From the 1981 landmark Decline of Western Civilization documentaries to the groundbreaking punk-drama Suburbia, and even into the early 90s when she directed one of the few good Saturday Night Live big screen spin-offs in the first Waynes World, I can't think of any director who had her finger on the pulse of going-nowhere-teenage-U.S.A. quite like Penelope Spheeris.
For an entire decade, Spheeris took a sometimes scary, other times hilarious peek into youth culture like nobody else dared to try, and her films document an entire era of bored youths whose only salvation is rock n roll.
Then there is the often forgotten 1987 punk rock buddy/road trip/dark comedy Dudes. Aside from having the distinction of being the best-named film of all time, it stars John Cryer (Duckie from Pretty in Pink), features a mosh pit scene courtesy of The Vandals, and that bass player from a band whose name I shall not mention here (hint; Weird Al did a really good parody of them in the song “Bedrock Anthem“) who Spheeris used in both Dudes and Suburbia, and turns out to be a pretty tolerable actor.
I guess this would also fall under the “dudes doing what dudes do” category.
