Penelope Spheeris, Jan. 18, 1991

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

For the past year or two, filmmaker Penelope Spheeris has been smack-dab in the middle of it.

She spent a year working as a story editor on the TV sitcom "Roseanne," then segued into a gig as director of the rap band 2 Live Crew's long-form video, "Banned in the U.S.A." It's as though she went mining for showbiz controversy and struck the mother lode.

Of her experience on "Roseanne," a TV series now legendary for battles between writers, producers and stars, Spheeris likens it to "having a belated Hollywood boot camp. It was pretty horrendous."

And the matter of her touring with and filming 2 Live Crew, the music industry's bad boys? Well, we'll get to that later.

First of all, who is this Penelope Spheeris, anyway?

Altman's angles put off studios, Jan. 18, 1991

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

Robert Altman is on the phone from his office in Los Angeles, laughing ruefully that many journalists are labeling "Vincent and Theo," his new film, a "'comeback."

"I wish I could make a comeback," he says. "At first, I resented that by saying, 'Jeez, I haven't been anywhere.' But now I have no work. I'd like to make a comeback, whatever that means."

The currently unemployed film director will be attending the Sundance Film Festival, running today through Jan. 27 in Park City, in conjunction with a six-film retrospective of his work, and to host the regional premiere of "Vincent and Theo" at 7 p.m. Thursday in Park City's Egyptian Theater. The new film is his look at the relationship between painter Vincent van Gogh and his brother, Theo, who supported the artist's nine-year career.

Patrick Bergin, "Mountains of the Moon," March 9, 1990

Patrick Bergin in "Mountains of the Moon"

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner

For Patrick Bergin, star of the new film "Mountains of the Moon," the glamor part of movie stardom took a little time to kick in. When he was shooting the film in Kenya, the experience was anything but. There's nothing particularly romantic about having lions thrown at you.

"Having a quarter of a ton of lion thrown on top of me was pretty fantastic and lousy at the same time," he says, laughing. "It certainly nearly killed me."

The scene involved his character, 19th century writer and adventurer Richard Burton, being chased and attacked by a male lion. Fortunately for Burton, the beast was fatally wounded as it leaped through the air at him.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dec. 4, 1992

By DONALD PORTER
Standard·Examiner staff

Somehow, this fits: Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg is squeezing in a phone interview view while tooling through Los Angeles morning traffic, on his way to do more satellite interviews for and TV stations around the country. It serves to reinforce the popular image of Katzenberg, the mogul who is said to complete some 200 phone calls each morning -- after reading several newspapers during his daily rise-and-shine physical workout.

No time to waste. Literally.

And from a business standpoint, who could argue? Katzenberg and Team Disney, transplanted from Paramount Pictures in 1984, took the studio that Uncle Walt built from a dead-last 3 percent market share that year to a first-place 20 percent in 1988. And since then, his motion picture division – including movies released under the Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures banners -- has been hanging tough, never out of the race.

"Aladdin," Disney's newest release, is sure to keep the company's stockholders smiling; it grossed $25.8 million over the Thanksgiving holiday, about 2-1/2 times what "Beauty and the Beast" did during the same time period last year. And critics have lavished so much praise on the film, there's already talk Robin Williams may be nominated for an Oscar in an acting category -- for his voice performance.

Brains and eggs at Bill and Nada'sYeah, Oct. 30, 1992

Yeah, that's my plate of brains and eggs.

One of the features I wrote in 1992 was a food story. I had some fun with it.

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff
SALT LAKE CITY -- If you know anything at all about Bill and Nada's, the landmark eatery north of Trolley Square in Salt Lake City, it's probably that the establishment serves brains and eggs.

That's right -- brains and eggs.

A local radio station, KLZX-FM, has fun with the dish in one of its promotions: "Jon and Dan in the morning," an authoritative voice intones. "A Utah institution -- like brains and eggs at Bill and Nada's."

Bill McHenry has been running the eatery since 1946, and brains have been on the menu since he opened the doors. Which means, of course, people have always eaten enough of his brains -- well, not his, exactly, but you know what we mean -- to make them a profitable dish.

"During initiation time at the university," McHenry says with a grin, "we go through a lot of 'em."

And that brings us to the obvious question: Why would anyone, of their own volition, eat the brains of any animal?

Bugs Bunny at 50, April 15, 1990

On the occasion of Bugs Bunny's 50th anniversary, I wrote a feature page cover appreciation of my favorite cartoon character. One of our staff artists, Larry Stephens, drew a great Bugs in a trenchcoat, looking very much like Humphrey Bogart -- cool. We decided to run it by Warner Bros. since Bugs is trademarked and the studio warned us against using it -- because Warren Beatty's "Dick Tracy" was coming out and they thought it looked like something from that film. So we used some WB stock art instead. After the thing was published, I sent a clip to the WB press people as a courtesy, and they were so thrilled with it they had it cleaned up from the newsprint version on beautiful white Velox paper and sent me back a rolled copy suitable for framing.

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

They say Bugs Bunny turns 50 this year. Which is like saying the Bible is a thick book -- it simply doesn't begin to tell the story. Bugs Bunny is ageless, so his being 50 years old is irrelevant -- except that it gives us one helluva good excuse to think about him.

So, on Easter Sunday as bunnies come to mind, let's do just that: Picture ol' Bugs in your mind. What do you see? Maybe he's casually nibbling a carrot and asking, "What's up, Doc?" while Elmer Fudd's double-barreled shotgun rests on the bridge of his nose. Or he has Yosemite Sam in such a snit that the mustachioed hothead is bouncing up and down on the heels of his boots like a superball on concrete. Or perhaps Daffy Duck is trying -- in eternal futility -- to outwit that wascally wabbit.

Whatever image springs to your mind, one thing's certain: You are smiling. It's impossible to ponder the Bugster and not smile. Einstein proved that; look it up.

Nobody ever gets the best of Bugs, because even in defeat -- which is rare -- Bugs has the last word. He is the coolest. The hippest. The best that's ever been.

Michael Moore, "TV Nation," Aug. 11, 1995

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

PASADENA, Calif. -- Professional nose-tweaker Michael Moore is a man with a mission: to inform, irritate and stimulate the American TV-viewing public.

The creator of "TV Nation," Moore met with TV writers at the Summer Press Tour here to promote the late-summer run of his show on the Fox network, which played a year ago on NBC.

"This is satire," Moore explained. "It's not a stunt, it's satire, and the purpose of it is to expose a system that somehow has drifted away from the bulk of the American people. People don't care about politics anymore and they don't vote and in some cases for good reason."