The Brainstorming of the Post for D.E.B.S. (2005)

This week, with the movie D.E.B.S. being my focal point, I’m going to let you guys in on a little bit of background on how I write the Sunday “Bad” Movie posts.  Is this because you need to know this information?  Not at all.  Most of you probably don’t even care at all about how I get the posts written.  If you’re reading the posts, you probably only care that there are posts to read.  And I know that not too many people are actually reading them.  So the number of people that this post is going to mean anything to will actually be next to none.

What this post is going to be is a brainstorming session about what I could have written this week.  The reason I chose to do this kind of post was that a lot of the ideas I was coming up with ended in the same sort of way.  I didn’t feel like I had enough knowledge to fully back up writing an entire post based on the themes.  There are two major concepts that I came up with that I think could have made for highly interesting posts, but my lack of knowledge in those areas of film would have made me seem obnoxious, uncaring, or downright unintelligent if I were to write about them in a lengthy post at this point in my life.  I just don’t know enough about the subjects to feel comfortable.  Other ideas that I had I just pushed away because I didn’t want to do those concepts or I thought they would be boring.  The idea of taking a look at ideas that I come up with for the posts seemed like one that could be enlightening for readers, and one that I would be able to write about with a good knowledge of the subject.

But before I get to that, let me tell you guys about the movie that spawned all of these thoughts.  It seems like a good place to start the brainstorming session.  I watched a 2004 movie called D.E.B.S.  The movie is a love story between two women.  One of them is a college aged spy, and the other is a mastermind criminal terrorist.  It’s kind of like a Romeo and Juliet, without anyone dying, and with a lot of early millennium teenage movie cheese.  It’s action, it’s comedy, it’s romance, and it’s not that good.  I’d still say it’s worth watching for Jimmi Simpson, since he’s always fairly great in his acting, but it could easily not be your type of movie.  I enjoyed it though, so there’s that.

So now that you know what the movie is, I’m going to get into the ideas that I had thought of when trying to decide what to write about for D.E.B.S.  Most of the ideas that I’m going to write about here were ideas that I had already come up with prior to beginning this post.  There might be a couple of ideas that appear while I’m writing this, too.  I’m going to set it up by type of ideas, explain the idea, and then explain the good and bad of the idea.  By the end of my writing about each idea, you should know why I didn’t use that idea.  It’s time to begin.

The Usual Suspects

This whole categorizing of ideas coming up covers the ideas that I could use for writing about almost any movie that I watch.  There are certain blueprints for posts that could be used every single week.  Most of the time, I try not to use these concepts when writing my posts because they feel a little bit lazier to me, and I tend to not like writing in these ways.  There is no real challenge to it other than getting the words out.  Sometimes they are things that have been written many times before and I feel that my writing of them will add nothing to the discussion.  And other times, I just think it won’t be fun to write or interesting to read.

The first of the usual suspects is a straight review of the movie.  I guess it could have been semi-interesting for D.E.B.S. because not a lot of people talk about the movie.  Having my input about the movie could interest some people.  And though you already know that I enjoyed the movie even though I can admit it’s bad, I could have elaborated on that to make you understand why.  However, there are some things about a straight review of D.E.B.S. that I would have had problems with.  Most of it comes down to my interest in reviewing movies.  I review movies for another website.  The fact that I do that makes me prefer not to review movies in other places.  I like to write different stuff.  I like the variety of writing different things.  If I’m going to write a review for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, I tend to keep that limited to newer bad movies that most people wouldn’t have seen yet.  That way, I feel a direction in what I am writing that keeps me more invested than I would be writing about a forgotten movie from the early millennium that nobody cares about.

Another of the usual suspects is to single out an actor and write about their history in bad movies.  D.E.B.S. had a few people that I could have written about for this week’s post.  Sara Foster whose two big movies, I believe, are this one and The Big Bounce.  Or Jordana Brewster who is really only doing Fast and Furious movies anymore.  And there’s Jimmi Simpson who can entertain me with any role he fills, even if he is in something terrible.  Finally, there’s Michael Clarke Duncan who was in a previous Sunday “Bad” Movie.  But my problem with this idea is how lazy the idea is.  Unless I have a personal connection to the actor, like I did with Paul Walker, I feel like it would just be a listing of credits.  It would also be worse if I hadn’t seen many of the person’s movies.  And the one time I did write a post about a specific actor, I don’t think it turned out as well as I wanted.  It was a release for me, but it wasn’t a good post.  A look at an actor’s movies only works if you talk about the movies and your connection to their work, and that only works if you’ve seen their movies.  With all of the actors in the movie, I haven’t seen their whole filmography and feel like I couldn’t do them justice because of that.

The final idea that I’m going to put into this section are two ideas that are similar but done differently.  One of them is the live commentary.  To the reader this isn’t actually live.  What it entails is me writing while watching the movie, and pointing out the absurdities as I watch it.  The problem with this is one that I noticed while doing this with Exit Wounds.  I can’t be writing a commentary post for a movie I’ve never seen before.  Therefore, D.E.B.S. could not have this kind of post.  The other kind of post in this vein is just me writing about the crazy things I just witnessed.  The writing, in this case, happens after I watch the movie.  I just make a list of events from the movie I watch and write about why I found them as insane as they are.  The main reason that I didn’t do this for D.E.B.S. is because, as crazy as I thought it was, it didn’t go over the top enough that I found it unbelievable.  These posts are usually my way of coming to terms with the unbelievably dumb nature of the movie.  This movie wasn’t quite that.

The No Ways

This type of post is a blueprint that I have for some movies that just doesn’t fit with the movie.  As much as the idea pops into my head, there is no possible way to do the idea because there is something about either the movie or my experience watching it that just stops that from happening.  It’s nothing against the blueprint or the movie.  It’s just impossible to mix the two in this case.

The main reason I made this entire category was to talk about the post I’ve done a few times where I write about my history with the movie at hand.  I like these posts.  I get to write about what the movie means to me, my experience watching the movie in the past, and how the movie has informed my appreciation of bad movies.  It lets you, the reader, get to know me a little more while also learning about the bad movie that I had just rewatched.  There was no way that I could write this kind of post this week since it was my first time watching D.E.B.S.  I have no history with it, can’t enlighten you on how it changed me… I hadn’t seen it until now.  So that’s why this post couldn’t happen.

Unique Ideas

Now we enter the fun zone of the Sunday “Bad” Movie posts.  This section is about the ideas that were wholly inspired by the movie of the week.  In this case, the movie was 2004’s D.E.B.S., so these topics are topics that were thought up after watching the movie this past week.  Actually, saying they were wholly thought up this week might be wrong.  Some might have been ideas I had and didn’t use for other movies that also fit into any themes within this week’s movie.  For the most part, I believe these ideas only came up this week though.  Not positive, but pretty sure.

In my summary of D.E.B.S., I brought up the fact that the movie heavily involves a romance between two women.  I thought that looking at homosexual relationships in bad movies might be an interesting idea to tackle.  I still think that it could make for an interesting concept.  However, I don’t feel like I am the right person to tackle the topic.  I am a straight white male.  I don’t have much experience in the gay culture, especially gay female culture.  Not that it’s really touched upon in D.E.B.S.  Though the two people in love are female, the gender of one of them could have been swapped and the movie would basically be the same.  But I also don’t have much of a cinematic background with that kind of relationship either.  Maybe if I watch more movies with same sex relationships I will feel comfortable touching upon the subject in a full post.  Right now, I don’t feel comfortable with it.

The same could be said for the next idea.  I dabbled with the idea of writing about movies centered on female teams.  The problem is that I can’t think of many movies that center on that concept, and I have seen fewer.  Though I think it would be a great topic to write about, I am not yet the right person to cover the topic.  I feel like my writing would be lacking if I were to tackle the subject.  So I didn’t.

In the end, I chose one of the topics I didn’t even cover in the post.  I chose to take a behind-the-scenes look at the Sunday “Bad” Movies and let you in on my thought process as I tried to write this week’s post.  I did that because I haven’t let you in on how I make these posts lately.  I did it because I didn’t feel comfortable with any of the other topics that I had thought up for various reasons.  This was the first idea I had for this week’s post that I felt was a good fit with me for this week.  And I feel like it turned out alright.  It was about the movie while being about anything but the movie.  It doesn’t feel like a complete mess as some recent posts have.  And I highly enjoyed writing the post this week.  That’s all that matters to me.  I need to like what I write.

I hope you enjoyed this look at how I come up with what I write as well.  I hope you got to know a little more about me and about how this blog works.  D.E.B.S. was a good movie to use as the inspiration for a post on the brainstorming of ideas that I go through in a typical week.  There were many components to it that made me debate some ideas that I have for posts on a regular basis.  And there were some meaty parts to the movie that would make for good topics to cover.  So there were a lot of choices that I could have made with the post, and a lot of reasons why I couldn’t use those topics to write the post.  What I came up with was this post.  It’s a good post.  I’m glad to have made it, and I’ll be glad if you enjoy it.

There are a few notes before we’re done here:

• D.E.B.S. was suggested for the Sunday “Bad” Movies by none other than @thenickisaac.
• I brought up that Michael Clarke Duncan was in another Sunday “Bad” Movie.  It was called A Crush on You.
• Other female group led movies I have covered are Chopper Chicks in Zombietown and Bratz: The Movie.
• I also mentioned Exit Wounds in the post.
• Have you seen D.E.B.S.?  Do you think it dealt with a lesbian relationship well?  Did you enjoy it?  Did you enjoy this post?  Would you like to know more about what goes into making the Sunday “Bad” Movies?  You can ask questions, answer questions, or just comment in the comment section.
• If you have suggestions for what I should watch for future installments of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can leave them in the comments section.  You can also suggest them to me on Twitter, or by emailing your suggestions to sundaybadmovies@gmail.com.
• I still don’t know what this month’s bonus post is going to be, but I have two days off now and I’ll figure it out during the two days.  I’ll tell you next week, I promise.
• Next week’s movie is Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, the first triple suggested movie ever.  You can watch in on YouTube like I did.  Have fun with that one.