Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You

For a limited time, our friends at the EarBuds Podcast Collective are pairing a podcast with our headlining film.

This week: Unsung History: The Panama Canal. This episode of Unsung History offers insight into the Panama Canal workers' experience more than 100 years ago. It ties into this week's tnmn pick by bringing us into a real-life labor rights predicament.

— Arielle at EarBuds Podcast Collective

Each week, Drew creates a watchlist with film recommendations provided by you, the tnmn community.

Last week’s category: satire films. The results are posted to our website and Letterboxd account every week.

This week’s category: slice of life movies. That is, films focused on realistic characters and the simple, everyday events that shape their lives. Reply to this email with your submission and why we should watch it. We’ll feature it in next week’s newsletter.

Note: If your submission doesn't comply with the category, I’ll spend years of my life becoming the foremost researcher in wildlife conservation. I’ll wait patiently until the lyrebird nears extinction, and then I’ll engineer a solution that will save them. I’ll begin a public influence campaign to save the lyrebirds. And I’ll convince the public that the only way to save them is to relocate them to your backyard. Lyrebirds make sort of annoying sounds. The public sentiment will overpower your needs, and you’ll live in a sea of mildly annoying bird sounds for the remainder of your days. So, ya know. Follow the category.

A spoiler-free description of the movie.

Telemarketer Cassius Green discovers the magical key to professional success.

If you like these things, then you’ll like the film.

→ Earrings and visual hyperbole. Tessa Thompson’s character wears multiple pairs of astonishingly unsubtle earrings, some of which are available on Etsy.

→ Surprises. Boots Riley’s writing will surprise you. And we all know you love surprises, you dirty dog.

→ Comically white vocal work. Feels like a specific thing to like — but I’m not here to judge you. No one has a more flagrantly “white voice” than David Cross or Patton Oswalt.

What I liked about it.

In 2022, a Sleepopolis study confirmed it. Of the 2,000 full-grown adults they surveyed, 34% of them still sleep with a comfort object. A stuffed animal or a blankey, most often. So, it’s not statistically weird to have a lovey in your thirties.

26% of participants rely on more unconventional methods to tire themselves out. One participant tries to think about alligators before bed. Another few put their legs on the wall or rock themselves to sleep.

No surprise — 17% sexually please themselves into a slumber. One might interpret the study as follows: people will do just about anything to nullify the anxiety preventing them from getting a good night’s sleep.

Perhaps a notable portion of evening anxiety is related to how we spend our days. Where we work, what we do, and how we do it.

Sorry to Bother You is a racial corporate satire that will prove sturdier than most — a product of writer-director Boots Riley’s sharp surrealist voice and uncompromising vision.

Not unlike Riley’s Amazon series, I’m a Virgo, Sorry to Bother You makes excellent use of hyperbole.

A crappy car doesn’t just have color-mismatched panels. The engine needs to be constantly smoking. And the windshield wipers are operated by the driver and passenger pulling a string tied to each.

And climbing the corporate ladder, in Riley’s world, involves literally ascending in a golden elevator — complete with a reassuring intercom voice showering you with compliments on your sexual tenacity.

The score from Tune-Yards is cluttered, peculiar and disorienting — a worthy accompaniment to the aesthetics.

The great LaKeith Stanfield delivers a wonderfully textured, down-on-his-luck performance in the leading role as Cassius Green. As do Tessa Thompson, Steven Yeun, and the rest of the (very good) cast.

Like the very best absurdist comedies, Sorry to Bother You is a most clever piece of writing. And while Riley has a lot to say about corporate greed, selling out, capitalism, and race, the film never — not once — feels preachy.

In fact, despite the heavy subject matter, Sorry to Bother You is hysterical, unrestrained fun. Fun that is amplified by the sorts of choices Riley tends to make as a director and writer.

Like when Lakeith Stanfield first discovers his “white voice”. Many filmmakers may have had Stanfield do a Dave Chappelle-adjacent news anchor voice and call it a day. It certainly would have made for an easier edit.

Instead, Riley casts David Cross, Patton Oswalt, and a few others to supply white guy voiceovers for black characters using their “white voice”. The result is jarring and undeniably more potent.

So, if your anxieties are of the modern capitalism, nine-to-five sort — and you’re one of the 34% of adults that still cuddles with a childhood stuffed animal. Or you find yourself thinking about alligators in the evenings to calm down. Or if you positively must fuck yourself into a state of blissful slumber.

Then this film might be an adequate antidote. A potent medicine that gives you permission to reflect on, and laugh at, some of the very things responsible for your bedtime shaky-wakies.

Enjoy the film.

A fact or two about the production that makes you say “oh, neat.”

→ The screenplay existed for years before the film was made. Riley wrote it in 2012. To generate interest and funding, his political hip-hop group, The Coup, released an album titled Sorry to Bother You that year. This didn’t work, according to Riley — but, of course, he eventually did get the film made.

→ The “white voices” weren’t recorded until Riley was 2/3 of the way through the director’s cut. In editor Terel Gibson’s words: “It was a very surreal experience when we brought those voices in because we had sort of gotten used to the original performances.”

One great line of dialogue from the film.

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