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Oakland director and hometown hero Boots Riley\u2019s new film, \u201cI Love Boosters,\u201d pays homage to a complicated folk hero: the booster, a neighborhood figure who sells shoplifted goods at a steep discount. The topic feels particularly poignant in the Bay Area, where high-profile smash-and-grabs make headlines and drugstores put toothpaste behind lock and key.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
But when asked about how crime trends influenced the film, Riley is quick to question their very premise, citing reporting on how drugstore executives overstated the effects of theft<\/a> and police unions hire public relations firms<\/a> to increase the perception of crime when data actually shows declines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s conspiracy theory, because people do conspire,\u201d he told SFGATE. \u201cWhat this does is to try to explain the problems of capitalism as the problems of the bad decisions of those impoverished.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Dating back to his early work as a community organizer, through his rap career with the Coup and in his first film, \u201cSorry to Bother You,\u201d and the TV series\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m a Virgo,\u201d<\/a> Riley\u2019s work is steeped in political activism. But what makes him such a compelling artist is that all the heady anticapitalist theory \u2014 of which there is plenty in \u201cI Love Boosters\u201d \u2014 is sneaked into a madcap package that\u2019s as influenced by \u201cLooney Tunes\u201d and Parliament-Funkadelic as it is Karl Marx.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n