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And yet, here we are.
Its 11 a.m., and theres nobody waiting for him but me.
Its made by the designer Abasi Rosborough, he tells me when I compliment him on it.
I got crushed a few times.
So I made some calls.
Riley scans the menu, full of decadent items that cost $22 or more.
Can I just get … yogurt and blueberries?
he asks the waiter, gazing at him as if squinting into a floodlight.
This is all pretty new territory for Riley.
It is a soul-sucking, boiler-room-style telemarketing call center and lucky him: He gets it.
And he said, Your movie is like your albums.
Which only makes sense to me.
He pauses: I dunno, he may have just said that because he knew I would like that.
The Coups first album,Kill My Landlord, was released in 1993.
Riley, still figuring out his approach, crammed unwieldy phrases like dialectical analysis into his rhymes.
Over the years, his sense of humor sharpened, as did his writerly instincts.
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In the wake ofSorry to Bother You, that seems like it might change.
The Coup has been picked up by Interscope, a deal long courted but inked just weeks ago.
He has already been given a deal to produce another feature film whatever he wants and a television show.
He is conscious of the inflection point before him.
So theres some pressure there.
Six years ago, in 2012, the Coup released an album.
That song title is a line from the screenplay itself.
To hear him tell it, that album was intended to pave the way for his screenplay.
He looks at me, deadpan: But that wasnt enough to get people excited.
In fact, Riley shopped the thing around fruitlessly for six years, hoping it would fire someones imagination.
He found no investors, but plenty of enthusiastic readers.
One such early reader was David Cross, who provides Cassiuss overdubbed white voice in the final film.
Fittingly, the two first met as performers at a Palestinian fundraiser.
That was the first time that we met, at 1st Avenue in Minneapolis, Cross remembers.
The people who put the benefit together werewaymore radical than I anticipated, I recall.
They werent Hamas, but philosophically, they were probably 12 degrees away.
So that was kinda funny, I was unprepared for that.
But I enjoyed the show a lot, and Boots and I kept in touch.
I dont even remember what he told me about it just that it was supposed to be funny.
I really, truly wasnt expecting that much.
But it was one the funniest scripts I have ever read.
I was just laughing out loud immediately.
His ear for dialogue and his story it was just really well done.
It was just so impressive.
But now, ironically, theres a new Coup album on the way, in July.
And its the one that we made while I was editing ten hours a day.
So many times in my life I cant pinpoint, he answers.
In some ways, this is the golden elevator.
Ive gone all this time without health care.
Ive been to the dentist for the first time in 20 years about a year ago.
The line rings so true that I ask him if hes heard those exact words.
I mean, I hear that all the time, he answers.
Thats why we all do what we do, you know?
I think most people would love for us to be a socialist society.
But they dont feel like they actually can change that part of it.
Mainstream culture, Riley contends, has largely forgotten the power of withholding labor.
Those were called hotbeds of communist activity by J. Edgar Hoover.
And in that milieu, thats when we got the New Deal.
Not because we elected the right person.
You would have demonstrations of 50,000 people in the streetsthat could shut down your industry, he says emphatically.
It was a demonstration of power.
And the power part came from the leverage of being able to withhold labor.
The crux of our power isnt only in our voice.
It is in our economic function in society.
In West Virginia, teachers shut down every public school in the state, with 34,000 workers out.
Tellingly, collective bargaining laws were so weak in the state that striking was actually illegal.
I am doing something important, he barks at his friends as he crosses the picket line.
The thing that relates me to Cassius is wanting your life to mean something, Riley says.
Which is combined with the me that is in Detroit, which is Does my art really do anything?
I ask him if putting Cassius and Detroit together is him making this movie and selling this movie.
Cassius, Detroit, and Squeeze, he corrects me.
He laughs and wipes his mouth.
Id have to think about that, he says.
I dont know thatthis specific breakfastis that moment, but it definitely happens.
Riley seems very comfortable critiquing himself as an artist.
Thats the thing: I never did.
Lets do that again.
I gotta go home.
Cant do that making a movie!
I think that the people who say they know what theyre doing dont, he says bluntly.
I never bought into that in the first place.
The difference was he felt comfortable admitting that out loud, to the entire cast and crew.
I would ask for suggestions.
Because I didnt even have to put on airs, it made me open to figuring things out.
Our time together is running out.
So before he gets up, he leans forward one more time.
I know that nobody knows what the fuck they are doing in art, he says.
Might as well be me fucking shit up instead of them.
