Charlie Sheen: Charlie's Devils

Speaking of the wild life, I wonder whether any movie company ever demanded he take a drug test? "They tried on the freaking Annaud movie," he says, referring to Wings of Courage, the movie to be shown in the handful of special huge-screen IMAX theaters around the world. "I'm on the freaking thing for a week and I was completely clean at the time and I refused the test. It just didn't seem right. I've never been asked for [a test] before and I don't think they had the director, the director of photography, the grips, the craft service guy, the honey wagon driver take them, so I refused. I mean, I'm in every fucking scene of Terminal Velocity and [I was going to be in Wings of Courage] for, like, five minutes. They said, 'What are you hiding?' and I said, 'Nothing, man.' Maybe it's some policy of Sony Pictures and if that's the case, I guess I'm not going to be working for Sony Pictures."

One of Sheen's posse strolls in and mentions the death of Kurt Cobain. Sheen says, "I think somebody juiced Kurt Cobain. I mean, who blows off their own face with a 12-gauge? I think it's a possibility he was murdered. He pulls out of this huge concert, which might have cost one of these fucking wise guy promoters millions. And they say, 'We'll teach this guy a lesson.' Who knows? They'll proba¬bly get Brad Pitt to play him in a movie. He couldn't pull it off performance-wise, but he looks like Cobain.

"Fame is a lot to deal with," Sheen admits when I ask if the pressure has ever made him consider ending it all. "But I was never suicidal. If I was gonna go out, I wouldn't do it like [Cobain]. I wanna do something more... dramatic." More dramatic than blowing off one's head at the height of fame? Sheen drops his volume and says, "I'd do it driving a '67 Stingray off the Grand Canyon, on fire, dressed as Spider-Man, screaming, 'Mom!' at the top of my lungs and have somebody videotape it.

"I'm not as afraid of death as I used to be," he adds, "but it's got to be the heaviest trip, 'cause they're saving it for last, you know?" So what terrifies Sheen these days? "Fucking sharks," he answers, like a shot. "I will not swim in the fucking ocean and yeah, I know all the statistics and bullshit, but I know that the one day I go in the water, I will be so afraid that my fear will attract [a shark]. Now they're saying that urine draws these fuckers. And who doesn't pee in the ocean? Except maybe LeVar Burton or someone. Sharks, man. I'd rather be shot in the stomach, which is probably the worst place to get shot."

He shakes off the terror. "Maybe I think about this stuff so much because I was born a blue baby. I had the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck and I was, basically, dead--just a soaked, lifeless, sack of child. I like to believe that my soul was kind of at limbo, looking for some entry point, then I went, 'That's who I want as my parents,' and on some level, maybe I'm in this business to deliver some kind of message or just to entertain people. Or just entertain myself. Who the fuck knows?"

When I ask, "So, how satisfied with your career are you right now?" Sheen lets out a grim chuckle and admits, "I'm not happy with the last couple of years. I'm not a brain surgeon, but I'm not an idiot either. And I'm fucking starved, man. I don't feel like I've been challenged in any way, not with what's really dying to come out, to present itself. I mean, The Three Musketeers? The Chase? I'm not knocking comedy, like in Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux, because it isn't easy. And I'm not knocking the rest of the talent involved in those projects, either. But it's time to do something out-there."

Or how about something just plain commercial? Like Indecent Proposal, which would have presented the irresistible spectacle of watching Sheen bundle with Demi Moore, whom years ago brother Emilio Estevez was engaged to? "I didn't want to have my wife in the movie snatched by Robert Redford," Sheen explains. "Besides, to show, in the end, that the million dollars didn't mean anything to the guy by having him buy at an auction an elephant, or whatever the fuck it was, for a million bucks? I mean, the millionaire's already jammed your wife, man, keep the cash!" What about White Men Can't Jump? "I didn't feel it would be any fun," he says. "I don't feel connected to basketball. At least, when I do a baseball movie, I know I'm gonna have a good time."

But what about movies he has gone up for, where the producers chose another actor? He ticks them off: "I met for Coppola on [Bram Stoker's] Dracula, but I could tell when I walked in the room that it wasn't gonna happen. You get a vibe, you know? He is a sweet man, but I knew he didn't want me. I met on Carlito's Way, which was written great and offered the chance to work with [Al] Pacino, but they went with Sean [Penn], who should have won an Oscar nomination. I don't think I could have turned in anything close to [what] he did; you felt you were watching some funky little Jewish lawyer that was completely out of his mind. I wanted to get a meeting on Ron Howard's new movie [Apollo 13] about the astronaut, the one Tom Hanks is doing. For some reason, the producer didn't think I was right for the gig. Hey," he says with a shrug, "I'm not going to do the Sean Young route and dress in a cat suit.

"I hadn't read a script as good as Birdy until I read The Shawshank Redemption, and I haven't read anything as good as that since," he continues. "I called my agent and said, 'I don't fucking care, I'll do this movie for scale.' I gave the script to Nic Cage and he fucking flips out, too. Could we both get a meeting? Could we audition a couple of scenes? No, they shut us down. Nic and I were going to spend a hundred grand, put together a three-day shoot, do some scenes, score it and send it to that motherfucker. Then we found out that they had gone with two talented guys, Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. But that one hurt, man. You don't get something real very often and that's what I'm after."

Sheen's hopes are now pinned on Sons, which he calls "an homage, a 26-years-later follow-up to Husbands, John Cassavetes's punishingly long 1970 movie about three talkative guys who freak out after the death of another friend, in which he'll play, for Cassavetes's writer/director son Nick, one of three talkative guys who freak out after the death of another friend. "What the industry doesn't understand right now is that I'm not working just to get rich," he asserts. "Word is out that I'm willing to take a large pay cut to do something really special-- and work out something [financially] better on the back end. [I want to] do one film that reminds people of where I came from, [like the] films that I used to make, that were about performance, about real people. This business is very forgiving, and I want to remind a lot of directors who I really want to work with, or work with again, that that guy still exists."

After a long pause, Sheen philosophizes, "How much money can you spend? How many fucking houses can you own? How many cars? How many of Babe Ruth's jerseys? I said it to Michael Douglas: 'How much is enough?' I want to be big enough not to have to star in a movie I direct, like I had to with my directorial debut and fucked it up because I can't do both things. Big enough to work with talented people and, if they happen to be my friends, so be it. Big enough to work when I choose. Big enough to tell certain motherfuckers, 'Eat my ass.' "

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Marisa Tomei for the July Movieline.

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