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D.E.B.S (2004) dir. Angela Robinson
13 Plays2 years ago
The Screen Queens podcast watches Angela Robinson's D.E.B.S (2004) with Carris Adams (Artist and Visiting Assistant Professor at University of Arkansas).
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Transcript
Introduction and Iconic Movie Lines
00:00:00
Speaker
to all the ladies I am big it's the pictures that got small
00:00:14
Speaker
All this way for my advice, I feel like Oprah. Person your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night. What the hell? I'm not going to worry about if people accept me or not. I'm going to make Hollywood wherever I am at.
00:00:34
Speaker
Deep within a college exam is a secret test. It measures a student's innate ability to lie, cheat, fight, and destroy. Those who score well are recruited into a secret paramilitary university. Some call them seductresses. Some call them spies. Fools call them innocent. They call themselves dems. It's a trap. Whatever.
Podcast Introduction and Focus on Women Directors
00:01:06
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Screen Queens, where we discuss a selection of movies directed by women from the silent film era all the way to modern releases. I am your host, Toppy Eletu-Odibo. Today on the Screen Queen, we will be talking about
00:01:22
Speaker
Debs from the year 2003-2004. If you haven't seen this film, it is directed by Angela Robinson. She's also directed films like Herbie, Fully Loaded with Lindsay Lohan. Side note, Lindsay Lohan is having quite the renaissance with her foray into Hallmark Christmas movies, so I wish her luck.
00:01:43
Speaker
Um, now this film is available on screen and you can rent it from Amazon prime. So I hope I have to listen to this podcast. You will check it out. And if you have, if you've already seen it and you're inspired to rewatch it, you can do so, um, this week or this weekend.
DEBS Overview and Fashion Highlights
00:01:58
Speaker
Joining me today is my guest. Caris Adam artist, visiting assistant professor at the university of Arkansas, as I call it, not Arkansas.
00:02:09
Speaker
Hi, Kerris. Hey, how's it going? It is going. How are you? I'm so glad I finally get you on my podcast. It's been, we've been talking about this for a minute.
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. It's fun. And I, I have never seen Debs before. I don't think I even heard of it before. Man. So I got to watch it and I get to talk to you about it. So it's going to be awesome. No, that's going to be great. Yeah. No. Debs is one of those things where like it's floating out there and never so often you see like the poster, you know, the girls with the button down crop shirts and the low rise plaid skirts and you're just like,
00:02:49
Speaker
I wonder what this is about. And it just looks kind of tacky. And so, you know, if you're like not really in the mood for that kind of movie, you might like gloss past it. But I'm here to say that maybe there is something. Just something a little.
00:03:05
Speaker
I don't know, je ne sais quoi about it. Maybe like a good bat, like it's bad, but like in a good way. Like, you know what I mean? We're gonna dive in a little bit to Debs. So for anybody who is not aware, Debs has basically came out. This movie takes us back.
00:03:25
Speaker
Let me tell you how far back we're going. We're going back to a period of low rise jeans, low rise skirts, exposed midriffs, tie gaps.
00:03:40
Speaker
Remember when we had those? Body gaps, guys. And that's the time when everybody was a size minus one. It really is a period in time. It is very specific. And there's a lot of actresses that you're probably familiar with, like the early odd stars like Meghan Good, Devin Ioki, Jadonna Brewster, who you might know from A Little Fast and Furious.
00:04:09
Speaker
Like movie, I think she was in the first Fast and Furious. Yeah, she was in like a lot of the Fast and Furious, but she was in Fast and the Fast and the Furious. And then Devin Ioki was in Too Fast, Too Furious. And then in 2011, they came together in the Fast Five. So in a way, we're getting a little like pre-reunion of like the Fast and Furious franchise in this movie, which I thought was pretty cool. And then another star that we have,
00:04:35
Speaker
I don't even know how they got this guy, okay? Michael Clark Duncan. Yeah, really? Yeah, Michael Clark Duncan is in it. I was like, baby, you were too good for this movie. I was like, okay, at least you guys don't know who this is. He is basically the star, I mean, outside of Tom Hanks, he's the star of The Green Mile, which is an emotional three-hour movie set in...
00:04:59
Speaker
Jim Crow South, I guess. And it's a great movie. And then Michael Clark Duncan deserves all the Oscars for this particular movie. And he's in this. And once you see the Green Mile and you see this movie, you understand how they literally are not even in the same league. But that's, you know, and Debs is basically about a bunch of like, I don't know if they're like high school or college students.
Plot Breakdown and Introduction of Lucy Diamond
00:05:24
Speaker
They are high school students.
00:05:27
Speaker
There's a lot of questionable things going on. Exactly, yeah. They're high school students, but clearly like college age, you know, like in their 20s, playing high school students. But yeah, so they take these like tests, like they're just regular SAT tests, I guess. And in that test, or like secret tests, where you get to discover whether you have these secret spy skills or
00:05:53
Speaker
that basically make you like the perfect assassin or the perfect spy. And then you end up working for this secret arm of the government called the Debs. And so that's where we kick off with the story, with the baddie being like Lucy Diamond, this world international diamond thief, international terrorist, international everything really. And
00:06:17
Speaker
That's really where I think I was just like, okay, and now I'm lost. But I picked this movie because it was ridiculous. And I just kind of want to know, like, what did you think? I am so happy that you said it's ridiculous because I too, as I was watching it,
00:06:40
Speaker
I was like, I didn't know. So I didn't I didn't watch any trailers. I didn't read anything before. I wanted to go in cold. And it started and with the opening credits. Right. The kind of the kind, the special effects of the early aunts. Right. It was like bootleg matrix, you know. And I thought to myself, oh, this is about to get interesting.
Guest Insights and First Impressions of DEBS
00:07:05
Speaker
Bootleg matrix. It was.
00:07:07
Speaker
It was like the kind of stuff that you would create in Windows 95. Yeah, exactly. And the opening credits, it's a little bit of a video game kind of thing. They're popping out of places. It's got the bootleg. This is supposed to be technology. These are supposed to be lasers. Those lasers.
00:07:36
Speaker
It was just so much. And so with that, I, and then when we open up and it's the girls living in this house kind of sorority style. Yeah, which by the way, the, um, I don't know if you noticed, but you know, the, uh, the Greek letters spell out like Debs.
00:07:56
Speaker
It was like, yeah, it just spells what it is. It just spells this acronym. And so just with that opening, it's a test I like to give myself in the first five to 10 minutes of the movie, can I discern what this whole thing is about to be about?
00:08:12
Speaker
Can I predict the middle and the ending? Is this how I try to just give myself this little test by what's been thrown out there? And with this one, I was like, oh, this is camp. It is super camp. Yeah. This is camp. I can't take this too seriously. And it has all the tropes of something like this, like a spy.
00:08:36
Speaker
All the tropes of a spy film, all the tropes of, what is it? I don't know what it's called exactly, but there's a whole fantasy about taking children and training them to be assassins, you know, with them being infiltrated into a society. Exactly. So there's that trope along with just the fashion.
00:09:00
Speaker
Yeah. Of the early odds. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And I was trying to think there's like, I think that there, oh, Spy Kids is like. Yeah, Spy Kids. I feel like that's the. That's exactly what it was. All of it was Spy Kids. Spy Kids meets Charlie's Angels. Because I think that Charlie's Angels was like, they released it a few years before this.
Comedic Elements and Spy Parody in DEBS
00:09:22
Speaker
And I'm sure in Hollywood, they're like, hmm, sexy women, kind of empowered.
00:09:28
Speaker
skimpy outfits, what do you think? And everyone was like, yeah, let's do more of this. Let's just put it out. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I loved it in a just a very like, this is nice to get drunk and watch with like my friends. Yeah, exactly. It's ridiculous. You should you're supposed to
00:09:51
Speaker
In theory, you should be able to suspend reality for a minute, you know? But it's like, you don't need to worry about work. I will say, I think whatever movie Meghan Goode was in is not the same movie everybody else was in. I agree. Because she was thinking it very seriously. And everybody else was just being like, just silly. And she was like, this is my acting debut kind of thing. Yes. Oh, yes.
00:10:16
Speaker
Megan Goode was trying to open that gun, that revolver, she'd click it open and then click it back. That thing was fucking huge. That gun was massive. It was bigger than her whole body, I swear, but she was making it work. She was out there flipping that hair, just strutting, and I was like, that's great. Yeah, love it for you.
00:10:39
Speaker
Okay, so let me give people like just kind of a breakdown of where this movie goes because as I was watching it in the beginning, I was like, who's going to be the bad guy? Because the villain is very important if you're going to have a spy organization. And this is where I'm going to tell everybody if you haven't watched it and you hate spoilers, please pause the show and go get a drink, put on Amazon, rent it, watch it, then come back and then press play because now we're going to talk about spoilers anyway.
00:11:07
Speaker
One, two, three, four, five, they're gone. Lesbian international villain who falls in love with one of the spies was not on my bingo card. It was not on mine either. When that started to pivot, I was like, oh, the movie just changed. The movie changed dramatically.
00:11:30
Speaker
Okay, because it starts off with, I guess, her like number one or number two in the criminal organization is like, girl, you know, this person broke up with you. It was like a lot and you haven't loved again. So I'm going to set you up on this blind date. And in my head, when I thought it was like he was saying blind date, I was like, okay, he's trying to set up with a Russian assassin. And it's more for a job like hire this person.
00:11:58
Speaker
for a potential dangerous, politically complex assassination. Not so much. It literally wasn't just a blind date with these two women.
00:12:14
Speaker
was, I thought the same thing, because she, there's a moment where she says, No, I don't go in blind, right? Like, or I don't get blind dates. And I really did think like, Oh, okay, she's saying that whatever the assignment is, whoever this partner is, she doesn't know enough about them. Yeah. So when they
00:12:34
Speaker
somehow, someway, she's convinced to do this, right? Yeah. To go in and they are sitting in this restaurant and the devs have figured out like, oh, this is our chance to get Lucy Diamond. Lucy Diamond. So we're going to do a stakeout. Yeah, the renowned Lucy Diamond. So we're going to do a stakeout by hanging from swings. Mm-hmm.
00:12:57
Speaker
in the ceiling of the restaurant. Yeah. And looking down on her while she's having this date with the Russian spy. Which they think is meeting a Russian spy for something super important. And it's not like she's literally just on a blind date that's been infiltrated by the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, like everybody who am I five, six, seven, eight?
Character Relationships and Plot Dynamics
00:13:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:23
Speaker
They're all there waiting to capture Lucy Diamond. Uh-huh, uh-huh. And you know, I know that I teach in higher ed, and so people think that I should be smart. But it was not until...
00:13:40
Speaker
This all started to go wrong that I figured out like, oh, they're actually on a date. Because at one point, you know, the Russian assassin is just like, you know, because Lucy Diamond is clearly not feeling this day at all. So she tries to fake food poisoning, which apparently is her go to for getting on a date. FYI, if you guys need to leave a date, food poisoning is completely legitimately an excuse that you can use.
00:14:04
Speaker
Anyway, the Russian is like, oh, you're trying to get out of this day. And it's like, you're going to be alone because you can't open up to love. And this is why people are firing bullets at them. Exactly. This is the part where I'm like, oh, it was actually a date, right? I was like, clearly, I'm not that smart. I should have clocked this when it was in the process of happening. But clearly, I'm not that smart because this was a twist.
00:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I didn't expect it at all. So they're sitting there, Lucy Diamond is like, you know, I'm not feeling it. I think I'm going to try to get out of this. Russian spy is like, I can't believe you don't want me. I know. And then the devs, the four devs are suspended from swings. They are at the top of this restaurant. And they're just like kicking it, looking down, listening to their conversation.
00:15:02
Speaker
One of them is smoking a cigarette. Of course, she's French, so she hasn't been smoking a cigarette the entire time. Stereotypes abound. Okay, guys. Stereotypes abound. Making good is there.
00:15:13
Speaker
with those eyebrows, you know, the over-plucked eyebrows of the early aughts. And what's the name of the blonde woman? What's the name of the character who basically are protagonists? Amy. Amy. Who like, we can get her name wrong and call her Alice. Yeah, we call her Alice periodically throughout the film. We call her Alice.
00:15:38
Speaker
But Amy is sitting there and her ex-boyfriend, who happens to be a CIA agent or something. Which, you know, pause for a second. Because if this girl isn't high school, what is your ass doing dating? If you are an FBI CIA agent, which I mean, you got to be at least 25 years old. What is your ass? You are committing a crime by being in a relationship. Yes, immediately.
00:16:04
Speaker
And he is like stalker ish, like calling her on all her devices, calling them on their highly encrypted phone while they're on a stakeout, just so he can be like, why did you break up with me? And I was like, this is why women don't feel safe.
00:16:24
Speaker
I will tell you right now, this is why I'm not dating, because I don't feel like it. Like, I literally said no. And the only thing is like, is there someone else? Because if there's someone else, I'm gonna, I'm like, guys.
00:16:35
Speaker
Maybe it's just you. And she literally was just like, it's you. And he's still not getting it. And it's just like, well, I want my father's bracelet back. Exactly. So as they are sitting from swings suspended from the ceiling of this restaurant, you're meant to think that it's pretty high up. Like it's like two or three floors up in here. He suspends down from nowhere, kind of like a spider. He just drops down on his own seat.
00:17:02
Speaker
and tries to take this bracelet off of Amy. And as they're wrestling over a bracelet, which let me tell you, those bracelets were big in Texas in the early aughts, we would get them at the fair for like $10 and then get somebody like etch your name in it and it would rock on your arm within a matter of a while. It's like, okay, claim me with a bracelet.
00:17:28
Speaker
Give me a bracelet and I am yours. So he drops down like a spider. He tries to take the bracelet off of her and throws it down into Lucy Diamond's soup.
00:17:43
Speaker
And so then that's how she knows it has been revealed. Now we're like shooting and everyone is just, they all just kind of come down on
Campy Tone, Soundtrack, and Satirical Elements
00:17:57
Speaker
this restaurant. It becomes like a whole chaotic scene. And then, you know, Lucy Diamond is trying to escape and Amy, who's the other protagonist is like chasing after and they bump into each other and Lucy Diamond falls in love.
00:18:14
Speaker
Immediately. Okay. Immediately. Which I was just like. All she needed to know was that she was blonde. Yeah, that was it. In high school.
00:18:23
Speaker
That's all that it took. I mean, I don't know. Maybe some lesbians might want to opine on this is like, if this is a thing that happens, but like what in actual hell? Yeah. And you know, of course, Amy is just like, oh, I'm not into girls. Like, what are you talking about? No. And Lucy Diamond escapes. And then it just sets off this whole chain of events where Lucy Diamond is trying to woo this high school girl.
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah. And she was like, she just doesn't know that she's into girls yet. Exactly. And I'm going to show her that she is into girls. And I'm going to show her. And did you notice that throughout the movie, every time they bump into Lucy Diamond, diamonds like shoot from her pockets? Yeah, she just has. That's how they know that she's been there. That's how they know she's been there, because there's diamonds. What's funny is when the first time where they're in that warehouse and she escapes,
00:19:20
Speaker
and you look on the floor, it literally is glass. Like the camera makes it look like glass until someone picks it up. It's like, oh, it's a diamond because they added some sparkly special effects. Yeah. Yeah. It's a piece of glass and then someone picks it up and then she's like, woo. And it starts to glitter.
00:19:39
Speaker
And so now it is a diamond. It's a rough diamond too. When we said this was camp, we were like not even lying. Like it really is. I'm not taking it seriously. I don't even think the director was taking it seriously. I don't think so either.
00:19:55
Speaker
Because even like this is where my art brain starts to get in the way, right? Like I start to critique the music choices, like the background music and the sounds. And there's so much of it that was very much spy kids. And so I found myself trying to trying to I found myself I found myself wondering about who the audience was for this. Yeah. Right. Because it didn't necessarily feel like an adult.
00:20:23
Speaker
And it didn't feel like a high school child either. So I was confused. Maybe it's like for those people who were into Clueless. There you go. I feel like maybe that was. But I mean, speaking of the soundtrack, too, I would say that that took me back to high school. Like you really did. I would you know, I found myself like singing along to certain songs I had not heard in forever.
00:20:49
Speaker
in erasure or low respect. I just started singing along to it. I was like, wait, what is happening? Oh, I am their intended audience. Oh my god. I am their intended audience. Yeah, meanwhile, I'm sitting there and I was like, what is this? I know. So I found myself thinking about just satire and if this is succeeding or failing at being satire, if it's satire at all.
00:21:17
Speaker
Well, I mean, that's interesting because I think that sometimes when you start a project and you go into it with like an intent for it to be art. Right. But over like when it comes out, maybe it doesn't quite hit the same and then it's seen as a failure. But then over time, like, you know, kind of like when you put cheese away for a while or wine away for a while, it just kind of matures into something else. And I think that that's what happened with this film is that like if I had watched this in 2003, 2004, I'd be like, this is some shit.
00:21:47
Speaker
This is terrible. But as a grown-up looking back, it's almost like when you look back at when you were a teenager and you're just like, I was stupid. Yeah, that's a great point. That's how I look at this film. Yeah, that's a great point. Because looking at it now, I can read it. I can analyze it and see all the tropes and stuff. But at the time, I wouldn't have picked up on any of that. I wouldn't have picked up on even the male gaze in it.
00:22:16
Speaker
I just want to pick up on, I just thought it was really, really dumb. And so yeah, coming back as an adult, it's like, Oh, okay. Well, this is, this is a little bit, I mean, even the acronyms are like, Debs is like discipline, energy, beauty, strength. And it's like, I was wondering,
00:22:33
Speaker
I wondered the entirety of that movie, like, what the fuck is this? They don't really tell. They don't say it. Or if they do, you like kind of miss it. It's not it's not focused on. But yeah, and so like, I don't know, I feel like I can look at it from that lens. And it might be one of those movies that I go back to when I just I'm like.
00:22:53
Speaker
Oh, you know, I just want something that's like so silly. You know, I pour myself like a couple glasses of wine and I just like let it play. You know, I think that's what it is. That's what it's going to be. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, one of the things that I remember talking to my husband, Greg, about when we were watching this movie is the lesbianism.
00:23:19
Speaker
or the lack thereof because I was like, this movie is trying to sell me lesbians and it's failing because these are two straight women and they are not, there's like zero chemistry. Like when they're trying to make out, they're like, it just feels like, it feels like, you know, those, when you're like, how do I even explain this? Think about two middle school girls who never kissed a boy and they're like, they have a sleepover and they're just gonna practice.
00:23:51
Speaker
That's what I was watching. It's like they're practicing kissing so they can go kiss boys. And it was like these two very gorgeous girls. I'm like, where are my butch lesbians at? You know what I'm saying? Super femme. Yeah, two super femme. I think that that's probably one of the criticisms for films that try to sell lesbians is they feel like they got to sell you lesbians that are like,
00:24:15
Speaker
really, really pretty and really femme. And that, that's not necessarily like reality, right? And so I'm trying to think there's a movie I have in my head where they kind of don't give us like femme lesbians from just like, but it's still like so heartbreaking and beautiful. It'll come to me eventually. But so like, I'm watching this and it's like, you know,
00:24:42
Speaker
they're just play fighting in bed. And I just, for a film that's directed by a woman, it felt very much like something that the male gaze would create. Absolutely. That's exactly what I was thinking. It felt like, oh, this is a queer relationship for men. Yes, exactly. For a cis head straight man, right? So they would be hyper film. They play in bed together. They hit you with pillows.
00:25:09
Speaker
They have long hair. One has dark hair, one has blonde. It was almost like the beginning of a porn. If it wasn't for the rating, any moment now, it would be a Pornhub special. Exactly. For sure. That was the movie I was thinking about, Pariah.
00:25:36
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I love Pariah. Pariah really just broke me in multiple places. Pariah was beautiful.
Angela Robinson's Influence and DEBS Compared to Her Other Films
00:25:43
Speaker
You know, I lived, we were, I mean, we were all living in Austin at the time, but you and I had maybe just met. Yeah. I went to see Pariah because you couldn't see it everywhere. Remember, like you had to go find a place to see it.
00:25:57
Speaker
And I remember going and all of the black lesbians in Austin were in there. And I was just like- You were a lesbian and you wanted to date? That was the place to be. That was the place to be, yeah. Pariah was a beautiful, beautiful thing. This was no pariah, so. No, this was no pariah.
00:26:14
Speaker
And I thought about, but I'm a cheerleader. And so it has some of that flavor to it. Which was really also, I feel like that was more queer than what was happening here. Absolutely. I don't know if maybe... So here's another thing about the director, Angela Robinson.
00:26:35
Speaker
where one of the movies that I watched by her and I want to say was From I forget what year it was, but it's Professor Marston and the Wonder Woman, which I did really like It's basically about this professor who was in a trouble back in the 40s like it was him about him Yeah, right. It was him his wife and this woman and it was about how like they're they have very unusual relationship and obviously
00:27:03
Speaker
having threesomes in the 40s. Who's doing that? Nobody. And then having like, you know, two women and men being in love. It's like a lot. He was also the person who created Wonder Woman, the comic book. So it's definitely worth a watch. She directed that one. And I thought that she did a better job of kind of defining, not defining, but kind of displaying queer relationships.
00:27:30
Speaker
And I don't know whether because this was the early odds, maybe in the editing room and the executives came in and were like, let's make it less.
00:27:42
Speaker
queer, right? Um, because I was like, this can't be this person that made this movie. And then like a decade later made this other movie, which has very similar like topics in there. So I do wonder whether there was some forces that were just like, make it more from the male gaze, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That was, that was,
00:28:06
Speaker
really interesting to me as I kept trying to place it. As I was trying to place who the audience could be, I could only really think of the pressure of the writer's room or the editing room. Or the funder. Or maybe even from the beginning with the script where they were just like, we'll fund this, but you need to make this like chasing Amy or something. There you go. Yeah, that's exactly.
00:28:34
Speaker
Deb's colon chasing Amy. That's exactly what it was. Literally, because the girls named Amy. I was not on purpose, but apparently- It was good though. It was good. You should take credit. I wonder if it's the same. Is it the same actress chasing Amy? Now I'm just curious whether it is. I don't think so. No, I don't think so either, but they kind of look very similar. Yeah.
00:28:59
Speaker
you know, blonde, you know, we love blondes. Don't worry about it. Yeah, yeah. Blondes and petite. That was, I think, you know, I, you know, I guess they were trying to be edgy by adding this element, be like, look, we're we, you know, it's new. It's a new century. Like we can talk about this, but they didn't quite go deep enough.
Camp Elements and Cast Performance
00:29:26
Speaker
But I guess like if
00:29:27
Speaker
if the whole thing is satire and the whole thing is a spoof, then yeah, you kind of get away with just it being light and fluffy. Because even the point where they are technically taking the clothes off and they get caught by the Debs organization and they're all covering themselves up with a blanket, it just seems like a sleepover that went wrong. Yeah.
00:29:52
Speaker
sweep over that went wrong. Yeah. Did you snap my bra? What is this? Like middle school? I was like, no, it's high school because she is in high school. You're sleeping with underage girl. Well then too, it's like they, they try to position at one point that Lucy Diamond is also around high school age. She's B. Yeah. Yeah. She's totally not high school age. First of all, she was driving a very nice car.
00:30:17
Speaker
A low rider car that also has- Yes, from all the diamonds she's been stealing, obviously. Yes, from all the diamonds she's been stealing, and this low rider car can shoot missiles out the back. Yeah. So basically, after that restaurant meeting, altercation, exchange, Lucy Diamond goes on a quest to woo Amy. Yeah. And at one point, I wouldn't say kidnap.
00:30:47
Speaker
Would we say kidnapped? Or would we say? Amy allowed herself to be taken. Not that I'm victim blaming here, though. But it is. She is a kid. She was napped. So it was kidnapped. But she didn't. For someone who is supposed to be trained to defend herself against threats, internal and external. I feel like maybe she just kind of went along with it.
00:31:08
Speaker
Yeah, it felt like, I almost said Jordana. I felt like Jordana was, but it's like Lucy Diamond basically is on the lam, and it's like, come with me, you know? And Amy says yes.
00:31:23
Speaker
And then goes missing for a week where she's eating all the best food. She's drinking the best drinks. She's pillow fighting, right? They're going to bars. Yeah, getting each other crystal diamond hank.
00:31:39
Speaker
Crystal diamond handcuffs, yes. And there's that moment where she's like, oh my God, I love these. And so they just spend a week in a thrall, basically. And some of the devs know that Amy has chosen to go with Lucy Diamond, and some of the devs
00:32:00
Speaker
believe that she has been kidnapped. And so there. Yeah. And so like what a kind of a manhunt for lack of a better term. And Amy Hunt. And Amy Hunt. Yeah. And so the devs are like, we've got to find her and set her free from this, you know, international terrorist. And yeah, like it just
00:32:28
Speaker
The whole thing is kind of ridiculous because they're going out there beating up homeless people be like, where is she? And like, just it just seems so insane. The whole thing only to find out that she she's in love with Lucy Diamond and she has to choose between whether she wants to be this, you know, she's called the perfect score. Basically, she got like the perfect
00:32:54
Speaker
score in their in their test and that secret test like things out like what kind of spy you're gonna be and so she's like kind of this ideal spy that the organization is trying to like promote and so it's like you're really good girl who's got everything going on who you know it's like I don't want it I don't want this crown I guess I I want to be able to go to art school I want to fall in love I don't know if art school was code for I am a lesbian or whatever but
00:33:25
Speaker
Well, I will say, as an art educator, more often than not, people are queer, right? Like, people are queer, they, it's largely so, right? To be the straight person in art school is...
00:33:42
Speaker
It's the minority. Are you lost? Yeah, basically. And so, you know, she has to choose between her dedication to this organization and, you know, this this new love that she's found because she couldn't find it with Bobby, the FBI agent or CIA agent or whatever. And then, you know, she has a choice to make. But her best friend, who's played by Megan Good, is like, no, no, no.
00:34:09
Speaker
you know, this is our dream. We're supposed to be working towards being the best agents possible. And there's this moment, very briefly, where I guess the leader of the organization, I think it's Miss Patrice or whatever, basically makes Amy the squad leader.
00:34:30
Speaker
And Megan Good was the squad leader so Megan Good, obviously if you don't know Megan Good, she is black. And then Amy is blonde. And there's this brief moment where they're having a conversation and it's almost like
00:34:46
Speaker
the the white the kind of like light version of talking about white privilege because she's like you get everything like you don't have to try you don't you know you don't even want this i'm like working really hard i'm doing all those things i'm kicking ass and then they just give you squad leader and i just was like i really wish this went deeper but of course in 2003
00:35:12
Speaker
how deep can you go about the discussion of white privilege? So I'm glad that the conversation happened, because even if the words white privilege was not spoken, like you could, if you are watching this now and you're very familiar with that term, you can pick it out and say, yeah, that's actually what that is, you know? Absolutely. That's exactly what it was. It was super brief. And to some degree, it was kind of a
00:35:38
Speaker
Like you said before, Megan Goode was giving it her all, okay? She was giving it her all. Megan Goode was like, this is mine! So there's a part of the conversation where it's a little bit of a tantrum, and then it's also Megan Goode acting her ass off, because she was like, this will not be the end of me.
00:35:58
Speaker
You know, in a way, it's like, you know, Megan Goode is technically like the squad leader, but she got made like the co-actress and like the supporting actress in this film. And the lead is not really doing it for me.
00:36:15
Speaker
And so I think there's something really deeper in her dialogue where she's like delivering this. She's like, I cannot believe they gave you this role. Because it should have been me. It should have been me. OK. Well, you never know. Making good. She loves Jesus. So she.
00:36:31
Speaker
She wouldn't have kissed a girl. No, she would not. She wouldn't have kissed a girl. I don't like it. Yeah. Yeah, so this whole movie is just like, I mean, for me, like, I would say like, just some of my favorite moments was just where like, you know, Michael Clarke Duncan would just randomly show up.
00:36:54
Speaker
Yeah, so they have hologram technology. That's something that, you know, you could, if you could break the themes of this movie, you know, you could break out into themes, the tech and the special effects. Yeah. So like, so Michael Clark Duncan and Holland, what is her name? Holland Taylor. Oh, yeah. I don't know if she's British, but I always feel like she is.
00:37:20
Speaker
I don't know. And she always pops up in the in the queer things like she was in the L word. She's American. Yeah, see, I thought so. I was like, I don't think she's British at all. But I always see her popping up in things. Yeah.
00:37:38
Speaker
and trying to position herself as Brutus. Yeah, her partner is Sarah Paulson, so she's an actual real life lesbian. You know, there we go. OK, cool. I don't know if I've seen her out at the time when this movie came out, but. Mm hmm.
00:37:53
Speaker
I was always seeing her in the L word. I would see her in, there was some other show or something that I would see her in and she clearly has a wife, or her daughter is a lesbian. It was always something like that.
Humor and Low-Budget Special Effects
00:38:10
Speaker
But the heads of this organization appear
00:38:16
Speaker
via hologram kind of just drops down into space. I know. And then they just appear in a body. They just appear in a body. Yeah. I was joking that Clark Duncan literally was like, I can only give you this much time.
00:38:37
Speaker
And you know, I remember I remember thinking to myself, this is where they spent the money because it wasn't on the special effects. Because at one point, Holland Taylor comes in to like celebrate this Amy character because she's encountered Lucy Diamond and lived to tell the tale. Right. And it's a very quick.
00:38:55
Speaker
It's a very quick second of it, but because she is wearing a blue suit and the green screen is a blue screen, she disappears. Part of her shoulder disappears as she's walking into the room. And that's how you know that not enough money was spent.
00:39:16
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Just another theme. Another theme is like budget. All right. Budget, right. Whenever you see, to me, whenever you see actors that are in the same clothing for the duration of a show or duration of a movie, it's like, oh, it's because the bulk of this budget went to the special effects or the fake diamonds, you know, or Michael Clark Duncan's salary for this. Yeah.
00:39:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, so we were talking about that they come in the kind of like, down into the space, they give directives, they give orders, and then they kind of like go back up into the ether.
00:39:59
Speaker
Yeah, or they show up on those little watches and you could tell someone just cropped this video onto a static image. But one of my favorite moments is they have this force field around the house and the force field is planned.
00:40:20
Speaker
Yes, the force field is plaid. A newspaper cannot go through the force field, but Amy and the other devs can enter through the force field.
Lucy Diamond's Character Quirks
00:40:30
Speaker
I think it's kind of like, I don't know if you ever had those, they have these
00:40:36
Speaker
cat boxes that they're like feeders for cats and they have little collars. And so if it's the right cat, it opens up and lets you into eat. And if it's the wrong cat, it just closes up. I think it's the same thing. Absolutely. Absolutely. What's some other one of my favorite tech moments and special effects is that Lucy Diamond has something has some kind of laser that melts glass temporarily so that she can walk through it. But then the glass
00:41:04
Speaker
resources. Yeah, the yeah, the force field. So it cuts out and then it just kind of like, closes around. Yeah, she, she like cuts open this glass, walks through it. And then the glass magically heals itself back together. Yeah. And I'm just like, this is this is crazy. Like I can just see like people in the writers room just like
00:41:26
Speaker
what would the future hold if they could have all this technology, and blah, blah, blah. Also, for some reason, Lucy Diamond is obsessed with blowing up Australia, just sinking. And I was like, I don't know why. But does it something that you want to talk to your therapist about,
Speculation on a DEBS Reboot
00:41:44
Speaker
girl? What did Australia do to you? Yeah, it's another one of those weird tropes. It's like, well, if you have this assassin, this assassin has to have
00:41:56
Speaker
kind of an ultimate evil goal of some sort. And for her, it's Australia. Let me tell you, I kind of want a sequel.
00:42:08
Speaker
You want a sequel? I don't know if I can handle a sequel. No, I want a sequel or I want a reboot. Because here's the thing, we're in this season of rebooting 90s movies, 80s movies. And I think eventually we're going to get to the point where the odds
00:42:28
Speaker
get rebooted. And I think that we could really do devs better. Like, you know, if we're gonna lean in on the queerness, I think it can be it can still be camp and it can still be funny. It doesn't have to be serious. And, you know, we can I feel like now did queerness isn't something that's like
00:42:47
Speaker
edgy per se, right? It's not something that you throw in there to make your movie like different. You know, we're talking about it. It's out there. It's normalized that we can definitely like put that in in a more intelligent way. Like we can talk about privilege in a more intelligent way. Like there are probably things that Angela wanted to do in that movie that she couldn't because of the time. And now that we're like 20 years later, I feel like
00:43:15
Speaker
Quite literally. Yeah. Quite literally. Let's do it. Let's bring it back. And, you know, I, I definitely think that there are people who would be really interested because like, there's a, there's a bunch of stuff that's come back. Low rise is back, girl. Thin eyebrows in the back. Uh, I don't think rat tails ever left, but like, you know, that's back. Um, there just a lot of things from that era. The Y2K fashion is resurfacing. And I think this is like the best time to like.
00:43:46
Speaker
delve into it again and just remind people, chokers were a thing.
00:43:55
Speaker
Chokers were a thing. They were a thing, but my neck was always too big. It was like I had a thick neck even then. I never could pull off a choker. I tried. It was just not happening. You know, not all of those fashion went for everybody. But I just, you know, like, I just want to see what we could do with it. Like, you know, what kind of villain could we have? Like,
00:44:18
Speaker
We could make it very interesting. I'm not going to be writing it or anything, but if anybody out there, if you're a director, specifically a female director, we don't want any male gazes over here. But if you want to remake this, I'm down. I have 20 bucks I can donate to. There you go. I actually have $20 that I can donate. Exactly. Because I've tried to think, what would you take out and what would you leave in for a
DEBS Themes and Modern Casting
00:44:43
Speaker
reboot?
00:44:43
Speaker
Oh, Bobby needs to go, obviously. I mean, like in terms of just kind of how predatory that was like, unless we're talking about how predatory it is, I don't think that it should be in there. Because ultimately, the conversation was about going after what you want.
00:45:04
Speaker
versus being the person that everybody expects you to be. That was the whole point of it. And I think why I related to that so well is because when I was in high school, I was trying to decide what I wanted to do when I went to college.
00:45:19
Speaker
I also, when you brought up in a cultural family, it's all about getting those A's, all about being a doctor or lawyer or whatever, and you're being pushed in that direction. Your dreams are based on your academic achievement. But I wanted to go to art school. I wanted to go to music school. I felt like I had a talent there, and I had to give up on those dreams.
00:45:44
Speaker
because they weren't supported. I didn't feel supported, and I kept being told that there was no way that that was going to feed me. There was no way that that was going to sustain me, and so it was best to go down this path. And so watching this as camp and silly and not high art as it is,
00:46:02
Speaker
I felt connected to that story to be able to say, yeah, let's talk about what decisions we make young people make at such a pivotal part of their life where they are just trying to figure out who they are. Like, you know, if you're a 17 year old and you're trying to figure out like,
00:46:19
Speaker
Am I queer? Do I like girls? And now you have to make this huge decision about what you do for the rest of your life when you're just trying to figure out who you are. It's like a lot. So I love that concept and that being at the root of the movie. And I want to keep that. But anything predatory, unless we're calling it out, I'm like,
00:46:42
Speaker
No. Absolutely. I think and that's such a great point. Like the crux of the movie is something very, very different than it has absolutely nothing to do with them being secret agents.
00:46:55
Speaker
It's like a side plot. Yeah, them being secret agents and a part of this thing is a side plot. It has nothing to do with them just trying to decide who they are and who they want to be. Because throughout the movie, too, Amy is talking to Lucy Diamond about all these horrible things she's done. And it turns out that she didn't do any of them.
00:47:19
Speaker
Yeah, right. Like that, that wasn't even her to begin with. Like someone died because he had Ebola. Someone died because they had a heart attack. It wasn't because she did anything. She just took credit for it. Yeah, she just took credit for it. And so there's this, it was pretty consistent throughout the film that both of them were misunderstood.
00:47:41
Speaker
And then all the people were defining who they were, and they didn't get a choice in doing that. So yeah, absolutely. You know what? I just realized I want to cast Zendaya.
00:47:55
Speaker
Ooh. I mean, what can't Zendaya do? Okay. She can sing, she can dance, she can act. What can she do? She's got the fashion. She's got the fashion. Yeah. I was like... This is a Zendaya fan club right here. She can take my money, okay? Zendaya can take all my money. Yeah, I would definitely cast Zendaya. Whatever the...
00:48:22
Speaker
you know, whatever the Trojan horse is that like carries us through the reboot. That's not them for maybe being agents in high school. Maybe the agents in college this time around. I don't know. Is Clark Duncan still alive? Can he? No, no. Yeah. He's been gone for quite some time. So you would have to recast Michael Clark Duncan. Oh, Vince Rhimes. No. You got it. Vince Rhimes.
00:48:53
Speaker
Um, Rhames? Is it Bing Rhames? Bing Rhames. Bing's written up in his name wrong. I'm gonna look it up. I'm gonna look it up. Greg, edit this part out. I'm sorry. Bing Rhames. Bing Rhames. Now, I've never really thought about it. Yeah, Bing Rhames. We're gonna get punished in hell. I just know it. We are. And let me tell you, there was a moment in my life where I thought, like, he's an attractive man.
00:49:20
Speaker
Yeah, but then he got older. I got older and he got, you know, he's only 63. He's only 63. He's only my dad's age. He's only the age of my mother and father.
00:49:36
Speaker
That's my that's usually my cut off, you know, like when you once you start getting into grandpa. Yeah. See, that's a no no. Yeah. Being Rames. There we go. Yeah. OK. Yeah. So, oh, you know, I feel like we're we're on the way to casting some with some great great. Yeah. So we could recast Michael Clark Duncan's character with being Rames. I sure. I mean, Holland Taylor is still knocking around. She can come back.
00:50:11
Speaker
She makes a movie once a year. She's only ended for like 10, 15 minutes at a time. I don't think I've ever seen her in anything where she's the leading character. She's always in a matching pantsuit. She's a part of Pantsuit Nation. She has been for quite some time. So yeah, she has to stay. Maybe Meghan Goode comes back also. Yeah, Meghan Goode could be one of the trainers. She rides with me. There you go. Yeah, she could be a trainer.
00:50:32
Speaker
Let me tell you, she keeps a job, okay? She keeps a job.
00:50:41
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, you know, you could have one of the like Ellie Fanning, like she's huge right now. Um, she could be one of the, one of the preppy girls, but I feel like, yeah, you know, there are options. We got options out there. There are some options. Bobby Milly. What's her name? Bobby Milly Brown or Milly Bobby Brown.
00:51:07
Speaker
Well, I was laughing because I know who you're talking about. This is the podcast where I ruin people's names. Hey, you know I don't remember her name. It's Bobby Brown. It's the kid from Stranger Things. Stranger Things. Seven or whatever the name is. I think, yeah, I totally think she could do it.
00:51:23
Speaker
Absolutely. I was also chuckling because that name sounds like an 80s band. You know, every time I'm just like, Ooh, have you listened to Bobby Billy Brown? Did you check out that Bobby Billy Brown?
00:51:42
Speaker
It's just a band. I think of it as a band every time, every time. Oh my god, yes.
DEBS Analysis and Conclusion
00:51:47
Speaker
Anyway, like we obviously, we could recast all day, but okay, what would be your overall rating for this movie? Oh my god, on a scale of... Oh, you know, the five stars, you know. Oh, the five stars. You know,
00:52:03
Speaker
I would give it like a three and a half. Okay. Yeah. I give it a three and a half. Cause like you said, it's not bad. It's not good. It's not good. It's not bad. It's bad. It's good. Like it's like a, it had, it exists in its own category. Yeah. It's not meant for you to take it seriously. No, if you take it seriously, you will literally hate it.
00:52:26
Speaker
you'll be disappointed. It's just meant for you to analyze it and to laugh, really. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I will say like two stars for the art, but four stars for how it makes me feel.
00:52:44
Speaker
There we go. There we go. So we're close. We're close there. I totally agree with that. You know, we're like three range. Surprisingly, if you look it up on like little box where you can see all these film.
00:53:00
Speaker
It's up to the four star. Some of you really love this movie and I appreciate it. Yeah, you like the campiness of it. Camp is interesting. You either love it or hate it with camp. It's very hard to kind of ride the middle of the road.
00:53:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, camp sometimes isn't something that's done on purpose. In fact, it's very in some films, it's unintentional. Like they were aiming for something straight or something, you know, serious. And then it just didn't hit the mark. And suddenly you have an iconic camp film. Mm hmm. Absolutely. So we did we haven't told your listeners how it ends.
00:53:46
Speaker
Oh, I don't even know if I remember. You're like, I just had a baby a few months ago. No, yes. How it ends is that Amy ends up running off with Lucy Diamond after, you know, they have this like end game or end of the year kind of.
00:54:06
Speaker
Prom. Yeah. And she's supposed to be accepting this award, I guess, for Best Spy and her friend, Megan Good. I keep calling Megan Good. I didn't even ask her. I think her name is Max in. Yeah. Yes, Max. He writes the speech.
00:54:22
Speaker
for her, where she's rededicating herself to the values of Debs. And, you know, as she's as she's basically saying this speech, Lucy Diamond is breaking in to to the event so she can like basically. I don't know, do something you get dramatic in. Oh, yes, a grand gesture, grand gesture.
00:54:50
Speaker
As before we get to the end game, so Amy ends up, she had her week of in a thrall. She decides to go back to the dev, so like she's had enough. Yes. And then Lucy Diamond starts to try to reform her life. She starts to give back money that she's stolen. Yeah. Give back diamonds that she's stolen. Did you notice that the money bags were money bags?
00:55:21
Speaker
the dollar sign on it, like a cartoon character and with a sorry note. This is what makes me think that it is, it was not to be taken seriously at the beginning. Absolutely. Why would you, why would the art department just throw that in there? You know what I mean? Why would the art department throw that in there? Why did the sorry note, it was written in just like high school bubble letters, sorry. And it was stuck to the bags with a gigantic safety pin, like the safety pin that you could only buy at a novelty store for baby things.
00:55:51
Speaker
Oh, like it was huge. It was all supposed to be fun. It was also. Yeah. And so she's on this path to redeem herself and be a good girl. So she's like, I'm going to right all of my wrongs. She even gets to the point where she tries to take the S.A.T. so she can pass and become a Debs herself. Exactly. Yeah. She fails. She doesn't actually do it because. Yeah. She gets into a fight at the S.A.T. at the S.A.T testing site.
00:56:22
Speaker
punches the proctor, if I remember correctly, that's what they're called. I'm going to sit down for a test. The stress is so much that, I mean, I feel her. I feel where she's coming from. For sure. For sure. Side note, do you remember your SAT score? No. Me neither. I know it wasn't good, but I don't remember.
00:56:44
Speaker
I absolutely don't remember mine. I think I remember a number, but it's like. I know it was between one and infinity. That's what I know. There you go. There you go. So we won't be doing that again.
00:57:01
Speaker
But yeah, so, you know, so obviously she decides, Lucy decides to break into this event to make this grand gesture. And just as she gets there, you know, I guess she locks eyes with Amy as she's doing the speech and Amy just throws that speech out and just says, you know what, I'm in love with this villain. And then my favorite line, I gotta go. I have a date with the devil. Yes.
00:57:31
Speaker
I have a date with the devil. I also this is weird. I was so distracted by Amy's hair when she was given that speech because it just wasn't done. You know, on my part, I was completely distracted by Lucy Diamond's lip gloss. Like it was just there you go.
00:57:52
Speaker
So much. Yeah. It's like, it was that's kind of sparkly, super, super, that shiny thick shit that people were wearing back then. Yeah. That may look like film. If you were thinking, you know, I want some Y2K inspiration, this is the movie for you. You're like, it's got everything. You know what? Commit. Over-pluck your eyebrows.
00:58:16
Speaker
Overcoat those eyebrows. Get those ultra low-rise jeans. That, you go all the way, okay? Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, so like, you know, she ends up running away with Lucy and the team of three, the four becomes a team of three and we don't care about the other characters because they weren't really.
00:58:39
Speaker
No, no, there was, there's old girl who was French, right? Who basically just had, she didn't even know how to do a French accent most of the time. Like she kept slipping in and out of it and all the only thing to remind me that she was French was that she was smoking all the time and she was sleeping with all the boys.
00:58:57
Speaker
Yeah, she was sleeping with all the boys, so she always had a boy in her room. In her room. And the boys in the room actually looked teenager-y, you know? They looked like teens. They had a youth to them. Teenager-y is totally not a word, but we'll go with it. But it is now. It is now. So she always had a boy in her room. She always wanted him to hurry up and get out. She was smoking a cigarette, and she spoke French.
00:59:23
Speaker
And then there was the other character who was kind of the goody two shoes, but not Megan Goode's character. Megan Goode's character was about the job. Yes, she was about the job. And then you had the goody two shoes who didn't believe. She's like, oh my god, you like her? But she's a girl. Girl. And her mouth was open. Did you notice that she never actually closed her mouth? It was always just kind of, ooh.
00:59:50
Speaker
I was like a bitch. Just constantly, yeah, Janet, I think was her name. Janet, yeah. That's such a... Janet grew up to be a supper mom in the suburbs. Oh, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. But yeah, you know, I really think people should give this movie a chance. Like I said, if it's available on Amazon, go get it. Yeah, for a whole like $2.99, $3.99. Yeah.
01:00:19
Speaker
Anyway, so that brings us to the end of this chat. I feel like we have covered a lot of ground more than I thought we would for this movie.
01:00:30
Speaker
more than I thought we would. I was curious. I was like, Hmm, I wonder how somebody's going to organize this hour of talking about Debs. It's not that deep, but apparently we made it deep. So, you know, I so appreciate you coming on this podcast, Charis. I hope that you will come back again. We'll choose another movie. Um,
01:00:50
Speaker
And thank you, everyone, for listening today. I hope you learned something new about... Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I hope you go and watch other movies by this director because I think she's got a couple of things. Herbie... Herbie Fully Loaded is not one that I thought that she would do, but yeah, that's kind of... It's very interesting, like her repertoire of movies, you know, like...
01:01:16
Speaker
They just don't match up, but here we go. Anyway, thank you everyone for listening. I hope you learned something new. I hope this made you want to go watch it. And if you've already watched it, I hope it made you want to rewatch it. Remember, you can subscribe to this podcast and get notified when our next episode drops. So until next time, thank you so much from the screen. Bye bye.
01:01:45
Speaker
Oh yeah.