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Ddon’t call Riley’s shoes anti-capitalist, at least without qualification. “I’m a communist,” he explains clearly. “A lot of things that call themselves anti-capitalist are doing it because they’re afraid to call themselves socialist or communist or something.”
But the same sign as one persists for a reason. From his beginnings with Coup, a subversive hip-hop group that gleefully mocked the existing culture of the genre’s music like Kill My Landlord and Genocide & Juice, Riley has created art that reduces capitalism as a way of managing everyday life, full of expected bugs, rather than an ax hiding under the bed.
As a director, Riley uses dark humor and magical realism to make capitalism look good, thwarting the aspirations of young activists. His first show, Sorry to Bother You, which shares its title with the Coup album, skewers telemarketing avarice and predation; His limited series I’m a Virgo, a 13ft-tall teenager raised privately, adds criticism to the commercialization of black bodies, where profit is presented in the face of agency.
His latest film, I love Boostershe turns shoplifting into a metaphor for Robin Hood heroes, where the theft itself is a means of escape. And it comes amid growing controversy over retail theft, with some on the left making small “extras” like. opposition viewand encourages workers to warn that it ends up harming workers while providing cover for vendors to continue the pressure and to pursue cases. “Theft is not outside of capitalism; it’s what capitalism is built on – not even, figuratively,” says Riley. “The bots were not different because they were stealing land, stealing mines, stealing workers.
Motivation, he adds, is a difference in behavior that provides opportunities for industrialists who strive for sustainable growth no matter what. He said: “I don’t buy the idea that retailers are going to make a profit because they shoplift. “We found a clear example here with (Walgreens) in the Bay Area that shoplifting was causing them to close and reform – then the recording of (management) and tell the shareholders that, shoplifting had nothing to do with it.”
In I Love Inspiration, Cake Palmer she plays Corvette, a beauty-loving, fashion-obsessed, heavily indebted. She breaks into an abandoned fried chicken shack and leads the Velvet Gang, a group of female shoplifters who work in high-end San Francisco stores and return the goods to the working class of Oakland.
Demi Moore and Christie Smith, a couturier who owns the capital, take fashion as a means of controlling the population – selling color while decorating in monochrome – and resent the Velvet Gang’s repeated interference with her business. Christie is declaring war on those “low-income, urban poor”; The Corvette responds and raises the alarm, and a Chinese factory worker – Hacks’ Poppy Liu – sends messages over the phone and connects the people on the street with the chaos outside. On the way, there is Don Cheadle in a fat suit, demon cunnilingus, a lecture on Hegelian dialectics – or so I thought until Riley jumped in again to explain: “It’s Marx’s dialectical materialism. Hegel’s is historical rather than economic.”
In person, Riley, 55, reads less like a writer-garde than a tweedy university professor. He speaks in full sentences and delivers his lines regardless of the time of work, his economic and social views with a bold and unmistakable sense of his own. business hats and light the side of the bacon. When Riley was talking about his new movie The New Yorker, and the Daily Show and NPR’s Fresh Airthe participants took a less promotional approach. The highlight was a stop at an Oakland gas station where Palmer and LaKeith Stanfield stood with customers and gave out free refills. A live rooster looked from the roof of the SUV.
“The rooster is there.” outside,” Riley beamed when I asked her about the pop-up. You can have chickens, but you can’t have roosters — which to me is the fun part, living in a community with roosters. When you wake up, it’s like nature.”
These extraordinary events are similar to any productions associated with Riley, a lifelong resident of Oakland who has made the city an unchanging place for his work; in fact, it wouldn’t look good in I Love Boosters, which delights in distant and sophisticated images – from the Corvette. he looks like the Michelin Man as he drags a suit full of stolen goods Christy sits inside a leaning tower that looks like it’s falling.
When I ask Riley if he can effectively criticize anti-capitalism without using surrealism as a Trojan horse, he is hesitant. “The look and the content are very closely related,” he says. “I’ll just say to people, hey, we need a country where the people democratically control the wealth we create and our work. But I want people to have ideas and shapes, to push and pull where they think about ideas in a different way.”
That realization never ceases to be beautiful; it extends to his support for Palestinian rights and other Hollywood figures who have expressed solidarity. Melissa Barrera, who was fired from the lead role in Scream 7 and rightfully so they are called antisemites In the media articles criticizing Israel in 2023, it was like a cautionary tale about the dangers of bringing radical ideas too close to the set. “It doesn’t stop me from speaking,” Riley said. “It didn’t stop Melissa Barrera, and she’s not sleeping in a chicken coop, but that’s the lesson she’s trying to teach.”
Riley also pointed to Rachel Zegler’s controversial public comments on the Gaza war during a promotion for Disney’s Snow White, which sparked Internet rumors of Hollywood producers creating a series of events – through websites or group chats – actors and other industry talents who are seen as sympathetic to the Palestinian people.
It is said that his name was added to the blacklist when he represented the writing and management unions at their 2023 negotiation meetings, and that he backed down when a reporter reached out to confirm the story. “I argued with the reporter, saying: ‘What kind of work is this emerging project doing?” he remembered. “Like, are you exposing those in power, or are you scaring the people in power? I find it’s the latter.”
As an independent filmmaker, Riley sees himself as immune to the industry pressures that can make Hollywood producers vulnerable to change of heart and backlash — a phenomenon he acknowledges as a self-proclaimed champion of the working class. He said: “I don’t try to get a job. I can make a $5,000 model or $50m. I can do that.”
Perhaps that’s why he criticized the collaboration with Annapurna Pictures, a boutique production company run by Megan Ellison, the daughter of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, a pro-Israel financier whose fortunes and influence in the American media have grown amid a combination of technology and political power. Of course, Riley is quick to explain the relationship: Annapurna acquired Sorry to Bother You after its 2018 Sundance premiere, and separately produced I Love Boosters under contract at the company before the project was picked up and paid for by Neon. “Annapurna may have expanded the brand, but that’s the extent of that connection,” he says.
Regarding Ellison’s name, Riley adds: “The only thing Megan ever said about that is: ‘I just want you to know that I’m not my father. But it’s interesting that it’s difficult when BlackRock and Vanguard – the biggest shareholders in Disney and Netflix, as well as Regal, Cinemark and AMC – have also given billions to Israel. So I get opposition, because you say: don’t make a movie, don’t show it in theaters, because they get 50% of the money. Even if you make it independent movie, you’re still in this business of freedom.”
Even so, the corporate arguments that support Riley’s work have not shown enough strength to sustain their political case. He often hears from viewers that they are inspired to improve the work environment in their communities after watching his work. He fondly remembers a group of telemarketers who came to him wanting to go on strike after Sorry to Bother You. There was just one problem: they had already agreed to work from home. “I was like, it’s not going to work,” he laughed.
They can reject the anti-capitalist label all they want. The shoe still fits. “I’m a person who believes that what gets us to the world we want starts right now with an anti-terrorist movement – one that uses lockouts as a way to shut down sectors of industry, entire industries.
