‘D.E.B.S.,’ Angela Robinson’s first feature-length film, is like ‘Charlie’s Angels’ with a lesbian twist. It opens nationwide on March 25. She’s finishing post-production work on her second full-length feature, Walt Disney Pictures’ ‘Herbie: Fully Loaded,’ which stars Lindsay Lohan. (Photos courtesy of Screen Gems)
advertisement
advertisement
|
SARAH KELLOGG
Friday, March 18, 2005
ANGELA ROBINSON makes the trip from near obscurity to Hollywood wunderkind look easy.
The lesbian director, writer and editor of the soon-to-be-released “D.E.B.S.,” Robinson has gone from toiling on the late shift editing somebody else’s film to helming a $70 million remake of a Disney children’s classic in just three years.
That she bursts on the scene with “D.E.B.S.,” her saucy tale of spy hijinks, lesbian love and kicky fashions, is no less extraordinary given that not so long ago she didn’t know whether to turn her idea into a movie or a comic book.
Even more astonishing for Robinson is that she’s fielding reporters’ questions about “D.E.B.S.” as she’s finishing post-production work on her second full-length film, Walt Disney Pictures’ “Herbie: Fully Loaded,” which stars Lindsay Lohan.
“It’s really insane,” says Robinson, 33. “The other day I looked around and there were all these people working with me. I mean it was surreal. I remember when there were just a few of us, and now I have a staff.”
“D.E.B.S.” hits movie screens around the country on March 25, opening here in Washington at Loews Dupont Circle.
Robinson still marvels that the film, a takeoff on “Charlie’s Angels” with a dash of “Clueless” and a smidge of “The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love” mixed in, found a home in Hollywood. After all, lesbian love stories and action adventure flicks aren’t two genres that usually click or get financed by studio execs.
“I think it’s difficult to make a movie with gay themes at all, but then to make it in Hollywood is even more amazing,” she says. “The new gauntlet for a gay filmmaker is to make a second film, and that’s what I’m doing now. Amazing.”
If Robinson’s a little gee-whiz about her success, forgive her. It’s still sinking in that she doesn’t have to do everything on the set anymore. There really are people who make the postcards, splice together the trailer and go get coffee.
“It’s never the moments you think it’s going to be that remind you that you’ve made it,” she says. “It’s these funny moments. I can’t tell you how excited I was to get the soundtrack album for “Herbie.” It had plastic wrap on it, and I just sat there and looked at the plastic wrap. I didn’t want to take it out.”
BUT DON’T THINK the plastic wrap is going to her head. Robinson isn’t interested in turning into another Hollywood sellout. She’s an auteur with a vision, and she’s determined to emulate the formula of her heroes Robert Rodriquez (“Spy Kids”) and Peter Jackson (“Lord of the Rings”), two filmmakers who didn’t sell their souls to work with major studios.
“I’m really inspired by filmmakers that come from independent roots and still work in the studio system,” says Robinson, who counts “Cabaret” and “Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark” as her most influential films. “When you look at their films, you know that a real auteur made them. My goal is to work on a huge scale, but with my particular vision.”
What’s that vision?
Well, first it’s got a sense of humor, tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek, thank you. Second, it doesn’t hurt if there’s a little action, as in high-wire, seat-of-the-pants adventure. And third, well, it would have to be her gay sensibility — call it drag queen on steroids.
“Angela is just one of the funniest people I know,” says Stacy Codikow, the founder of POWER UP, a Los Angeles nonprofit that helps finance and staff independent gay films. “She’s that rare combination of shyness and talent, completely secure in herself.”
It was POWER UP that awarded Robinson a grant in 2002 to make a 10-minute version of “D.E.B.S.” The film almost didn’t win that grant, because one of the judges thought its special effects might make the movie too pricey to produce.
Codikow said the rest of the panel of judges could see the promise in the girl-power story, the hip sensibility and the witty dialogue. Talent won out. Robinson was one of three filmmakers to win a grant that year.
“It’s such a crossover film,” Codikow explains. “It’s a mainstream, regular movie that has a lesbian relationship at its core. And she treats it as a matter of fact. Girls have lesbian relationships.”
If there’s a fairytale portion of Robinson’s story, it’s what happened next.
At the POWER UP premiere of the short film in November 2002, industry bigwigs, including Ilene Chaiken, the creator of “The L Word,” were bowled over. By the end of the evening, she had appointments with producers. By the end of the week, she had a job on “The L Word.”
Working on “The L Word” might be considered a lesbian’s career climax, but for Robinson, it turned out to be another stop along the way. She worked as a staff writer for 13 weeks, helping to flesh out the show’s characters and to build the backbone of the first season’s storylines. For those who pay attention to these details, she’d most want to date the Bette Porter character played by Jennifer Beals, who like Robinson is biracial.
ROBINSON GREW UP in Palos Verdes, an upscale community near Los Angeles. Her first studio break came after the short version of “D.E.B.S.” entered the festival circuit, arriving at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2003. It was there that Sony Screen Gems snapped up the film and tapped Robinson to write and direct the full-length movie.
A year later, “D.E.B.S.” the feature was playing to rave reviews on the festival circuit, including the Reel Affirmations Film Festival here in Washington, and Robinson was working on the lot at Disney.
“From ‘Chickula: Teenage Vampire’ to the short and then subsequent feature ‘D.E.B.S.’, we have seen Angela’s talents and we always were expecting great things,” says Joe Bilancio, who oversees programming for Reel Affirmations. “We can only hope the next major production goes back to a GLBT theme so we can showcase one of our community’s finest talents.”
At some point, the handful of gay filmmakers who make it in Hollywood find themselves where Robinson is now. Gay and lesbian audiences would like her to keep telling their stories, while Hollywood has got something else in mind. She’s determined to find her own path.
“I was on some panel about what’s next for gay film,” Robinson says. “We were talking about whether it’s always going to be exclusively gay or whether gay themes or characters are an element of broader films. I think there will be some gay films, but I do think it makes sense to make us a part of the story just like everyone else.”
Robinson’s part in the story is that of confident-if-slightly bewildered creator. With an imagination borne of old-school comic books a lá “Wonder Woman” and the “Justice League” and a love for the rat-tat-tat of musicals and dance, Robinson is carving out her own special place in Hollywood, one film at a time.
“I had a big fantasy life when I was a kid,” she says. “Both my parents worked a lot so I was on my own reading and watching TV. I think of ‘D.E.B.S.’ as coming from that kind of fantasy life. It’s like ‘Charlie’s Angels’ but what you wished would have really happened.”
|
