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BeatRoute Magazine BC Print Edition July 2018

BeatRoute Magazine is a monthly arts and entertainment paper with a predominant focus on music – local, independent or otherwise. The paper started in June 2004 and continues to provide a healthy dose of perversity while exercising rock ‘n’ roll ethics. Currently BeatRoute’s AB edition is distributed in Calgary, Edmonton (by S*A*R*G*E), Banff and Canmore. The BC edition is distributed in Vancouver, Victoria and Nanaimo. BeatRoute (AB) Mission PO 23045 Calgary, AB T2S 3A8 E. editor@beatroute.ca BeatRoute (BC) #202 – 2405 E Hastings Vancouver, BC V5K 1Y8 P. 778-888-1120

BeatRoute Magazine is a monthly arts and entertainment paper with a predominant focus on music – local, independent or otherwise. The paper started in June 2004 and continues to provide a healthy dose of perversity while exercising rock ‘n’ roll ethics.

Currently BeatRoute’s AB edition is distributed in Calgary, Edmonton (by S*A*R*G*E), Banff and Canmore. The BC edition is distributed in Vancouver, Victoria and Nanaimo. BeatRoute (AB) Mission PO 23045 Calgary, AB T2S 3A8 E. editor@beatroute.ca BeatRoute (BC) #202 – 2405 E Hastings Vancouver, BC V5K 1Y8 P. 778-888-1120

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FILM<br />

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU<br />

BOOTS RILEY BREAKS GROUND WITH DIRECTORIAL DEBUT<br />

PAT MULLEN<br />

Sorry To Bother You provides unconventional genre-bending social commentary.<br />

Boots Riley might be best known as<br />

the frontman for the Oakland-based<br />

hip hop group The Coup, but he breaks<br />

new ground as an artist with his feature<br />

directorial debut Sorry to Bother You.<br />

The film stars Get Out’s Lakeith Stanfield<br />

as Cassius, who succeeds in his menial<br />

telemarketing job when a co-worker<br />

(Danny Glover) advises him to woo<br />

customers with his “white voice.” The<br />

zany political satire was a breakout at<br />

Sundance and invites comparison to last<br />

year’s Get Out with its genre-bending<br />

social commentary. Riley introduces<br />

himself as a filmmaker with a fierce<br />

counter-cultural punch.<br />

Riley, who studied film at San Francisco<br />

State University before his recording<br />

career, relates to Cassius’s experience<br />

working the phones, having been a<br />

telemarketer himself. Riley says no<br />

particular episode from his telemarking<br />

days inspired the film. It was “just being<br />

there in the cubicle, feeling the soulkilling<br />

feeling that comes from that, and<br />

vowing revenge,” he laughs.<br />

The film drops Cassius down a rabbit<br />

hole throughout his rise up the corporate<br />

ladder that includes Armie Hammer as a<br />

coke-snorting CEO who mutates African<br />

Americans into workhorses complete<br />

with snouts and swaying foot-long cocks.<br />

It defiantly spits in the face of corporate<br />

America.<br />

“My success as a hip hop artist has not<br />

been a financial one,” admits Riley when<br />

asked how his work helps him keep his<br />

views on capitalism in check. “It’s been<br />

successful in the sense that I’ve been<br />

able to keep pushing it out, keep making<br />

music, and have people listening to my<br />

music.” Riley adds that success can seem<br />

relative, since only last year he had his<br />

power cut off and could relate to Cassius’s<br />

experience being months behind on rent.<br />

With that being said, he acknowledges<br />

that the system can be advantageous<br />

for making music and films like Sorry to<br />

Bother You that challenge the status quo.<br />

“I don’t think the answer to what this<br />

system has wrong with it is something<br />

that is changed by individual action,” says<br />

Riley. “I don’t have qualms about using<br />

the system that exists to get messages to<br />

people to organize against it.”<br />

Despite being years in the making,<br />

Sorry to Bother You is very timely with its<br />

anti-capitalist message. Tessa Thompson<br />

stars alongside Stanfield as Cassius’s<br />

girlfriend Detroit, who moonlights as<br />

a human billboard to fund her antiestablishment<br />

performance art. Cassius’s<br />

success strains their relationship as she<br />

tries to open his eyes to the fact that<br />

capitalism is just another form of antiblack<br />

oppression. The script, written in<br />

2012 and published in 2014, resonates<br />

with Trump’s America as the film opens<br />

amidst brewing international trade wars.<br />

“It would have been relevant in 1986<br />

and, unfortunately, will keep being<br />

relevant as long as we have capitalism,”<br />

observes Riley.<br />

Audiences get a wakeup call as<br />

Riley’s hip hop roots inject fiery urban<br />

musicality into Cassius’s odyssey. Nothing<br />

about the film follows Hollywood<br />

convention, least of all the trippy<br />

soundtrack by The Coup. The film<br />

adds to the conversation for diverse<br />

representation as one of two Oaklandshot<br />

films to be released this summer. The<br />

other, the spoken-word urban musical<br />

Blindspotting starring Hamilton’s Daveed<br />

Diggs, had a friendly rivalry with Riley’s<br />

production competing for personnel and<br />

equipment.<br />

Riley says it feels good to see the films<br />

put Oakland on the world’s screens.<br />

“It reminds me of the early nineties<br />

when a lot of groups from Oakland were<br />

coming out,” he says. “There’s a lot of<br />

creative people in that area that need to<br />

get a chance to do their thing.”<br />

THIS MONTH IN FILM<br />

BRENDAN LEE<br />

Sorry to Bother You – <strong>July</strong> 6<br />

When the key to power and success for young black telemarketer<br />

Cassius Green is sounding white on the telephone, how far will he go<br />

until he’s lost himself? With this fresh comedy, first-time director Boots<br />

Ridley puppeteers his own unique take on the surreal in a perfectly<br />

off-kilter alternate reality.<br />

Eighth Grade – <strong>July</strong> 13<br />

It’s the bitter end of childhood and the abrupt realization that growing<br />

up is the toughest thing we’ll ever do. From acclaimed comedian Bo<br />

Burnham comes a look at one of life’s greatest ordeals; we’ve all been<br />

there, and however horrible, we’d give it all to go back. With Eighth<br />

Grade, Burnham takes us there.<br />

Hot Summer Nights – <strong>July</strong> 27<br />

“I hope you’re good at being hurt.” Timothée Chalamet stars as the<br />

quiet, new kid in town for the summer who falls flat-on-his-face in<br />

love with a girl named McKayla, all the while flipping weed with her<br />

brother, spiraling in and out of any sense of control.<br />

Under The Tree – <strong>July</strong> 6<br />

What starts as a harmless spat between neighbours over an unsightly,<br />

shadow-casting tree, escalates and transforms into something much<br />

more personal, and far darker. This Icelandic dark-comedy takes<br />

the bad-neighbour formula to new heights, a place where pent-up,<br />

suburban rage is at long last untethered.<br />

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot – <strong>July</strong> 13<br />

When John Callahan loses the use of his legs in a car accident, he<br />

confronts his rooted alcoholism with a stubborn but newfound<br />

affinity for drawing cartoons. Adapted from the quasi-memoir,<br />

Will the Real John Callahan Please Stand Up?, the film stars Joaquin<br />

Phoenix, Jack Black, and an almost unrecognizable Jonah Hill.<br />

Hot Summer Nights<br />

26<br />

<strong>July</strong> <strong>2018</strong>

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