I have to make a huge confession: I became so frustrated in trying to find a good movie that I kind of gave up over the last five years…and so therefore, I very seldom watch movies anymore.
No, just the way that they’re portrayed in movies and TV shows. The last part of your question was what, do I get frustrated because teenagers today don’t get it? I think it’s probably my way of trying to embrace my own horrific upbringing– not embrace it, but make it right. I think what you’re asking is that you sense a feeling of compassion from me, as a director, toward teenagers and kids. I have to ask: when you watch kids’ movies-do you ever get frustrated that they don’t really get the way that teenagers or pre-teens talk to each other or think? It’s a very unsentimental love, one that seems to come from your need to understand where these characters are coming from. The thing that makes “Suburbia” and “The Little Rascals” feel like “Penelope Spheeris movies” to me is the way that you show an overwhelming sense of empathy for your young characters. This time around, we talked about working with child actors, directing Donald Trump, filming the recently-deceased Germs bassist Lorna Doom, and letting Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx date her daughter. This is the third time I’ve interviewed Spheeris each conversation reveals something new and hilarious about her and her work. Finally, I spoke with Spheeris last week, after reading that Shout Factory is releasing a blu-ray of her caustic punk melodrama “Suburbia” on January 29th. On January 14th, I raced to buy Universal’s new blu-ray of Spheeris’s “The Little Rascals.” And on January 16th-upon hearing about the untimely death of Lorna Doom, the bassist for California punk group The Germs-I overturned my cluttered apartment to find my copy of Spheeris’s “The Decline of Western Civilization,” which features amazing concert footage of Doom and her band.
I spoke with Spheeris this past January, a month that reminded me, in a couple of ways, why I love her films.