Jonathan Penner
Jonathan Penner is an actor, born 1962.
Three careers have run in parallel here, and the reality-television one is now the most visible. Jonathan Penner, born in New York in 1962, is an actor, a screenwriter and a producer, and the film he is most identified with is one he produced as well as starred in: The Last Supper, a 1995 black comedy about graduate students who begin settling political arguments at the dinner table by permanent means. He plays Marc, one of the diners.
The acting record around it is a catalogue of early-1990s studio comedy and late-night cable. He is an air traffic captain in Coneheads, a studio executive in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, a submariner nicknamed Spots in Down Periscope, and Marv Miller in White Palace. Television gave him steadier work: Nicky Columbus on The Naked Truth, Dave Parelli on Rude Awakening, and a turn as The Champion in the live-action version of The Tick.
Then there is Survivor, where he has appeared as a contestant more than once and where a large part of his public profile now sits. That is an odd shape for a career, and it is worth being honest about the rest of the filmography, which runs from an Amityville sequel through Bloodfist 7 to a horror anthology fronted by Snoop Dogg. He is a dry, precise comic actor who has spent a great deal of time in films that did not deserve him.
Movies (10)
TV (6)
Where to start with Jonathan Penner
Watch The Last Supper first and treat the rest as optional. It is the film Penner produced and acted in, a sharp and mean satire about liberal certainty that has aged into something more uncomfortable than it was in 1995, and his Marc is the one who keeps trying to hold the group's logic together.
For the studio comedies, Down Periscope is the most watchable, a broad submarine farce that knows exactly what it is, while Coneheads is the nostalgia pick and White Palace is the best-directed thing on the list. On television, The Naked Truth gives him the most room, and The Tick is a live-action oddity that has outlived nearly everything around it.
Survivor is a different proposition entirely, and if you arrived here from the show, that is the credit you already know.