View the full episode transcript.

Filmmaker Boots Riley has a knack for being in the middle of major events– local, national or worldwide. Hell, he’s even tapped into the future. As we begin a new year, who better to talk to?

In 2023 Boots Riley released I’m a Virgo, a seven-part television miniseries centered on the tale of a 13-foot tall Black man from Oakland. The main character, Cootie, is rudely awakened to the ways of the world, and its perception of him.

Behind the scenes in Hollywood, Boots stood alongside Writers Guild of America union members as they took to the picket lines protesting for better wages and job security, amongst other things.

Back home in Oakland, Boots has been working with local filmmakers to develop a hub for people interested in learning more about the industry, it’s called Cinemama. But his community work didn’t stop there, as Boots also pounded the pavement in an effort to separate the truth from the falsehoods around the supposed connections between crime and the closure of local businesses. And then he got online to provide some clarity on the Town’s “crime wave.”

Boots Riley wears a signature hat and holds a mic as he stands on stage at the Oakland Museum of California during an event honoring the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. (Pendarvis Harshaw)

On August 11th of last year, Boots was honored for his work as the lead MC for the hip-hop collective The Coup during a celebration for hip-hop’s 50th birthday. And a few weeks later, Boots and a number of people who identify as Jewish took to Oakland’s federal building in protest of the Israel Defense Forces indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Gaza.

From global issues to community conflicts, Boots has had a foot in a number of the major current events of the past year, and he says he’s not done yet. So we’re kicking off 2024 by talking to someone who has their finger on the pulse of the culture, and a hand in directing the future.

Episode Transcript

Pendarvis Harshaw, host: Open the door 2024, let’s get it started, man! Happy new year, ya’ll! Hope you all are well, and warm. Many blessings on this new campaign.

Welcome to Rightnowish, I’m your host Pendarvis Harshaw. We’re getting this year started by talking to someone who had a wild 2023.

Last year, Oakland filmmaker, organizer and MC, Boots Riley got active! He created a sci-fi show called I’m A Virgo. It’s about a 13-foot tall Black man from East Oakland.

And behind the scenes, Boots stood alongside members of the Writers Guild of America as they protested for major changes that’ll benefit the work that they do.

Boots also talked to business owners in Oakland about commerce, violence and how it’s all being portrayed in the media.

This week, we discuss community, the art of storytelling, and some of the more oppressive elements in our society– in the unique way that only Boots can:

Boots Riley, in clip: uh, what do you call a bass player without a girlfriend?

Pendarvis Harshaw: uhh…I don’t

Boots: Homeless!

Pendarvis Harshaw: [Laughs]

Boots Riley: And that’s because there’s some truth in that!

Pendarvis Harshaw: Comin’ in hot, right after this.

Pendarvis Harshaw: So in 2023, you dropped this magnificent series, I’m A Virgo, a show about a 13 foot Black man from Oakland and how society responded to him. It’s been a few months… The first thing that jumped out at me from watching the series is symbolism. And I’m wondering, did your symbolism ever go over people’s heads?

Boots Riley, guest: The symbolism that I use is pretty overt. It’s pretty like, you know, hits you in the head. Critiques I see is like, “that was too much or this was…”

You know I, I try to make art that’s a little unsettling at times, right? That can even be repulsive a little bit so that, you know, I want to bring you into a world and then push you back a little to where you like, “whoa, what’s going on?” Hopefully, I’m not- I don’t push you back too far to where you don’t re-engage. But to me, um, that is part of like, the art being more honest where you know it’s a piece of art and it is not just the world as it is.

Pendarvis Harshaw: That makes sense that’s the purpose of art, of education, of entertainment, is to take people out of their world, expose them to something that would then drop them back off, but, new enlightened with a new kind of mind frame.

I experienced that in watching I’m a Virgo, you know, where I’m familiar with stories of giants from ancient times but I had never conceived of a giant in the neighborhood where I spent time growing up, the Dubs. And being like “oh wait, hold on, mind blown!”

And so that was that was an example of the symbolism that I saw. I guess in some ways we were kind of giants because of how society treated us… like we were weird. You know, like, we stood out in the crowds, if you will. Did you have any personal experiences that inform the show or the characters in it?

Boots Riley: I think that’s the only way to be an artist is if your personal life influences it. So, when I write like every character is me, but me with certain parameters, like I’d been through these experiences, you know, it’s a way that that I can make the characters more human, right? So… or every character is a piece of me.

Pendarvis Harshaw: That makes perfect sense, it’s all coming from your mind, so yeah, it has to be you that pours into it. And you pour heavily into the Oakland bucket in this series. And there’s references both to the Dubs as I mentioned as well as the Lower Bottoms, there’s sideshows, there’s music. There’s people who even remind me of folks from the Town. How has the community received this series?

Boots Riley: Having something so specifically about Oakland, not only, you know, is something that [stutter] people from Oakland feel excited about, but even if someone’s not from Oakland or has never been, it makes it feel more fantastical, actually, because you have some real things to ground it and so everything else feels more special.

Audio from I’m A Virgo Clip

[door creaking open]

Dad: What the hell is wrong with you coming in…?

Mom: Shh– What are you thinking?

Cootie: What?

Mom: What do you mean, what?!

Cootie: It’s a word attempting to specifically locate the object of one’s inquiry.

Dad: Boy, I wish I was eight foot taller.

Mom: Have you been listening to me? Have I been wasting my breath?

Cootie: You can’t waste or save it because it comes out either way.

Dad: Man, this dude is crazy.

Mom: You do not appreciate what we put aside to keep you safe, to keep you fed, to become the man that you are! I gave up-

Cootie: What, Bing Bang burgers? hmm? Ya’ll used to eat bing bang burgers!

Dad: Yes, I did. I did eat Bing Bang burgers. But I stopped.

Cootie: Okay. How about subwoofers then, huh? You guys always play music from these tiny little speakers so you basically kept one of the greatest inventions from me! It moves through your body like, like waves, okay and it sings to your bones! And you can feel the ground and the sky at the same time! As if, as if, as if you’re the thing that’s keeping it together, you know? I’m 19! And I heard bass for the first time? That’s abuse!

Pendarvis Harshaw: The surrealism definitely makes you feel detached from the experience of being in Oakland. You know like, I could say that, ‘That would never really happen.’ And also the things that really are reference points are like, okay, I know what he’s going for. I know what this is a reference to. And so that’s the balance. Is that intentional?

Boots Riley: I always say, I think the more specific you are, the more universal you are… Often the way film is made these days, because it’s kind of done on a production line sort of thing, everything is any-place-USA. Okay, they’re supposed to be in Ohio, but they’re filming in Vancouver… And everything becomes devoid of the specificity.

[Music]

Pendarvis Harshaw: Beyond the work that you’ve done that’s flourished on the screen you’ve been heavily involved with work happening behind the scenes. 2023 saw a number of major labor movements. One of them, more notable ones, was in Hollywood, the writers strike. I wanted to know your perspective on what the agreement from the writers strike. What do you think came out of the writers strike in the agreement?

Boots Riley: There were significant gains made around AI and things that they didn’t think we could get, that people said we couldn’t get. There were gains made around residuals, around streaming, significant gains that we wouldn’t have gotten at all without a strike.

One of the wins was, uh, what we talk about as “transparency.“ At first it was with reruns. We keep playing your thing, more people see it. and they’re making more money with it. So you get more, you get more back end. With streaming they’re making more money than they did the other way and they’re also having to pay out much less.

And so the idea was like, hey, if you have a TV show or a movie that a lot of people are watching, you should get something extra on top of that. But there was never a way because they never told anybody those numbers.

What was won on the WGA side was the idea that they will share the numbers with WGA representatives who will then collect fees for the writers based on that and distribute it.

The other unprecedented things: demanding the amount of people employed on a show. So they, we have these “writers room minimums” you know, is like saying you’ve got to hire at least this many people at this level. That sort of thinking is one where it’s saying like, ‘You’re making all this money. Share it more with us. Make this a safer job to have,’ you know, financially safer job to have by employing more people.

The strikes happening in Hollywood have been part of this movement of the working class, moving to the left and becoming more militant and more radical in many areas.

The folks that are making more and don’t really need the strike, in case of the writers and showrunners and the big stars with SAG, some of the big directors. They’re striking on behalf of the folks that are at the bottom rungs. Right? And there’s a radical solidarity that’s happening in those cases.

Similarly, we see those things happening with stuff like the UPS strike where they were all willing to go on strike: the full timers were going on… they were going to go on strike on behalf of the part timers.

I think, those are the things that people are gleaning that people sticking together, you know, even when they feel like, ‘okay, this is not necessarily benefiting me as much directly right now.’ They understand that that strength grows and benefits them in more significant ways… later.

Pendarvis Harshaw: At the intersection of entertainment and economic justice in Oakland, you’re doing work with an org called “Cinemama.” Can you tell us about the organization and what the big goal is?

Boots Riley: There are there are some filmmakers from around the Bay Area. And we started talking about how a lot of filmmakers will be in the Bay Area working in their cubbyholes and not knowing each other are around and end up moving to L.A. because they think that there’s more opportunities for them there.

Another reason that people move from here that are artists or are filmmakers is because the rent is so damn high. So there’s a couple of things. One, we want to create actual spaces for filmmakers in the East Bay, specifically in Oakland, to be able to work together if they need if they want to meet each other, show their work, and also develop themselves.

We’re working to get a screening room and connect it with a social space of some kind, whether that’s a cafe or bar or something like that, and have these spaces, but to also advocate for things that will make there be able to be more space for people to be artists.

Pendarvis Harshaw: All those actions are stimulating the artistic community, like clear across the board, and as well as like, stimulating the economy…I know that Oakland as a whole has been on your radar. The work that you do, we both work in the community. There’s been- long been an issue of violence, I put “violence” in air quotes. And I make like a horizontal sign because in my mind, violence is horizontal. It’s not just the violent act. It’s also the things that put people in position to take acts. And I was following some work that you were doing, where you were looking at this rise of “violence” in Oakland and how it’s been communicated in the media. And I’m wondering from your perspective, how can you combat both the misinformation and the violence?

Boots Riley: When you look at CDC statistics of homicides, 1950, “Black on Black murder” was 50% more than it was around these ages at times. It went up steadily till the year 1970 where it was 75% more than it is in these days.

Since then, there’s been this bumpy road down. It’s gone up and down, but it’s been the more- the curve of it has been down. Times when violence has gone down, it’s been because pay has gone up. It’s been because of of all these things that you might call “social justice,” quality of life, where people don’t have to hustle as much.

When the quarantine happened, many people, including myself, called out that if you have a quarantine, you have people not being able to work and not getting paid. People are going to have to get money from somewhere.

So if you wanted to reduce the violence, you have a bigger shot at reducing violence by supporting, uh, supporting labor movements that are striking to raise wages, and striking, as WGA did, to expand hiring.

The Fed to other financial gurus recommended recently that there be a 5% lay off to raise unemployment because the raise in unemployment causes a desperation in which people will accept lower pay.

They say this out in the open. It sounds crazy. They say this and they did it, they did it: 5% across a whole bunch of industries after these recommendations came down. Now, that desperation that causes people to accept lower pay is a desperation that will also cause them to be like, ‘I can steal a laptop.’

Also, there’s an organization called Neighbors Together Oakland, putting out this idea that the crime rate has risen. It’s gone down for two years since 2021, apparently, and it only went up for a couple of years before that.

It is funded by a woman who is heir to the Bay Alarm Company who’s also a major real estate developer. So the same group that is calling, that is saying we need more police because there’s higher crime are also the ones who lobby to end the eviction moratorium, kicking families out onto the street. They’re also the same ones who are complaining that homeless people are in Oakland and trying to get them swept off of Wood Street!

So, you have a real estate developer and an alarm company heiress who funds a neighborhood organization to kick people out onto the street, say there shouldn’t be homeless here, say that there’s too much crime and everybody should be locked up because all of these things benefit further gentrifying Oakland. And they benefit a narrative that says poverty is only coming from these choices people are making.

Pendarvis Harshaw: You went on a bit of investigative reporting spree, in the summer of 2023. The connections that you just pointed out, is that some of which stumbled across when you were looking at businesses that were saying that they were going on strike because of the ‘rise in crime?’

Boots Riley: That’s a whole even separate thing but yes, when a group, I forget the name of the group, said that… that businesses in Oakland were going on strike.

[Music]

Boots Riley: First they started claiming that Oakland businesses were shutting down because of crime. There’s been no proof that more businesses have shut down at a faster rate than they have ever been shutting down. Restaurants open and they shut down. That’s just how things happen.

You have folks like Target who opened up these experimental things to compete with CVS, and they were small things, they didn’t work and they didn’t work across the country and they shut them down. But here’s the thing is, they’ve been used as political fodder.

Somebody, you know, shutting down will be like, ‘Oh, my business didn’t work because people didn’t come to it. And I think it’s ‘cause of crime in Oakland.’ That’s not a fact. That’s just them saying that.

Anyway, so they started saying, okay, these businesses are going on a 1 day strike against the crime, the rising in “crime” in Oakland. They kept saying 200 businesses, 200 businesses, and they wouldn’t say which businesses. And the couple of businesses, they said, at first, weren’t going on strike. And then one of them said they were going to open up two hours later in response to that. Another one that said that they were going on strike, they never were open on that day of the week anyway.

So then there was a… I don’t remember what publication but they, they showed a list of, uh, of businesses that were provided by this group saying they were all going on strike and I just called them up. And, you know, uh, all except for one had said either they didn’t- had never heard of it or they had never heard of it, they weren’t going on strike and they were mad that their name was being used for that.

It was fake! But so it goes along with this this narrative and there’s very little journalism being done against the narrative. So, so much of the narrative about crime is ‘whatever the police say’ is said as fact, like as if they have no motivations that are political.

Journalists should qualify that this is what the police are saying and put that in context of everything else that’s going on. We know… way more than enough about the history of police and specifically the history of the Oakland Police Department, themselves. So much so, that I actually… people think of me as fearless but I’m afraid of saying some of this stuff because some people get killed!

[Music]

Pendarvis Harshaw: We’ve touched on a number of things, like everything from economic disparities to entertainment, mass organizing, misinformation. I’m thinking about 2024 and what’s to come everything from: it’s an election year to multiple wars going on overseas. I’ll ask you this: Is there anything that you’re specifically looking forward to in 2024, as it relates to your work?

Boots Riley: I’m really hopeful about this strike wave that’s happening. A lot of the strike wave has been from places that were otherwise unorganized. They didn’t have a union. And often people organizing without the help of any traditional union and sometimes joining the traditional unions, sometimes joining less traditional unions. But that is also making the larger traditional unions more militant. And radicals that are inside of those places kind of coming to the fore. And so there’s a lot of possibility.

You know, average everyday people saying, ‘well, can you really do something? You know, like, is that possible?’ And the truth is that if you can organize and shut an industry down, you can demand all sorts of things and get get it because you’re making them choose between no profit and less profit.

[Music]

Pendarvis Harshaw: Boots! Thank you, you clearly are a busy guy, thank you for taking time to talk. Good luck in the new year, and we are looking forward to the next production!

Boots Riley: I’ll be shooting another movie in March. I’ll just say this: it’s about a group of professional shoplifters who find a device called the “situational accelerator.”

Pendarvis Harshaw: For all of you listening out there, do yourself a favor and follow Boots on social media, you can find him on any platform under his name Boots Riley, and Riley is spelled R-I-L-E-Y. And check out his films and his music too!

This episode was hosted by me, Pendarvis Harshaw.

It was produced by Marisol Medina-Cadena

Chris Hambrick is our editor.

Sheree Bishop is our production intern.

Christopher Beale is our engineer.

Additional support provided by Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Cesar Saldaña, Ugur Dursun, and Holly Kernan.

We, at the Rightnowish team, are looking forward to bringing you some dope stories this year. And all that we ask in return is that you drop a comment, rate the show, tell a friend or share an episode with a colleague! Thank you in advance.

Rightnowish is a KQED Production.

Until next time, peace.

Rightnowish is an arts and culture podcast produced at KQED. Listen to it wherever you get your podcasts or click the play button at the top of this page and subscribe to the show on NPR One, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.

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