Movies: Penelope Spheeris

An unfinished archival short, in which the titular substance plays a key role in determining an outmoded man’s role in a changing society. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013....

Albert Brooks goes to a research institute to find out why people don't like him and how he can change that. Saturday Night Live, Season 1 Episode 9...

Albert Brooks presents a mockumentary in which he presents several shocking news stories. Saturday Night Live, Season 1 Episode 1...

A short documentary accompanying the first EP released by Lifers Group, a rap crew that grew out of the Lifers Group Juvenile Awareness Program — a youth crime prevention program founded in East Jersey State Prison in 1976 and made famous by the docu...

Picking up the story first presented in I Don’t Know (1970), Hats Off to Hollywood (1972) brazenly and brilliantly mixes documentary reality with fully staged recreations/reimaginings of episodes in the lives of Jennifer and Dana, a loving, bickering...

Documentery from 1991 where The 2 Live Crew, Chuck D (Public Enemy), Too Short, Ice-T, Geto Boys, H.W.A. drop real talk on different topics....

Super mid-season replacements to failed shows in a network's super season. Saturday Night Live, Season 1 Episode 4...

Made in an environment and at a time when frequent and gratuitous images of nude women permeated the work of her male counterparts, director Penelope Spheeris produced this intimate and sensual observation of a woman bathing. The appearance of Sphee...

Synthesis is director Penelope Spheeris' first film, made in 8mm Kodachrome while she was a student at UCLA. In a seemingly near-future control room devoid of people, various readouts and calculations suggest that humankind is not altogether compati...

UCLA Student Film, Preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. A man and his wife suffer under the monotony of everyday life with work at an insurance company and unhappy marriage....

Albert places an ad in a newspaper expressing a desire to perform a heart bypass & gets to live his dream of being a heart surgeon for one day. Saturday Night Live, Season 1 Episode 3...

Albert Brooks introduces himself to the audience through showing them his home movies from childhood & attempts and fails at doing candid-camera style pranks. Saturday Night Live, Season 1 Episode 2...

A video portrait of 2 Live Crew as they fought to release their album "Banned in the USA" during the censorship crisis of the late 80s and early 90s that ultimately resulted in the "PARENTAL ADVISORY EXPLICIT CONTENT" sticker. This 49-minute docume...

Documents the making of BLOOD DOLLS, interviewing members of the cast and crew....

An early short film by Penelope Spheeris about a boy enjoying the age-old pleasures of making a wish on a dandelion. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016....

Two years before Peter Watkins’ Punishment Park (1971), director Penelope Spheeris takes the McCarran Act to its inevitable next step and shows us—via an early use of mockumentary—what the U.S. might be like if potential subversives were simply locke...

A white man goes on trial for having raped a black woman....