‘Director Penelope Spheeris hasn’t directed a movie since the horribly-received 2011 comedy “Balls to the Walls,” but don’t look for her name to appear and be attached to another movie ever again.
In an interview with the A.V. Club, Spheeris claims she’s made up her mind and she’s a goner, she’s hitching a ride on the leaving train and not coming back to Tinseltown, because “Hollywood changed into something that I didn’t want to be a part of,” adding, “It was too — it’s ugly,” she continued.
Spheeris is best known for directing “The Little Rascals,” “Senseless,” and “Wayne’s World” and the excellent “The Decline of Western Civilization.”
“There’s no forgiveness,” Spheeris said. “Oliver Stone could go wreck a car and get arrested for being on drugs and then do ‘Alexander.’ But we can’t do that. Women can’t make mistakes. I’m not driving home tonight because I had a couple beers, you know? You can’t screw up when you’re a woman. One little mistake, and you’re done,” adding “You have no friends in Hollywood. Hollywood is a lonely, lonely desert, especially as a woman.”
Mostly, Spheeris says the process that comes in being a director in Hollywood is painful and just not worth the effort anymore, adding that she’s made enough money and invested in enough stocks to be able to have the luxury to call it quits:
“It’s not like they go, ‘Okay, Penelope, you’re out of jail now. Let’s make a movie,'” she said. “At this point, I don’t want to make a movie. They can’t even fucking beg me to make a movie. I got to make a lot of money in the days when you could make a lot of money as a director, and I invested it right. I don’t need that anymore. It’s not like I’m bitter. I just feel like I went through too much pain.
When asked whether she would come back to Hollywood if the right circumstances presented themselves, Spheeris, saving the best for last, proclaimed “I don’t need them. I really don’t. Especially now, what am I going to do? Work for a year on a movie and make $50,000? They can blow me! That’s a quote. You can print that.”
You bet we will.
“Hope,” Na’s first film in ten years — his last one being the exemplary “The Wailing” —is a gloriously messy, blood-soaked sci-fi epic that may become a cult classic despite—or because of—its polarizing nature.