Boots Riley Has Some Sharp Critiques of Spike Lee’s ‘BlacKkKlansman’

A post shared by Boots Riley (@bootsriley) on Jul 20, 2018 at 11:26pm PDT

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:

Ok. Here’s are some thoughts on #Blackkklansman.

Contains spoilers, so don’t read it if you haven’t seen it and you don’t wanna spoil it. pic.twitter.com/PKfnePrFGy

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) August 17, 2018

Dammit. Spike was paid over $200k “by NYPD”. I left that out of the end.

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) August 17, 2018

In the 5th paragraph it says: “where he did what all papers from the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (Cointelpro) that were found through the freedom of information act tell us he did”

2b clear, it shuld say: “found through the freedom of information act point to him doing”

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) August 17, 2018

Boots Riley conituned his critiques on Monday, August 20th:

Police and Fire Publishing was who published the book at first. That changed after the movie was real. https://t.co/2MIySFg1wk

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) August 20, 2018

I 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?

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) August 20, 2018

Also- 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.

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) August 20, 2018

Was 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.

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) August 20, 2018

In his memoir stallworth lists the ain danger of the PLP was that they wanted to “smash” the KKK.

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) August 20, 2018

*main danger

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) August 20, 2018

Those are my last tweets about blackkklansman. Moving on.

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) August 20, 2018

He wrapped up everything by saying that people should go see the film, regardless:

Ok- 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.

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) August 20, 2018