Penelope SpheerisFilmography

Born:: December 2, 1945 in New Orleans, LA
Occupation:: Director, Producer, Screenwriter
Biography:: Majoring in film at UCLA, Penelope Spheeris launched her career by producing short subjects for satirist Albert Brooks, many of which were highlights of "Saturday Night Live's" first season. When Brooks stepped up to feature films with Real Life (1978), Spheeris stayed on as his producer. Her...Read More

Sort By:
Title
Release Date

The Gospel According to Janis

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Zooey Deschanel

Synopsis: The Decline of Western Civilization director Penelope Spheeris teams with screenwriter David Dalton for this lovingly crafted biopic of the iconic, 1960s-era "Me and Bobby McGee" singer, starring Zooey Deschanel in the eponymous role. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide Read More

2007
The Kid & I

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Tom Arnold, Eric Gores, Linda Hamilton, Henry Winkler

Synopsis: A washed-up actor finds an unlikely path back to the big screen in this offbeat family comedy. Bill Williams (Tom Arnold) is an actor whose career has gone into a severe tailspin ever since his brief fling with fame -- a supporting role in the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle True Lies. Sinking into Read More

12/2/05
Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

Synopsis: The Z Channel wasn't America's first premium cable outlet specializing in feature films, and it wasn't the most commercially successful, but few, if any, had as strong an impact on the film industry or a more influential list of customers. Based in California and blanketing sections of the state Read More

10/15/04
Hollywood High

Synopsis: This exhaustively researched cable-TV documentary traces the history of drug movies, from camp classics like Reefer Madness to more serious and sober examinations like Requiem for a Dream. Top-heavy with clips from such once-shocking groundbreakers as The Man With the Golden Arm, the "head" flicks Read More

2003
The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron

Crew: Director

Actors: Brian Dennehy, Shannon Elizabeth, Christian Kane, Cameron Bancroft, Nancy Sakovich

Synopsis: Based on Brian Cruver's first-person book, Anatomy of Greed, this strident TV movie chronicles the rise and fall of the notorious Houston-based Enron Corporation in the early years of the 21st century. The film is related from the perspective of Cruver himself (played by Christian Kane), here Read More

2003
We Sold Our Souls For Rock 'N' Roll

Crew: Cinematographer, Director

Actors: Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath

Synopsis: Director Penelope Spheeris offered a witty and insightful look at the 1980s metal scene in her documentary The Decline of Western Civilization 2: The Metal Years, and now she examines the state of metal at the end of the century as she documents the 1999 edition of Ozzy Osbourne's annual touring Read More

2001
The Decline of Western Civilization - Part III

Crew: Director

Actors: Final Conflict, Litmus Green, Naked Aggression, The Resistance

Synopsis: In the third Decline of Western Civilization documentary, Penelope Spheeris (The Little Rascals) filmed four bands (Final Conflict, Litmus Green, Naked Aggression, The Resistance) in 35mm and Dolby, and she also segues into social commentary on homeless kids in Los Angeles, interviewing some who Read More

11/13/98
Senseless

Crew: Director

Actors: Marlon Wayans, David Spade, Matthew Lillard, Brad Dourif, Tamara Taylor

Synopsis: Penelope Spheeris directed this Marlon Wayans comedy, scripted by the Rocket Man team of Greg Erb and Craig Mazin. Saddled with several on and off-campus jobs, hard-working college student Darryl Witherspoon (Marlon Wayans) is aiming for a position with the Smythe-Bates brokerage firm, but twit Read More

1998
Black Sheep

Crew: Director

Actors: Chris Farley, David Spade, Tim Matheson

Synopsis: Handsome, smooth-talking Al Donnelly (Tim Matheson) has everything going for him. A politician, he is engaged in a heated gubernatorial race with the feisty Governor Tracy (Christine Ebersole), a tough old bird who doesn't hesitate to play hardball with opponents. Unfortunately for her, things are Read More

1996
The Little Rascals

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Travis Tedford, Bug Hall, Brittany Ashton Holmes, Kevin Jamal Woods, Zachary Mabry

Synopsis: Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat, and the other characters made famous in the Our Gang shorts of the 1920s and 1930s are brought back to life in this nostalgic children's comedy. Although the setting is the present day, the characters remain much the same, down to their old-fashioned clothing and their Read More

1994
The Beverly Hillbillies

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Diedrich Bader, Dabney Coleman, Erika Eleniak, Cloris Leachman, Rob Schneider, Jim Varney

Synopsis: Penelope Spheeris directed this compulsively faithful film adaptation of the popular 1960s television series. The familiar story 'bout a man named Jed Clampett (Jim Varney), a poor mountaineer who barely kept his family fed, continues to follow the TV show's format. Jed discovers oil on his Read More

1993
Wayne's World

Crew: Director

Actors: Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Rob Lowe, Tia Carrere, Lara Flynn Boyle, Brian Doyle-Murray

Synopsis: Based on the Saturday Night Live sketch of the same name, Wayne's World is a wacky, irreverent pop-culture comedy about the adventures of two amiably aimless metal-head friends, Wayne (Mike Myers) and Garth (Dana Carvey). From Wayne's basement, the pair broadcast a talk-show called "Wayne's World" Read More

2/14/92
Prison Stories: Women on the Inside

Crew: Director

Actors: Rae Dawn Chong, Lolita Davidovich, Talisa Soto

Synopsis: This made-for-cable women-in-prison film is an anthology collecting three short subjects. In the first, a pregnant inmate (Rae Dawn Chong) must seek protection from a gang; in the middle film, a prisoner tries to keep her family from following her lead into a life of crime; and in the closer, a Read More

1991
Wedding Band

Actors: William Katt, Joyce Hyser, Tino Insana, Lance Kinsey, David Bowe

Synopsis: In this comedy, the members of the Shakers, an aspiring rock band, perform at a series of weird and wacky weddings. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide Read More

3/2/90
Roseanne: Fender Bender

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: Roseanne gets into a car crash when her old boss, Mrs. Wellman (Debra Mooney), hits the Conner family station wagon. After the accident sends her to the hospital, Roseanne decides she is entitled to some money. Dan enlists the help of a lawyer friend, who tells them that they won't make a dime by Read More

1990
Thunder and Mud

Crew: Director

Synopsis: The Notorious Jessica Hahn gets down and dirty with other stars of female mud wrestling in this video. The buxom babes battle it out on behalf of their favorite rock bands who play thunderously in the background. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

1989
The Decline of Western Civilization

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, The Circle Jerks, Fear

Synopsis: The performers, attitudes, and music of late '70s, early '80s Los Angeles punk scene are documented in this film by director Penelope Spheeris. Not merely a compilation of concert footage, The Decline of Western Civilization compiles numerous viewpoints on the meanings of the punk movement, from Read More

6/3/88
The Decline of Western Civilization 2: The Metal Years

Crew: Director

Actors: Anthony Joseph Perry, Steven Tyler, Alice Cooper, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Lemmy, Ozzy Osbourne

Synopsis: Ozzy Osbourne, Gene Simmons, and Aerosmith's Joe Perry and Steven Tyler are among the Heavy Metal artists interviewed in The Decline of Western Civilization 2: The Metal Years. This follow-up to filmmaker Penelope Spheeris' classic 1981 "punk" documentary The Decline of Western Civilization is a Read More

1988
Dudes

Crew: Director

Actors: Jon Cryer, Daniel Roebuck, Flea, Lee Ving, Catherine Stewart

Synopsis: Penelope Spheeris, director of the infamous documentary The Decline of Western Civilization may well have given the world its first punk-rock Western in the form of Dudes, a sort of Suburbia meets High Noon meets Deliverance. Three East Coast punks (Jon Cryer, Daniel Roebuck, and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers Read More

8/28/87
Summer Camp Nightmare

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Chuck Connors, Charles Stratton, Adam Carl, Harold Pruett, Melissa Brennan

Synopsis: Offering an updated take on William Golding's Lord of the Flies, complete with anti-fascist metaphors, this drama is set at a summer camp where the kids rise up against their counselors and start running things themselves. It is based on a novel by William Butler, The Butterfly Revolution. Read More

4/17/87
Hollywood Vice Squad

Crew: Director

Actors: Ronny Cox, Frank Gorshin, Leon Isaac Kennedy, Trish VanDevere, Carrie Fisher, Robin Wright Penn, H.B. Haggerty

Synopsis: This attempt at parodying a world of hookers, child pornographers, and drug cartels never quite gets off the ground. Though these topics are not inherently amusing, director Penelope Spheeris takes the plot of Hardcore as a springboard and develops a few parallel stories that are meant to be Read More

2/28/86
The Boys Next Door

Crew: Director

Actors: Maxwell Caulfield, Charlie Sheen, Christopher McDonald, Hank Garrett, Patti D'Arbanville

Synopsis: The "boys next door" are Roy Alston (Maxwell Caulfield) and Bo Richards (Charlie Sheen), typical California teens freshly graduated from high school. Daunted by the prospect of the real world, the boys decide to go on one last fling in L.A. But it's not all clean, wholesome fun; in fact, Caulfield Read More

1985
Suburbia

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Bill Coyne, Chris Pederson, Timothy Eric O'Brien, Jennifer Clay, Wade Walston

Synopsis: Following up her critically acclaimed documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, Penelope Spheeris made this gritty drama her first feature-film outing. Bill Coyne stars as Evan Johnson, an angst-ridden kid living in L.A., who bands together with a group of other young societal rejects and Read More

1983
Real Life

Crew: Producer

Actors: Charles Grodin, Frances Lee McCain, J.A. Preston, Matthew Tobin, Albert Brooks

Synopsis: Albert Brooks made his feature-length debut as a writer and director with this wickedly funny satire, in which Albert Brooks plays "Albert Brooks," an arrogant and self-centered comedian who has decided to make a documentary film. Following the lead of the infamous pre-Real World PBS series An Read More

1979
Genesis 4

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This is a collection of 12 student film projects of varying lengths. Some of them are story films, others are documentaries. Among the documentary films, one shows daily life in an urban ghetto, another looks at problems of homosexuals. The story films include a thriller about a baby-sitter trying Read More

1971
Naked Angels

Actors: Art Jenoff, Felicia Guy, Leonard Coates, Tedd King

Synopsis: In this biker flick, the leader of an LA gang rides out for revenge against the Las Vegas-based Hotdoggers, who beat him senseless, hospitalizing him. He becomes so violent and obsessed that his own gang kicks him out. In the end, they change their minds and readmit him. Then they all roar off to Read More

1969