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Penelope Spheeris (born December 2, 1945) is an American director, producer, and screenwriter.

Spheeris was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, to a Greek immigrant father who owned the Magic Empire Shows (Majick Empire). She spent her first seven years traveling around the American South and American Midwest with her father's carnival.^[1] She majored in film at UCLA in the Westwood area of Los Angeles, California.

Spheeris launched her career by producing short subjects for satirist Albert Brooks, many of them being highlights in the first season of the TV series Saturday Night Live. Her first auteur feature film was The Decline of Western Civilization (1981), a punk rock documentary that she wrote, produced, and directed. She followed up with The Decline of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years, this time about the Los Angeles heavy metal scene of 1988, with footage and interviews of legendary metal bands such as Ozzy Osbourne, Aerosmith, Megadeth and Motörhead.

She was also a writer for the TV series Roseanne (1988-1997).

In the 1990s, Spheeris directed Wayne's World, a comedy based on Mike Myers' skits from Saturday Night Live. The movie grossed an impressive $121 million and became a popular hit. Spheeris didn't direct the sequel, Wayne's World 2, because she couldn't tolerate Mike Myers any longer.^{[citation needed]}

Even though she was (and probably still) famous for making Wayne's World, many thought that the movie started the downfall of Spheeris' film career, directing more mainstream comedies than her usual punk rock films.^{[citation needed]} She directed the TV-show-based comedies The Beverly Hillbillies and The Little Rascals (in which she co-wrote the screenplay), along with the Chris Farley comedy Black Sheep and the Marlon Wayans comedy Senseless. The comedies fared well at the box office, but they were widely panned by critics. Critics felt the films were unfunny, and that Spheeris doesn't have enough skills to film comedy.^{[citation needed]}

Despite the criticism, Penelope Spheeris continues to direct. In 2005 she directed the Tom Arnold movie The Kid & I. Spheeris will return to rock drama: as of 2006 she is at work on Gospel According to Janis, about Janis Joplin.

Contents 1 Trivia 2 Filmography 3 References 4 External links

• Penelope is the sister of singer Jimmie Spheeris.
• She is the first cousin of musician Chris Spheeris^[2] and the Greek-French director Costa Gavras, whom she says makes her consider that there is something to the genetic aspects to the job description.^[3]

• Uncle Tom's Fairy Tales (1968)
• I Don't Know (1972)
• The Decline of Western Civilization (1981)
• Suburbia (1984) aka Rebel Streets and The Wild Side
• Hollywood Vice Squad (1986)
• The Boys Next Door (1985 film) aka Big Shots
• Dudes (1987)
• The Decline of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years (1988)
• Thunder and Mud (1990)
• Wayne's World (1992)
• The Beverly Hillbillies (1993)
• The Little Rascals (1994)
• Black Sheep (1996)
• The Decline of Western Civilization III (1998)
• Senseless (1998)
• The Thing in Bob's Garage (1998)
• Hollywierd (1999)
• We Sold Our Souls for Rock 'n Roll (2001)
• Posers (2001)
• Closers (2001)
• The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron (2003)
• The Kid & I (2005)
• Gospel According to Janis (2008)

• IMDb entry for Penelope Spheeris