It must be exhausting to be Charlie Sheen. Just watching the two-part Netflix documentary series \u201cAKA Charlie Sheen\u201d can feel draining.<\/p>\n
Consider. By the time Sheen was 25, he had starred in the Oscar-winning blockbusters \u201cPlatoon\u201d and \u201cWall Street,\u201d and had already started growing his dubious party animal legend, entering a rehabilitation center for drug and alcohol addiction. In subsequent years, he saw his engagement to Kelly Preston end after an accident in which Sheen\u2019s gun accidentally discharged and a ricochet hit Preston; he started smoking crack; was exposed as a major client of \u201cHollywood Madam\u201d Heidi Fleiss; had a near-fatal overdose; was hospitalized; went back to rehab; and relapsed again.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s just Part 1 of the documentary. Insanely enough, the worst was yet to come.<\/p>\n
With the first part of \u201cAKA Charlie Sheen\u201d clocking in at 93 minutes and the cheekily titled \u201cPart Deux\u201d adding another 88 minutes, we\u2019re talking about a total running time of just over three hours. Even Charlie Sheen might say that\u2019s a LOT of Charlie Sheen. Director Andrew Renzi keeps things moving with the usual documentary combo platter of present-day interviews, archival footage, film and TV clips, and dramatic re-creations, but by the time we get to the bittersweet but hopeful conclusion (Sheen has been sober for eight years), it feels like the film would have been more effective as a feature-length documentary. It\u2019s like watching a train wreck, with a lone survivor emerging, only to see yet another train wreck\u2014with that same guy crawling out from the rubble once again. And again. (Still, kudos to director Renzi for finding just the right moments to sprinkle in snippets of Sheen\u2019s films and TV work, as well as his father\u2019s, that often serve as poignant reflections of various triumphs and setbacks in Charlie\u2019s journey. Life imitating art, and vice versa.)<\/p>\n
To Sheen\u2019s credit, he is forthcoming and places the blame for his troubles squarely on himself.. Looking fit for someone who\u2019s been through what he\u2019s been through, the now 60-year-old Sheen sits in a corner booth in a diner, still expressing himself in that unique manner that pinballs between illuminating reflection and WTF does that even mean, e.g., \u201cShame is suffocating\u2026but shame can turn into someone\u2019s North Star, you know, or their South Star, or the Death Star.\u201d Sheen\u2019s father, Martin, and his brother Emilio Estevez declined to participate in the documentary, though Charlie says their relationships are solid. However, we do hear from key figures in Sheen\u2019s life, including ex-wives Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller, daughter Lola and son Bob, his brother Ram\u00f3n Estevez, longtime friends Sean Penn and Chris Tucker\u2014and his \u201cTwo and a Half Men\u201d co-star Jon Cryer, who notes, \u201cI worked with Charlie Sheen for eight years, and if you wonder what it\u2019s like to work with Charlie Sheen for eight years, when I started, I had hair.\u201d<\/p>\n
Save for a few jumps, \u201cAKA Charlie Sheen\u201d follows a straightforward chronological timeline. We see Super 8 footage of home movies that young Charlie shot with Emilio and friends, such as Sean and Chris Penn\u2014mini-stories filled with pretend violence, mirroring the work that dad Martin Sheen was doing in films like \u201cBadlands\u201d and \u201cApocalypse Now.\u201d Sheen shares anecdotes about his rise in Hollywood, starting with a memorable cameo in \u201cFerris Bueller\u2019s Day Off\u201d before he skyrocketed to fame with \u201cPlatoon,\u201d \u201cWall Street,\u201d \u201cEight Men Out,\u201d and \u201cMajor League.\u201d By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Sheen was essentially on a years-long bender, accompanied by the likes of Nicolas Cage (\u201cwe were warped\u201d) and careening out of control. <\/p>\n
\u201cPart Deux\u201d kicks off with footage of Sheen meeting with the press after getting out of rehab in 1998, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s a good day to be alive\u2026I want to thank my family for their support, my friends\u2026\u201d That support\u2014and Sheen staying alive\u2014would be put to the test time and again over the next decade, as Sheen resuscitated his career via the small screen, winning a Golden Globe for \u201cSpin City\u201d and then starring in \u201cTwo and a Half Men,\u201d which became an instant hit. But the party bus never stopped rolling for very long. Ex-wife Denise Richards tears up as she recounts their tumultuous marriage (\u201cwhat he put me through\u2026I don\u2019t know how I\u2019m here, to be honest\u201d). Brooke Mueller, Sheen\u2019s third wife, weighs in on their drug-fueled union. In a weird but admittedly compelling turn, even Sheen\u2019s longtime drug dealer \u201cMarco\u201d appears, giving an interview in the condo Sheen bought for him, with a 2009 People\u2019s Choice Award for \u201cTwo and a Half Men\u201d on a table in Marco\u2019s living room. \u201cSometimes [Sheen] would smoke so much crack he couldn\u2019t even speak,\u201d says Marco. We\u2019ve seen a lot of documentaries about celebrity struggles, but I\u2019m not sure we\u2019ve ever seen one featuring an interview with the drug dealer.<\/p>\n
It was clear Sheen was going through some major problems while \u201cTwo and a Half Men\u201d was still a ratings success\u2014but the network\u2019s solution was to throw $2 million an episode his way, making him the highest-paid TV star in history. \u201cIt was a recipe for disaster,\u201d says Sheen, who would go on to embark on a bizarre and disturbing string of media and live appearances, turning catchphrases such as \u201cWinning!\u201d and \u201cTiger Blood\u201d into dark rallying cries. Remember the \u201cMy Violent Torpedo of Truth\/Defeat is Not an Option\u201d tour, with stops at Radio City Music Hall and the Chicago Theatre, among other venues, where thousands of fans cheered Sheen\u2019s meltdown as if he were some Addiction Superhero? \u201cIt feels weird,\u201d Sheen says in the present day, \u201cIt feels like I\u2019m watching somebody else\u2026It just creates\u2026the shame shivers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charlie Sheen certainly appears to be in a better place these days. This week also marks the release of his book \u201cThe Book of Sheen: A Memoir.\u201d The \u201cTorpedo the Truth\u201d tour has given way to the Redemption Tour. One hopes Sheen has quelled or at least quieted all those demons that were born of the illness of addiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It must be exhausting to be Charlie Sheen. Just watching the two-part Netflix documentary series \u201cAKA Charlie Sheen\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-127794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}