For today's Female Filmmaker series we are highlighting the impossibly cool rock director Penelope Spheeris. She's a punk through and through and she has delivered some of the best classic films of the 20th century. And she has shown us some hot rock chicks, too!
Penelope Spheeris is basically the definition of cool. She is one of my favorite people period because she does whatever she wants and she does it well. Like...really well. She brought punk, underground, and rock-n-roll to the forefront with her super cool documentaries or feature films.
She was born in New Orleans and her Greek father was a sideshow strong man, so she had cool beginnings from the get-go. She began her career by producing short films for comedian Albert Brooks and some of them were even included in the first season of SNL.
In 1981 she put herself on the map with the punk documentary The Decline of Western Civilization which was a huge shock to America's system. Between this documentary and her 1983 narrative film debut Suburbia in 1983, Penelope was THE punk rock filmmaker. This was personally my intro to Penelope and I practically wore out my video tape watching and rewatching Surburbia.
In Suburbia, Gina Carrera is stripped naked when she is in the middle of a punk circle, but the lead singer chastises punks and comes to the naked girl's rescue. We get less meathead nudity from Suzann Schott who shows her fake breasts in a strip club.
The one and only Roger Corman produced her sequel to The Decline of Western Civilization in which she focused on the heavy metal scene in Los Angeles in 1988. This lead to her being offered to direct This is Spinal Tap, but she shockingly said no.
She made a series of mainstream movies like Hollywood Vice Squad and even Little Rascals. Then in 1992, she made Wayne's World and we have been partying on ever since. Not only did she bring us that amazing "Bohemian Rhapsody" car moment, but Spheeris is responsible for introducing us to rockin' hottie Tia Carrere as Cassandra Wong.
She says that she has "two careers": a mainstream film career for Hollywood and her independent music documentary career. Well, she's really good at both of them, so she can have as many careers as she wants.
She is still impossibly cool. She has directed several TV episodes, but she spends a lot of her time just chilling out with her husband, a man known only as Sin, whom she met while filming The Decline of Western Civilization III. So, yes, he's a punk. Punk has her heart through and through.
Watch this sexy striptease from her film Suburbia starring Suzann Schott:
