A Biddeford rapper is offering free tickets to a screening Saturday afternoon of “Sorry to Bother You” at Portland’s Nickelodeon Cinemas.
This image released by Annapurna Pictures shows Lakeith Stanfield, foreground, and Danny Glover in a scene from the film, “Sorry To Bother You.”
Rory Ferreira, who raps under the name of Milo, hopes to fill all 129 seats of the 4:20 p.m. matinee of fellow rapper Boots Riley’s movie debut.
“When I first heard about this movie, I wondered will I have to go to Boston to see it?” Ferreira said. “I thought it was really cool that the Nickelodeon even had it. Then I wondered, will people go see this here? I don’t know. There is work to do here, you know what I mean? Is Maine ready? Maybe if I do this they’ll be interested. Who wants to see this thing with me?”
It turned into a $900 question. The 26-year-old bought every $7 matinee seat and issued a public, first-come-first-served Twitter invite.
“Yo, portland maine,” Ferreira tweeted. “Catch a flick wit me. i bought out the 4:20 showing of ‘Sorry to Bother You’ at the nickelodeon.”
The invite had been retweeted about 120 times by 9:30 pm Friday, including once by the director himself.
Ferreira hasn’t seen the movie yet, but friends from his days of living in Los Angeles and Chicago have been texting their rave reviews. He considers the public showing a way to support black cinema and Riley, who first hit the music scene in the 1990s as a front man for The Coup and whom Ferreira considers a personal hero.
yo, portland maine– catch a flick wit me. i bought out the 4:20 showing of “Sorry to Bother You” at the nickolodeon tomorrow. 124 seats, first come first serve. pic.twitter.com/lEe2kFLktt
— rory (afk) (@yomilo) July 13, 2018
The comedic sci-fi satire opened in a few big markets last weekend, grossing $725,000, and is only just now hitting theaters in smaller markets. Critics have called it ambitious, fearless and crazy. “A wild, wiggy piece of homegrown, hip-hop surrealism that skewers race, class and capitalism,” wrote Rafer Guzman of Newsday.
Like Riley, Ferreira defies easy labeling. Rolling Stone calls Ferreira one of “avant-rap’s most compelling figures,” someone who issues limited edition cassette tapes that sell for hundreds of dollars online, runs a record label out of his record store, Soulfolks, at 53 Main St. in Biddeford and has toured throughout the U.S. and Europe.
His lyrics don’t shy away from tough subjects, nor does Ferreira himself. Last month, he and his family spoke out after he was banned from the Shaw’s in Saco for questioning a manager about enforcement of the store’s alcohol ID policy. The white manager called police on Ferreira, who is black, and his wife and child. A Shaw’s executive later apologized for the incident and lifted the ban.
Ferreira said the incident has made him question whether he is truly welcome in a Maine community he loves. Though The Washington Post described “Sorry to Bother You” as “an impassioned, chaotically accurate response to dark and troubling times,” Ferreira said the incident played no role in his decision to support Riley’s movie, which is an important statement on its own.
Sam Mercer, the Nickelodeon’s general manager, said people often stop in to inquire about buying out a theater only to balk at the cost of the gesture. He said he wasn’t surprised that Ferreira, whose music Mercer followed long before he realized he lived in Maine, is the rare person to follow through on such an inquiry, nor that it happened with this film.
“He’s making a really powerful statement,” Mercer said. “It’s an important movie for people to see. It’s a really good film, but it’s also an important movie to show in Maine, which is pretty homogenous. Word of mouth for an independent movie like this, especially when it is on an opening weekend, can make or break it. Hopefully people will come out.”
People occasionally rent out a theater for a private showing before the Nickeloden opens, but Mercer said he can recall only one other buyout in his seven-year tenure at the downtown cinema. That individual bought out the whole theater, but it was for a private showing, Mercer said. He can’t recall which film was screened during that event.
Mercer noted that “Sorry to Bother You” was not an easy movie to land. At this time, Nickelodeon is the only Maine theater showing it.
He warned would-be moviegoers that seats at the free showing will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis, and that the only way to claim a seat is to be sitting in it personally. He said he has no idea how many people will show up, especially on a nice summer day in Maine, but he hopes the social experiment is a success, both for Riley and Ferreira.
“It will be fun,” Ferreira said. “Gotta puncture the mundane with the marvelous, that’s what I say.”
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