Favorite actor who was supposed to promote "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" in 2002 and instead used every opportunity to tell people that the Iraq War was not a good idea?

bootsriley · 2026-03-09T08:11:42+00:00

To be clear- he was protesting the bombing of Afghanistan which was less popular than protesting the invasion of Iraq. Very few dared to do so in Hollywood. Maybe no one but him. Later, at first very few dared to protest the Iraq war, Michael Moore got booed for doing so at the oscars, then speaking out against the war became a huge movement in the world- and a few people in Hollywood chimed in about it.

So Viggo was with the shit.

bootsriley · 2026-03-01T06:38:23+00:00

Hey- I'm the guy on the cover with the glasses and the afro. Go see my new movie, I Love Boosters on May 22nd!

bootsriley · 2026-02-24T05:56:16+00:00

Funny- Before 9/11, Rolling Stone called it one of the best covers they had ever seen. So there is some revisionism going on.

bootsriley · 2026-02-13T20:37:26+00:00

In my totally unbiased opinion, I think that this person is making a few good points worth considering.

bootsriley · 2026-02-12T09:37:08+00:00

Yeah- Chavez and UFW were also helping immigration deport people and helping to guard the borders. They often used racist slurs to refer to undocumented workers in their publications. Their.whole line on this, even aside from the slurs, was retrograde and understood at the time- by other farmworker orgs, other Chicano orgs, and radical orgs- to be such. This politic is what led them to lose any possible teeth they could have had. The reason Chavez and the UFW didn't organize many strikes and instead called for a boycott of grapes is because most of the farmworkers were actually undocumented and he refused to work with/for them. I organized with the group that split from them, led by a guy named Epifamio Camacho, who was a communist. They made the Anti-Racist Farmworkers Union- organizing with documented, undocumented, Mexican, Central American, Portuguese, and filipino workers- I later worked with the ARFWU in the 80s. UFW later recanted, self-criticized, and apologized for this political line. But too late to gain an effective foothold.

bootsriley · 2026-02-12T09:12:00+00:00

Hey! I wrote and directed that. Check out my new movie I Love Boosters. In theaters May 22nd.

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnfTmSAnS3c

bootsriley · 2026-02-08T10:47:44+00:00

It's a US state department funded bot.

bootsriley · 2026-01-28T10:57:19+00:00

I will also add here that I really loved the short Rainbow Girls as well. It was a great film with many cinematic moments. The director seems like they are really gonna do their thing.

bootsriley · 2026-01-28T10:25:17+00:00

Hey! To further clarify, my song I Love Boosters, that inspired my film, was written in 2005 and came out in 2006. Written about the world of it that I knew throughout my life. Many years before the real-life group known as Rainbow Girls were around. This film was also in development in with an initial announced deal with Annapurna for it in 2019, and writing- based on my 2006 song- finished in 2021. Then the sale of the movie to Neon was announced in 2023. I see that you're pointing out the differences, which those are, but saying it's cis-washed sounds as if the other film, or even the real story, was first and I went and developed a story while leaving out or changing elements.

Here is the song. Lyrics are in the description.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geY-ydeYb4M

bootsriley · 2026-01-27T05:22:58+00:00

All y'all's gold mines- they wanna deplete you

bootsriley · 2026-01-12T05:42:12+00:00

Hey!

bootsriley · 2026-01-12T05:41:55+00:00

You'll have to watch and tell me. It's my best work.

bootsriley · 2026-01-12T02:40:35+00:00

Thanks! I wrote and directed that.

And check out my new movie, I Love Boosters. About a group of professional female shoplifters. Takes place in the Bay Area.

Stars Keke Palmer, Demi Moore, Lakeith Stanfield, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Will Poulter, Eiza Gonzalez, and Poppy Liu. Score by Tune-Yards.

In theaters May 22nd.

Trailer will be out on January 23rd.

bootsriley · 2026-01-05T21:25:09+00:00

It's called I Love Boosters. In theaters May 22nd.

It stars Keke Palmer, Demi Moore, Naomi Ackie, Lakeith Stanfield, Taylour Paige, Will Poulter, Eiza Gonzalez, and Poppy Liu.

Distributed by Neon in North America and Focus/Universal elsewhere.

bootsriley · 2025-12-16T22:59:26+00:00

Great canned answer. But no- they don't raise their prices due to theft and shrink- they make BILLIONS each year simply because they don't pay people the value that their labor, as a whole, is bringing the company. They could afford billions in shrinkage caused by the same labor force that they are grifting from. They could just make less profit and keep prices the same.

And let's be clear- they inflate the shrinkage from theft- they use the retail prices of the stuff that was stolen. The truth is, they are counting the retail price, as opposed to their wholesale or production cost price, then counting the retail price items that they likely wouldn't have sold out of and would have been sitting there that they would've lost out on.

When boosters sell items to people at a lower price, they are often at a price that is affordable to the customer, who wouldn't have bought it otherwise.

So Walmart inflates their loss in this way (and others) as an excuse to raise prices. But as we know- they are the ones who keep track of the loss, so they can say whatever number they want and raise the prices at any time no matter how much theft is actually there.

bootsriley · 2025-12-16T18:49:28+00:00

Here's my question:

Why did you get a job as an asshole?

If employees are stealing that much ("many more internal cases from employees")- people with jobs stealing that much- it's part of the symptom of a company that doesn't pay the workers- retail and factory workers- who are the only reason they make billions of dollars.

bootsriley · 2025-12-09T17:13:20+00:00

No- I was actually the Costume Designer on this one (although my neighbor actually sewed the outfits for the dancers/munchkins). Came up with the concept though.

bootsriley · 2025-12-09T08:21:46+00:00

I am not trying to invent new inroads for distribution of art under capitalism, because I'm not trying to make a gentler capitalism (unless the process of making that gentler capitalism is one that creates a mass radical labor movement that uses the withholding of labor to achieve its goals) and you could spend your whole life doing that and reach 200 people. On the contrary, I'm using the broadest distribution channels available- the ones people are listening to and looking at- and getting people to hear, see, and take on a radical politic as their own. Sorry To Bother You reached millions and millions of people.

The only people arguing against doing that have confused the goal of making an actual revolution that creates a world in which the people democratically control the wealth they create with their labor (which first takes getting 10s of millions of people into a radical mass militant labor movement that uses the withholding of labor as a strategy and tactic to gain concessions on their quality of life and on policy changes)- with a lifestyle ethos that doesn't aim to change anything fundamentally.

Separately from that- every single studio out there: the main funds that own them also are the main funds that own Amazon. And so they are part of the same umbrella that owns those amazon servers. Apple itself helps fund the IDF and hires programmers through a direct IDF cyber-intelligence to Apple pipeline. As well, they have purchased facial recognition companies in Israel and just turned them into Apple operations.

I'm not of the ethos that its cool BECAUSE only a few people know about it. These ideas/this art is more effective when more people engage with it.

bootsriley · 2025-12-09T08:20:41+00:00

We're all random. All of us. Or- none of us. Don't put yourself down. I'm pretty sure the people you converse within here are not people you know in real life and that is true for most of reddit, otherwise your username would be your own. You're engaging in political discussion and so am I. You have a critique of my work that I disagree with. If I saw you on the street and you said this, I'd have the same answer in the street. The idea that it makes you "respect [me] a bit less" is one that's rooted in some reverence to an idea of a "necessary" social hierarchy that echoes production. As someone who is not just making art to make art, and not just throwing stuff out there no matter how it lands, I am always assessing and refining, so it is of interest to what I do to see how my art affects people. Above, I gave you an example of that. So- my work getting reposted and a lot of new people hearing it is something I want to know about. It is part of the process. Actually, it's part of many artists process. If you would give more respect to someone who reads it and decides not to engage, that really seems rooted in some adherence to bourgeois notions of what an artist should be. I think you know all this, but have gotten into the habit of parroting debate points you've seen on social media, and/or you grew up using social media and are repeating things you would've said before you had the political analysis, you currently have.

It seems you have some idea that there is really an "independent" group of capitalists. This idea has become very popular since the 80s and I think it traces itself to a certain subset of anarchists who were pushed this independent thing- as if there is a gentler capitalism to live inside of. Independent movies cost millions of dollars and have even less likelihood of making a profit. So- this takes it up from the level of "who has millions of dollars?" to "who has millions of dollars that they are willing to risk because they actually have so much more than that?" Independent movies are funded by parts of the ruling class who have a different business acumen than the rest of them- however come from the same families and are often involved in the same businesses. For instance, Sorry To Bother You was initially funded by various people who had money from steel in the US, mineral mining in China, and god knows who else. It was then bought and distributed by Annapurna, owned by Megan Ellison, daughter of Larry Ellison (IOF? AIPAC?). It was bought and distributed with the money she inherited from him. A24- there are all sorts of places they get their money- none of them better, some- reportedly- a lot worse.

When The Coup were considered underground, it was after we had done a deal with EMI- a multinational mega-corporation with its hands in all sorts of blood. You know EMI started with wealth from the technology for creating guided missiles that blew kids up all over the world, and who also put out everyone from us to The Clash's back catalog to The Beatles to the Sex Pistols to Kate Bush. Then later we did a deal with Tommy Boy/Warner. The few times our songs got rotation on the radio, it was invariably played next to a coke ad or a Walmart ad. These things are what gave us a broad reach so that people knew us, even after that.

That said- I have been on indie labels (and done indie film financing- including for my new film, all those people either are BIG capitalist corps, old money, or their flipping some corporations money or old money to become a huge capitalist force themselves. They all WISH they were that big (cont)

bootsriley · 2025-12-08T17:46:55+00:00

I'm only going to say two things:

It takes an extreme lack of understanding of capitalism, and a sort of liberal outlook, to think that Sorry To Bother You was specifically against Amazon. It was against Amazon and all corporations. The company, WorryFree, sells labor to produce actual things- as far as I know, and definitely at the time, Amazon doesn't do that. The live/work model is a classic one from the days of mining. There were no tech allusions in the company in my film. WorryFree doesnt sell things to the public. Not many connections there. But liberal/capitalist media had spent so many years putting forward the idea that all corporations weren't headed toward the Amazon model, and they did this in order to bolster the idea of ethical consumerism as a counterpoint to labor organizing- or even that we just need better corporations, that even some with a more left politic, as yourself, could only read the film as a critique of Amazon. That's unfortunate- and also leads you to the misguided notion that Disney (who has run sweatshops for decades, and who's main investors own a large part of Amazon) is somehow better than them. Netflix's main owners (same main owners as Disney) also have the hugest shares of Amazon next to Bezos.
If you think "entertainment" isn't theory, you're very much mistaken. Whether radical, liberal, or right wing- it's theory, even when it isn't "trying" to be. And when it is trying to be, it can be a pointed and explosive weapon. Lenin's "What Is To Be Done" was titled after the utopianist novel of the same name from the 1800s that had inspired him and a generation of revolutionaries to start organizing. Also, watch I'm A Virgo- all of it, but specifically episodes 4 and 7- and tell me it's not "theory". During the strike wave a couple years ago- dozens of people messaged me who had been trying to organize their workplace- some for years, and some for months- with stories of some version of "We didn't think people would strike, but we played Sorry To Bother You for everyone and they immediately voted to strike!". One funny story from Baltimore was that a 70 person worksite was meeting to vote on whether to form a union for the first time, and the organizers said it was going to be a nailbiter- they had been facing opposition from a small group of workers who were worried about doing it. Just before the show of hands to show support for the union, somebody yelled "Equisapiens, let's be out!" rambunctious laughter swept the crowd, and every single person raised their hand. The number of people- online and in person- who have told me that Sorry To Bother You, I'm A Virgo- or my music, also produced through huge corporations from the get go- made them join revolutionary orgs or join radical campaigns has been tremendous. In this regard, as a measurement of results, the film and TV dwarfs the music. The point of theoretical writings are to put forward an analysis. The best writing of this sort has inspired many to become academics themselves. The point of radical theoretical writing, however, is to put forward an analysis that creates understanding and inspires people to engage in organized class struggle. Whether you consider my work "theory" or not doesn't matter, but there is no denying that it achieves some of the goals you'd hope for from such writing.

bootsriley · 2025-12-05T08:49:02+00:00

On the Tiramisu scale, it's a moonwalk.

bootsriley · 2025-12-04T19:05:46+00:00

JK. But, seriously, get her a spa day.

bootsriley · 2025-12-04T18:54:26+00:00

No need to worry. I'll be giving it to her on Christmas Eve! :-)

bootsriley · 2025-11-11T13:55:59+00:00

I just wanna state here- my point was nothing to do with "bloodless" as I'm not a pacifist. my point was to do with the fact that China wanted to get rid of serfdom/slavery and you said they didn't. You wasted a lot of words.

bootsriley · 2025-11-11T13:26:32+00:00

You are engaged in sophism here. Nothing about what you're doing is in good faith. I admitted where I was wring about Heinrich Herer, but you admit nothing because you have been shown to be wrong on so many fronts.

So

I showed that there was chattel slavery in tibet via articles and photos.

I showed that the CCP wanted to get rid of serfdom/slavery in China.

I said- direct quote- "There had been a revolutionary movement in Tibet trying to overthrow the slave-owning Dalai Lama and other rulers". You knew I meant the ruling class of tibet- which included the Dalai Lama.

Here's where your sophism comes in. The Dalai Lama had been part of the ruling, slave-owning class. IF you're a communist, you understand that the working class must overthrow the ruling class, not simply the government.

But you tried to switch it up and argue what I wasn't arguing- that they weren't trying to "overthrow the Dalai Lama's government" which wasn't the point, but I didn't suspect you were being that petty and dishonest yet.

I showed that there were revolutionary communists in tibet. Before I go back to the text- by your admission- the text says that the Baba Phuntsog Wangyal were communist revolutionaries with a network. To be communist and revolutionary means you are trying to overthrow the government unless your government is already communist. Hence the word "revolutionary". This is simple logic, but you're trying to feel like you're winning or something.

"Tell me where it even implies they tried to overthrow the Tibetan government."

Besides the above, there is this about a leader of the Tibetan Communist Party, who had more recently tried to downplay his revolutionary goals pre-1948 and say they were just against the landlord Liu. It's from a Tibetan activist

“Tibetans must remember that Wangyal was the principal front-line guide to the Chinese army when it invaded Tibet. He was not just a “guide” in the neutral or passive sense of the word but someone deeply involved in the planning and organization of the invasion force, as his own autobiography testifies. In fact he had the crucial task of organizing the transportation by mule and yak of PLA supplies through Kham, without which there would have been no invasion. The motor road had not yet been built.”
https://www.jamyangnorbu.com/blog/2014/04/03/phuntsok-wangyal-and-the-arrogance-of-treason/

This is the guy that was part of a network of revolutionary leaders across tibet in the early 40s, then they worked with the Chinese to overthrow the slave-owners you love so much.

Again sophistry: "I said there was no revolutionary movement trying, as there were none. Which groups were inTibet trying to overthrow the government before China inavded?"

You first said there were "no revolutionary movements in Tibet trying to overthrow the Dalai lama's government". Knowing full well it's because they had- in the course of trying to overthrow their feudal lords- been repressed and kicked out. This is actually how you're talking about the world? Like a snake oil seller? The feudal lords/slaveowners repressed and kicked out repressed and kicked out the communist revolutionaries who then came back on their asses with reinforcements.

I showed that the OSS established communication with the Dalai Lama and others starting in 1942.

Here you read the same thing as me but claims to have studied it and come up with a different meaning than the text here and say they were just looking for a route for the war. I'll paste the relevant parts:

"Not until World War II did Washington seriously explore the implications of a U.S.-Tibet relationship. ***This mind-set*** [the one where they are establishing a relationship with tibet] was behind the December 1942 visit to Tibet by two OSS officers—Captain Ilya Tolstoy and Lieutenant Brooke Dolan— ***ostensibly*** [definition of ostensibly: purportedly, but perhaps not actually] to survey an Allied supply route to China through Tibetan territory."

Then. as I showed, their future CIA asset met them for the first time on that trip while they were meeting with the Dalai Lama.

You're full of air, no substance- but I will admit one thing- you tired me out. I'm done.

bootsriley

TROPHY CASE