The career of filmmaker Penelope Spheeris has followed two distinct and parallel paths, each of which will be celebrated this weekend at PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater as the latest installment of their Carte Blanche series. For some, Spheeris is best known as the director of mainstream comedy hits including Wayne’s World (which will screen on Friday evening), Black Sheep, and The Beverly Hillbillies. For others, she’s the chronicler of hard-edged musical subcultures whose three The Decline of Western Civilization films are landmarks of the documentary form.

When last we spoke, in 2013, Spheeris was close to resolving the issues that had hampered the wide release of 1998’s The Decline of Western Civilization Part III, which took a harsh yet heartfelt look at the “gutter punk” lifestyle of homeless Los Angeles teenagers. (She refused to surrender her rights to the first two Decline movies as part of a distribution deal for the third, and the trilogy remained unavailable on DVD or Blu-ray until 2015.) Recently, as we chatted in anticipation of her upcoming visit to Portland, another of her music-related projects is finally, if briefly, seeing the light of day nearly a quarter-century after it was made. We Sold Our Souls for Rock ‘n Roll captured the 1999 heavy metal Ozzfest tour, which included a Black Sabbath reunion as well as sets by up-and-coming rockers such as System of a Down and Slipknot.

Unfortunately, as Spheeris tells it, festival organizer (and First Spouse of hard rock) Sharon Osbourne failed to secure the rights to use the music performed on stage in the film. For that reason, Souls has languished in obscurity so long that it now serves as much as a time capsule as a celebration of head-banging energy. “I was told the rights were cleared when the bands did the tour, that it was included in their tour contracts,” Spheeris recalls. “I didn’t ask to see a tour contract, because if Sharon Osbourne says something, you believe it. I knew Sharon and Ozzy at least fifteen years before I did We Sold Our Souls. They were my friends. I would go to the concerts and Sharon would ask me to go backstage and calm Ozzy down when he got nervous. But when we started working together on the movie, I had an epiphany. I had thought I was the most badass chick on the planet, but as I told Sharon, I had to hand the title over to her.”

Spheeris’s Hollywood career essentially ended following 1999’s Senseless, a Marlon Wayans comedy that she was hired to direct, based on the success of Wayne’s World, by Bob and Harvey Weinstein. “That could have been a good movie,” she laments. “But they kept giving me really bad rewrites. To quote Bob, ‘It’s my fucking money and I’ll spend it any way I want.’ Contractually, I had to do it. The movie didn’t do well, and I ended up in director jail. They paid me lot of money, so I can’t complain too much, but they were really awful to work with.”

The lack of opportunity Spheeris was given to recover from that stumble was typical of the way Hollywood treated female directors, even those who had previously delivered box-office success. Her 2013 visit to Portland had been as the special guest of the Portland Oregon Women’s Film Festival, and while she chafes a bit at the gendered label, she also acknowledges that there has been improvement: “Have things changed? Yes, somewhat. I’m not going to say we’re on an even level with male directors as far as perception or salary or anything. But we’re getting there. Or I should say they are getting there, because I don’t consider myself part of it anymore. I got so fed up with it, I decided ‘Fuck it. I’m not doing these fucking movies anymore.’ I quit Hollywood before Hollywood could quit me.”

Navigating the business and trying to make a living, Spheeris would essentially take any job that was offered. One such job was a project spearheaded by Jennifer Aniston called Five, in which five female directors each helmed a segment about a woman dealing with breast cancer. In addition to Spheeris and Aniston, the others were Demi Moore, Alicia Keys, and future Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins. “Me and Patty were the only real directors. I’m writing a book, which I’m nearly done with, and in it I describe what happened on that show,” says Spheeris. “I’m sorry, but when women get together, there’s a pecking order. Jennifer was the alpha, and I got picked on. They gave me, as a gift, the most disgusting-looking sex toy, in front of the whole crew. It was so humiliating, but I didn’t speak out about it at the time.”

Returning to the topic of We Sold Our Souls, Spheeris describes how Saturday’s screening came to be: “When we finished the film, and before Sharon decided to pull it from distribution, it screened at Sundance, so we had a 35mm print and a DCP [Digital Cinema Package]. That was deposited at the Motion Picture Academy, where it languished for all these years.” Now that it’s a historical document, and some of the bands in it have gone on to great success, Osbourne is, according to Spheeris, once again pursuing the music rights. In the meantime, when the Academy approached Osbourne about screening it, she agreed, and now the Portland Art Museum has been given the same permission. While the legal issues aren’t resolved to an extent that would allow broader distribution or a streaming release, wheels are reportedly turning that could result in that outcome.

Sponsor

This may not be the last of Spheeris’s projects to emerge from legal limbo, however. Her 1969 student film Uncle Tom’s Fairy Tales, which starred none other than a young Richard Pryor, has been missing in action for decades. According to Spheeris, Pryor’s widow Jennifer and she have been “talking quite a bit. She’s like a pit bull, man. Richard was so smart for bringing her back into his life before he died, because she is preserving everything R.P.-related. She’s still digging, trying to find that footage. I had dailies I gave to her, after she threatened to sue me—it’s fine, we’re good friends now.”

Happily retired from the movie-making madhouse, Spheeris seems gratified to reflect on her diverse and fascinating legacy. “We Sold Our Souls and Uncle Tom’s Fairy Tales are both on the shelf for now, but I just hope that, before I die, they hop off the shelf and into movie theaters.” This weekend, in Portland, one of them will for a day.

(Wayne’s World screens at 7 p.m. on Friday at the Tomorrow Theater; Penelope Spheeris will participate in a discussion moderated by PAM CUT’s Amy Dotson at 6 p.m. on Saturday, followed by a screening of We Sold Our Souls for Rock ‘n Roll).

ALSO THIS WEEK:

Seven Samurai: Oh, it’s only one of the greatest films ever made, newly restored by Janus films in 4K digital glory. Set in chaotic 16th-century Japan, Akira Kurosawa’s most famous film is a three-plus-hour epic that has inspired countless imitators but no equals. A rural village learns that bandits plan to return in the fall and steal the local harvest, and so reach out to the titular septet to prepare a defense. Upon that slender plot, which practically invented—or at least solidified—and entire genre of “assemble the team” movies, rests a saga that combines humor, philosophy, and of course thrilling action. The most expensive Japanese film ever made at the time (1954), its production rivals that of Apocalypse Now in arduousness, and the film’s original American release made barely a blip. Now, however, it’s regarded as one of those canonical titles you simply must see if you consider yourself anything of a cinephile. (Opens Friday at Cinema 21.)

The Seventh Curse: As part of its monthlong “Repmaggedon” series, Cinemagic presents this bonkers 1986 Hong Kong action-horror-comedy hybrid about an adventurer who, having been cursed when he rescued a woman from the evil Worm Tribe, must travel back to the tribe’s territory to get said curse lifted. This is mostly an excused for goofy, gory antics that include a fighting demon baby, a brief appearance by Chow Yun-Fat, and iconic Hong Kong star Maggie Cheung as our hero’s sidekick. Think Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on acid, and you’re in the neighborhood. From the director of the extreme cult classic The Story of Riki-Oh (which, along with two other Lam Ngai Kai films, will be showing in coming weeks). (Screens Monday at 4:50 p.m. and Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Cinemagic)

The Secret Art of Human Flight: One of the highlights of last fall’s Eastern Oregon Film Festival was this offbeat fable about a man, grieving his wife’s sudden death, who stumbles onto a bizarre self-help guru named Mealworm (Sound of Metal Oscar nominee Paul Raci). As he pursues the quixotic skill promised in the movie’s title, our widower stumbles his way toward a reckoning with his sense of loss and his inability to imagine a way forward. (Opens Friday at the Salem Cinema.)

To the Stars the Hard Way: A forgotten classic of Soviet sci-fi cinema, this 1981 film is about an alien clone, rescued from a wrecked spacecraft, who returns to Earth to try to live as a human. This gets complicated when she discovers that she possesses superhuman telekinetic powers. The mystery leads to an expedition to discover her home planet and travel to it. (Screens Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Clinton Street Theater.)

Sponsor

Tokyo Cowboy: Local film programmer Greg Hamilton inaugurates a new, occasional series spotlighting discoveries he has made at film festivals across the country with this endearing, low-key comedy. An executive with a Japanese food conglomerate and a Wagyu beef expert travel to the wide-open spaces of Montana in an effort to rescue a struggling cattle ranch before the bosses decide to sell it off for parts. Splendidly shot and pleasingly paced, director Marc Marriott’s first feature also boasts an appearance by Robin Weigert, whose work as Calamity Jane on Deadwood still holds a place in my heart. (Screens Wednesday, July 31, at the Hollywood Theatre.)