D.E.B.S.
They make a lot of movies about dogs. Dogs that play basketball,
do karate, solve mysteries etc. The
thing is, these movies are totally degrading to dogs
by forcing them to do totally unnatural things so that they can amuse a human
audience. I doubt if dogs could make
their own films they would be so stupid, or if dogs could at least choose which
films they went to see they wouldn’t go see movies about dogs driving racecars or whatever.
What’s even worse is that lesbians get the same screen treatment as
dogs, and they’re human.
Most movies featuring or about lesbians are not made
for the gay audience. Movies like Wild Things and Bound force lesbianism into an arena for the amusement of straight
guys. When you see a movie like DEBS
it’s pretty freaky. It actually shows
lesbians on dates where the conversation is awkward and two people have
difficultly interpreting each other’s signals.
When they smooch it’s not all showy and eroticized, it’s kinda just like how normal people kiss each other. And even though the characters in this movie
all dress in school girl uniforms and spend plenty of time snuggling there’s
never the feeling that you’re watching a TATU video.
This movie handles the main relationship with a sweet
sincerity and awkward realism reminiscent of the better Sex and the City
episodes. The weird thing is that this
movie is about Amy (played by Sara Foster of little to no fame), the leader of an
elite group of international crime fighters who all dress like
schoolgirls. Amy falls in love with Lucy
Diamond (played by Fast and the Furious star, Jordana
Brewster) who is an international crime lord complete with an evil layer called
‘Evil Layer’. These are two lovers from
opposite sides of the tracks, just like in Grease, only despite DEBS
being about homosexuals, DEBS is somehow less gay than Grease.
The Amy character did not know she was gay until an
intense Resevoir Dogs moment where she
corned Lucy Diamond on a mission. Amy
had never been interested in boys and constantly avoided a nice handsome guy
she dated named Bobby who is a NSA sniper.
She doesn’t really like being a superspy and
would rather study art because she sees it as a more accepting community. Lucy Diamond was a megalomaniac who says she
never had trouble holding the world hostage with hijacked nuclear weapons, but
has always been unlucky in love. After a
disastrous blind date with an ex-KGB assassin, Lucy was ready to give up on
love, but when ambushed by DEBS spy, Amy, she begins to believe again.
The film follows a realistic relationship of Amy’s
doubt-riddled self discovery as a lesbian and Lucy’s character seems to be
pretty accurate of successful people who need to learn how to handle human
relationships. Of course the other DEBS
agents find out about Lucy and Amy and this creates problems.
The writer/director/editor (a triple job title that
can be summarized as Robert Rodriguez) is a lady named Angela Robinson. On the DVD she talks about how DEBS
started as a comic strip that she doodled just for kicks while in film
school. She said she always played
around with the DEBS characters while she was thinking up ideas for the
type of film “that
independent filmmakers are supposed to want to make”. I’m assuming she’s talking about those
bullshit indie movies where a dysfunctional family
gets together for Thanksgiving and realize that they are all absurd one
dimensional caricatures designed to clash with each
other in a series of critically acclaimed performances. Fuck, I hate those movies. Needless to say DEBS does have any of
that indie movie nonsense where the gay artist kid
asks the anal republican kid to pass the yams and a big fight breaks out and
somebody’s drug problem gets brought up and Maggie Gyllenhall
has a big confrontation with her estranged father who is dying and Zach Braff learns to blah blah blah fucking blah…
No this movie has none of that shit. It has some fun stuff like the classic scene
where a boyfriend teaches his girlfriend how to drive and the girlfriend bumps
into a dumpster and stalls the car, except that in DEBS Lucy is teaching
Amy how to drive a tricked-out James Bond car and Amy accidentally fires one of
the attack rockets, blows up a dumpster…. and stalls the car. There’s also a great bridging section when
Lucy has to convince Amy that she doesn’t want to be a supervillian
anymore and begins wiring all the money she’s robbed the world of back to its
rightful owners. This scene is done as a
montage to the song ‘A Little Respect’ by Erasure and Lucy dances around
singing into a broom handle while the bank transfers
go through. I found this pretty wacky
since my song choice for such an occasion would be ‘China Girl’ by David Bowie,
which is a very similar song. On the DVD
they mention that Jordana Brewster felt uncomfortable
doing this singing and dancing and was actually more apprehensive about what to
do than during any of her lesbian love scenes.
I found this pretty surprising. I
mean I know Jordana’s a Yale graduate and the
daughter of a supermodel, but I figured everybody danced around to new wave
songs when they were home alone or had at least seen Risky Business and
knew the drill. I know there are guys
who teach movie stars how to do karate and play poker and speak with accents,
so maybe I have a future teaching actors how dance around to new wave songs in
their knickers.
The story of how this film came into production is that
the film’s Robert Rodriguez, Angela Robinson, got funding from some feminist
organization to make a short ten minute film of her comic strip. She took the ten minute version to Sundance
or some place and then the big movie execs liked what they saw. Robinson says on the DVD that they called her
into their office and offered her 2 million dollars in budget to make this
movie but she had to say ‘yes’ then or else the money would “disappear”. This sounds pretty magical, the kind of
ultimatum that David Bowie would give Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth. I’m guessing it wasn’t actually magic
disappearing money and that this was just a test to see if Robinson was some
kind of retard who would actually have think about whether she wanted to make a
2 million dollar film or return to unemployment.
That being said, I’m really amazed at the quality of
this film for two million dollars of budget and a month long shooting
schedule. That’s not much. Jordana must’ve had
to learn to lip sing and bop around to Erasure practically overnight and
without the benefit expensive coaching. DEBS
frequently gets compared to that Charlie’s Angels movie, but I think if DEBS
had had the budget Chuck’s Angels got it would’ve blown it away. I’m sure it takes 2 million dollars alone to
hire enough guys to roll Drew Barrymore out of bed in the morning and hose the cracksweat off her, let alone paying those wire operators
to help Drew jump and kick and nod.
The lack of budget is not as obvious as you’d
think. Jordana’s
evil layer, the explosions and ‘forcefield’ /
‘beaming up’ computer effects are on the same professional quality as the Power
Rangers, which is not bad. It’s
obvious that they didn’t have the budget when you look at the way some of the
scenes are cut. Most of these action
directors these days graduate from the school of whizbang
filmmaking, in which characters frequently seem to teleport in that you never
see them walk anywhere. You see them
leaning forward in their chair and then BAM! they’re
across the room at the bar and they’re already pouring a drink. These whizbang guys
also do fight scenes more as summaries of fights. You see every impact and the occasional
pained reaction, but never any wind ups or missed punches. DEBS didn’t have the money to put five
cameras whooshing around the same shot and DEBS didn’t have the time in
the editing room to jump-cut everything together. You actually see characters run across entire
rooms. You see them squat, leap, land
and recover when jumping instead of most movies where characters are just
suddenly in the air and then back on the ground fighting without missing a
beat. This movie really makes you aware
of how slow people actually run and how jumping makes most people look kinda awkward and man’s
ability to jump and slide are not really as useful as John Woo has led me to
believe.
I’m going to level with you. This is not the best movie ever made, but
it’s got heart and some good laughs. If
you liked Charlie’s Angels and But I’m a Cheerleader, then take
the average of those two and you’ll find out how much you’ll like this. Or maybe you’re dying and always wanted to
see Charlie’s Angels and But I’m a Cheerleader and since you have
little time left for this world you can see them both at once in viewing DEBS.
This movie is a starting point for a lot of successful
careers, and although not perfect, you can feel all the talent at work
here. Angela Robinson, the director,
went on to work The L Word, what I understand to be a lesbian take on Sex
and the City. It’s supposed to be
pretty good. The lead actress, Sara
Foster, went on to get larger breasts but smaller roles. Funny. The chain-smoking sex addict French DEBS
agent went on to have roles in 2 Fast 2 Furious and
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