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From The Coup To 'Sorry To Bother You': Boots Riley Is Oakland's Undefinable Storyteller [Interview]
Photo Credit: Steve Cohn
Boots Riley Has Some Sharp Critiques of Spike Lee's 'BlacKkKlansman'
Boots Riley has some sharp critiques
Sorry to Bother You and BlacKkKlansman have been two of the most critically acclaimed movies to be released this summer.
So it was interesting to Boots Riley, the writer and director of Sorry to Bother You, dish out some sharp critiques of BlacKkKlansman, which was directed by Spike Lee.
READ:Spike Lee Paid $200,000 By NYPD For Consulting On Ad Campaign
Boots Riley started critiquing the movie on Friday (August 17th) when he wrote a pretty detailed explanation of his issues. Basically, Riley detailed all the ways Lee's movie played with the truth when it came to the film's protagonist Ron Stallworth. Riley felt like Lee and the writers went out of their way to make the character more heroic.
This is pretty par for the course for most Hollywood movies. However, Riley's critiques come from the fact that Stallworth was part of the FBI's controversial Cointelpro program, and he helped infiltrate a black radical group. At one point Riley wrote: For Spike to come out with a movie where a story points are fabricated in order to make Black cop and his counterparts look like allies in the fight against racism is really disappointing, to put it very mildly.
READ:From The Coup To Sorry To Bother You: Boots Riley Is Oakland's Undefinable Storyteller [Interview]
Here is what he wrote:
\u201cDammit. Spike was paid over $200k "by NYPD". I left that out of the end.\u201d— Boots Riley (@Boots Riley) 1534543362
\u201cIn the 5th paragraph it says: "where he did what all papers from the FBI\u2019s Counter Intelligence Program (Cointelpro) that were found through the freedom of information act tell us he did" \n\n2b clear, it shuld say: "found through the freedom of information act point to him doing"\u201d— Boots Riley (@Boots Riley) 1534543362
Boots Riley conituned his critiques on Monday, August 20th:
\u201cPolice and Fire Publishing was who published the book at first. That changed after the movie was real.\u201d— Boots Riley (@Boots Riley) 1534727165
\u201cI want to make clear that I support changing true stories. I definitely will. The question is- what story do the changes tell? What are you changing that world to say?\u201d— Boots Riley (@Boots Riley) 1534731650
\u201cAlso- w Stallworth, what we know is he spent at least 3 years infiltrating radical and Black orgs- one of those radical orgs being one that my parents were in- and I was later- called Progressive Labor Party. He consulted w the FBI & talked to them weekly.\u201d— Boots Riley (@Boots Riley) 1534732028
\u201cWas the FBI officially called cointelpro by1979? who knows, maybe not, but it was local police and FBI working together to disrupt black radical and radical organizations.\u201d— Boots Riley (@Boots Riley) 1534732028
\u201cIn his memoir stallworth lists the ain danger of the PLP was that they wanted to "smash" the KKK.\u201d— Boots Riley (@Boots Riley) 1534732028
\u201c*main danger\u201d— Boots Riley (@Boots Riley) 1534732028
\u201cThose are my last tweets about blackkklansman. Moving on.\u201d— Boots Riley (@Boots Riley) 1534732377
He wrapped up everything by saying that people should go see the film, regardless:
\u201cOk- this is the last- I think folks should see Blackkklansman if they haven'&talk about the ideas I put forward here. I think it's a well made film and many out there dont care about filmmaking as much as Spike.\u201d— Boots Riley (@Boots Riley) 1534732597
