Please welcome Boots Riley.
(cheering and applause)
Thank you.
-Welcome to the show. -Thanks for having me.
Can I just say, I watched this movie,
and there are few films that have left me...
Like, I remember, genuinely, The Matrix was the last movie
that left me... like, had me leaving a cinema
not knowing what I thought about the world.
This film has been phenomenal.
Word of mouth is blowing it up everywhere.
Did you expect this when you directed and wrote it?
Of course, you know, I have big dreams,
so I hoped for it, but I did not expect it.
-Right. -You know, I think what's happening
is, one, it's a funny movie, and people aren't used
to thinking and laughing at the same time.
-Right, right, right. -The way the movies are right now.
And, so, yeah, I think people are seeing something new
that should have been in cinema already and...
It's a, it's a story that-that's fascinating.
And you-you base it on a piece of your-your real life.
So, for those who don't know, Sorry to Bother You
basically follows the story
of a young man who works in telemarketing.
He gets a job as a telemarketer,
and he's trying to figure out how to make money,
how to make sales. And we saw in the clip there,
you know, Danny Glover says to him,
"Hey, man, you've got to practice your white voice."
-Yeah. -Which is such a powerful moment, 'cause it talks
to code-switching and the whole idea
of changing to make ends meet.
Yeah. And-and I have to say, that clip is edited,
so some of the subtlety is taken out,
because there are all sorts of levels.
He says, "I don't mean Will Smith white.
That's not white. That's just proper."
-Right, right, right. -And, um, you know,
he explains the idea,
which is that there is no white voice,
that all of this stuff that we're doing
is a performance of some sort.
And the mythical idea of the white voice
is this one where there are no problems,
where you got your bills paid, you never get let--
you never get fired, you just get laid off.
-Right, right. -You know, that sort of a thing
that-that is almost the opposite of the racist black tropes--
the racist tropes of black folks,
which are that we're savage
and, um, all our problems, poverty--
our poverty comes from bad choices that we make.
So the opposite of that is this mythical white voice
that we sometimes have to put on in order to survive.
I feel like you-you never put on that voice as a person.
Like, you know, for those who don't know you,
I mean, you are-- you're known in the Oakland
and San Francisco community as a rapper.
Uh, you-you wrote this-this story.
It wasn't picked up for a long time.
Um, you believed in it, though, so you kept on pushing it.
But you don't strike me as the kind of person who's ever said,
"I'm gonna blend into the world.
I'm going to-- I'm gonna be what everyone wants me to be."
And this movie's definitely not that as well.
(stammers) Did you-- Have you ever been in a place
where you thought to yourself, "Let me just blend in
and-and try and make the money the normal way"?
-Well, no. But except... -(laughter)
I mean, I did do telemarketing
and I had some version of the white voice
and I was-- it was in order to sell-- to-to sell that.
And what it-- what that is over the phone is a little different
than the one that people have to do,
like, in their corporate job,
where people see that they're black
but "Hey, I'm talking in a way so you know
that I am... not dangerous"
-or some-something like that. -Right, right, right.
But, over-- in the movie, at the beginning,
and over the phone when I was doing telemarketing,
it was, "I'm lying to you, and you--
"I want you to think that I'm white
so that you will spend some money with me."
-Right, and that's-that's... -And that's a testament
to the racism that exists out there.
A lot of the story is about megacorporations
-and these super billionaires making so much money -Yeah.
and their employees struggling just to make ends meet.
Exactly. Because-- And-and it's funny,
because movies don't usually deal with that,
even though it's something that...
They don't usually deal with the struggle that's happening.
Rebellion is edited out of the worlds that we create
with our movies, unless it's, like, 300 years from now
in some world we can't relate to.
But what's happening now is the product
of us ignoring what's been going on for a long time.
And that's us living in this system.
It's-- It comes from the economic system
that we're under. And this-this, uh, film
does deal with race, but it deals with race
as it intersects with our-- with the economic system we're in.
It's one of those films where, honestly,
if I tried to describe it to somebody,
I would be doing it a disservice.
All I say to anyone who will listen to me is,
"Go and watch this movie.
You will not regret spending that cash."
Thank you so much for being on the show.
-Thank you. -I appreciate you so much.
Sorry to Bother You is in theaters now.
I promise you you'll love it. Boots Riley, everybody.