Dec 13, 2024
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‘Sorry to Bother’ Busts Wide Open Oakland Cine
by Doniphan Blair
The stars of 'Sorry to Bother You', Tessa Thompson and Lakeith Stanfield, encounter a loud demonstration at work. photo: courtesy B. RileyFINALLY A FEATURE FILM WITH ALL THE
the pathos, perversity, politics and BLACK comedy—in all implications of the term—to detonate a unique, aggressive film movement in Oakland.
The directorial debut of Boots Riley, the well-known Oakland rapper who co-created The Coup in 1991, “Sorry to Bother You” (see trailer) is an ambitious mashup of ideas, genres, cinematic photography (by newcomer Doug Emmett), great acting and no-holds-barred satire, the likes of which I haven’t seen since, say, “How to Get Ahead in Advertising” (Robinson, 1989).
It opens innocently enough in bed with Detroit and Cassius, beautifully played by Tessa Thompson (Creed”, 2015, “Westworld”, 2016-) and Lakeith Stanfield (“Atlanta”, 2018, or “Quest”, 2017, see cS article) respectively. They only finally get up when Cassius decides to go look for work in a crowded, overamped and modernized Oakland.
There’s even a tender mystical moment, which big pictures often fail to include: Cassius worries if what he is doing will matter in the future; Detroit lovingly assures him it will.
Although their romance humanizes the film through to its end, the hysterical bits start early—notably the electric door, on the garage where they live, opening accidentally during sex, or their car’s wipers requiring manual operation with a rope—as do the plot twists.
'Sorry to Bother You' director Boots Riley, the well-known Oakland rapper, cleans up well for the media, a trick he learned when his band, The Coup, started charting in the '90s. photo: D. BlairAfter Cassius lands a job at a futuristic call center, he begins dropping into people’s homes, literally—a striking metaphor for the soul-killing sales call. He learns to conjure a “white voice” (provided by comic actor David Cross), again literally, winning him sales and then accolades from a sleazy boss, played to the hilt by West Oakland’s own Michael X. Sommers.
The cast is rounded way up by Terry Crews as Cassius’s voice-of-reason uncle (“The Ridiculous 6”, 2015), Danny Glover (too many credits to mention) as the call center co-worker who hips him to the "white voice" trick, Armie Hammer as the center's corrupt owner (the Oscar-nominated “Call Me by Your Name”, 2017), Omari Hardwick (recently starring in the amazing “A Boy. A Girl. A Dream”, Basir, 2018), and many more.
Riley, who also wrote, could afford so much talent his first time out because "Sorry to Bother You” has been garnering acclaim since 2012, when he floated its themes in an album of the same name (featuring the great “Magic Clap”), and two years later when the SF literary mag McSweeney's published his very funny script.
Riley earned a generous startup grant from the SF International Film Festival, where “STBY” was the two-week event's "centerpiece" and had its international premiere on April 12th—simultaneously at SF’s Castro AND Oakland’s Grand Lake, with Q&A skyped from latter to former. He was also taken in by LA’s premier African-American filmmaker whisperer, Forest Whitaker, whose name undoubtedly attracted some investors.
From a well-woke family out of Detroit (hence the female lead's name), Riley landed in Oakland as a child and if you haven’t heard his story, it’s well worth your next five minutes, or fifteen if you click all the music links.
Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield) celebrates selling out to become a top salesperson at his call center. photo: courtesy B. RileyBy the time he was 20, Riley was working at UPS, where he met the guy later called E-roc and they formed The Coup, receiving some airplay with their first album, “Kill My Landlord” (1993). Their second, “Genocide & Juice”, a year later, garnered good radio rotation with its single, "Fat Cats And Bigga Fish", which also had a stylish BW video, rich in production values, costumes and sets (see it here).
By the time we get to the 1998 “Steal This Album”, and its bigger hit, “Me & Jesus the Pimp in a '79 Granada Last Night”, featuring lines like “he was smilin' like a vulture as he rolled the horticulture,” Rolling Stone Magazine is calling it “a masterpiece of slow-rolling West Coast funk.” Its MTV, which Riley presumably directed (since he studied media at SF State), has a fully cinematic feel (see it here) and its songs actually inspired literature (Monique Morris’s “Too Beautiful For Words”, 2000).
"The Guillotine", one of The Coup’s most infectious tunes and colorful videos, features lyrics like “We got hella people, they got helicopters,” Boots in bunny makeup and the band line dancing across West Oakland. "Strange Arithmetic”, also off the "Sorry to Bother You" album, exemplifies their hybrid of rap, funk and punk.
At the same time, Riley was also exploring his aggressive activist side. He formed the Mau Mau Rhythm Collective, which mounted “edutainment” concerts, promoted the Black Panther Alumni Association and Copwatch, and helped stop the FBI's "Weed And Seed" program and Oakland's "No Cruising" ordinance.
Amazingly, The Coup’s fourth album, “Party Music”, scheduled for release late-September, 2001, had cover art with an exploding World Trade Center. After proving they were not party to the conspiracy, it required a rapid redesign, something Riley appears adept at.
Bay Area superstar Danny Glover spices up a scene in 'Sorry to Bother You'. photo: courtesy B. RileyAfter its makeover, “Party Music” was hailed as “the hip-hop album of the year" by Rolling Stone, while Vibe Magazine listed Riley as one of 2002’s ten most influential artists, leading to appearances on Fox News, “Politically Incorrect” and elsewhere. Soon The Coup was touring with Rage Against the Machine and Riley was joining with their guitarist, the also-very-political Tom Morello, to form a side band, Street Sweeper.
Riley even scored that most commercial of hipster accolades, scoring an episode of “The Simpsons” with his tune "Pranksta Rap" (2005). The following year The Coup’s “Pick a Bigger Weapon” included guest artists Morello, Black Thought (The Roots) and Bay Area punk intellectual Jello Biafra, and was crowned Album Of The Year by The Associated Press. After touring the globe, where the French especially adore him, Riley returned home and became intimately involved with Oakland's Occupy in 2011.
Around this time he started writing “Sorry to Bother You”, which brings all of his interests—music, Oakland, politics, humor and wild-ass visuals—into one pulsating and provocative package.
The film’s biting satire—about a poor soul who sells out, makes bank and even breaks strikes—overshadows the need for more precise political exposition. It already compels the viewer to think, to laugh hysterically on occasion and to decide on their own, which is the secret to herding anarchists.
Amazingly, Oakland has already figured massively in this year's films, notably the opening and closing scenes of the worldwide blockbuster “Black Panther” and as the setting of the soon-to-be released, Sundance-darling “Blindspotting”. But the former is a tad too narratively complex and the latter too heartfelt to be iconic or ironic enough to crack the code of Oakland’s structural ambiguity.
Boots Riley, Terry Crews and Michael X. Sommers go goofy on the red carpert set up by the SF International. photo: D. Blair“Sorry to Bother You”, on the other hand, does what an indie should do: bring to the table new ideas, analysis and techniques, not to mention the massive raw energy flop sweating off the screen, while staying just slick enough to entertain the troops at a multiplex in Topeka, Kansas, say.
Indeed, “Sorry to Bother You” is relentless, much like Riley himself, who is said to be stubborn but pragmatic. The script keeps on twisting and turning, with a gasp-out-loud development at the end of every second or third cut, with Lakeith Stanfield’s straight man carrying the story forward, until he reaches some incredible conclusions as well as confusions, some of which could not help but bleed into the making of.
Indeed, its Oakland-based production was known to have some issues that threatened to push it both over budget and out of that solidarity feel standard to indies. It was apparently saved by a few personnel changes and hard work by the production team, which included locals like producer George Rush, line producer Debbie Brubaker and location manager Heather MacLean, among the many others working feverishly to bring it across the finish line.
Admittedly, in the current festival version, the film's end is a bit of a mess, due to the profusion of story lines and strange occurrences. But rumor has it that there is a plan afoot to alleviate that with some strategic re-editing. Along with some additional filming, that did happen a couple weeks ago, this promises to present a more cohesive film by summer release time.
Regardless, even in the chaos of the climax, the incredible reveals still astound; there’s an animated sequence as shocking as it is satisfying—ditto the full- frontal male nude scene; AND there is a nice romantic denouement, delivering us right back to where we started, Detroit and Cassius in bed but so, so, so much further along—as are we.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on May 14, 2018 - 12:49 AM
by Doniphan Blair
The stars of 'Sorry to Bother You', Tessa Thompson and Lakeith Stanfield, encounter a loud demonstration at work. photo: courtesy B. Rileythe pathos, perversity, politics and BLACK comedy—in all implications of the term—to detonate a unique, aggressive film movement in Oakland.
The directorial debut of Boots Riley, the well-known Oakland rapper who co-created The Coup in 1991, “Sorry to Bother You” (see trailer) is an ambitious mashup of ideas, genres, cinematic photography (by newcomer Doug Emmett), great acting and no-holds-barred satire, the likes of which I haven’t seen since, say, “How to Get Ahead in Advertising” (Robinson, 1989).
It opens innocently enough in bed with Detroit and Cassius, beautifully played by Tessa Thompson (Creed”, 2015, “Westworld”, 2016-) and Lakeith Stanfield (“Atlanta”, 2018, or “Quest”, 2017, see cS article) respectively. They only finally get up when Cassius decides to go look for work in a crowded, overamped and modernized Oakland.
There’s even a tender mystical moment, which big pictures often fail to include: Cassius worries if what he is doing will matter in the future; Detroit lovingly assures him it will.
Although their romance humanizes the film through to its end, the hysterical bits start early—notably the electric door, on the garage where they live, opening accidentally during sex, or their car’s wipers requiring manual operation with a rope—as do the plot twists.
'Sorry to Bother You' director Boots Riley, the well-known Oakland rapper, cleans up well for the media, a trick he learned when his band, The Coup, started charting in the '90s. photo: D. BlairThe cast is rounded way up by Terry Crews as Cassius’s voice-of-reason uncle (“The Ridiculous 6”, 2015), Danny Glover (too many credits to mention) as the call center co-worker who hips him to the "white voice" trick, Armie Hammer as the center's corrupt owner (the Oscar-nominated “Call Me by Your Name”, 2017), Omari Hardwick (recently starring in the amazing “A Boy. A Girl. A Dream”, Basir, 2018), and many more.
Riley, who also wrote, could afford so much talent his first time out because "Sorry to Bother You” has been garnering acclaim since 2012, when he floated its themes in an album of the same name (featuring the great “Magic Clap”), and two years later when the SF literary mag McSweeney's published his very funny script.
Riley earned a generous startup grant from the SF International Film Festival, where “STBY” was the two-week event's "centerpiece" and had its international premiere on April 12th—simultaneously at SF’s Castro AND Oakland’s Grand Lake, with Q&A skyped from latter to former. He was also taken in by LA’s premier African-American filmmaker whisperer, Forest Whitaker, whose name undoubtedly attracted some investors.
From a well-woke family out of Detroit (hence the female lead's name), Riley landed in Oakland as a child and if you haven’t heard his story, it’s well worth your next five minutes, or fifteen if you click all the music links.
Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield) celebrates selling out to become a top salesperson at his call center. photo: courtesy B. RileyBy the time we get to the 1998 “Steal This Album”, and its bigger hit, “Me & Jesus the Pimp in a '79 Granada Last Night”, featuring lines like “he was smilin' like a vulture as he rolled the horticulture,” Rolling Stone Magazine is calling it “a masterpiece of slow-rolling West Coast funk.” Its MTV, which Riley presumably directed (since he studied media at SF State), has a fully cinematic feel (see it here) and its songs actually inspired literature (Monique Morris’s “Too Beautiful For Words”, 2000).
"The Guillotine", one of The Coup’s most infectious tunes and colorful videos, features lyrics like “We got hella people, they got helicopters,” Boots in bunny makeup and the band line dancing across West Oakland. "Strange Arithmetic”, also off the "Sorry to Bother You" album, exemplifies their hybrid of rap, funk and punk.
At the same time, Riley was also exploring his aggressive activist side. He formed the Mau Mau Rhythm Collective, which mounted “edutainment” concerts, promoted the Black Panther Alumni Association and Copwatch, and helped stop the FBI's "Weed And Seed" program and Oakland's "No Cruising" ordinance.
Amazingly, The Coup’s fourth album, “Party Music”, scheduled for release late-September, 2001, had cover art with an exploding World Trade Center. After proving they were not party to the conspiracy, it required a rapid redesign, something Riley appears adept at.
Bay Area superstar Danny Glover spices up a scene in 'Sorry to Bother You'. photo: courtesy B. RileyRiley even scored that most commercial of hipster accolades, scoring an episode of “The Simpsons” with his tune "Pranksta Rap" (2005). The following year The Coup’s “Pick a Bigger Weapon” included guest artists Morello, Black Thought (The Roots) and Bay Area punk intellectual Jello Biafra, and was crowned Album Of The Year by The Associated Press. After touring the globe, where the French especially adore him, Riley returned home and became intimately involved with Oakland's Occupy in 2011.
Around this time he started writing “Sorry to Bother You”, which brings all of his interests—music, Oakland, politics, humor and wild-ass visuals—into one pulsating and provocative package.
The film’s biting satire—about a poor soul who sells out, makes bank and even breaks strikes—overshadows the need for more precise political exposition. It already compels the viewer to think, to laugh hysterically on occasion and to decide on their own, which is the secret to herding anarchists.
Amazingly, Oakland has already figured massively in this year's films, notably the opening and closing scenes of the worldwide blockbuster “Black Panther” and as the setting of the soon-to-be released, Sundance-darling “Blindspotting”. But the former is a tad too narratively complex and the latter too heartfelt to be iconic or ironic enough to crack the code of Oakland’s structural ambiguity.
Boots Riley, Terry Crews and Michael X. Sommers go goofy on the red carpert set up by the SF International. photo: D. BlairIndeed, “Sorry to Bother You” is relentless, much like Riley himself, who is said to be stubborn but pragmatic. The script keeps on twisting and turning, with a gasp-out-loud development at the end of every second or third cut, with Lakeith Stanfield’s straight man carrying the story forward, until he reaches some incredible conclusions as well as confusions, some of which could not help but bleed into the making of.
Indeed, its Oakland-based production was known to have some issues that threatened to push it both over budget and out of that solidarity feel standard to indies. It was apparently saved by a few personnel changes and hard work by the production team, which included locals like producer George Rush, line producer Debbie Brubaker and location manager Heather MacLean, among the many others working feverishly to bring it across the finish line.
Admittedly, in the current festival version, the film's end is a bit of a mess, due to the profusion of story lines and strange occurrences. But rumor has it that there is a plan afoot to alleviate that with some strategic re-editing. Along with some additional filming, that did happen a couple weeks ago, this promises to present a more cohesive film by summer release time.
Regardless, even in the chaos of the climax, the incredible reveals still astound; there’s an animated sequence as shocking as it is satisfying—ditto the full- frontal male nude scene; AND there is a nice romantic denouement, delivering us right back to where we started, Detroit and Cassius in bed but so, so, so much further along—as are we.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on May 14, 2018 - 12:49 AM
