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
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
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>