Kill James Bond! - S4E2.5: Spice World [PREVIEW]

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

In the late 90s, close to half of british state intelligence apparatus and nearly 60% of the GDP was involved in some manner in maintaining a phenomenon known as 'cool Britannia'. The Spice Girls were a girl band formed from open auditions with the aim of creating a group capable of cutting across every demographic in britain, creating a cultural juggernaut that could rival the Britpop boybands of the day. At the height of their success, their manager's brother wrote a film about them, with them playing themselves. This is that film. ----- FREE PALESTINE Hey, Devon here. For the past few months I've been talking to a family trapped in Gaza, working to cover their daily living costs amidst repeated displacements in the Genocide. Their names are Ahmed and Layla, and their 4 kids are Jana, Malik, Lana and Amir. Anything you can contribute would mean the world to me. They deserve to live. https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/MajedAqi https://www.map.org.uk/donate/donate ----- Consider supporting us on our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond ------ WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com

[♪THEME MUSIC PLAYING [♪THEME MUSIC PLAYING [♪THEME MUSIC PLAYING Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Kill James Bond. I'm November Kelly and I'm joined as always by my friends Abigail Thorne and Devon. Hey bitches! Hi! It's girls night. It's the most girls night it's fucking girls night. It's the most girls night it's ever been. Devon, thank you for an inspired choice of bonus episode.

Yeah, this was actually genuinely, as always Devon, you choose films and I'm like, oh for fuck's sake, how are we gonna get anything out of this? Knocked it out of the fucking park. And then it's like the most seminal feminist text of 1997. Thank you. I had to make up for cruising one way or another. This is Spice World, baby. We're talking 1997? 99?

97. 97, Spice World. Spice World or every British prison after about 2015. Spice World or is that calling it nowadays D 2015. RILEY Spice World, or as they're calling it nowadays, Dune. ALICE A Rackus. RILEY Let's get that out of the way. ALICE I had it buried like three quarters of the way into the notes, I was gonna try

and ambush people with it, it's fine, they'll forget. RILEY You'll still be able to do it, I'm sure. ALICE So yeah, if you're not familiar with The Spice Girls, this is the movie that they made of them. For those who don't know, during the New Labour years, the Spice Girls were a popular mass movement that while not formally part of the government, were like, delegated a lot of governmental t- they were sort of like Hezbollah. Yeah.

In many ways. I mean, listen, over in America you spend all of your government money on giving, like, Air Force guys mind controlling drugs and seeing if they can see Mars. We spent it on getting together all the girls in England and choosing a band out of them. They held open auditions for the Spice Girls. ALICE Yes! Yeah, this was a deep state project to create a girl group that would kind of like, unify the nation. And it did. And it did.

Well, it unified many nations because the Spice Girls were like, internationally, hugely popular. Cool Britannia. Like global. They were a big part of it. Anyway, as part of this phenomenon- They were like, critical national infrastructure. For real, yeah.

Genuinely. And so as part of this, they made a movie. I will say, in 2007, One Pole ranked this as the worst British film ever made. Wrong. Oh, that's harsh. It is currently sitting at 35% on Rotten Tomatoes. Well, yeah, that's about right. Listen, I have some thoughts about this, and we'll get to them.

Yes. We should introduce the Spice Girls, of whom there are five. Of whom there are five, and three of them Abi can do a pitch perfect impression of, I found this out pre-recorded. Yeah, we'll get to that. But like, in 1997, this was pre-Financial Crash, so you could have a girl band with five members in, this is the kind of ridiculously profligate thing that you couldn't do now. Nowadays for that you'd have to go to like Korea or something.

But yeah, but they were Mel, Emma, Mel, Jerry, and Victoria. It's also, it's really weird to see Victoria Beckham before she hit the big become Victoria Beckham. Yeah, for real. This is a, like, huge cultural output, but this is still a larval Victoria Beckham, like she hadn't fully hit the big time yet. So just to run down the Spice Girls typology here, they each have like a code name, like a personality. So we have Mel C, Sporty Spice. Yes, she's the lesbian.

Mel B, Scary Spice. Yes. Yes. She's black. Not clear why she's scary. Emma, Emma Bunsen, who's Baby Spice. Yes, because she's childlike and blonde. Victoria, who is posh spice.

Yep, self explanatory. There's so much to say about that, but yeah, keep going. And then Geri Halliwell who is, oh fuck, what was- Ginger spice, baby, because she's ginger. Ginger spice! That's it. Couldn't think of anything other than ginger spice. Yeah, they got some ideas themselves.

Train spotting spice. Tell you what, what about brook layer spice? I sure hope she do. Yeah. But yeah, so, they're a girl group, and this is a movie in the mold of like, A Hard Day's Night, where the band are playing themselves, and it's like a fictionalized version of, oh, I wonder what adventures the Beatles get up to, day to day. What are the Spice Girls up to?

Yeah, exactly. So we open on them, the five girls doing a gig, and we meet a couple of characters who are going to be important in the film, in addition to the five girls themselves. One of them is their manager, Clifford. Yes, I fucking love this guy. We have so much to talk about Clifford. Clifford, Stan Clifford, first of all. This is Richard E. Grant, an incredible casting choice. Richard E. Grant, legendary English actor. purple tie, purple shirt, then he swipes in a green jacket, green shirt, green tie. He knows where his bread is fucking butted. He looks great.

He's got one that's just like all leather, he's got like a leather three piece suit, I'm like, god, you must be fucking dying in that, Mick. His first line, by the way, is- I sense the vibes. Which I just appreciate in and of itself. I've got a great vibe, sensor. He's their manager, he's kind of a bit of a stick in the mud, he's very like, we've gotta be on schedule, you've gotta work hard, you've gotta be professionals, he's in contrast to

the girls themselves, who are like, we're just trying, girls just wanna have fun. Yeah, they're like, flighty. Cause like, one of the things that the Spice Girls did was invent feminism, with a heavy asterisk in Britain. Yes, yeah, girl power as a phrase. Was their slogan, yeah. And girl power, we're not defining girl power, but I have a list of things that girl power is, and we'll build to the definition. Right now, one of the things that girl power is about is being yourself and having fun, and mucking about.

That's number one. Absolutely. With a bullet. Yes. Yeah. Like, number one and two, be yourself and have fun with it, number one. Number two, muck about, right? And so, you need a- Being on time? That's not girl power at all. That's fucking stupid. No, no.

Absolutely. The other guy who we have here is a friend of the show, and a guy I just went drinking with in Edinburgh a little while ago, Alan Cumming. A guy I legitimately love to see. Seeing his name in the credits, I have a homophobic slur to say. You'll be in anything Alan. You'll be in Bellity Well Anything. No, no, let's not do that.

I won't say it to him. I will say about Alan Cumming, right, I love him as an actor, by his own account this was his favourite film to work on. And I think that speaks very well of Spice World. It does. Yeah, everyone seems to be having fun on the set of Spice World, I will say. Yeah, sorry to turn this into guy I love to see hour, but that's kind of what the film is, right? Because there's, per the Telegraph's invaluable article, it's not actually titled this, but it should be, A People's History of Spiceworld, everybody in British, like British

acting, wanted a cameo in this for a couple of reasons. The Spice Girls were critical national infrastructure. Everyone else wanted a cameo in this, and actors move in herds, and they, like, a lot of them have kids who are very into the Spice Girls. Bob Hoskins has a little cameo in this, and actors move in herds, and they, like, a lot of them have kids who were very into the Spice Girls. Bob Hoskins has a little cameo in this movie because his kids loved the Spice Girls and bullied him into doing it, like Raoul Julian, Street Fighter. And I, I literally, I wrote this down in my notes, un-paused, and the next shot was Elton John.

So it's just, it's like this for an hour and a half. So Alan Cumming is Piers, who's playing, he's like a very posh video journalist. There's so much like, class media politics going on in this film. Yes. Yeah, but they don't let him use his real accent in this, boy he's got this kind of like, very poshh accent which is frankly a little bit activating. I actually don't have it on the thing, but like, he's this documentarian who's following them around and he's very pretentious, he's trying to get into their inner lives, there's

a mean joke about that later. But so, these are the two sort of supporting characters we're stuck with introducing. We, incidentally, we get, they get led out of the gig, and we get a curious detail, a curiously upsetting and realistic detail, which is, there aren't supposed to be any fans, but because it's like, it's a hard day's night, there's like a ton of screaming fans outside, and paparazzi, and Richard E. Grant has to stop the paparazzi from upskirting the fucking Spice Girls. Yeah! On the red carpet! bond, all one word, and sign up today for just £5 a month. You get everything at £5 a month. There's no reason to give us more than £5 a month unless you're like, you love

it, you're a piggy. Yeah, you're gonna have to do it this week, because I can really only get away with accidentally posting the whole bonus episode once, I think. I'll see you there. Moi.