M m m. You're listening to Playback, a Variety I Heart Radio podcast. I'm your host, Variety Awards editor Chris Tapley. This week, I'm talking to Boots Riley, the writer and director of the film Sorry to Bother You. Boots got his start in the music world as part of the Oakland hip hop group The Coup. We talked about his history and that industry and how it informed his transition to filmmaking, among other things. So sit tight, this is playback.
What's no big deal because we just started to paying from what I'm here today with Boots Riley, the writer and director of Sorry to Bother You, also a hip hop legend I would say from his days as the frontman of The Coup. Thanks for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. You've been working a lot. This is funny to me right now because we're redoing what we just did. Why did you tell them? Because it's funny, I like to bring it up. We're
just talking about your nickname. How did you get the nickname Boots? Wearing boots at the wrong time, in the wrong place in high school? And uh, it was a name that I wouldn't answer to for three years. Like people would be like Boots, Boots, and I would actually ignore them until they said Ray Raymond or Ray Riley. I was first known as Ray Riley, Like people thought that was my first name, Ray Riley. Would be like, what's your last name? Ray Riley, and be like you
just said it? But yeah, once I started rapping, like it was a name that people who didn't even know me because of the circumstances that came up and called me Boots, you know, like, oh, that's Boots. So when I started rapping, I was like, better use the name that everybody already knows me by. Well. I love your music, man, and I actually want to start there kind of work our way into the movie. But you know, you Kill
My Landlord your debut album. Uh. I'm a big fan of early nineties music, all of it, you know, hip hop, what was going on with R and B rock, It's just an interesting clash of genres that was going on at that time. So I'd love to talk to somebody like you who entered that scene at that time and and and just very curious what it was like for you, What was what was the music world like for you to enter it? In the early nineties coming out of film school and kind of what was going on with
music at that time. M I have to think about things in a way I haven't thought about them, So I think that you know, at the time, there were there were less outlets for people to hear music from, so it was important to get into those outlets like so you know, even like for for rappers, for hip hop, there weren't like venues like whereas like maybe with indie rock, you could play these venues, gather up a crowd and maybe tour and but a lot of towns and especially Oakland,
but a lot of towns all over the country. Um, what we now consider hip hop venues that do hip hop shows, they usually do a lot of different things, but they wouldn't have hip hop there because the idea was hip hop shows would be too violent, that was what they thought or whatever. Who knows, but they weren't having them. They just have rock shows there. So we didn't have like the ways to like go about it
in that way. Like we did have an independent hip hop movement, but that was just us selling tapes out of our trunk, like pulling up on a group of people, getting them to play our hape and uh, you know, and hopefully they dance to it and like it, or you give out your tape to the people that are popular with big systems, and we would go around the country everyone for we go around the country our first promotional tour. We didn't have any shows. We just got
to each city, put up stickers and posters. Asked where because there was no like network, you didn't know where the record stores were. You ask people where the record stores are, because this is like right before sound scan jumped off, and even the sound Scan for a while was not the independent store. So we asked where the record store is, Asked them if we could put up our own um, put up our our point of purchase stuff.
Asked them what parties were going on that night? Go there, Go get the DJ to play a song, give flyers to everybody. Hopefully we can get on the mic and say something, do something and be in in between that get people to play the music in their cars. And
so we did that. You know, we did that for weeks and weeks, and that was the ninety three that was where and then it was only so we needed to get on bet and we were not on their radar and we went this is what when BT was in in d C still and we went and we banged on the door, like literally banged on the door, and Um, there was a dude Joe and I'm forgetting his name, but he was with the host of BT. We don't know who the producers were or anything, and
we were on wild Pitching. They kind of knew some of this stuff, and so we we went and we asked for him and we're like, yeah, he told us to come here and and uh he came out and he was like, what was this all about? And We're like, we want to take you to lunch. So we went to we spent our per diem. We put our per diems together, me pam uh e rock In our road manager at the time, check the pharaoh put our per diems together, which was like six dollar a day per
diem or something. And we bought this dude lunch and um made friends with him and he played our video. Um a lot of that d I Y stuff. I mean that probably translates to the film world, right, I mean, oh yeah, I mean that's how I got it funded, how I got people behind it with with the music. Was there anything at the time that was there a hole you felt needed to be filled? Was there a certain was there something that wasn't happening in music that
you wanted to put there? Oh? Definitely. I. UM. You know, I came from an organizing background. I started, UM, I have a lot of contradictions. I different times, I was, I was doing theater and I was an organizer. UM. With that that was helping out the creation of a of an anti racist farm workers union in Watsonville and
uh not in Watsonville and Delano and McFarland. UM. I also was also right after that during the same time, at the same time was promoted parties, you know, like the parties like ladies in Free before ten, you know that sort of thing, and uh you know, dress code,
no gym shoes, you know whatever. UM, all of these things kind of converged and I and then I and I was going to film school at different times, you know, while all of these things were overlapping, and I, UM, I saw that, you know, everything that I do is about how I look at the world. And I thought I didn't think anyone was out there putting out the analysis that I was putting out that I wanted to
put out. So I started doing that, and when I decided to do it, I didn't know what I was doing, and similar to film, I was like, well, this has to be done. What do I need to learn to do this? And I knew I wasn't good at rapping you know, um radical you know radical organizations. They operate off of a philosophy of dialectical materialism, which is one of the ideas behind is that everything changes, nothing stays
the same. Um that even I mean, and this is true obviously, even the rocks are deteriorating and changing all the time. So with that that everything is changing, you also can have something to say or to do with
how things change. So thinking about that ends up, especially for a kid trying to figure out who they are and what they want to do, that ends up being liberating in the sense that you also, because of that, can figure out if you want to get to point B or C or whatever that no matter how impossible it is, it's really just about having a clear analysis of what the obstacles are, figuring out what those steps
are that you would have to take. You know, like if I wanted to go to the moon in three months, you know, one of my obstacles would be money, so I'd have to get some billionaire to want to send me to the moon. You know whatever, I could define that, maybe it's almost impossible. Maybe I wouldn't be able to attain the steps in between. But the first step is two correctly define what those steps are gonna be. And so I did that with music. I practiced. I looked
at what other rappers were doing. Sometimes it was you know, almost imitating them and figuring that out, figuring out what they did with their you know, delivery, figuring out you know, and figuring out how, and then practiced. You know, I knew that practice was a big part of it. And I knew that there's different ways just from organizing. I know, there's different ways to practice, Like if I'm talking to you, it's different than me like sitting down writing something or whatever,
or if I'm talking to tend people. All those things I applied to doing the music, and I made myself get better and um and and and enough to do this thing. It wasn't like I wasn't the guy who people were like, Oh, you're good, you should do this. What are you doing not doing that? You know? People were like surprised when I was doing it, similar to how they were with the film. Yeah, I'm sorry to throw.
You probably came in here expecting to start talking about the movie and you really but I just wanted to get into your because it's it's it's interesting to me how it might inform because also, you know, I read that you you wrote you taught a course on in high school or high school course on persuasive lyric writing. Is that true? So I'm curious about that because I actually want to know the answer, Like what what? What? What is persuasive writing? What? What? What is an example
of persuasive writing? Uh? What's this? I mean? It more is about having a reason you're talking to someone, like especially if you're making a piece of art. It's more looking at it from the standpoint of, m what do you want to say about the world, as opposed to that you want to just get to the end of the verse and say some cute things. You know that applies to film. Obviously you're dealing in theme with with
with screenwriting. You want to be saying something. Obviously your movie is saying something, is saying a lot of things, and it's having a lot of fun as well along the way. Um, you know, you've got this thing that you say every time someone asks you to kind of distill it, and I'm just gonna say it for years time and not let you say this film is an absurdist, dark comedy with magical realism and science fiction inspired by the world of telemarketing, which completely undersells or omits any
of the socio political underpinnings of the film. So why is that just to not scare someone away with the first Well, here's the thing is that I think all of these films are political, even like Skyscraper and Rampage. I haven't seen those movies, so I don't know in which way they are, but they're all telling us something, even when the writer might not be conscious of what the but sometimes the writer is conscious because as we know, there is and this is for some people who haven't heard,
this might seem like I'm a tinfoil hat guy. But ever after nine eleven, there was an open dialogue between the Pentagon and different studios, and not just for films about you know, the invasion of of of Iraq. Like there's a dialogue that's going on, and some of that has to do with how are the how is the army being portrayed? How is the you know, like, are there some things where you can put in some navy seals all those sorts of things. Um, And and that's
just the more crass stuff. But other stuff is you know, um, just the way life is, you know, like what what things you're supposed to be be scared of? What things? You know? What you know, putting out the idea of what most humans want and how most humans act. It's all political. So if we talk about my film in terms of it being quote unquote political, then what it's doing is it's making us think that the rest of the stuff is normal. You know, it's making us think
that the rest of the stuff has no viewpoint. Regarding the tinfoil hat comment, I mean, do you do you deal with that? Do do do? Do you? I mean I was I asked that because I was watching your politically incorrect episode from fifteen years right after nine eleven, you know, when party music came out, and uh, I just wanted to jump through the screen and smack Bill Maher around because he was he was so condescending to you and the other guests on the show as well.
Do you deal with that. Um well, I would say this. I mean I do sometimes, but then i'm always I'm not always, but I'm shown to be right. Like on that one, I was putting forward the idea that the US got into invading uh Iraq for monetary reasons, and they were like, oh, you're crazy this and that, what what are you talking about. Then of course it got
found out. You know, I'm not saying I was the only one saying that, but there wasn't anything was considered a too radical an idea for people to even discuss on Disney owned television. I guess you know. So yeah, um so I don't think that normal folks take it as, you know, something way out there. I mean, look, there was a there were two studies recently done, one by Harvard put to me the more telling one was the one. I can call it up on my phone because I've
screenshot at it to show to people. But um uh the but where there's a right wing think take that did a study of millennials and one of the things that came up with made made this think tank up in arms, saying, look, this is showing us that you know, universities are doing this and that anyway out of those hundred, millennials showed one and two believe that we should have
a socialist world. Um. So often though, writers and artists have done everything that we can do to try to get out of the real world, you know, like to to um separate ourselves from folks. So we've we've made ourselves believe that there's nothing that can be done about the world and that, and so we sink into writing and we're like, we're gonna expose it, which my show, which my movie kind of talks about, like we we are like, look what we're du is we tell the
truth and that's our job. That's all we can do. Man. So we just tell the truth and you know, it gets out there. But that's not enough. And in giving us ourselves that excuse, we cling on to the idea that we should change what we write about, UM two because everyone else is not as enlightened as us. So you know, people water down there own ideas publicly because we you know, that's what the media is often does, is it makes us think that we're the most radical
person in the room. That's the whole job. I mean, I have so many examples of that in life, where I mean, I mean, Occupy coming up, it's one of them.
Nobody would have thought in two thousand and ten that in two thousand and eleven you'd have this movement jumping off in every town in the United States where they basically we're having a class line that said versus the one percent, which now is a cliche sort of thing to throw out there too, where we don't even think about it, and just but in reality talking about an economic function to this economic system, which seems it's radical
to say that there are functions inside of an economic system. But we wouldn't have thought that. But all these things popped up in all of these towns, and and beyond the people that showed up there, the folks that liked the fact that it was there, that weren't showing up there. I mean, the point is is that um, before that,
they hadn't even said the word capitalism. And there's some study was done where before um, before Occupied the News had said the word capitalism once in twenty years, and then after Occupy they were saying it, you know, every night, like it was a dirty word to those who were like it was like to look at it in a to look at things as having anything to do with
economic function. Um then calls up other questions. But but here's the thing, the other reason that I don't talk about it necessarily in terms of a social political thing, because I mean, if you get any director here and you talk to them about their ideas, they're gonna have as many ideas as I do. But for the past twentysomething years, uh, rebellion has been edited out of what we write about. I just regarding that comment, I just read something you said about another film, UH never let
me go. I had the exact same takeaway from that movie that you did, and you know, which is that there's no spirit of rebellion within the film. And in some ways, okay, that's kind of the point, but that's but it's not what I wanted. And you could have that be the point for the characters that are there. Let's say he wanted to write about some emotional thing
of like giving up and losing hope. Okay, but it could still be somewhere in the world, you know, somewhere because they have other things happening in that world that you know, and and but it gets yeah, we don't even have it in that world. The only time we have it in that world. Is when they create such a science fiction. Um uh, such a science fiction created different universe. Yeah. That and and that it doesn't even matter. Like Star Wars was supposed to be started out as
George Lucas's version of Apocalypse Now. He was supposed to write Apocalypse. It was his idea to do Apocalypse Now, but he, um, this is according to the conversations. It's just a book that's of conversations between Michael and Dodchy and Walter Merch who edited a lot of that stuff.
He was going he he was making his movie based on the Heart of Darkness as Apocalypse Now was um but following the Vietcom with the Vietcong as the protagonists and going into um U s territory to find this viehic X Vietcom guy who had risen up the ranks and become powerful there and we're helping them to fight the Vietcom. And people are like, that's too radical. You're having them identify with, you know, the communists, and George and he's like and he couldn't get it funded, so
he's like, fine, I'll put it in space. And that's where Star Wars comes the rebels were. For at least for the first movie, the rebels were supposed to be the vietcom The Empire was the United States and um and Darth Vader was their curts. And it doesn't matter. Nobody cares, you know what they It's so removed from real life that you can only couch those ideas in something that's fantasy or something and that that you're saying that that and because of that, how removed it is.
That's why we have no idea why anybody is in the Empire to begin with, Like nobody is like, yeah, it really fights for our families. No, nobody's doing that. It's so removed that there's no allusion to the United States or and and in a lot of these movies, that's why they have evil versus good in that way because they don't want to. They don't want to, uh, make reference to anyone in our real world. So I mean in Star Trek they're supposed to live in a
socialist society. Nobody cares. It doesn't matter. It's so far, you know, like Republicans can watch those things and be totally down because it doesn't really raise the thing. And and I'm not saying that I think that they're definitely or even a lot of Republicans that would agree with the basic idea that people should get the value of the work that they do, you know what I'm saying,
which is a very socialist concept. But um, you know, when you start putting lingo on it, then people are like, oh, I don't think I agree with that. I'm not supposed to. You know. Then as an art artist, when we start talking about the film in that way, my ego gets hurt because I put a lot of work into the style of this, into into the storytelling that um, just because I end up having a different viewpoint than that people aren't used to seeing in film, then that's what
gets talked about. But um, I would say that there's a lot of stuff that we all you know, this was a collaboration of actors and production designer DP and UM costume designer. Like with this vision that I had that I think, um, it's something that could get looked over. So that's why I talk about what it's what to me, that's what it's about. Just just and this is we're talking about that one question for a long time. But
that's what it's about. Is those those things that I said it is an absurd as dark comedy, magical realism, science fiction, because all those other things that don't have my viewpoint, they have some other viewpoint that we don't talk about either. Well, let's talk about just the It has a very interesting journey obviously, this story, I mean, the script was published through the help of Dave Eggers originally, so you finally got the funding to make it as
a film. Um. So, you know, just a very unique kind of trajectory for a story like this. You went to the Sundance Labs with it as well, what what did you learn with with the sun Dance Institute of it all? I mean, you know, and I mentioned earlier you went to film school by the way, so like so everyone's under aware you went to film school before
you became a music star. Yeah. I went to film school and that was at San Francisco State and at the time there was a lot of focus on experimental film and documentary um, both of which ones weren't things I was interested in. UM and uh, going to school in San Francisco might have been a different thing going to film school in l A or New York, where I think, like if you go to school in l
A Or New York. You know, people who got out of school and made a film or even you know, made a narrative film at the you know, for their thesis. You know, I went to film school in North Carolina, so I know what you mean. Yeah, so it was like it seems still like a pipe dream even though I was in film school. And so that's why I took the record deal, um and on the and then to be honest, you know, that was a long time ago.
I don't remember any of that ship, you know, Like I'm sure I learned some of that stuff and put and brought it forward, but I can't parse out where I got this versus where I got that, because you know, I also was in you know, we made a lot of videos of which I only co directed one of them, but um, you know, I was a part of that whole process, and you know, I wasn't a stranger to a set um. But I think a lot of really
more than way more than film school. What helped me out is producing music, which is a similar collaborative process where you've got people that are masters of their craft and in the music sense, if I'm the producer they've each got more experience, well maybe not experienced, but they've each got more UH knowledge of music than I do. UM. But it's my vision that I have that that that we and I have to get them to buy into it.
I have to get them to like it. I have to get them to UH and I have to know what I want out of each one of them that that they can bring. And then I have to know that, you know, the guitar player is gonna want a guitar solo and that might not help out the final product. I have to know that when the bass player has
a better baseline than I do. So all of those things and just working and getting projects done and having the experience of dealing with people fighting with each other, and you know, I wouldn't have made this movie even
with you know, the same idea. If I had the same idea, I wouldn't have made the same movie coming straight out of film school because I might have been so worried about just being able to make a film that I would have been like, Okay, we can take out all that stuff and it's really just about Cassius in Detroit meeting each other at a telemarketing place. You know what I'm saying, like, uh, I might have been
more malleable. But since I had been doing art for a long time and had been doing art that was contentious, even just not even for the politics, but for the style with which I did it, I was used to people being like, that's weird, why are you doing that, and having my own reasons and being okay with that.
But but also listen, you know, that's also part of the dialectical materialism idea, is that you know, taking critique in and and being okay with it, and and you know, and and listening to it, and you know, you do go through a process of not listening to it and then after a while you hear it. But you know, so all of that, but then going to the Sunday and Slabs, it still was like a world that I
didn't know, right. I didn't know other filmmakers. I had just started kind of meeting other filmmakers because I joined UM the SF Film Filmmaker and Residence program, and so there were people like actually being like, we're putting this together. We made a film and we you know, so it was but but going there and first to the Screenwriter's Lab, then later to the director's lab. Um, the screenwriter's lab.
You have all of these people that are masters of their craft looking at it, and and first, you know, it's just validating, like, um, the ones that liked it. But I mean it was a it was a controversial one, I will say, you know, um, because it was different just even the format or whatever. And then some people were like, I like it, but you know, we need to make this more like a movie you can sell or whatever, you know, just trying to help me out whatever.
You know, this conversation is keeping the movie nicely vague to how people are like what is this and and and uh. But then you do you see them debating your script and you realize nobody knows what the funk they're doing, and they're all trying to use what they know to tell a good story and that's all it is. And um, so that helped me out tremendously. Um. As well as like just comments by different people, um huh.
You know, even both the negative and I won't say negative, both the comments that were like critical and wanting me to change certain things, um, and the ones that upheld it. Like but but the best thing I got in the screenwriter's lab was this guy Koree my News, who was like, look, I don't I don't know how to tell you anything about your script. That's dumb. It's your script. My script is my script. Whatever. Um. I just come here because they give me. You know, it's a resort and you
know it's free food and it's fun. Um. And he said, but what I will tell you is I love Cassius. I love your lead character. I want to I want to have drinks with him. I want to hug him and take care of him when I hang out with him. I just want to be around him all the time. Um. And he said, and that's how I know it's bullshit
because I hate everybody. And and so we had a three hour long conversation about people in our lives who you know, and their decision at different points that we disagree with, and what was happening with that, and you know, and what I realized from that was that I was making ashes just be this like innocent pinball getting slapped around, and you know, it was the same things that happened
in the movie. But but he was just it just happened to be that he had to make this decision and had to make that decision and all that kind of stuff, and I ended up giving him more agency because of that where he actually made these decisions, because this was that that that the conversation brought out, that this is more real, what really happens in real life, that you know, people make their decisions and then they even sometimes dig theirselves further into it because they don't
want to have made the wrong decision and they own it. And so he became that character, and that that had reverberations throughout the script to the other characters as well. So, um, what about names. I wanted to talk to you about names. You mentioned Cassius in Detroit. There's also Diana. It's not defaultry debauchery, but what is yeah, and Salvador and Lankston just interesting names. Do you think much about how you're
naming a character? Oh yeah, yeah, I'm into you know, if you even see my song titles and album titles, I'm very I mean, this album that's the soundtrack to the movie is actually probably the least creative title that I've ever had, which is the soundtrack to Sorry to Bother You. But uh yeah, naming is a is a big part of it. Naming is like dialogue or lyrics
or you know anything like that. I mean basically, you give me any space where I get to create something, I'm going to want to make the most of it. Why do you think you were so good at telemarketing? Um? Well, which partly inspired this. Yeah, well, I was always that kid that um that a newspaper had a seventeen year old goal and scoop up all the kids in the neighborhood into a van, which seems like how did they
let us do this? And uh takes you to some other neighborhood where you get out and you and you go door to door, you knock on the door and sell newspaper subscriptions and at the end of the day you get a slice of pizza and uh and if you happen to sell some newspapers, you get something I don't know, like a dollar or something I don't know. Um. And I was that kid that would knock on your
door with tears in his eyes. And you know, because it definitely was already the time when I was about to get picked up and I wasn't gonna sell this one's newspaper that was going to give me my trip to Disneyland. You know that sort of thing. Through that for the wrong reasons, I learned how to listen to people, learned how um, sometimes people say something very different than what they actually mean, which happens a lot in this movie.
But um, and that carried over into for good reasons, into my skills at organizing and realizing that it's not about the lingo that people use or whatever. You know. I'm not someone that gets caught up on people using the you know, politically correct language. It's more about what they're about. Sometimes that language tells you something about what they're about, but it's more about what people are about.
And I used that in my organizing because I was seeing that some folks were being really didactic and not hearing other folks that we're actually agreeing with them. Then that even more carried through into my writings of songs, like talking about the things that people really are thinking about and caring about, like you know, our stuff. No matter how political it was. It wasn't say rage against the machine, which those lyrics are about, like anger and
being mad at the system or whatever. Our lyrics were often funny and danable. I mean the songs and and and with this realism I don't know, there might have been. We have a song called Ask Breath Killers, which are about these uh it's a commercial. The song is a commercial for of uh these pills that you take that stop you from kissing the boss's ass and uh yeah, so but but yeah, basically plugging into what I had learned from organizing, which is that it's not people being
mad at the way things are. That helps because most people don't like the way things are. Some people do, but most don't. The thing that's stopping people from doing things is them feeling like there's a way to change it. So our music was always very optimistic, and that had to do with me listening to people and and not just listening for the words that they say. You know, like there are some people that would at that time
be like, oh, hip hop it's so materialistic. They're always talking about, you know, the money that they have, and they don't even have the money. I'm like, exactly, they're not talking about the money they have, They're talking about the freedom they want and there and and but we
haven't presented a movement for folks to get there. And uh so my music was much different than other music that would have been labeled conscious or something like that, because it wasn't preaching that you're doing the wrong thing. Stop thinking about that, think about this. You know. It was like talking about, here's what you're already thinking about. I think it's connected to this. Let's go do this,
you know. And so that also so then when I was you know, I quit doing telemarketing and you know, I did telemarketing in college, and then I did it again after a second album because I had at an age twenty four midlife crisis where I felt like I was like being fake and you know, I've been. I was doing music for my adult life and I had not I didn't have respect for artists or myself as an artist. As a meaning, I didn't think that it really did anything. I was wrong, but there's part of
it that is right. And um so I stopped and we made an organization called the Young Comrades. And during that time, I needed a way to make money, and I knew I was gonna telemarketing, so I did that in order to be because I could do telemarketing one day every two weeks and make all the money I
needed to to be organizing. Yeah, and I think that the reason that I was that good is because um, of listening and thinking about what people wanted, what people and you know, so for manipulative reasons and and uh, you know, not sticking to the script. You know, um, you know it was that at that time I was doing tele fundraising, so ostensibly it wasn't as bad as you know, selling people encyclopedias they don't need or whatever, and and newspapers, which I had done before. Um, but so,
but yeah, I had ways of manipulating people. What's next? I know, you got like you got a TV deal and and probably people ready to read TV deal and a TV deal and a feature deal and both of them are for whatever I want to do. Well, that's great. Yeah, I can't ask so much more to that. Do you you feel like film is something that I mean, as you as you said, you were born into this, you're born into activism and and and and uh uh or organizing Is film something you feel like can really be
a proper tool for that? Um? I think it's up to the organizations. I think it can be. Yes, the answer is yes. But if there aren't movements happening, then it just becomes ideas and people talk about them. They become cute and cool, and you know, people will get the T shirts and the ear rings and then you know, which I think are is good because the T shirts and the earrings make people talk about the movie, um, and they also show that people are like connecting with it. However,
there needs to be movement. There needs to be movements that folks can join where at the place that they're at, you know, and uh, we'll see whether whether they're out there. I think they are out there. We're seeing all kinds of stuff happening right now. We're seeing, um, West Virginia or is it just Virginia the teachers strike where they're shutting shut down the whole thing. We're seeing stuff like
that going on all over the place. People are looking for way, for footholds for people to have power with and uh, you know, hopefully this film doesn't just become a talking piece or whatever. And you know, some of our music I feel like was that. But it also can inspire people to do things. One thing I hope inspires as other writers to stop editing a real part of the world out of their worlds. Yeah. Absolutely, movies called Sorry to Bother You. It opens July six. Uh,
everyone should go see it. Hopefully this conversation stimulated because we didn't really get into the nitty gritty. But I didn't want to. I didn't want to, like, you know, it just it's a It's a movie to go in without knowing anything. Just listen to everybody telling you that it's good and then go. Because that's how I That's how I went to see Um, That's how I went to see uh black Swan. You know, I didn't know
anything about it. I saw the poster and I was going on a date with this girl and I was like, Oh, we're gonna go see a ballet movie. I'm gonna have to get high. So I got really high because I was like, I'm not this is I kept smoking in the parking line. I was like, I'm not high enough to go see a ballet movie and I'm a lightweight. And then but I wasn't getting because I'm a lightweight and didn't know that I should wait. I just kept smoking and I sat down in the seat and I
was like, oh shit, I'm high. And then the movie came on, and throughout it, I was like loudly saying, oh, oh my god, this is the best movie I've ever seen, and uh, I want people to do that, but without smoking the weed. You know, no matter how illegal it is, it's still Do you smoke anything it's bad for you?
That doesn't I'm not you know whatever. I just want to say that in my time right here, is because you know, we get all hyped off of stuff and like, oh it's it's healthy, No do it, but just know it's unhealthy when I when I drink whiskey, I'm not like, oh this is healthy, you know, right, But but we're the wisdom Riley. We'll go check out the movie. Everybody did you like? Six? Sorry to bother, you really appreciate
you coming on the show. A right man. Thank you for having me July six and select theaters July everywhere. There you go. Thanks Matt m