Sue me. I can’t stop watching Charlie Sheen clips. I can’t help myself from clicking on clip after clip of Sheen’s now-infamous interviews with ABC’s Good Morning America. Like this. And this. And, oh heaven help me, this, from 20/20.
Watching a celebrity self-destruct in real time has become a bit of blood sport in our tabloid-frenzied culture. Even WebMD is in on the action. We are transfixed by the train wreck, by the tragedy of witnessing potential unfulfilled, opportunity squandered, and the pitfalls of privilege.
Sheen’s various interviews to media outlets (ABC, CNN, Radar Online, among others) have generated a lot of buzz, but people have been talking about Charlie Sheen’s bad behavior for a long time. Sheen’s drug, gambling, and sex addictions have been high-larious fodder for more than a decade. Here’s a flashback to a November 2000 episode of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire,” featuring a chubby Drew Carey, a thin Alec Baldwin, and knowing laughter with Reg over Sheen’s troubles.
Many celebs, world-weary and drug-wise themselves, take the “he’s an adult, it’s his life” stance, including recovering addict (and Mel Gibson defender) Robert Downey, Jr.
As I was looking at clips of Sheen’s media blitzkrieg, I couldn’t help remembering the early days of Charlie Sheen, when he was the youngest addition to a roster of hot young Hollywood stars including Johnny Depp, Rob Lowe, and the Coreys. Too young to belong to the Brat Pack with his brother, Emilio Estevez, Sheen stepped out of the shadows of his famous acting family in iconic roles in “Lucas,” “Platoon,” and “Wall Street.” My girlhood crush on Charlie Sheen evaporated sometime around 1990, long before his current troubles, but about the time his film career took an unfortunate turn. I’m guessing “Hot Shots” happened when his need for hookers and blow took over as his primary vocation. This little primer on the glory days of Charlie Sheen is for the young readers who’ve only known the cranked up, Hawaiian shirt wearing, wife beating, piece of shite we see before us now.
Early in his career, Sheen racked up a series of strong roles in great films (and if you say 1984’s “Red Dawn” isn’t a great film, we’re fighting).
Here’s how I’d like to remember Sheen (and Corey Haim, for that matter, on the banana seat bike). In 1986’s “Lucas,” he plays a classic clean-cut jock with a soft side. Part of Sheen’s charm in those heady early days was his apparent effortlessness on film.
He won acclaim for his role in Oliver Stone’s “Platoon” (1986) and worked with Stone again in a lead role as Bud Fox, a wanna-be player striving for the finer things in life in “Wall Street” (1987).
Sheen continued work in 80s classics, including “Young Guns,” “Eight Men Out,” and “Navy Seals,” churning out over 20 movies before the end of the decade. The 1990s marked a turn in his career, from dramas to comedies.
So was Sheen ever funny? If you’ve somehow watched his television show (let’s pretend you haven’t), that is a legitimate question. He told CNN’s Piers Morgan that he is able to make Two and a Half Men so damn funny because he lives such a crazed lifestyle. Everyone on it says knows coke makes you funnier. Here’s a clip from “Major League II.” Decide for yourself.
Perhaps you like your comedy a little less subtle, in which case I recommend the 1993 vintage “Hot Shots! Part Deux.”
His appearance in “Loaded Weapon” (also 1993) was mercifully brief.
It only gets worse from there, except for a small cameo in “Being John Malkovich” (1999).
By this time, Sheen’s film career was essentially over as he transitioned to television, starring in Spin City in the early 2000s as a replacement for the ailing Michael J. Fox. For me, his best and most prophetic work was in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” with Jennifer Grey’s old nose.
And now you’ve Sheen It. Go work on winning.
