“It’s a provocative, serious, ridiculous, screwy concoction about whiteface, cultural code-switching, African-American identities and twisted new forms of wage slavery, beyond previously known ethical limits.”
Nigel’s introduction to the film, shown at The Lord Palmerston, 18 June 2019
The link from our last film in the Chain Bamboozled to Sorry to Both You was contemporary satires about race in America. (It beat Get Out and Dear White People). While this film is very much a satire about race it’s also, as you will see, a very strident satire about capitalism. One critic called it “a fairytale nightmare of late capitalism”.
This is the directorial debut of Boots Riley. He was 47 when he made the film but had been well known as a musician before this shift to filmmaking, and it was inspired in part by his frustrations with dealing with record label suits as well as growing up and living in Oakland his whole life (where the film is set) and his own experiences of working as a telemarketer to make ends meet as a radical artist.
And this is definitely a radical film.
His parents were social justice organisers and Riley joined the Marxist-Leninist Progressive Labor party at 15. In 1991, he formed hip-hop collective the Coup and went on to release six politically charged albums, notably 1998’s acclaimed Steal This Album.
He wrote the script in 2012 and couldn’t get it made. In the end his friend, the writer Dave Eggers, published the screenplay in full in a 2014 issue of his publication McSweeney’s. Then it started to get attention and was produced as an entirely independent feature.
The casting history is quite interesting. Originally Jordan Peele was in the frame for the lead role but he went on to direct Get Out instead. Then Donald Glover was cast but dropped out to star as Lando in the Han Solo so they ended up with Lakeith Stanfield who is incredible. If you’ve seen Get OUt you might recognise him as the creepy Logan in that film. Other notable cast members are Tessa Thompson who doesn’t seem to have made a bad film in my experience until I read the reviews of the new Men in Black movie.
Stephen Yeun, the Korean-American actor you’ll recognize if you watched the Walking Dead on TV or better still if you saw the Korean movie Burning last year. You’ve also got Danny Glover, Armie Hammer and Terry Crews.
The film came out last year to a lot of buzz and good reviews. One of my favourites is this from Sight & Sound magazine: “This palpably handmade movie doesn't reach out, and nor does it engage in chin stroking: instead, it extends a middle finger.”
To say much more about the film would be to spoil it I suspect. But - as you’ll see - and hope you appreciate it’s a true one of a kind.
Or in Boots Riley’s words: "an absurdist dark comedy with aspects of magical realism and science fiction inspired by the world of telemarketing".
