{"id":33,"date":"2026-05-19T19:38:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=33"},"modified":"2026-05-19T19:38:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:38:28","slug":"boots-riley-marx-brother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=33","title":{"rendered":"Boots Riley, Marx Brother"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On a cool, drizzly day in Oakland, California, the film director Boots Riley often seemed less like a person than like a landmark\u2014clockable from a distance. In part, this was because Riley, who is fifty-five, wore a gargantuan, lumpy tomato-red felt hat with a wide brim, like the cowboy hat worn by Quick Draw McGraw in the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons. It was January, 2025, and Riley was taking a lunch break from editing his second movie, the caper film \u201cI Love Boosters.\u201d On his way to a burrito joint, he was stopped on nearly every block, often by fans of \u201cSorry to Bother You,\u201d his surreal sci-fi movie about an Oakland telemarketer, from 2018, or of his equally loopy 2023 Amazon TV series, \u201cI\u2019m a Virgo,\u201d about a sheltered thirteen-foot-tall Black teen-age boy. Some people quoted lines from his nineties hip-hop group, the Coup; others knew him from the 2011 protest encampment Occupy Oakland.<\/p>\n

Read more The Fate of Twenty-one Los Angeles Siblings<\/a><\/p>\n

No matter who walked up, Riley slowed down. Oakland has become a city of artists, and often people just wanted to talk shop. A skate-store owner had plans for his own caper movie; so did a guy from a sign store. A musician called Big Hungry, who was starting a \u201cdigital music salon,\u201d thanked Riley for hooking him up with a writing group. In each encounter, Riley, a chill, hangdog figure with mutton chops and a spray of freckles, was soft-spoken and receptive, curious and unhurried, but also a little elusive when necessary, knowing when to drift away. His friend Pete Lee, a photographer and a filmmaker, once recalled the default question that Riley uses to identify friendly semi-strangers he can\u2019t remember: \u201cSo\u2014what are you working on?\u201d<\/p>\n

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On our way back to Riley\u2019s editing suite, we passed a mural of Oakland notables, an image that included the hip-hop luminary Tupac Shakur and Pam the Funkstress\u2014the d.j. for the Coup, who died at the age of fifty-one, after complications from surgery. A skinny man wearing a GoPro spotted Riley from a block away, whipped his head around like Wile E. Coyote, and barrelled toward us. \u201cYou<\/em> should be on a mural!\u201d the man yelled.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not done yet!\u201d Riley shouted back.<\/p>\n

All week, Riley had been struggling to hone the rhythms of \u201cI Love Boosters,\u201d which was slated to premi\u00e8re that fall. The film, inspired by a track from the Coup\u2019s 2006 album, \u201cPick a Bigger Weapon,\u201d is a Robin Hood story in which the Velvet Gang, a crew of shoplifting \u201cboosters\u201d led by an Oakland resident named Corvette (Keke Palmer), squares off with a venal, worker-exploiting, idea-stealing billionaire designer, Christie Smith, played by Demi Moore. But, like all of Riley\u2019s projects, the movie defies easy summary: it is a screwball farce, a Day-Glo dystopia, a heist flick, a sci-fi adventure, and a psychedelic social satire, double-stuffed with anti-capitalist themes and absurdist detours, plus a touch of vampire cunnilingus. Riley was working with the independent film company Neon, which, after years of snapping up Oscar winners at film festivals, had begun producing its own films, and \u201cBoosters\u201d was its biggest production yet. Expectations ran high: \u201cSorry to Bother You,\u201d which cost only $3.2 million, made eighteen million dollars at the box office. \u201cBoosters\u201d cost twenty million dollars, and Riley still had to finalize the hand-crafted effects that are essential to his D.I.Y.-ish aesthetic\u2014a ragged, cartoony quality that he calls \u201cjankiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riley saw \u201cBoosters\u201d as his best chance to infiltrate the mainstream. He\u2019d spent decades as a critics\u2019 darling, first in music and then in film and TV; in Oakland, he was perfectly in synch, a Marxist bohemian auteur-virtuoso whose class-war themes were native to the culture. Now his goal was to blast \u201cBoosters\u201d far beyond that radius, turning it into a summer blockbuster, a popcorn hit with a revolutionary heart.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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That day, Riley had been editing a sequence in which Corvette sneaks into a San Francisco condo owned by Christie, her fashion idol, by hiding inside a coffee delivery cart. The scene used one of the film\u2019s funniest visual gags, an apartment so crazily tilted that nobody inside it could stand up straight. Like many of Riley\u2019s best bits, it doubled as an in-joke for locals: Millennium Tower, a San Francisco high-rise completed in 2009, had sunk sixteen inches, then leaned two more, creating a luxury boondoggle.<\/p>\n

On Riley\u2019s monitor, Corvette, attempting to flee the condo, was tugged downward by gravity\u2014and when she tried to stay stable her legs whirled in a \u201cLooney Tunes\u201d blur. Riley had achieved the effect by using an elaborate pinwheel mechanism that spun mannequin legs at lightning speed.<\/p>\n

The sequence ran long. Riley tweaked dialogue in which Moore posed the body of the girl pushing the coffee cart while pontificating about seeing it as \u201cart.\u201d Ultimately, he decided that it didn\u2019t land. \u201cIt\u2019s bad writing,\u201d he said, cutting the whole exchange. Flipping through shots of Corvette peeking impishly from the cart, he rejected one, with an affectionate laugh, as \u201ctoo<\/em> Keke Palmer.\u201d He was seeking a hard-to-hit tone: jokes that wouldn\u2019t \u201cpressure\u201d the audience or produce \u201cthe wrong kind of laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, hours in, he was satisfied. \u201cIt\u2019s very \u2018Pink Panther\u2019! The whole thing feels like a Blake Edwards movie,\u201d he said. At his request, his editor, Matt Hannam, added circusy sound effects, including a slide whistle. \u201c\u00a0\u2018Guest starring Dom DeLuise,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Riley added, laughing.<\/p>\n

Riley\u2019s movies are entwined with\u2014and, often, inspired by\u2014music. For \u201cBoosters,\u201d he\u2019d set the action to a hilarious cacophony of hoots and whistles composed by Tune-Yards, his Oakland neighbors Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner, who had scored all his projects. The collaboration had been easy, instinctual, and locally sourced: while Riley was writing the \u201cBoosters\u201d script, he\u2019d run down the block to discuss new scenes with the musicians. The rest of the production had been much harder\u2014particularly because, to his frustration, he\u2019d been forced to film primarily in Atlanta rather than in Oakland, after a year of maddening delays led to the production losing its California tax rebate.<\/p>\n

Midway through the afternoon, Riley gave his son Nicos a call. Riley has four children: Alina, twenty-eight, and Nicos, twenty-five, from an early marriage to an illustrator; Xola, twenty, with another ex; and Django, thirteen, with his long-term partner, Gabby La La. Nicos, who is on the autism spectrum, was attending a school that taught filmmaking skills to neurodivergent adults. He had got lost on a bus route; Riley spoke to him gently, arranging for an Uber. He\u2019d been trying to guide Nicos during the difficult transition to an independent life, which made it even harder to be out of town for months at a time.<\/p>\n

Late one evening, after he\u2019d finished editing, we drove to a chic cocktail bar, a product of the gentrification he\u2019d fought for years. On the way, I asked how long he\u2019d been wearing these big hats. (He had a roster, including a nubbly Rastafarian number.) They were a recent thing, he explained: a year and a half earlier, he\u2019d bought a few from Uptown Yardie, an \u00e9lite London brand inspired by Jamaican culture. He took the red felt hat off his head to show me its ornate inner structure, joking that it was a \u201chat within a hat.\u201d I peeked inside it: it struck me as an embodiment of Riley\u2019s adoration of too-muchness, and also like the slang that comedy writers use for overkill: a hat on a hat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For more than a year, as I\u2019d trailed Riley, I\u2019d assumed that his hats were savvy self-branding, a deliberate shift away from the dandelion Afro that he had worn since the nineties, when he\u2019d scowled, with quasi-parodic toughness, from the covers of albums such as \u201cGenocide & Juice.\u201d These days, he looked as goofily approachable as a children\u2019s-show host, which struck me as helpful in a career that required him to win over normie film executives.<\/p>\n

There was a simpler explanation, he told me: his hairline was receding. The longer he wore these Brobdingnagian toppers, the harder it was to quit\u2014the hats matted down his hair, and it was difficult to detangle. Lately, he\u2019d been wondering if he should wean himself off the hat habit. \u201cThey\u2019re heavy<\/em>, too,\u201d he said. \u201cAt first, I couldn\u2019t wear this one for more than a few minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

After our drink, Riley ran into a labor activist he\u2019d worked with decades earlier. As they were talking, a second man walked up, who turned out to be Riley\u2019s former dentist. Riley was equally at ease when talking with the dentist, listening patiently as the man described his fancy new house in a gentrified area. As we walked away, Riley shook his head and burst out laughing. \u201cThat guy really fucked up my teeth,\u201d he said. \u201cIt took years to fix them!\u201d<\/p>\n

Four months earlier, I\u2019d met Riley in Atlanta, where he was shooting at the Greenbriar Mall. Inside was the set for Metro Designers, an outlet of Christie Smith\u2019s clothing chain, which sells monochromatic clothes\u2014one color per month. Right now, everything was an eye-searing neon yellow. Poppy Liu, playing a disgruntled Chinese factory worker who joins forces with the Velvet Gang, was rehearsing a sequence in which her character loots the boutique using a literal plot device: a sci-fi teleportation gadget that sucks up clothes in seconds, like a magical vacuum.<\/p>\n

Between takes, Liu did TikTok dances, trying to summon the right energy. She said, \u201cBoots, can I ask you something? Am I looking serious, or am I, like, \u2018Wowww\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re looking serious,\u201d Riley told her, quietly. The character hadn\u2019t used the gadget much yet, he noted. \u201cSo you might be, like, afraid<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBoosters\u201d had taken a winding path to development. Two years ago, when Annapurna, the indie production company that distributed \u201cSorry to Bother You,\u201d approached Riley about moving forward with a second film, he was feeling bruised from the chaotic production of \u201cVirgo,\u201d which had undergone painful cuts only to sink beneath the waves of Amazon\u2019s algorithms. His priority was developing a different screenplay, then titled \u201cThe Electric Spanking of War Babies,\u201d a sci-fi adventure inspired by the wisdom of Parliament-Funkadelic. (\u201cFree your mind and your ass will follow.\u201d) He was also hoping to adapt the playwright Anne Washburn\u2019s feral and philosophical dark comedy \u201cMr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Annapurna pushed for the more accessible \u201cBoosters,\u201d a heist film he had on the back burner. Riley was game, particularly after the executives sweetened the deal by offering him the chance to work with Michaela Coel, the Ghanaian British auteur behind HBO\u2019s \u201cI May Destroy You.\u201d Coel read Riley\u2019s script and agreed to play Corvette, although she was concerned that her accent would be an impediment. At the time, she was struggling with writer\u2019s block, and Riley advised her to write for four hours a day, whatever the results. The method worked so well that she completed her own TV series, which she then stepped away from \u201cBoosters\u201d to make, joking, \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t have given me that advice.\u201d In an added irony, she started dating the tech entrepreneur Spencer Hewett, a Thiel Fellowship recipient whose breakthrough project was developing a R.F.I.D. surveillance technology that can help reduce retail theft. (Coel\u2019s publicist said that she was unavailable for comment.)<\/p>\n

When Riley was ready to shoot \u201cBoosters,\u201d Neon stepped up as a co-producer, offering Riley the significant budget he needed. This time, the director was determined not to cut corners, to make a film as maximalist as his imagination. Hunting for a new Corvette, Riley sent an Instagram D.M. to Palmer, a former Disney star and pop singer who\u2019d broken through to film snobs with her work on Jordan Peele\u2019s \u201cNope.\u201d They had a four-hour meeting, hashing out the script. Palmer, who grew up in a working-class family in Robbins, Illinois, told me, \u201cWe really vibed on life.\u201d She described Riley as \u201cthoughtful, very human,\u201d adding, \u201cHe doesn\u2019t just think the actress should show up and be used relentlessly.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the Metro Designers set, the crew positioned some lighting while Riley and his costume designer, Shirley Kurata\u2014the giddy mind behind the Elvis cosplay in \u201cEverything Everywhere All at Once\u201d\u2014chatted about recent movies. On most sets, black T-shirts are the rule, but among the \u201cBoosters\u201d crew the brightness was cranked to eleven: Riley wore rainbow sneakers, Kurata a multicolored Muppet-fuzzy vest. The crew, during a weekly movie night, had watched \u201cMegalopolis,\u201d the Francis Ford Coppola epic from 2024. Riley, a Coppola buff, understood why critics had found it self-indulgent. \u201cYou know, it might have been O.K. if Adam Driver was playing a human being,\u201d he joked. Even so, he\u2019d felt goosed by Coppola\u2019s playful, unapologetic auteurism, by how liberated Coppola had been to make a movie that was like no other. He\u2019d heard that much of the \u201cMegalopolis\u201d script was generated through improvisation\u2014the kind of filmmaking that was only possible, he said wistfully, because Coppola had paid for everything himself. One of Riley\u2019s favorite films was Coppola\u2019s \u201cBram Stoker\u2019s Dracula,\u201d in which Gary Oldman played Nosferatu in a cherry-red kimono. It was a flamboyant film, unafraid of seeming ridiculous, and was therefore indelible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Riley wanted to inject \u201cBoosters\u201d with a similar fearlessness, using the elasticity of the heist-comedy genre to draw connections to deeper issues. In his script, he\u2019d incorporated a Chaplinesque slapstick sequence in a Chinese factory where workers made sandblasted jeans. The scenario was based on a real-life scandal: workers have died from cancer from the chemicals used in sandblasting. In an early draft of \u201cBoosters,\u201d he\u2019d marked this scene with the words \u201ca note: I\u2019m paying for an extra day of shooting in order to put this back in the script.\u201d (Ultimately, Neon ponied up for the filming.) Too often, radical artists were forced by the market to speak in code, he told me, the way George Lucas had when he made \u201cStar Wars\u201d instead of the film he\u2019d originally envisaged\u2014a Vietnam War movie from the P.O.V. of the Vietcong. Riley was occasionally dinged online for working with Amazon or with Annapurna, which was founded by Megan Ellison, the daughter of the right-wing titan Larry Ellison. Riley had no tolerance for that critique: in his view, there was no \u201cclean\u201d way, under capitalism, to make art for a mass audience. And if you couldn\u2019t reach everyone what was the point?<\/p>\n

He was just as impatient with the idea that \u201cBoosters\u201d glamourized theft, an incendiary topic in the wake of the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd, when looting became a talking point for the right. For years, he\u2019d been giving speeches at colleges, arguing that crime was often necessitated by capitalism, which created an underclass and then punished the sub-rosa tactics that its members used to survive. \u201cBoosters\u201d was a sci-fi fantasia about class payback\u2014and part of a cinematic tradition. When an X user complained that the film\u2019s trailer encouraged thievery, Riley shot back: \u201cYou didn\u2019t hear a peep from them about Ocean\u2019s 11, Heat, or the other millions of heist movies or 20,000 Mafia movies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riley filmed at the Metro Designers store for several days. In the movie, members of the Velvet Gang take sales jobs there in order to case the joint, only to discover how greasily exploitative the conditions are: the music is so loud that it drowns out workers\u2019 complaints; lunch breaks last thirty seconds, forcing employees to line up at starting blocks, then sprint for their food. But the mood at the fake store was laid-back, happy. Under a canopy, the ensemble chitchatted about plastic surgery in Hollywood.<\/p>\n

Over lunch, Riley\u2019s first assistant director, Milo\u0161 Mili\u0107evi\u0107, told me that he\u2019d also worked on \u201cVirgo,\u201d which was shot in New Orleans. The process had been brutal, he said: Riley had been forced to cut entire episodes, making the narrative choppy; he\u2019d fought Amazon to maintain the show\u2019s most original elements, among them a graphic episode in which his na\u00efve giant, Cootie, loses his virginity to his tiny, supernaturally fast girlfriend. The results\u2014filmed with miniatures, Claymation, and puppets, using forced perspective, manipulating scale to create illusions of size\u2014were eye-popping. The show, which featured a sizzling performance by Walton Goggins, as an authoritarian vigilante, was an avant-garde breakthrough for television.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It was also a flop. Nevertheless, Mili\u0107evi\u0107 had been eager to work with Riley again. He saw him as a visionary whose concept of jankiness had potent philosophical dimensions. It was an anti-Marvel stance, rejecting the visual conformity of so much C.G.I. It had a childlike warmth, evoking old-school kids\u2019 shows like \u201cH.R. Pufnstuf.\u201d It was \u201cpoor people\u2019s work,\u201d like drag, or quilting\u2014a way of utilizing scrap materials to create something fresh and beautiful. And yet it was also an \u00e9litist, niche style aimed at audiences who craved something pure and not mass-produced. Mili\u0107evi\u0107 described Riley as a rare blend in Hollywood, both a mature, practical artist and a dreamy newbie, \u201cethereal, open to the abnormal.\u201d He noted, \u201cThere are shots where Riley says, \u2018You can see the seams, you see the imperfections,\u2019 which he doesn\u2019t mind\u2014and actually embraces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raymond (Boots) Riley was born in Chicago in 1971, to a sprawling, polyglot family with deep roots in radical politics. His father, Walter Riley, was one of eleven children of sharecroppers from Durham County, North Carolina, and became an activist at thirteen. For years, Walter led the N.A.A.C.P.\u2019s state youth chapter, then he worked as a labor activist for the Maoist Progressive Labor Party, organizing rank-and-file autoworkers, before becoming a civil-rights lawyer. He met Riley\u2019s mother, Anitra Patterson, in San Francisco, when he was on a strike. Patterson, born in New York City, was the daughter of a Black poet father and a German Jewish artist mother whose brother, a socialist in the French Resistance, had fought and then fled the Nazis. When Raymond was a year old, his parents moved the family to Detroit; when he was six, they returned to the Bay Area; when he was eight, Patterson moved out, and Walter, by mutual agreement, became a single father to Raymond and his brother.<\/p>\n

The year Patterson left, Riley, then a third grader, lost the bus pass he used to get to a magnet school near Berkeley. A bubbly charmer, Riley was confident that someone would help him out. Instead, he wound up trekking for miles, rejected first by bus drivers and then by a carful of cops, who scoffed, \u201cWe\u2019re not a cab service.\u201d When he finally made it home, at 10 p.m.<\/em>, his father was sobbing on the front porch, certain that his son was dead. For Riley, this was a jolt of illumination about the way the world viewed him\u2014not as a child but as a suspect, a scammer in the making. As he once put it, \u201cMy mother had always told me that I was so cute, but I realized I wasn\u2019t cute\u2014I was Black.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riley wanted to be seen another way: as a hero. As a kid, he feverishly fantasized about being a kung-fu-powered ass-kicker like Marvel\u2019s Daredevil\u2014or a soldier, like the scrappy teens in the Cold War film \u201cRed Dawn,\u201d who fight a Soviet invasion. (His father talked him down, calling the movie fascist.) Walter, who had left the Progressive Labor Party, didn\u2019t preach Marxism to his son, but Riley embraced a radical-left viewpoint on his own, after tagging along with some cute older girls who were participating in a cannery workers\u2019 strike.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Still, Riley\u2019s early role model was not an activist but an artist: the gangsta-rap legend Ice Cube. Riley venerated the rapper so much that his early tracks for the Coup, which he founded at the age of twenty, were all Ice Cube imitations, with his voice pitched low and his affect \u201chard.\u201d Riley met his bandmate E-Roc in 1991, when they both had gigs handling packages for UPS; later on, he met Pam the Funkstress when she d.j.\u2019d at Tupac\u2019s first album-release party. The Coup\u2019s early records were pugnacious, laced with humor and some finger-wagging. In \u201cFuck a Perm,\u201d Riley mocked beauty standards; in \u201cLast Blunt,\u201d constant weed use. Left-wing analysis animated his lyrics: in \u201cFat Cats, Bigga Fish,\u201d a small-time thief realizes that the C.E.O.s whose pockets he picks are way bigger crooks than he is, cutting dirty deals to gentrify Oakland.<\/p>\n

The albums didn\u2019t sell. E-Roc said, of the gangsta-rap era, \u201cIf you weren\u2019t talking about money, drugs, and sex, nobody was really trying to hear you.\u201d E-Roc admired Riley\u2019s idealism but wasn\u2019t that political himself; he quit the band to take a union job as a longshoreman, and suggested that Riley do the same. Riley turned him down. Now twenty-four, he felt like a failure. The radicals he revered\u2014the Black Panther Fred Hampton, the vanguard activists in Cuba and South Africa\u2014had rattled the world in their teens, the way his father had. The Coup had made it onto local radio, but, although critics praised Riley\u2019s droll wordplay\u2014the Los Angeles Times<\/em> called him \u201crap\u2019s most articulate Marxist\u201d\u2014they pigeonholed his lyrics as \u201cconscious hip-hop,\u201d as if he were grinding out didactic pamphlets.<\/p>\n

For a few years, Riley stopped making music. He helped form a radical collective, the Young Comrades, which fought three-strikes drug laws, police brutality, and an \u201canti-cruising ordinance\u201d in Oakland. He did telephone fund-raising for nonprofits, luring Orange County Republicans into supporting homeless shelters. By the time he picked up the mike again, in 1998, shortly after his first child was born, he had a renewed sense of purpose. The Coup\u2019s new albums featured rude, funny bangers such as \u201c5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O.,\u201d which, like so many Riley tracks, used slicing comedy to denounce billionaires. (\u201cThey own sweatshops, pet cops, and fields of cola \/ murder babies with they molars on the areola \/ control the Pope, Dalai Lama, Holy Rollers, and the Ayatollah.\u201d) He was still taking aim at capitalism, but his sonic landscape now had a relaxed, get-down vibe.<\/p>\n

In September, 2001, the release of the Coup\u2019s album \u201cParty Music\u201d was upended by a perverse coincidence: the album\u2019s cover showed Riley\u2019s finger poised over a music tuner as if it were a bomb detonator, while smoke spilled from the World Trade Center in the background. The image was a metaphor for the destruction of capitalism, he insisted, not a blueprint for action. But the record company changed the cover against his will, and he wound up on ABC, fruitlessly debating the Iraq War with Bill Maher.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It was a rough period; Riley felt marginalized, treated as a cartoon terrorist. But by then he had embraced a different role model from his youth: Prince. At fifteen, he\u2019d seen \u201cPurple Rain\u201d with friends, and had been awestruck not just by Prince\u2019s musicianship but by his persona, his ability to radiate skilled, seductive joy\u2014to exude not hard authority but the soft stuff. Riley recalled, \u201cWe were, like, \u2018What is<\/em> this?\u2019 The high voice. We didn\u2019t know how short he was. We went from \u2018Oh, is this guy gay<\/em>?\u2019 to \u2018We don\u2019t care!\u2019 Like, \u2018Maybe being gay is cool, if he\u2019s doing it?\u2019 But we didn\u2019t say it\u2014admit it out loud.\u201d Looking back, Riley told me, \u201cPrince saved my life,\u201d by liberating him from comic-book masculinity. Like Prince, Riley had a singular moniker\u2014\u201cBoots\u201d originated as a taunt from students who were mocking a pair of Florsheim boots that Riley had been given by his father. He\u2019d hated the nickname at first, Walter told me: \u201cHe would wake up and come into my bedroom and say, \u2018You made me wear those boots!<\/em> \u2019\u201d As a front man, Riley embraced the name\u2014and, with it, a peacocking ambition to achieve mass visibility.<\/p>\n

In 2012, the Coup released the love song \u201cThe Magic Clap,\u201d the first track that Riley had written with his new partner, the sitarist and helium-voiced singer Gabby La La. Its optimistic sexiness was inseparable from its ideological punch. (\u201cWe wanna breathe fire and freedom from our lungs \/ Tell Homeland Security we are the bomb!\u201d) The playful, cheaply made video showed Riley, in a natty royal-blue suit, being electrocuted by G-men, then breaking away on a wobbly pink bicycle.<\/p>\n

The song appeared on \u201cSorry to Bother You,\u201d a concept album that was tied to a screenplay with the same name that Riley had written\u2014a mordant, magical-realist story about Cassius, a sad-sack Oakland nobody who scores a job as a telemarketer for a sinister, non-unionized corporation called RegalView, then uses a \u201cwhite voice\u201d to shoot up the corporate elevator. Initially, Riley, who\u2019d taken a few film courses at San Francisco State, conceived of the album as a vehicle to help him jump into directing: he figured that he\u2019d take the music on tour, raising the hype and the money he\u2019d need to mount an independent film.<\/p>\n

That plan fizzled fast. Riley kept moving, crashing parties at the Sundance Film Festival and toting the screenplay everywhere, honing his pitch. He networked maniacally, finding mentors and allies through his activism, among them the \u201cArrested Development\u201d star David Cross, who agreed to perform Cassius\u2019s \u201cwhite voice.\u201d In 2014, he ran into the San Francisco literary macher Dave Eggers on the street; Eggers published the screenplay as a book for his McSweeney\u2019s imprint, scoring Riley some mainstream credibility. Finally, in 2015, Riley was accepted to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, in Park City, Utah; the next year, he got into the festival\u2019s program for new directors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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At Sundance, he was peppered with notes, often contradictory, from industry names: some loved his script, others hated it, and one suggested that he ramp up the love story and de\u00ebmphasize the labor politics. This experience cemented Riley\u2019s sense that he should trust his gut. The most useful feedback came from Karim A\u00efnouz, a Brazilian director, who told Riley, \u201cI really love your main character. I wanna protect him, I want to make sure he\u2019s O.K. in the world. And that\u2019s how I know it\u2019s bullshit, because I hate everybody!\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more The Art of the Ceasefire<\/a><\/p>\n

Riley realized that A\u00efnouz was right: Cassius was too much of a victim, a pinball in the capitalist machine. He refined the script further, showing his hero doubling down on his Faustian bargain. As Cassius, Riley cast the brilliant, sad-eyed actor LaKeith Stanfield. Armie Hammer played the villainous C.E.O.; Tessa Thompson was Cassius\u2019s lover, a radical artist with her own \u201cwhite voice.\u201d \u201cSorry\u201d was defiantly weird, stuffed with comic digressions such as ads for WorryFree (an Amazon-like corporation flacking indentured servitude) and a reality show called \u201cI Got the Shit Kicked Out of\u00a0Me.\u201d The film ended with a truly bananas sequence featuring a scheme by RegalView to enslave horse-human hybrids.<\/p>\n

Riley filmed \u201cSorry\u201d in Oakland, in twenty-six days. It d\u00e9buted at Sundance, then got strong reviews; one critic praised it as \u201can absurdist, startlingly original Molotov cocktail through the pane glass window of Hollywood.\u201d It felt like his new career had achieved liftoff. Instead, what followed was the turbulent production of \u201cI\u2019m a Virgo,\u201d the story of a sheltered Black teen who dreams of becoming a superhero\u2014a plot partly inspired by the day Riley lost his bus pass. He saw \u201cBoosters\u201d as his do-over, a chance to regain Hollywood momentum.<\/p>\n

There was a consistency to Riley\u2019s filmed stories, which he sometimes described as tracks on an album. In each one, an Oakland na\u00eff\u2014Cassius, Cootie, Corvette\u2014was torn between a seductive capitalist and an inspiring left-wing organizer, one the path to fame and riches, the other to community and revolution. Riley\u2019s core ideology hadn\u2019t changed since his teens; he believed in a mass strike in which workers would unite, globally, to withhold their labor, leading to radical structural change\u2014he\u2019d depicted such transformations in each of his productions, including in \u201cBoosters.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he\u2019d<\/em> changed, as an artist. In middle age, he\u2019d evolved into an aesthetic magpie, pulling together influences like a d.j. It had taken him a while to be open about his enthusiasms. He told me, \u201cIn junior high school, I really loved the eighties British invasion, right? You know, the Cure, Depeche Mode, all that kind of stuff. But you\u2019re not going to hear any nineties interviews talking about that.\u201d His first album, \u201cKill My Landlord,\u201d now made him cringe, he said: its aesthetic felt too narrow and its politics too on the nose.<\/p>\n

What he loved these days was mixtures, color, variety: paisley worn with plaid, the painter Jacob Lawrence, any artist \u201cwho takes different textures and slaps them on top of one another.\u201d His tastes are broad but lean toward the colorfully experimental, from the precise geometries of Wes Anderson to the trippy existentialism of Leos Carax, from the far-left Pier Paolo Pasolini to the far-right Yukio Mishima. For \u201cBoosters,\u201d his touchstone was an obscure Michel Gondry film from 2013, \u201cMood Indigo,\u201d a retro romance full of futuristic imagery: skittering robots, a piano that mixed swanky cocktails when played. His favorite recent movie is \u201cHundreds of Beavers,\u201d a manic fur-trapper farce with handmade effects\u2014jankiness personified. He was an eager student of the methods artists use to seduce audiences, devouring David Byrne\u2019s book \u201cHow Music Works\u201d and a documentary about the devilishly clever publicist Edward Bernays, who sold cigarettes by rebranding them as feminist rebellion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Over the years, Riley had added to his lineup of heroes. In the nineties, boomer music executives often spoke to him in their native language, Bob Dylan fanhood. Initially, he resisted, but over time he became a full-on Dylanite himself. Recently, he\u2019d gone toe to toe with James Mangold, the director of the Dylan bio-pic \u201cA Complete Unknown,\u201d critiquing him for having downplayed the Communism of Dylan\u2019s mentors.<\/p>\n

All art is political, Riley often says, whether it claims to be or not. Superhero stories are copaganda; sitcoms sell middle-class norms. But art is also more than ideology. It is a source of joy and comfort; it makes you horny and angry; if it\u2019s bold enough, and crafty enough, you can\u2019t ignore it\u2014and it could change you, the way it had him.<\/p>\n

In November, 2024, the \u201cBoosters\u201d production shifted to a soundstage in Norcross, Georgia, adjacent to the Marvel lot where \u201cBlack Panther\u201d was shot. One day, the crew was filming a scene at one of Christie\u2019s fashion shows, where the Velvet Gang confronts its nemesis. The head of Neon had flown in to observe; executives in black suits mingled with the funkily attired crew. A few days earlier, the film\u2019s department heads had debated, collegially, how to get the crowd in the scene to look big enough without leaning too hard on \u201ctiling,\u201d the cheat of digitally copying and pasting. They\u2019d budgeted for a hundred extras\u2014could they afford more? A Technocrane? \u201cWe can shoot like Coppola, from above,\u201d Riley suggested. \u201cThe lower we are, the harder it is to hide that we don\u2019t have that many people.\u201d He wanted to generate awe: \u201cWhen Corvette says, \u2018I feel like I\u2019m touching the world,\u2019 it has to feel big<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Floating above the soundstage was a massive eyeball with a rainbow runway carpet protruding from it like a tongue. Rows of extras lined up on either side of the carpet. After the debate, the producers had agreed to add a hundred and twenty-five more extras, sending Kurata, the costume designer, on a frantic thrift-store shopping spree, seeking monochromatic outfits in blue, pink, brown, yellow, orange, and green.<\/p>\n

Behind a black curtain, Demi Moore looked spookily glam in a suicide-blond wig with black roots. She was filming a scene in which Christie berated her skeptical assistant, Miranda Priestly style. One day, the assistant would run her own fashion line, Christie told her\u2014and then she could talk about how hard her boss had pushed her, how crushing the hours had been, how harsh the conditions for factory workers. Fashion was worth the sacrifice. \u201cWe could get every whacked-out asshole in the state of Michigan wearing fuchsia,\u201d Moore said, nearly hissing. \u201cWe could look from space and see a big spot of fuchsia<\/em>. Bam!<\/em> I mean, humanity is our canvas. So get excited<\/em>, bitch.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Riley chuckled, pleased. He gave Moore a note: maybe this was the first time she\u2019d said these particular thoughts out loud? Moore tried the exchange a few more times, in different tones\u2014more acidic, more surprised, more chaotic. Then Riley turned to the actress who was playing Christie\u2019s assistant. \u201cBe more afraid of her,\u201d Riley suggested, and then, a moment later: \u201cTry a different thing\u2014you hate<\/em> her.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the most satisfying ironies of Riley\u2019s films and TV show is how charismatic and, at times, convincing his villains are, from Armie Hammer\u2019s silky tech C.E.O. to Walton Goggins\u2019s righteous supercop. There was no narrative tension if it wasn\u2019t tempting to see the world their way. And, of course, Riley was a boss himself, trying to put his own spot of fuchsia on the planet. He wasn\u2019t always at ease discussing the parallel. When I asked, a few times, if he identified with Moore\u2019s character, he pivoted off the topic, telling me, simply, \u201cAll the characters are me.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was clearly important to him to be an ethical leader. On the set of \u201cVirgo,\u201d he had learned that some stand-ins had been stiffed by a sketchy payroll company. He guaranteed the employees\u2019 pay with his own money, then threatened to quit, withholding his own labor until the company compensated everyone. He was a fiery advocate during the 2023 Writers Guild strike; at one point, a leaked e-mail from a Directors Guild chair smeared him as part of a \u201cfringe group\u201d whose members should be blackballed from elected positions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Not everyone on set shared Riley\u2019s politics, I knew. Mili\u0107evi\u0107 had told me he believed that the economic impacts of the Writers Guild strike had outweighed any gains. Riley\u2019s friend Pete Lee, who was working as the set photographer, described himself to me, wryly, as a \u201cfair-weather Communist.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Offline, Riley was at ease talking with, and working alongside, unlike minds. He tried not to doomscroll, he told me, and he even had a \u201cdumbphone,\u201d intended to keep him unplugged. But, when he did<\/em> log on, he had what Twitter veterans call a \u201cposter\u2019s soul,\u201d debating strangers about Venezuela and Gaza, searching for his name and then replying. In February, 2025, as DOGE<\/em> was crushing U.S.A.I.D. programs that supported children in poverty, Riley tweeted that he didn\u2019t oppose \u201cdismantling\u201d the agency, calling it a C.I.A. front that \u201csubverts democracies\u201d on behalf of U.S. corporations. In October, 2025, he jumped into a Reddit Oscars forum after a user described him as \u201cmassive tankie,\u201d slang for a leftist who excuses injustices committed by Communist governments. \u201cI prefer the term \u2018huge\u2019 to massive, thank you,\u201d Riley joked, then wrote a long post defending China\u2019s invasion of Tibet on the ground that Tibet had been a slave state, complete with a feverish cascade of links, which was disputed by someone who claimed to be a scholar of Tibet, leading to a whose-links-are-better dance-off. In a follow-up comment, Riley wrote, \u201cAll of my art is argument with strangers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riley told me that people often described him as \u201cuncompromising.\u201d This wasn\u2019t accurate, he said: you couldn\u2019t make a movie\u2014or be in a band or in a union, for that matter\u2014without bending to, and understanding, the needs of others. But he wasn\u2019t a journeyman director who would take any job just to get ahead. In the two-thousands, he\u2019d heard a musician complain about a new tattoo on the forehead of his brother, which rendered the brother \u201cnot unemployed but unemployable.\u201d Riley\u2019s ideology was his own forehead tattoo, he told me: \u201cI\u2019m already<\/em> that person. So the people that are choosing to work with me, they know where I\u2019m at.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. I prefer that.\u201d Over the years, he\u2019d found surprising allies, including a record executive who\u2019d once been in the Revolutionary Communist Party. Riley said, \u201cI mean, the world is full of people with radical ideas who have just decided, like most of us, \u2018Oh, there\u2019s nothing you can do about it. And I have to get a job, right?\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

The older Riley got, the more determined he became to use his time wisely. One night, over drinks with the crew, he brought up his mother, Patterson, who\u2019d died in 2014. When Patterson was fifteen, she\u2019d got pregnant by an older man; by thirty-two, she had four children. \u201cShe was tired of being a mother,\u201d he told me, with equanimity. He\u2019d forgiven her for leaving long ago; his father, for his part, told me that he and Patterson had agreed that she would \u201cgo off and do what men do when they have children.\u201d She had been a spitfire, eager to travel, study, dance, have love affairs, and explore the world. After her death, Riley read her diaries, an awkward experience at times. (\u201cYou\u2019ve got to read about your mother comparing people\u2019s dick sizes,\u201d he told me, wrinkling his forehead.) But it had been worth it: he\u2019d wanted to feel more empathy for, and clarity about, the person who had been there before he existed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Riley has been through his share of personal loss. In 2006, several of the Coup\u2019s crew members were injured when the group\u2019s tour bus flipped over and burst into flames; a few years later, the group\u2019s bassist was shot and killed on his way to a rehearsal. Pam the Funkstress died young. Riley has a phobia of anesthesia, so much so that he underwent a colonoscopy without it. \u201cI\u2019m more afraid of dying than of the pain,\u201d he told me. It had been his weirdest experience of being recognized by a fan: when he was on the table, the doctor told him, \u201cThis is a strange way to meet you.\u201d Riley didn\u2019t look at the monitor during the procedure. \u201cIt was, like, just looking at the inside of myself in real time,\u201d he told me. \u201cI don\u2019t want to think about how, you know, how fragile it all is.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few months after filming the fashion-show scene, Riley was in Oakland for postproduction. On a sunny Saturday morning, he, La La, and their kids met up at the New Parkway Theatre, which hosts a weekly screening of cartoons. Riley, in a jumbo-sized blue hat and black-and-white pajamas, watched a clip from the show \u201cUnderdog.\u201d He\u2019d loved TV cartoons growing up\u2014they were funny and simple but also educational, stuffed with sly parodies of pop culture he\u2019d never heard of. Years ago, Riley had explored the idea of doing voice work, thinking that it might be both fun for his kids and a way to make good money. After talent agents at W.M.E. proposed some roles, he clarified that he wouldn\u2019t play a dope dealer or a cop. \u201cAnd they were, like, \u2018Well, you should probably generate your own material,\u2019\u00a0\u201d he said. He\u2019d also had a chance to experience a different flavor of fame: while he was recording \u201cGenocide & Juice,\u201d he was recruited to appear on MTV\u2019s \u201cThe Real World.\u201d He turned it down, mainly, he recalled, because he \u201cdidn\u2019t want people to know I wasn\u2019t hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the cartoons, we headed to Riley and La La\u2019s house; he\u2019d bought it with the money Amazon had paid him for \u201cVirgo.\u201d It was a warm, bohemian hangout with a ceramic rabbit in the front garden, a lounge with a fireplace, a studio for La La, who is a fibre artist and an illustrator, and a cozy kitchen with a whimsical mural of a tree blooming with fruits and cupcakes. In the bathroom, a framed Red Scare-era poster read \u201cIs your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier, Riley had described La La to me as a mischief-maker. When we arrived, La La, who wore flower-print clogs, handed me a \u201cFriendship Buck,\u201d a handmade faux currency that she gives to everyone she meets. As she cooked noodles for Django, she told me about the many art projects that she had in progress, including a graphic memoir done in watercolors. But these days she saw herself mainly as a mom (\u201cchief noodle-maker\u201d) and an \u201cextreme feminist\u201d with a wide circle of friends. When I asked if she shared Riley\u2019s ideology, she said, \u201cI\u2019m apolitical.\u201d Her focus was more on making things, including a Y.A. book that she\u2019d written, celebrating her childhood in the Bay with her white Jewish mom and Chinese Methodist dad. Like Riley, she considers herself Jewish, and, she told me puckishly, she also sees herself as white: \u201cBoots says I\u2019m not white, but I am\u2014it\u2019s, like, Are you what you see or what other people see of yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n

Riley, who was sitting nearby, at the dining room\u2019s long table, smiled but suggested that this was probably not how white people saw her. \u201cPotato, potahto,\u201d La La drawled. \u201cHave you seen my mom? She has black hair. We look exactly the same. She basically is<\/em> Chinese.\u201d Later, when Riley and I began to talk about the Coup track \u201c5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O.,\u201d which had been embraced online by admirers of Luigi Mangione, she chimed in: \u201cMy mom was a C.E.O., and it hurts my feelings!\u201d Her mother had founded a wool-diaper-cover company called Biobottoms, she said, which was run primarily by women. Later, as Riley and I talked about his packed schedule, he theorized that in a truly revolutionary society people might work only three days a week, allowing them to devote more time to things they loved, like art or gardening. La La wisecracked, \u201cFor moms, we\u2019re only changing diapers three days a week. Best of luck to you children, sitting in your diaper for four days!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As much as La La teased Riley, when he stepped away she became his hype man. She described him as a preternaturally generous artist, far more concerned with the greater Oakland collective than with himself. That had been true back when he was dead broke, she added\u2014he had always advised, and lifted up, other artists. She called these mentorships \u201cseeds being planted.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Riley returned to the table, La La told me that his high profile in the city sometimes bugged her, because fans were always interrupting them, even sitting down at their table. Riley protested: It was just that one guy that one time, and they had walked away from him! Her \u201cwhole thing\u201d was quality time, she explained, then said, with a shrug, \u201cWe can have quality time in the grave when we\u2019re dead. I\u2019m hoping we can get one box that can just be us hugging, like, for eternity.\u201d She went on, \u201cI\u2019m weaving our shroud right now, with your hair that I find in the shower.\u201d<\/p>\n

This past March, \u201cBoosters,\u201d after a series of delays, finally had its premi\u00e8re, at South by Southwest. In the days leading up to the festival, Riley was in energetic contact with Neon\u2019s publicity team, ginning up promotions in full Barnum mode. On his own, he\u2019d booked a nationwide tour of colleges, to screen \u201cBoosters\u201d and do Q. & A.s. He planned to release an EP of songs performed by Palmer.<\/p>\n

That afternoon, Riley was filming promotional shorts with Palmer for the movie-review social network Letterboxd. Palmer wore a sparkly pink gown; Riley, a jumpsuit speckled with tiny embroidered daisies. When Letterboxd producers asked Riley to name a movie that offered \u201cfashion inspiration,\u201d he recommended the Serbian farce \u201cBlack Cat White Cat\u201d; Palmer praised \u201cSex and the City.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the two mingled near the snack area, Riley asked if Palmer was aware of the trade convention CinemaCon, in April: \u201cIt was on the show \u2018The Studio.\u2019 That\u2019s how you get more screens!\u201d Palmer knew all about it, but she\u2019d already agreed to record a TED<\/em> talk in Vancouver at the same time. Maybe she could Zoom? Riley suggested an offbeat approach\u2014to zhuzh up the visit, they could frame the Zoom footage to look as though Palmer were arriving through the film\u2019s teleportation device. He pitched a few stunts that could work in any city: maybe she could busk on a street corner?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Palmer, a master at social media with an Instagram following of 14.4 million, considered these ideas. Then she beamed and, in a low, confident voice, said, \u201cThat sounds incredible<\/em>. That would be insanely dope.\u201d She added, \u201cLet\u2019s plan it! And I\u2019ll have my girl film it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The next night, the Paramount Theatre, in downtown Austin, gleamed with the poster for \u201cBoosters,\u201d on which the cast\u2019s faces clustered like flower blossoms. A crowd outside screamed \u201cBoots!\u201d when they spotted Riley\u2019s hat, then shrieked louder as he strolled toward them with Moore, her long black hair swaying like a cape.<\/p>\n

In the theatre, the audience howled at Kurata\u2019s costumes, including in a sequence when the Velvet Gang wore so many layers of stolen clothes that they waddled like Michelin Men; there was booming laughter at the payoff to a side plot involving Stanfield, who played a dreamy seducer with his hair in Prince-ish loose waves. There was also an audible \u201cmmmm\u201d at a quieter image: an immense, wadded-up ball of receipts and bills that rolled through Oakland\u2019s streets like a boulder, haunting Corvette. When the film ended, Riley jumped onstage, addressing the crowd as his partners: if they liked \u201cBoosters,\u201d they should tell people. He said, \u201cYou might think because it\u2019s on Neon, and they\u2019re the shit, we got it covered\u2014we don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neon held a premi\u00e8re party, hosted by Variety<\/em>. On the way there, Riley\u2019s close friend Jeremy Glick, a literature professor at Hunter College, told Riley, of the film, \u201cWe have a lot<\/em> to talk about! It\u2019s got all these elements that I feel very familiar with\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. accelerated, if you will. You really made the qualitative leap, man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you, man,\u201d Riley said, smiling.<\/p>\n

The two had met in the nineties, at a salon at Amiri Baraka\u2019s house, in Newark, but they\u2019d grown closer after 9\/11. Glick was the son of a Port Authority worker who died in the attack on the World Trade Center; afterward, he went on Fox News to debate Bill O\u2019Reilly, denouncing anyone who used his father\u2019s death to support the invasion of Afghanistan. Back then, both Riley and Glick felt marginalized, under siege in a country where merely criticizing income inequality was viewed as outrageous. A lot had changed since; to many younger people, including Glick\u2019s students, the men\u2019s once radical ideas were common sense. Riley had endorsed Bernie Sanders a decade ago, but he had never cared much about electoral politics, which struck him as small-bore change. Yet the rise of Donald Trump had made Riley\u2019s bombastic aesthetics oddly relevant: the cartoonish, amped-up landscape of his movies now felt less like satire and more like a mirror.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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At the party, Palmer, in an aquamarine leather jacket, stood in a glass box alongside three brightly dressed mannequins and performed a song that Riley\u2019s daughter Alina had written for the movie, the melancholic \u201cCassandra.\u201d Afterward, Poppy Liu flashed her phone in Riley\u2019s face: an early review of \u201cBoosters\u201d was out and it was strong, celebrating his film as \u201ca surreal, hyperpop love letter to creatives living under capitalism.\u201d The cast, clustered around him, jumped up and down.<\/p>\n

At an after-party, at a bar called the Flower Shop, one of the film\u2019s producers, Aaron Ryder, sat eating French fries from a silver bowl. Ryder had been through some stressful launches, he told me; his first film, Christopher Nolan\u2019s nonlinear masterpiece \u201cMemento,\u201d was initially rejected by every distributor. Still, Ryder described \u201cBoosters\u201d as \u201cmaybe the hardest film I\u2019ve ever been involved with.\u201d Postproduction was rough: \u201cYou\u2019ve got miniatures, you\u2019ve got stop-motion, you\u2019ve got a ton<\/em> of music. But you also have something extraordinary.\u201d If making a movie was like planning a camping trip, he said, Riley was all about detours: \u201cWe\u2019re going to go to the city first, then swim across a river, then go to a rave, and, before that, we have to stop at a 7-Eleven.\u201d Neon had done what Amazon hadn\u2019t\u2014given Riley the freedom to swing for the fences.<\/p>\n

The next day, Riley and I sat down at the Austin Proper hotel, whose lobby was full of Silicon Valley types heading to the tech events of SXSW. He was excited to speak to college students again. He\u2019d had to retire one of his old speeches, which denounced copaganda for teaching poor people to obey authority, after placing it in the mouth of a Communist organizer in \u201cVirgo.\u201d Events had overtaken Riley\u2019s most outlandish plots: three years after the show aired, a militarized police force, ICE<\/em>, was poised to repress and criminalize political dissent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Even so, Riley felt encouraged. He told me, \u201cYou know, I made this movie before the Minnesota general strike\u201d\u2014in late January, in sub-zero temperatures, hundreds of businesses and dozens of unions shut down to protest ICE<\/em>\u2019s Operation Metro Surge. \u201cAnd, arguably, that general strike is more<\/em> radical than the one in the film, you know? It was people withholding labor in order to change a policy that didn\u2019t necessarily even affect them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBoosters\u201d is scheduled for wide release in late May, amid tough competition from powerful Hollywood franchises: \u201cThe Devil Wears Prada 2,\u201d the sixth \u201cScary Movie.\u201d Riley hoped that audiences would find \u201cBoosters\u201d just as colorful, alluring, and fun\u2014\u201clike a roller-coaster,\u201d he said, but thundering in from a fresh angle. And maybe he was onto something. Three weeks before \u201cBoosters\u201d was to open, New York\u2019s democratic-socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, declined to attend the Met Gala, which was being sponsored by the Amazon founder (and Washington Post<\/em> destroyer), Jeff Bezos. Mamdani posted counterpropaganda: glamour shots of the artisans, retail workers, and delivery people who anchor New York\u2019s fashion industry, \u201cfrom true love found on the picket line to a free tailoring school out of a Brooklyn basement.\u201d This was Riley\u2019s approach in action: shifting the spotlight away from the hypnotic parade to the workers who made it possible.<\/p>\n

Like \u201cSorry to Bother You,\u201d \u201cBoosters\u201d had a third act that Riley knew not every viewer would roll with\u2014the storytelling was ecstatic, shaggy, and a little incoherent. But it was also optimistic, an attempt to help audiences imagine a better future. In the cut we watched at SXSW, Violeta, a left-wing stoner trying to unionize Metro Designers, gave a speech in which she described the way social progress ascends like a spiral, through contradiction and clashes. Riley imagined his film\u2019s structure that way, he told me. It followed a pattern that didn\u2019t exist\u2014yet. He held his arm up high, then twisted it, smiling, mimicking the shape of that imaginary spiral and making a whirring sound, like a helicopter rising into the clouds.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more Will Donald Trump Be Allowed to Destroy His Records?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boots Riley\u2019s zany movies, such as \u201cSorry to Bother You,\u201d combine pop aesthetics with radical politics. Can he make his new film, \u201cI Love Boosters,\u201d a blockbuster? Emily Nussbaum reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-onward-and-upward-with-the-arts"],"yoast_head":"\nBoots Riley, Marx Brother - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=33\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Boots Riley, Marx Brother - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Boots Riley\u2019s zany movies, such as \u201cSorry to Bother You,\u201d combine pop aesthetics with radical politics. 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