Keke Palmer, Boots Riley on Fashion Satire
Boots Riley unleashed I Love Boosters on Austin, Texas, Thursday night. The filmmaker, known for marrying smart social commentary with weirdly believable magical realism, appears to be doubling down on what’s working for him.
A send-up of late-stage capitalism, the film, as Riley explained to the South by Southwest crowd gathered at The Paramount Theater, focuses on the chasm between those manufacturing high-end fashion with those profiting from it, consuming it and, as is so often the case, merely desiring to consume it.
“The way you dress, it’s thought of as an artistic endeavor,” he said. “But what is behind the art? How does it get made? And what puts the value on it? Is it just the idea that is owned? Or is it the labor that it takes to make it? So many people want to be involved with that world and involved in art and feel like they’re in that conversation, but it costs too much. That’s definitely where the boosters are in that.”
Boosters, for those not acquainted with the word, are shoplifters who resell their spoils at a discount. Riley said he patronized a few boosters when he was younger, and the original iteration of the title came from a song he wrote in 2006.
To explain anything about the mechanics of the film — aside from the fact that it follows a group of Oakland, California, boosters (Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige and Poppy Liu) who clash with a billionaire designer (Demi Moore) — would be a disservice to moviegoers. Suffice it to say, Boosters is as bonkers funny and completely unexpected as previous Riley efforts like Sorry to Bother You and I’m a Virgo. And the film benefits greatly from impactful visuals and the chemistry of its core cast. (Read THR‘s review here.)
“I don’t usually watch myself,” said Palmer, also an executive producer, who’s made an exception for this effort. “I love to watch it because I keep seeing all the different layers of things that he put in there.”
She watched it again on Thursday, sitting through the screening before joining Riley and her castmates on stage afterwards. “I think it always hit me, but when I was [watching it] here again, there’s something so powerful about understanding that we all are having the same issue — Black, Latin, Asian, whatever you are — we all dealing with some crazy struggles.”
Palmer is the center of the film and building the cast around her initially had Riley hesitating. Ackie, fresh off of her Film Independent Spirit Awards win for Sorry, Baby, is high on plenty of casting wish lists these days. But her status as a London native initially gave Riley pause.
“Often, when black British actors do Black people in the U.S., it’s this generic sort of non-geographical thing,” he said. “I knew this was something very specific.”
Riley’s reservations disappeared when Ackie sent him a video of her delivering one of the film’s monologues in a voice and manner he found unmistakably Bay Area. He had a different hang-up over casting Paige. “It’s a smaller part,” explained Riley. “I was like, ‘If you do this, people are going to say that I underutilized you.’”
Paige, who starred in Zola and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, was apparently unbothered.
“I just thought it was going to be fun, she said. “I want to have a colorful career, working with incredible people and trying things. I didn’t care.”
Liu, who plays the fourth booster who joins up with the trio of friends later in the film, chalked their chemistry up to the specifics of their filming schedule.
“We all lived in a hotel in Atlanta with windowless bedrooms for two and a half months … that really bonded us,” she said. “Our circadian rhythms were matched only to each other and to no one else.”
I Love Boosters is out, via Neon, on May 22.
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