyone else is not as enlightened as us. So
Speaker 1: you know, people water down there own ideas publicly because
Speaker 1: we you know, that's what the media is often does,
Speaker 1: is it makes us think that we're the most radical
Speaker 1: person in the room. That's the whole job. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have so many examples of that in life, where
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, Occupy coming up, it's one of them.
Speaker 1: Nobody would have thought in two thousand and ten that
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eleven you'd have this movement jumping
Speaker 1: off in every town in the United States where they
Speaker 1: basically we're having a class line that said versus the
Speaker 1: one percent, which now is a cliche sort of thing
Speaker 1: to throw out there too, where we don't even think
Speaker 1: about it, and just but in reality talking about an
Speaker 1: economic function to this economic system, which seems it's radical
Speaker 1: to say that there are functions inside of an economic system.
Speaker 1: But we wouldn't have thought that. But all these things
Speaker 1: popped up in all of these towns, and and beyond
Speaker 1: the people that showed up there, the folks that liked
Speaker 1: the fact that it was there, that weren't showing up there.
Speaker 1: I mean, the point is is that um, before that,
Speaker 1: they hadn't even said the word capitalism. And there's some
Speaker 1: study was done where before um, before Occupied the News
Speaker 1: had said the word capitalism once in twenty years, and
Speaker 1: then after Occupy they were saying it, you know, every night,
Speaker 1: like it was a dirty word to those who were
Speaker 1: like it was like to look at it in a
Speaker 1: to look at things as having anything to do with
Speaker 1: economic function. Um then calls up other questions. But but
Speaker 1: here's the thing, the other reason that I don't talk
Speaker 1: about it necessarily in terms of a social political thing,
Speaker 1: because I mean, if you get any director here and
Speaker 1: you talk to them about their ideas, they're gonna have
Speaker 1: as many ideas as I do. But for the past
Speaker 1: twentysomething years, uh, rebellion has been edited out of what
Speaker 1: we write about. I just regarding that comment, I just
Speaker 1: read something you said about another film, UH never let
Speaker 1: me go. I had the exact same takeaway from that
Speaker 1: movie that you did, and you know, which is that
Speaker 1: there's no spirit of rebellion within the film. And in
Speaker 1: some ways, okay, that's kind of the point, but that's
Speaker 1: but it's not what I wanted. And you could have
Speaker 1: that be the point for the characters that are there.
Speaker 1: Let's say he wanted to write about some emotional thing
Speaker 1: of like giving up and losing hope. Okay, but it
Speaker 1: could still be somewhere in the world, you know, somewhere
Speaker 1: because they have other things happening in that world that
Speaker 1: you know, and and but it gets yeah, we don't
Speaker 1: even have it in that world. The only time we
Speaker 1: have it in that world. Is when they create such
Speaker 1: a science fiction. Um uh, such a science fiction created
Speaker 1: different universe. Yeah. That and and that it doesn't even matter.
Speaker 1: Like Star Wars was supposed to be started out as
Speaker 1: George Lucas's version of Apocalypse Now. He was supposed to
Speaker 1: write Apocalypse. It was his idea to do Apocalypse Now,
Speaker 1: but he, um, this is according to the conversations. It's
Speaker 1: just a book that's of conversations between Michael and Dodchy
Speaker 1: and Walter Merch who edited a lot of that stuff.
Speaker 1: He was going he he was making his movie based
Speaker 1: on the Heart of Darkness as Apocalypse Now was um
Speaker 1: but following the Vietcom with the Vietcong as the protagonists
Speaker 1: and going into um U s territory to find this
Speaker 1: viehic X Vietcom guy who had risen up the ranks
Speaker 1: and become powerful there and we're helping them to fight
Speaker 1: the Vietcom. And people are like, that's too radical. You're
Speaker 1: having them identify with, you know, the communists, and George
Speaker 1: and he's like and he couldn't get it funded, so
Speaker 1: he's like, fine, I'll put it in space. And that's
Speaker 1: where Star Wars comes the rebels were. For at least
Speaker 1: for the first movie, the rebels were supposed to be
Speaker 1: the vietcom The Empire was the United States and um
Speaker 1: and Darth Vader was their curts. And it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Nobody cares, you know what they It's so removed from
Speaker 1: real life that you can only couch those ideas in
Speaker 1: something that's fantasy or something and that that you're saying
Speaker 1: that that and because of that, how removed it is.
Speaker 1: That's why we have no idea why anybody is in
Speaker 1: the Empire to begin with, Like nobody is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it really fights for our families. No, nobody's doing that.
Speaker 1: It's so removed that there's no allusion to the United
Speaker 1: States or and and in a lot of these movies,
Speaker 1: that's why they have evil versus good in that way
Speaker 1: because they don't want to. They don't want to, uh,
Speaker 1: make reference to anyone in our real world. So I
Speaker 1: mean in Star Trek they're supposed to live in a
Speaker 1: socialist society. Nobody cares. It doesn't matter. It's so far,
Speaker 1: you know, like Republicans can watch those things and be
Speaker 1: totally down because it doesn't really raise the thing. And
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying that I think that they're definitely
Speaker 1: or even a lot of Republicans that would agree with
Speaker 1: the basic idea that people should get the value of
Speaker 1: the work that they do, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: which is a very socialist concept. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: when you start putting lingo on it, then people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't think I agree with that. I'm not supposed to.
Speaker 1: You know. Then as an art artist, when we start
Speaker 1: talking about the film in that way, my ego gets
Speaker 1: hurt because I put a lot of work into the
Speaker 1: style of this, into into the storytelling that um, just
Speaker 1: because I end up having a different viewpoint than that
Speaker 1: people aren't used to seeing in film, then that's what
Speaker 1: gets talked about. But um, I would say that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that we all you know, this
Speaker 1: was a collaboration of actors and production designer DP and
Speaker 1: UM costume designer. Like with this vision that I had
Speaker 1: that I think, um, it's something that could get looked over.
Speaker 1: So that's why I talk about what it's what to me,
Speaker 1: that's what it's about. Just just and this is we're
Speaker 1: talking about that one question for a long time. But
Speaker 1: that's what it's about. Is those those things that I
Speaker 1: said it is an absurd as dark comedy, magical realism,
Speaker 1: science fiction, because all those other things that don't have
Speaker 1: my viewpoint, they have some other viewpoint that we don't
Speaker 1: talk about either. Well, let's talk about just the It
Speaker 1: has a very interesting journey obviously, this story, I mean,
Speaker 1: the script was published through the help of Dave Eggers originally,
Speaker 1: so you finally got the funding to make it as
Speaker 1: a film. Um. So, you know, just a very unique
Speaker 1: kind of trajectory for a story like this. You went
Speaker 1: to the Sundance Labs with it as well, what what
Speaker 1: did you learn with with the sun Dance Institute of
Speaker 1: it all? I mean, you know, and I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: you went to film school by the way, so like
Speaker 1: so everyone's under aware you went to film school before
Speaker 1: you became a music star. Yeah. I went to film
Speaker 1: school and that was at San Francisco State and at
Speaker 1: the time there was a lot of focus on experimental
Speaker 1: film and documentary um, both of which ones weren't things
Speaker 1: I was interested in. UM and uh, going to school
Speaker 1: in San Francisco might have been a different thing going
Speaker 1: to film school in l A or New York, where
Speaker 1: I think, like if you go to school in l
Speaker 1: A Or New York. You know, people who got out
Speaker 1: of school and made a film or even you know,
Speaker 1: made a narrative film at the you know, for their thesis.
Speaker 1: You know, I went to film school in North Carolina,
Speaker 1: so I know what you mean. Yeah, so it was
Speaker 1: like it seems still like a pipe dream even though
Speaker 1: I was in film school. And so that's why I
Speaker 1: took the record deal, um and on the and then
Speaker 1: to be honest, you know, that was a long time ago.
Speaker 1: I don't remember any of that ship, you know, Like
Speaker 1: I'm sure I learned some of that stuff and put
Speaker 1: and brought it forward, but I can't parse out where
Speaker 1: I got this versus where I got that, because you know,
Speaker 1: I also was in you know, we made a lot
Speaker 1: of videos of which I only co directed one of them,
Speaker 1: but um, you know, I was a part of that
Speaker 1: whole process, and you know, I wasn't a stranger to
Speaker 1: a set um. But I think a lot of really
Speaker 1: more than way more than film school. What helped me
Speaker 1: out is producing music, which is a similar collaborative process
Speaker 1: where you've got people that are masters of their craft
Speaker 1: and in the music sense, if I'm the producer they've
Speaker 1: each got more experience, well maybe not experienced, but they've
Speaker 1: each got more UH knowledge of music than I do. UM.
Speaker 1: But it's my vision that I have that that that
Speaker 1: we and I have to get them to buy into it.
Speaker 1: I have to get them to like it. I have
Speaker 1: to get them to UH and I have to know
Speaker 1: what I want out of each one of them that
Speaker 1: that they can bring. And then I have to know that,
Speaker 1: you know, the guitar player is gonna want a guitar
Speaker 1: solo and that might not help out the final product.
Speaker 1: I have to know that when the bass player has
Speaker 1: a better baseline than I do. So all of those
Speaker 1: things and just working and getting projects done and having
Speaker 1: the experience of dealing with people fighting with each other,
Speaker 1: and you know, I wouldn't have made this movie even
Speaker 1: with you know, the same idea. If I had the
Speaker 1: same idea, I wouldn't have made the same movie coming
Speaker 1: straight out of film school because I might have been
Speaker 1: so worried about just being able to make a film
Speaker 1: that I would have been like, Okay, we can take
Speaker 1: out all that stuff and it's really just about Cassius
Speaker 1: in Detroit meeting each other at a telemarketing place. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, like, uh, I might have been
Speaker 1: more malleable. But since I had been doing art for
Speaker 1: a long time and had been doing art that was contentious,
Speaker 1: even just not even for the politics, but for the
Speaker 1: style with which I did it, I was used to
Speaker 1: people being like, that's weird, why are you doing that,
Speaker 1: and having my own reasons and being okay with that.
Speaker 1: But but also listen, you know, that's also part of
Speaker 1: the dialectical materialism idea, is that you know, taking critique
Speaker 1: in and and being okay with it, and and you know,
Speaker 1: and and listening to it, and you know, you do
Speaker 1: go through a process of not listening to it and
Speaker 1: then after a while you hear it. But you know,
Speaker 1: so all of that, but then going to the Sunday
Speaker 1: and Slabs, it still was like a world that I
Speaker 1: didn't know, right. I didn't know other filmmakers. I had
Speaker 1: just started kind of meeting other filmmakers because I joined
Speaker 1: UM the SF Film Filmmaker and Residence program, and so
Speaker 1: there were people like actually being like, we're putting this together.
Speaker 1: We made a film and we you know, so it
Speaker 1: was but but going there and first to the Screenwriter's Lab,
Speaker 1: then later to the director's lab. Um, the screenwriter's lab.
Speaker 1: You have all of these people that are masters of
Speaker 1: their craft looking at it, and and first, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just validating, like, um, the ones that liked it.
Speaker 1: But I mean it was a it was a controversial one,
Speaker 1: I will say, you know, um, because it was different
Speaker 1: just even the format or whatever. And then some people
Speaker 1: were like, I like it, but you know, we need
Speaker 1: to make this more like a movie you can sell
Speaker 1: or whatever, you know, just trying to help me out whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, this conversation is keeping the movie nicely vague
Speaker 1: to how people are like what is this and and
Speaker 1: and uh. But then you do you see them debating
Speaker 1: your script and you realize nobody knows what the funk
Speaker 1: they're doing, and they're all trying to use what they
Speaker 1: know to tell a good story and that's all it is.
Speaker 1: And um, so that helped me out tremendously. Um. As
Speaker 1: well as like just comments by different people, um huh.
Speaker 1: You know, even both the negative and I won't say negative,
Speaker 1: both the comments that were like critical and wanting me
Speaker 1: to change certain things, um, and the ones that upheld it.
Speaker 1: Like but but the best thing I got in the
Speaker 1: screenwriter's lab was this guy Koree my News, who was like, look,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know how to tell you anything
Speaker 1: about your script. That's dumb. It's your script. My script
Speaker 1: is my script. Whatever. Um. I just come here because
Speaker 1: they give me. You know, it's a resort and you
Speaker 1: know it's free food and it's fun. Um. And he said,
Speaker 1: but what I will tell you is I love Cassius.
Speaker 1: I love your lead character. I want to I want
Speaker 1: to have drinks with him. I want to hug him
Speaker 1: and take care of him when I hang out with him.
Speaker 1: I just want to be around him all the time. Um.
Speaker 1: And he said, and that's how I know it's bullshit
Speaker 1: because I hate everybody. And and so we had a
Speaker 1: three hour long conversation about people in our lives who
Speaker 1: you know, and their decision at different points that we
Speaker 1: disagree with, and what was happening with that, and you know,
Speaker 1: and what I realized from that was that I was
Speaker 1: making ashes just be this like innocent pinball getting slapped around,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was the same things that happened
Speaker 1: in the movie. But but he was just it just
Speaker 1: happened to be that he had to make this decision
Speaker 1: and had to make that decision and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, and I ended up giving him more agency
Speaker 1: because of that where he actually made these decisions, because
Speaker 1: this was that that that the conversation brought out, that
Speaker 1: this is more real, what really happens in real life,
Speaker 1: that you know, people make their decisions and then they
Speaker 1: even sometimes dig theirselves further into it because they don't
Speaker 1: want to have made the wrong decision and they own it.
Speaker 1: And so he became that character, and that that had
Speaker 1: reverberations throughout the script to the other characters as well. So, um,
Speaker 1: what about names. I wanted to talk to you about names.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Cassius in Detroit. There's also Diana. It's not
Speaker 1: defaultry debauchery, but what is yeah, and Salvador and Lankston
Speaker 1: just interesting names. Do you think much about how you're
Speaker 1: naming a character? Oh yeah, yeah, I'm into you know,
Speaker 1: if you even see my song titles and album titles,
Speaker 1: I'm very I mean, this album that's the soundtrack to
Speaker 1: the movie is actually probably the least creative title that
Speaker 1: I've ever had, which is the soundtrack to Sorry to
Speaker 1: Bother You. But uh yeah, naming is a is a
Speaker 1: big part of it. Naming is like dialogue or lyrics
Speaker 1: or you know anything like that. I mean basically, you
Speaker 1: give me any space where I get to create something,
Speaker 1: I'm going to want to make the most of it.
Speaker 1: Why do you think you were so good at telemarketing? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: which partly inspired this. Yeah, well, I was always that
Speaker 1: kid that um that a newspaper had a seventeen year
Speaker 1: old goal and scoop up all the kids in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood into a van, which seems like how did they
Speaker 1: let us do this? And uh takes you to some
Speaker 1: other neighborhood where you get out and you and you
Speaker 1: go door to door, you knock on the door and
Speaker 1: sell newspaper subscriptions and at the end of the day
Speaker 1: you get a slice of pizza and uh and if
Speaker 1: you happen to sell some newspapers, you get something I
Speaker 1: don't know, like a dollar or something I don't know. Um.
Speaker 1: And I was that kid that would knock on your
Speaker 1: door with tears in his eyes. And you know, because
Speaker 1: it definitely was already the time when I was about
Speaker 1: to get picked up and I wasn't gonna sell this
Speaker 1: one's newspaper that was going to give me my trip
Speaker 1: to Disneyland. You know that sort of thing. Through that
Speaker 1: for the wrong reasons, I learned how to listen to people,
Speaker 1: learned how um, sometimes people say something very different than
Speaker 1: what they actually mean, which happens a lot in this movie.
Speaker 1: But um, and that carried over into for good reasons,
Speaker 1: into my skills at organizing and realizing that it's not
Speaker 1: about the lingo that people use or whatever. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm not someone that gets caught up on people using
Speaker 1: the you know, politically correct language. It's more about what
Speaker 1: they're about. Sometimes that language tells you something about what
Speaker 1: they're about, but it's more about what people are about.
Speaker 1: And I used that in my organizing because I was
Speaker 1: seeing that some folks were being really didactic and not
Speaker 1: hearing other folks that we're actually agreeing with them. Then
Speaker 1: that even more carried through into my writings of songs,
Speaker 1: like talking about the things that people really are thinking
Speaker 1: about and caring about, like you know, our stuff. No
Speaker 1: matter how political it was. It wasn't say rage against
Speaker 1: the machine, which those lyrics are about, like anger and
Speaker 1: being mad at the system or whatever. Our lyrics were
Speaker 1: often funny and danable. I mean the songs and and
Speaker 1: and with this realism I don't know, there might have been.
Speaker 1: We have a song called Ask Breath Killers, which are
Speaker 1: about these uh it's a commercial. The song is a
Speaker 1: commercial for of uh these pills that you take that
Speaker 1: stop you from kissing the boss's ass and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so but but yeah, basically plugging into what I had
Speaker 1: learned from organizing, which is that it's not people being
Speaker 1: mad at the way things are. That helps because most
Speaker 1: people don't like the way things are. Some people do,
Speaker 1: but most don't. The thing that's stopping people from doing
Speaker 1: things is them feeling like there's a way to change it.
Speaker 1: So our music was always very optimistic, and that had
Speaker 1: to do with me listening to people and and not
Speaker 1: just listening for the words that they say. You know,
Speaker 1: like there are some people that would at that time
Speaker 1: be like, oh, hip hop it's so materialistic. They're always
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, the money that they have, and
Speaker 1: they don't even have the money. I'm like, exactly, they're
Speaker 1: not talking about the money they have, They're talking about
Speaker 1: the freedom they want and there and and but we
Speaker 1: haven't presented a movement for folks to get there. And
Speaker 1: uh so my music was much different than other music
Speaker 1: that would have been labeled conscious or something like that,
Speaker 1: because it wasn't preaching that you're doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: Stop thinking about that, think about this. You know. It
Speaker 1: was like talking about, here's what you're already thinking about.
Speaker 1: I think it's connected to this. Let's go do this,
Speaker 1: you know. And so that also so then when I
Speaker 1: was you know, I quit doing telemarketing and you know,
Speaker 1: I did telemarketing in college, and then I did it
Speaker 1: again after a second album because I had at an
Speaker 1: age twenty four midlife crisis where I felt like I
Speaker 1: was like being fake and you know, I've been. I
Speaker 1: was doing music for my adult life and I had
Speaker 1: not I didn't have respect for artists or myself as
Speaker 1: an artist. As a meaning, I didn't think that it
Speaker 1: really did anything. I was wrong, but there's part of
Speaker 1: it that is right. And um so I stopped and
Speaker 1: we made an organization called the Young Comrades. And during
Speaker 1: that time, I needed a way to make money, and
Speaker 1: I knew I was gonna telemarketing, so I did that
Speaker 1: in order to be because I could do telemarketing one
Speaker 1: day every two weeks and make all the money I
Speaker 1: needed to to be organizing. Yeah, and I think that
Speaker 1: the reason that I was that good is because um,
Speaker 1: of listening and thinking about what people wanted, what people
Speaker 1: and you know, so for manipulative reasons and and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not sticking to the script. You know, um,
Speaker 1: you know it was that at that time I was
Speaker 1: doing tele fundraising, so ostensibly it wasn't as bad as
Speaker 1: you know, selling people encyclopedias they don't need or whatever,
Speaker 1: and and newspapers, which I had done before. Um, but so,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I had ways of manipulating people. What's next?
Speaker 1: I know, you got like you got a TV deal
Speaker 1: and and probably people ready to read TV deal and
Speaker 1: a TV deal and a feature deal and both of
Speaker 1: them are for whatever I want to do. Well, that's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't ask so much more to that. Do you
Speaker 1: you feel like film is something that I mean, as
Speaker 1: you as you said, you were born into this, you're
Speaker 1: born into activism and and and and uh uh or
Speaker 1: organizing Is film something you feel like can really be
Speaker 1: a proper tool for that? Um? I think it's up
Speaker 1: to the organizations. I think it can be. Yes, the
Speaker 1: answer is yes. But if there aren't movements happening, then
Speaker 1: it just becomes ideas and people talk about them. They
Speaker 1: become cute and cool, and you know, people will get
Speaker 1: the T shirts and the ear rings and then you know,
Speaker 1: which I think are is good because the T shirts
Speaker 1: and the earrings make people talk about the movie, um,
Speaker 1: and they also show that people are like connecting with it. However,
Speaker 1: there needs to be movement. There needs to be movements
Speaker 1: that folks can join where at the place that they're at,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh, we'll see whether whether they're out there.
Speaker 1: I think they are out there. We're seeing all kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff happening right now. We're seeing, um, West Virginia
Speaker 1: or is it just Virginia the teachers strike where they're
Speaker 1: shutting shut down the whole thing. We're seeing stuff like
Speaker 1: that going on all over the place. People are looking
Speaker 1: for way, for footholds for people to have power with
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, hopefully this film doesn't just become
Speaker 1: a talking piece or whatever. And you know, some of
Speaker 1: our music I feel like was that. But it also
Speaker 1: can inspire people to do things. One thing I hope
Speaker 1: inspires as other writers to stop editing a real part
Speaker 1: of the world out of their worlds. Yeah. Absolutely, movies
Speaker 1: called Sorry to Bother You. It opens July six. Uh,
Speaker 1: everyone should go see it. Hopefully this conversation stimulated because
Speaker 1: we didn't really get into the nitty gritty. But I
Speaker 1: didn't want to. I didn't want to, like, you know,
Speaker 1: it just it's a It's a movie to go in
Speaker 1: without knowing anything. Just listen to everybody telling you that
Speaker 1: it's good and then go. Because that's how I That's
Speaker 1: how I went to see Um, That's how I went
Speaker 1: to see uh black Swan. You know, I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about it. I saw the poster and I was
Speaker 1: going on a date with this girl and I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go see a ballet movie. I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to get high. So I got really high because I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm not this is I kept smoking in
Speaker 1: the parking line. I was like, I'm not high enough
Speaker 1: to go see a ballet movie and I'm a lightweight.
Speaker 1: And then but I wasn't getting because I'm a lightweight
Speaker 1: and didn't know that I should wait. I just kept
Speaker 1: smoking and I sat down in the seat and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh shit, I'm high. And then the movie
Speaker 1: came on, and throughout it, I was like loudly saying, oh,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is the best movie I've ever seen,
Speaker 1: and uh, I want people to do that, but without
Speaker 1: smoking the weed. You know, no matter how illegal it is,
Speaker 1: it's still Do you smoke anything it's bad for you?
Speaker 1: That doesn't I'm not you know whatever. I just want
Speaker 1: to say that in my time right here, is because
Speaker 1: you know, we get all hyped off of stuff and like,
Speaker 1: oh it's it's healthy, No do it, but just know
Speaker 1: it's unhealthy when I when I drink whiskey, I'm not like,
Speaker 1: oh this is healthy, you know, right, But but we're
Speaker 1: the wisdom Riley. We'll go check out the movie. Everybody
Speaker 1: did you like? Six? Sorry to bother, you really appreciate
Speaker 1: you coming on the show. A right man. Thank you
Speaker 1: for having me July six and select theaters July everywhere.
Speaker 1: There you go. Thanks Matt m