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?
By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff
Previewing tonight at 7 p.m. on KTVX Channel 4 is "The Jeff Foxworthy Show," starring comedian Jeff Foxworthy -- guess that's where they got the title -- who's most famous for his redneck-themed stand-up act.
In the series, which was not made available for yours truly to preview, Foxworthy plays Jeff Foxworthy (that way you won't get confused), a Southern-born heating and air conditioning contractor who lives with his wife and son in Bloomington, Ind.
The show's executive producer, Tom Anderson, said at the Summer Press Tour that he equates Foxworthy's brand of humor with Jerry Seinfeld's.
"Seinfeld does what he does in New York," Anderson said. "And he kind of makes fun of people. And we like him because he's so nice. But Jeff really is kind of like the Seinfeld for the rest of the country." Thus, he said, the Midwest was chosen for the setting of the sitcom.
