“The Sandlot” interviews, April 9, 1993

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff


Renna

SALT LAKE CITY -- Patrick Renna and Chauncey Leopardi, two youthful co-stars of "The Sandlot," are sitting in a suite at the Hilton Hotel, attempting to verbalize their feelings about acting in the movie. It's a nostalgic kiddie-baseball fantasy, very much in the vein of the vintage "Our Gang" series.

Renna, a husky 14-year-old, plays Ham, the team's slugger and chief trash-talker. Leopardi, 11, plays Squints, a bespectacled half-pint with a taste for older, buxom women.


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.