Queer kitsch, the varied career of Jimmi Simpson, and whether 'Charlie's Angels knockoff' is such a bad thing after all. In this episode I'm joined by video essayist Queline Meadows (aka Kikikrazed) to explore why D.E.B.S., a lesbian spy parody directed by Angela Robinson in 2001, is a queer comedy is worth watching.

00:00:02:09 - 00:00:23:09
Will
Hi. I'm Will Webb, and this is why you should watch. In today's episode, we're looking at DEBS, the 2003 spy comedy directed by Angela Robinson. Before we get started, if you aren't subscribed yet, then make sure you are so you don't miss out on another cracking episode in future. And if you could leave a comment and give the video a thumbs up, that would be awesome.

00:00:23:23 - 00:00:25:06
Will
Okay. On with the episode.

00:00:27:06 - 00:00:53:13
Voiceover
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 seductress, as some call them spies. Fools call them innocent. They call themselves Debs.

00:00:54:14 - 00:01:21:09
Will
Amy is top of her class at the Debs Academy, where the spies of tomorrow receive their top secret training. But a chance encounter with supervillain Lucy Diamond leads Amy to question her place in Debs, as well as her own sexuality. Joining me to discuss this movie is Queline Meadows, a video essayist whose previous work includes plenty of sight and sound, mentions commissions for the BFI and a physical media release on the film wolfwalkers.

00:01:21:18 - 00:01:25:02
Will
Hope you enjoy our discussion. Hi, Queline, and welcome to the show. Hey.

00:01:25:02 - 00:01:28:00
Queline
Well, thank you for having me. I'm very happy to be here.

00:01:28:00 - 00:01:45:24
Will
Oh, no, thank you. And thank you so much for picking such an interesting film. When I get in touch with people about being in the podcast, what I often say is like, I want to hear about what you think of really interesting films. They don't even have to be good. And I think Debs is like right on the line of being maybe more interesting than good.

00:01:46:03 - 00:02:06:29
Will
I think it's definitely merging the good, but it may not even be good, but we might get into that as we go. I'm happy to have like a fight about it. It's great. And I know that you're a as I use your video essayist and we know each other through discourse, we're part of what I guess we sometimes call in our CVS a collective of video assets who function, who organize remotely.

00:02:06:29 - 00:02:14:09
Will
And one of the things that's come up in that a lot is that you are like a massive rom com fan, particularly Hugh Grant.

00:02:14:09 - 00:02:18:19
Queline
Movies. Yeah, yeah. Notting Hill is is number one for me.

00:02:19:00 - 00:02:21:06
Will
Have you engage with any of the discourse about Notting Hill?

00:02:21:11 - 00:02:22:29
Queline
What's the discourse? What? What?

00:02:23:17 - 00:02:50:03
Will
So Notting Hill, the area of London is a historically black area. It's one of the main historic black areas of London. It's also where our carnival is, is where like the Afro-Caribbean and Caribbean community particular lived from about the fifties onwards. So the fact that Notting Hill, the most famous depiction of this area, features no black cast at all, as far as I can remember, is like quite a discussed point in like for film criticism.

00:02:50:13 - 00:03:12:25
Will
It's interesting because it like it. I think about it as being the the peak of like Blair, Tony Blair like neo liberal cinema because it's basically like imagine a London where there were no black people. Everything was fine in this area. Yeah. So it's interesting. I mean, I really like Richard Curtis movies for what they are. I don't have like a great love of rom coms.

00:03:12:25 - 00:03:13:20
Will
Like, I know you do.

00:03:13:23 - 00:03:16:20
Queline
Yeah, I do know that. I love you, girl. You know that at all about Notting Hill?

00:03:16:21 - 00:03:35:10
Will
I will send you off this. There was a like, I guess what we now call adult animation show on BBC three, which was like a teen focused channel. That kind of come and gone from the airwaves over the years over here. And they did a surreal animated sketch show, basically. And one of the sketches was them shooting at Notting Hill.

00:03:35:10 - 00:04:06:01
Will
It came out in 2000 for the program. And so it's like Hugh Grant as a caricature, like wobbling around of a giant has and there's like a big brick wall and armed police, like holding out anyone who's like, I think they're darker than like a certain color scheme. Yeah. So yeah, it's an interesting it's interesting legacy and I've always wanted to think about like doing a Blair Blair romcoms thing because there's also like Billy Elliot from that time is very light of a school of that kind of film.

00:04:06:27 - 00:04:24:28
Will
But I do love Hugh Grant. I have to say, I think he's like a fab actor. And when he's actually trying, which is, I don't know, maybe half the time he can be he can really act. Yeah, but I love his particular brand of just like, awful. He's great. And I like that he can play a villain and a romantic lead with basically the same character.

00:04:25:24 - 00:04:45:00
Will
He never really changes it. Like to think about how he is in Bridget Jones, where he's essentially the bad guy versus how he is in one of my favorites. And I've said that I confess that I've ever tackled music and lyrics. Oh, okay. Yeah. I like it because it has an excellent fake song in it. Oh, yeah, there's not many.

00:04:45:02 - 00:04:46:17
Queline
Pop Goes My Heart. Yeah, yeah.

00:04:47:01 - 00:05:06:22
Will
Oh, yeah. One of my favorite 80 songs that was not made in the eighties. And yeah, I think even the song at the end is quite good. But yeah, as a as a movie overall, it's not great. But I think that that's like the nadir of his rom com experience, right? He kind of after that took a bit of time off and then did Cloud Atlas where he ate someone.

00:05:06:25 - 00:05:07:25
Will
And I think that kind of.

00:05:08:03 - 00:05:08:10
Queline
That.

00:05:08:16 - 00:05:12:16
Will
Gave him and it gave him a new reputation. And now he does gangster movies nicely.

00:05:12:27 - 00:05:15:23
Queline
And he's going to be in the new Dungeons and Dragons movie, too.

00:05:16:24 - 00:05:34:09
Will
He is, indeed. Yeah. I saw a beautiful interview of someone trying to explain to him what a DM was and him thinking it was something to do with BDSM, which is just like he obviously is not engaged at all, which I love. Good for him. I mean, that's fair enough. And so it's fun that you chose a rom com for us to talk about.

00:05:34:09 - 00:05:52:02
Will
We did actually talk about chatting for me and all of the dying girl, which I think is like a really interesting pic, but maybe for another episode. But Depth is a movie that I like, have very fond memories of having seen the first time, and then I have not watched it about a decade until like about a week ago.

00:05:52:09 - 00:05:56:03
Will
And I would love to hear about how you first came to see that.

00:05:56:12 - 00:06:23:02
Queline
Well, when I watch it, today was my sixth time seeing it. The first time I watched it, it was my freshman year of college. I was 18 and I think I was just like making my way through different like lesbian movies like I had seen. But I'm a cheerleader, I think, these days, but I'm a cheerleader is like the first lesbian movie that a lot of like baby gays will watch.

00:06:24:07 - 00:06:39:29
Queline
So I had seen that a million times and then I heard about Debs. I don't even know, probably like Letterboxd or something. So I watched it on like some legal website and yeah, I just thought it was so awesome and fun.

00:06:41:09 - 00:06:45:27
Will
Yeah. How did you watch it? Like you slept in a dorm room sort of environment. Do you watch it with people?

00:06:45:27 - 00:06:47:04
Queline
I watch it with one of my friends.

00:06:47:23 - 00:07:03:19
Will
We I feel like that's a that's that's how I saw it the first time as well. And I feel like that is a better way of doing it because there's something sort of like crowd pleasing about it that I think maybe doesn't hold up if you watch it just on your own. Like I did this by where I watched any new for the first time as well.

00:07:05:00 - 00:07:27:29
Will
I think it would have been about about six, seven years old. Then the L word had come and gone, which is what Andrew Robinson, the director of this, did after Debs. So I actually did one other thing after Debs that we'll talk about in a sec. But yeah, L-word was the next one. And I actually was also going through all the gay movies basically when I was at uni and they had I'd seen but I'm a cheerleader.

00:07:27:29 - 00:07:53:12
Will
It was like 1 a.m. on film for I was just like one of our free to air film channels in the UK. And I, it's not surprising to me that the Debs would come up. I feel like Debs is what IMDB would recommend you if you had just watched. If you'd gone to the page of I'm a Cheerleader, there's about three years between them and I think there was a real move in comedy in general to go towards like more surreal stuff, heightened sort of settings.

00:07:54:25 - 00:08:05:11
Will
And then there's also that like there's a reaction against it. Like Anchorman is like the dividing line, I think, when they start doing like improv instead and that's 2004, which is the same year this came out. It's all right. You've all.

00:08:06:10 - 00:08:07:10
Queline
Got to take your word and.

00:08:07:10 - 00:08:19:04
Will
Release period because it was indie. Yeah, okay. But yeah, I'd heard about it because it won. She won an award at Sundance for the short film The Starter Off. Have you seen the short film?

00:08:19:04 - 00:08:19:15
Queline
No.

00:08:20:20 - 00:08:49:19
Will
So it's essentially the opening title sequence of the film. It's basically like an intro for a fake TV show about Debs and it has like the SAT tests and stuff like that, which is great and it's really fun, a very crowd pleasing. And I think at Sundance they must have been like, Well, fuck, fuck. It's like fun. And I do think that's like the place that it has in the kind of queer cinema canon and in America anyway, because like so many LGBT films are tremendously sad, like for really good reason, but it's nice to have like, like fun.

00:08:50:01 - 00:09:10:10
Will
And I think even but I'm a cheerleader is very much about it's about gay conversion camps, right? Like it's not inherently a fun premise, it's just the way that the film treats it. And so yeah, I would have introduced the plot a little bit, but just to recap it, like Debs basically is about a group of indeterminate aged girls.

00:09:10:10 - 00:09:12:25
Will
I think they're supposed to be like in their early twenties.

00:09:12:25 - 00:09:13:04
Queline
Yeah.

00:09:13:20 - 00:09:44:12
Will
But they're wearing schoolgirl outfits and they tend to institution with a headmistress that seems to be training them for spy work. And no one really knows how they're select, why they're selected as they're selected through the SAT test. And they have a handler who is Michael Clarke Duncan dearly departed massive nerd that he was and yeah it basically uses that as a jumping off point to tell essentially like a coming out story within the context of supervillains and a very cops and robbers way.

00:09:44:12 - 00:09:55:06
Will
So I was wondering like, what hit you about that when you first watched it? Because you I guess you'd seen all the major rom coms by this point, right? You'd seen the holy text. Yeah. The Richard Curtis is the Nancy Meyers.

00:09:55:25 - 00:10:23:15
Queline
Yeah. Well, I think the thing is, especially with like other gay movies, it's like a lot of them, like they're good, but they have to do with like coming out is like a major conflict. Like being gay is a major conflict. Like and with Debs. The the real problem with Amy. Amy, I think is the one who gets the Lucy Diamond.

00:10:23:15 - 00:10:42:18
Queline
It's like, yes, she discovers that she's gay. But to me, like in the film, the problem is just that she's, like, sleeping with the enemy, you know? It's like, not like really an issue that that she's queer. So I just, like that.

00:10:42:18 - 00:10:49:07
Will
I think no one actually mentions it when they find her in bed. They're like, immediately, like, oh, come on. Like, she's the enemy instead of anything else.

00:10:49:10 - 00:11:10:20
Queline
Like someone like Holland, Taylor's character or the headmistress makes a joke, like, Oh, like you wanted to have your collegiate lesbian fling in style. Well, yeah, it's just like it just. And I just. I think it's nice to watch a movie where it's not a big deal that someone's gay. So.

00:11:11:16 - 00:11:34:04
Will
Yeah, and it seems like not unexpected within the context either. One of the things that strikes me really early on is that we meet this super villain character, who's Lucy Diamond, which is his greatest Jordana Brewster, who I think is underrated. I mean, she's very funny and she's very funny in this context. I think the name of her lackey, the actor, could really recognize him.

00:11:34:05 - 00:11:34:17
Queline
Good.

00:11:34:17 - 00:11:34:27
Will
Yes.

00:11:34:27 - 00:11:36:11
Queline
Got played by Jimmi Simpson.

00:11:36:26 - 00:11:55:16
Will
Yeah. Who's like well, these people, he pops up in, like hundreds of things in like small but weird roles. He always plays that character and he's a great kind of counterpoint to her. And we see her like doing some evil plan that looks like she's setting up a hit. And then it turns out to be the she's being set up on a first date with this ex assassin or possibly current assassin.

00:11:56:01 - 00:12:24:25
Will
And what I like about that is that there'