Chapter 1: What is the central theme of Boots Riley's film 'I Love Boosters'?
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today is filmmaker, rapper, and community organizer Boots Riley. His work for the last few decades has circled the same argument, that capitalism produces the contradictions we live with and that art can make them visible.
He made that argument as the frontman of the Oakland-based hip-hop group The Coup, and in his screen work with his 2018 film Sorry to Bother You, a surreal satire about a black telemarketer who finds success after he learns to use his white voice.
And he's making the argument again in his latest film, I Love Boosters, which was first a love song he wrote 20 years ago about shoplifters, or boosters as they're called.
My shoes used to wrap. Every time my soles hit the street, they would flap. Then in high school, Langston Anderson would cap because my jacket didn't have a brand name on it. Back years later, this lady took me to her apartment. It looked like the Macy's sportswear department. Clothes on the chairs, on the couch, in the carpet. A 20 had me icy like **** in the Arctic.
If it wasn't for the hard work of a booster, most couldn't go to the clubs that were used to. If you don't fit the dress code, they'll boot you. Like people who ain't dressed up won't.
I Love Boosters, the film, stars Kiki Palmer as the leader of a crew of women shoplifters in the Bay Area who steal from luxury fashion stores and sell the goods cheap to people who can't afford retail. Demi Moore plays the fashion designer whose stores they're robbing from, and Lakeith Stanfield plays a figure who threatens the whole operation.
As you heard, before Riley made films, he made music. The Coup released their first album, Kill My Landlord, in 1993. Before that, he was a labor and community organizer, a UPS worker, and a telemarketer, a job that would eventually become the subject of Sorry to Bother You. Boots Riley, welcome back to Fresh Air.
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
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Chapter 2: How does Boots Riley relate his past experiences to his creative work?
Well, I have been a broke rapper for a long time, having to stay fly. You know, it's just a job requirement. And so I've definitely had to deal with a lot of boosters. When I wrote that song 20 years ago, it was a lifetime of experience. And also just saw how much of a service it provided a community who's, in my case, the Black community. I don't think they only exist in the Black community.
A community whose style is inspiring these things that are costing more than people can afford with the income that they have.
That is the interesting – it's not an inversion, but it is the thing that we sit with as the audience because we are living this world through the boosters themselves. And so we're able to see from the inside how they're interpreted from the outside and what's really happening. But, you know, that term boosters – I had never heard that before.
I think I heard like, OK, in Detroit, I know somebody with the hookup or, you know, I know a guy.
Yeah, it's funny because online there's this whole debate about where that term came from. There's people in New York saying we came up with the term. There's people in obviously in the Bay Area saying we came up with the term. And there's people in Chicago saying, no, no boosters. We did that in such and such. So there's this whole debate.
And, um, you know, obviously I can't come from the Bay area, so I'm going to, you know, uh, shoot shots on, on, on that behalf. However, uh, Yeah, I think it was all over. And definitely people had different ways of calling it. But, you know, I have no idea where it came from. There's somebody that could probably call in and tell us the etymology of that.
Exactly. And I obviously am out of the loop. But I want to talk a little bit about what you were saying about the booster's place and how they serve the community. And let's talk about that a little bit through the character Corvette herself, who's played by Kiki Palmer. And she isn't just a booster.
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Chapter 3: What inspired Boots Riley to write the song 'I Love Boosters'?
She is a designer. And Christy Smith, the fashion mogul that she admires, who's played by Demi Moore, steals one of her designs. And basically, this woman is hailed as a genius, but she's stealing from black and brown communities.
Yeah.
When was the first time you kind of realized that idea that like what what is being stolen is actually maybe yours in the first place?
You know, I think you'd have to back it up to when I was 14 or 15, you know, and I got involved in supporting people who were organizing a cannery workers strike in Watsonville, California. So I got invited to it. youth, uh, event based on that. And, um, you know, they, they, someone was like, Hey, you know, we're going to have this thing.
Um, we'll be by on, on, you know, we'll be by at noon on Saturday. And back then there's no cell phones, there's no anything. So you could totally ghost somebody a lot easier. And I planned on it. So I was like, I'm, I'm just, you Yeah, come by. I'm not going to be there. But I forgot about it. And so they came by with a van full of 14-year-old girls.
And they were like, hey, you want to go to the beach? And I was like, oh, yeah, I definitely want to go to the beach with y'all. And they were like, but first we're going to stop and stop off and support the Watsonville Cannery Workers. And then so that's kind of how I got hoodwinked into it, because I entered the van with, you know, flirtatious goals. And and then I met.
These girls who were like they were talking about things that were on the news, the world events, these sorts and and and things that I purposely was trying to ignore because I didn't have a sense that I could have any effect on it. Right. Right. I didn't have a sense that like it didn't matter if I paid attention or not, because what am I going to do? These are just things that that happen.
And they were talking about it. And I realized that.
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Chapter 4: How does Boots Riley's upbringing influence his artistic vision?
They felt that they could have something to do with what happened. And it was connected to this cannery worker strike that we were going to. That this was not only about someone trying to get higher wages, but it was about how you might be able to create a movement that has the power to fight. to affect those who are in power.
And it started to me talking, started the conversation about what power actually is under this system. So I went in that one trip from wanting to get with these girls to wanting to be them.
Yes, to wanting to be them and understanding because they're opening up your world. But you grew up in a household with a father who also was teaching you through his actions, being an organizer and working in Detroit on behalf of the auto workers. Yeah.
But the thing is, is that you don't. One thing that I think was good is. My parents didn't like say here you have to learn this and blah, blah, blah, because I probably would have later thought of it as their stuff and not mine. I don't know if they did that intentionally or that's just how it was. But, yeah, they'd have when I was when we lived in Detroit, we lived there till I was six.
They'd have meetings, but the meetings would always, and I didn't know they were meetings because they would always end in like bidwist parties or like, you know, playing records and dancing. So I just knew people were around sitting on couches talking to each other and they end up having fun. So I just thought they were having parties, but it did shape what I thought community was.
Something you do in this particular film, I Love Boosters, the news is always there. It's the radio. It's the TV. But since we're sitting in the world of the boosters, we are the boosters.
Yeah.
We are seeing... what is just such a short, distorted view of them because we see their whole worlds. When did you start to also understand that, and I'm super interested in this as a journalist, that, oh, what I am seeing is just a very small part of what is my reality here?
Yeah. Well, okay. So after the Watsonville Cannery workers strike, then I was helping to organize something called the Anti-Racist Farm Workers Union. And we did all this stuff and
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Chapter 5: What role does capitalism play in Boots Riley's films?
At that point, I'm 15. And they're giving us assignments like, you guys got to run off the flyers while we're in the fields. You got to make signs. You got to make a skit. You know, all these things. You got to plan the caravan thing. We're doing this door-to-door thing. So it was like, you know, and I was willing to do more because I wasn't where anybody knew me.
Like, you know, 15 years old, you're trying to be cool and you don't want people to see you doing certain things. I would have never, like, walked up to someone and passed them a flyer because it was... Maybe they'll think that's nerdy or something like that. I don't know. But I got involved doing all that stuff. So then I get back to school.
And one of the first thing and I'm totally I'm a revolutionary at that point. I'm a communist by then. And I'm like, OK. So I so I start using these ideas of how to get people involved. And there was a bunch of students and me started this this. Walk out against year round schools. It's pretty easy to get high schoolers to walk out against the idea of going to school year round.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so you get 2000 students to walk out, get 2000 students to walk out. And, you know, this is very different than what I'm doing because I'm invest. I know everybody. And, you know, so I so I have the bullhorn and we're in front of the school. And I'm saying things about what we're going to do. The plan is to march down to the school board. And the principal, Mr. O'Leary, who is an ex-cop,
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Chapter 6: How does Boots Riley address the contradictions of success in his work?
buff and walked around in a pose with his arms out so you knew that his biceps were too big for his arms to go at his side. I see it. And he walks out there and he says, Riley, give me that bullhorn. And so I was like, okay. And everybody was like, what are you doing? Yeah.
And as I was handing it to him and trying to take it back, like a good 15 or 20 students come and help me to try to pull it from him. And we eventually get the bullhorn back from him. But this guy, Navin, it cuts his arm and it splurts out onto a Leary shirt.
Wow.
Right. And we all marched down to the we all marched down. They were so this was the 80s. This is 86. And so in my lifetime, my conscious lifetime, I had never seen anything like that. But I think it scared the school board to where as soon as we got there, they came out and announced they were reversing their decision.
Wow.
And so we were drunk with power, basically. We're like, what? Is this easy? Right, right. Right? And the next day was the first time I ever saw a color picture on the cover of the Oakland Tribune.
And what was it?
It was a color picture of Presbytery with blood all over him.
Yep.
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Chapter 7: What unique perspectives do the characters in 'I Love Boosters' represent?
Yes, about that perception there. I was really fascinated by that news component in this film, too, because we see that dynamic about protests all the time, right? where there's a particular part of the protest that becomes the news story versus the protest itself. In many instances, it's because of the looting. The looting is the thing that we see the most more than anything else.
So also, I want to put this in the context in the movie, because what you're making is a
great point that i think but but i what i'm setting up in the movie has to do with when i would be watching tv a lot i was like addicted to tv and my father would always be like you know why you think it's interesting why you think those people's lives are interesting and he would say because they're not watching tv because the reality for many of us
is we're spending so much time watching these screens. And so for me, what we do see on these screens is a huge part of our life. It's a huge part of what affects us. And so I want that representation on there, not only the interpretation from what happened in real life to what's happening on the screen, but how we are affected by all these things.
It's interesting about the casting of this film because you've got some real big heavy hitters. You've got Don Cheadle. You've got Demi Moore, Kiki Palmer, who's been around since she was 11. She's been famous. Oh, yeah.
Lakeith Stanfield.
And Lakeith Stanfield, part of whom you made famous with, you know, Sorry to Bother You, but he's since gone on and done so many things. And what's interesting is I interviewed Tessa Thompson a little while ago, and she told me the story of how –
you almost took her out of the cast of Sorry to Bother You because she had gotten a Marvel movie and you felt like she might be too exposed and too well-known.
It wasn't just the Marvel movie, to be fair, but yeah.
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Chapter 8: How does Boots Riley envision the future of his artistic endeavors?
it's the George Clooney, it's George Clooney breaking into banks. It's George Clooney being a sniper. It's George Clooney. And I was like, I don't want the, it's George Clooney doing this thing. I want it to be this character, right? And I think that what I've realized is that even though
the star of it all, stars, how big someone is, can make people come to a movie for that, then it's my job to make them forget what they know about that person, right? What they know about that actor. And it's also the actor's job. So I'm picking people that can pull that off.
Why was Kiki the person that had to be Corvette?
Oh, I saw how in other movies they were like, okay, she does this one thing. or these two things, this certain cadence. And they were like missing this whole other piece of her.
Of Kiki. Yeah.
And not in all the things they did. She's shown herself. That's how I knew it, right? And also I met with her. And I could see this thing and her willingness to go there, you know. And in the same way that often I'm trying to cast against type, in that way, I saw with this, like, this is a chance to see someone do stuff that they haven't done before.
And that she has this whole skill set that people were underappreciating.
You've said that you love stories that live inside of a contradiction.
Mm-hmm.
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