Penelope, Spheeris’ Direction Fits Comfortably Behind Bars

For a director like Penelope Spheeris, a prison drama is a picnic.

“This is an easy show for me to do because it is people talking,” Spheeris said. “You know, I am used to blowing up cars, killing people and having buildings crash in. So, this to me is a pleasure.”

With her punkish red hair and black spandex outfit, Spheeris doesn’t look like the stereotypical film director. Over the last 10 years she has built a reputation as a director of rather offbeat films, including “The Decline of Western Civilizations,” Parts I and II, the acclaimed documentaries on punk music; “The Boys Next Door,” a thriller about serial killers, and “Hollywood Vice Squad,” the exploitation flick.

Spheeris was chatting during the last day of production on “‘New Chicks,” an episode of HBO’s dramatic trilogy “Prison Stories: Women on the Inside,” debuting Saturday. Rae Dawn Chong and Annabella Sciorra are the new chicks: lifelong friends-one is pregnant-who find their friendship tested when they serve time in a maximum security prison after felony convictions.

“New Chicks” marks Spheeris’ TV directing debut. “I worked on ‘Roseanne’ for a season as a story editor. That was no party,” she said, during a break from the filming at a Pacoima hospital. “But this is actually more like a movii than TV. It’s not like a sitcom. That’s why I like it, and that’s why I want to do it.”

Spheeris also wanted to direct the episode because she was reared around people like the characters in the drama.

“When I went down to the Chino women’s prison (for research), it was packed with people who were familiar to me,” she said. “When I was growing up in Orange County I used to hang around with those kind of low riders. When I read the script, it really rang true.”

Meeting the women prisoners was a moving experience for Spheeris. “It was a warm, almost inviting, environment.Women’s prisons are different than men’s prisons. They are very homey. Maybe it’s just women’s instinct. Then you realize they are in there for a reason. I was sitting there and talking with this very, very nice woman and at the end of the conversation she tells me she’s been in for 13 years. You walk away and realize she had to have committed murder.”

Spheeris has directed six feature films but is still looking for respect in Hollywood. “It’s very discouraging sometimes for me to look at the new releases in the papers and see directors’ names I have never seen before. Oftentimes, studios would rather give a job to the first-time male director than deal with a female director.”

“I have a great reputation critically,” Spheeris said, adding that doesn’t mean anything to the studios who do the hiring. “Unless you have a mega-hit, I don’t think it matters to them. I haven’t had one of them, so I will have to have one before I am in a wheelchair.”

She’s had to take what film projects were given her. “Because I have been raising a kid for 20 years, I take any work I can get as a matter of survival,” she said. “That accounts for me doing a film like ‘Hollywood Vice Squad.’ I don’t always get to do what I want to do.”

Spheeris wants to direct for European television. “In Europe, I have a very good reputation as a feature director,” she said. “Now, there are so many more satellite installations and they need lots and lots of product. The Europeans are far less sexist than the Americans.

“The only thing that has changed in America (over the past 10 years) is that there are slightly more women directors. If you have a hit you are a hero, but then you fall into another trap, too. If Amy Heckerling (“Look Who’s Talking”) wants to do a horror movie, they are not going to let her do it because she has to do a comedy.”

Spheeris, though, would love to do a comedy. “I am a very funny person, but people don’t know that because I got pigeonholed into being a director of youth rebellion films, documentaries and real serious things like ‘The Boys Next Door.’ I get a lot of dope-deal scripts, lots of murder scripts. I am a very funny person-but they don’t believe me.”

“Prison Stories: Women on the Inside” premieres Saturday at 10 p.m. on HBO and repeats Jan. 30 at 8 p.m.