"I want to piss everybody off!" claims Charlie Sheen. And in this interview, he tries his best, trashing everyone from Tom Cruise, Julie Roberts, Keanu Reeves, Marisa Tomei and Brad Pitt to Sean Young, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nastassja Kinski, Stephen Dorff and Kristy Swanson. Oh, and LeVar Burton.
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Do I use condoms? Is that the question?" Charlie Sheen asks, laughing.
"Absolutely! In fact, I'm wearing one right now." The 29-year-old Sheen utters this pronouncement while we're hanging out between shots for his new $40-million Disney flick, Terminal Velocity, in which he and co-star Nastassja Kinski fall out of planes, dodge spies and bullets, and find time to kiss. Having established where one of Hollywood's busiest bachelors stands on the matter of protection. I move on to ask him why he thinks an actor should never poke the doll with whom he shares the billing.
Sprawled on the leather seat of his bus-size trailer, Sheen kicks back with a Corona before replying, "Never sleep with your co-sitar if you really want to be sexy together in a movie, because fucking offscreen can dissipate the energy on-screen, you know? And never sleep with your co-star if her pussy smells like her butthole." When he sees my jaw drop in response to this pearl of wisdom. Sheen backtracks a little by saying, "And ... I can't think of more reasons, maybe because I've been making so many movies with other guys.
"But no way anything went on with Kristy Swanson on The Chase." he claims, a moment later. "I mean, if ever a thought went through that airhead of hers, it would perish from loneliness. I haven't fucked Nastassja Kinski either, but she fucking turns me on, man. She has a reputation for being difficult and there've been times on this movie when I felt I was the only guy holding it together with her. If I broke down, we would have lost her completely."
Not minutes before telling me this, Sheen, who makes $6 million for movies I mostly don't want to see, had vowed he did not want to handle this Movieline interview the way he handled his previous Movieline interview [August 1990]. What, no spilling the beans on such escapades as a youthful four-day crime spree? A credit card scam? A supposed accident involving a loaded gun with his then-girlfriend? No unfurling of one of his famous poems, such as a poisonous ode to the press? Why ever not? "Because I thought I was an asshole in that interview," he confesses. "It was during that whole crazy period when I was feeling very much like being an outlaw. Or maintaining the image of an outlaw. Which can be interesting and fun, but not real productive. I was just talking about all kinds of shit, you know? Now, the press wants to maintain that outlaw image."
Taking another belt of brew, Sheen now makes another attempt at demonstrating how he can observe the appropriate proprieties if he wants to. He touts Terminal Velocity as a movie with "Hitchcockian flair," and says it's no "boys' toy, action movie, but something that's performance-driven." Just about the time he says, "You watch--this movie will survive a long time," he notices my eyeballs drifting to the back of my head.
"Hey, you know, Stephen," he says, grinning, dropping the act, "if it turns out to be crap, hey, we gave it a shot." He mentions that the flick's advertising slogan will probably be, "How fast can you fall?" which strikes me as a key question in his career. After all, he made an early splash with attention-getting performances in such Oliver Stone movies as Platoon and Wall Street, and appeared in distinguished, if less successful, fare like John Sayles's Eight Men Out. But, having spent the past six years slogging through the likes of Never On a Tuesday, Courage Mountain, Navy SEALS, Men at Work, Cadence, The Three Musketeers -- and yes, some hits, too, like Young Guns, Major League and Hot Shots!--Sheen should know precisely how fast one can fall.
If I don't want to sit through his films, why do I want to interview Sheen? Because the guy is no less photogenic or talented than a dozen others we could name who garner more hype. And because he strikes me as someone who never gives a dull interview. I think of him as the son of the badass Martin Sheen of Badlands and Apocalypse Now while his brother Emilio Estevez is the son of the beatific Martin Sheen of Gandhi and TV movies about the Kennedys. Beyond that, I'm curious about why Charlie seems to coast in his career instead of kick ass. Recently, and rather mysteriously, he dropped out of co-starring with Craig Sheffer in Wings of Courage, a big-screen IMAX adventure movie directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. I recall, too, that he passed on White Men Can't Jump, Indecent Proposal and The Cowboy Way, making him largely culpable for Woody Harrelson's movie career. But the tendency goes further back. When Brandon Tartikoff ran Paramount, he put out the word that he saw Sheen for the role Tom Cruise would eventually grab in The Firm; earlier, Cruise took the role in Born on the Fourth of July for which Oliver Stone initially wanted Sheen.
So, what's going on with him? Is he doing an Elvis, trashing himself in movies for the big bucks? Did his well-publicized reputation for once being boozy and mouthy catch up with him, making big-time directors and actors stay clear? It has been quite a while since Sheen worked with a major director or opposite megastars. In other words, never mind Nastassja Kinski, where are Sheen's screen pairings with Bridget Fonda? Julia Roberts? Meg Ryan? Marisa Tomei?
"I'd like to jam Bridget Fonda," he drawls. "She's sexy. Really sexy. I think we would be good together. Meg Ryan and I should do a movie, because, if you combine the grosses of the movies that she and I have turned down, it's like eight billion dollars. Someone who's a real hammer is Polly Walker, who killed me in Patriot Games. Then, she got married and pregnant. Jeesh. Marisa Tomei? Every year at the Oscars, there's one that slips by. When she won against those incredible actresses, I went, 'What the fuck? Did we all see the same fucking movie?'
"I had a couple of dinners with Julia [Roberts] before I left for Vienna to do The Three Musketeers," Sheen says when I ask him about the prospect of working with her. "We got along pretty good. She's a pretty bright lady, a lot of energy. Inside of five minutes, she's asking me what kind of interests I have, hobbies, and as I got to each of them, she tells me, 'I don't eat red meat,' 'I don't like baseball,' 'I don't like muscle cars,' 'I don't like guns.' And I'm looking at her and ... well, I mean, I like Kiefer [Sutherland] and I'm thinking, 'Should I call him for tips?' But then, I'm also thinking that I'm gonna go off and do this movie with him in a couple of weeks. And if something went down between her and me, I wouldn't want to have to lie to him, you know? I'm not saying that I could have done anything with her, but who knows? I mean, she was shutting down 'The Machine,' which is the nickname my friends gave me, 'cause I go, like, all night, whatever I'm doing. But Julia was shooting me down pretty hard. Which happens. But rarely."
And what if Sheen learned that a movie he really wanted paired him again with Sean Young, whom he dissed in print after they made Wall Street together?
"How much are they paying me?" he asks, chortling. "Actually, we kissed and made up at Planet Hollywood in Phoenix. I saw her and said, 'We should bury the hatchet. I wanna apologize for all the bullshit I said about you in the past.' I patted her on her back and she turned around, being funny, to see if I stuck any signs on her back or anything, and said, 'Will you sign my autograph book?' So I signed it. She's out of her fucking tree, but I bet she's a great jam, though. Just a little out of control."
Since Sheen earlier mentioned that most of his recent action movies and parodies of action movies have paired him with other guys, how come he hasn't made flicks with the other, bigger male contemporary actors? Just this fall, when Sheen turns up in Terminal Velocity, Cruise, Brad Pitt and Christian Slater, for instance, will be out with the high-profile Interview With the Vampire. "I'd rather be making fucking Terminal Velocity than ever be a fucking vampire. I hope all those guys, Cruise, Pitt, Slater, are brilliant and win Oscars and make a billion dollars for that show. Tom Cruise totally invented himself, came out of nowhere, started as an image, then exposed himself as a true talent. I mean, the guy is fucking good, can't take that away from him. Oh, and Leon DiCaprio with his Oscar nomination and all his fucking James Dean bullshit? Shit, some of these punks got no fucking respect."
He's rolling now, quaffing more brew, Bogarting his cigarette between sips. "Was it in your Movieline story with Stephen Dorff that he was talking about guys playing the wrong ages in movies, like I supposedly was in Platoon?" he asks, referring to an interview I did with the outspoken BackBeat star. "I was 19 when I made that movie. Dorff is a pretty good actor, but he was jacking off in some high school gymnasium when I was making the movie. Or was it junior high? I'm not saying I'm an old-timer, but I'm in my eleventh year and maybe I deserve a little badge for taking the shit of the decade.
"I mean, how does fucking Francis Ford Coppola, one of the greatest filmmakers of our time, see Keanu Reeves's work, see what we've all seen, and say, 'That's what I want in my movie'? How does Bertolucci see that and say, 'That's my guy'? Emilio and I sit around and just scratch our fucking heads, thinking, 'How did this guy get in?' I mean, what the fuck? How does Keanu work with Coppola and Bertolucci and I don't get a shot at that, know what I'm saying?
"Maybe I should become a heroin addict," Sheen says, dissing Young Hollywood.
"Maybe I should roam the fucking streets at 5 a.m. and hang out at fucking coffee bars. You know, become avant-garde. Or maybe if I adopt an English accent and add a middle name, so I'm Charlie Something Sheen, I'll get there."
He shoots me a look, making it clear that now that Lucifer has risen, there's no way he wants to shove him back down. "Hey, you know what? Fuck politically correct," he announces. "It's time to get real. Time to get politically incorrect on every level. And to piss everybody off, from women's rights groups to animal protectionists to firearms lobbyists, vegetarians and fucking work-out fanatics. I want to piss everybody off."
Why not go first, then, to I'affair Fleiss, the Hollywood madam and call girls brouhaha in which his name surfaced as, reputedly, a John? After all, Sheen has, according to published reports, admitted he was indeed a Fleiss client--one of the few unmarried ones, he pointed out in his defense-- after reports that police found traveler's checks inscribed with Sheen's John Hancock among Fleiss's things when she got busted last summer. But I want to know about the rumors that say the services were for cheerleader-type playmates. "I don't wanna sound like an asshole with the Heidi thing, but it's so fucking... so over talked about," he says, treading lightly. "If we could just avoid that subject entirely..." Well, I suppose we could, but, come on, Charlie, what's the deal with cheerleaders?
He says, "Well, that stuff was fabricated in that [Fleiss] situation, but it [does] exist as a bit of a fantasy in my mind. Somebody fucking peeked into my head, you know? I can't look at some of those cheerleaders and not think about lifting up those little skirts. Yeah, 'Up with that tutu,' you know? What is it about a cheerleader, man? Is it the outfit? The innocence? Absolutely. And those little, low, half-socks. 'Cause, I'm a foot guy, you know. Terrible foot fetish. I'm not saying terrible as in 'bad,' I'm saying it's just tremendous. I'll suck some toes, man. I'm telling you, I've met knockout babes, you know, and they decide to get comfortable and they take their fucking shoes off and it's like--" he breaks off, bulging his eyes in mock-horror as if looking at a gruesome pair of feet, then continues, "Yooooo, daddy, I've got better-looking feet than that. But I don't like to have my toes sucked 'cause I'm too ticklish down there."
Okay, I ask, when did Sheen first become aware of the ineffable power of his down there! "It's a fucking good story, man," he says. "As a kid, when it came to me and Emilio, I was the one who never, ever got the girl. I lost my virginity in Vegas. I was, like, 15. Pop took me and my cousin Joey, who was visiting from Ohio, to Vegas. Pop goes to sleep about 10. We were leaving the next day, so Joey and I are looking through the phone book, 'cause we know this is the place, right? And we find a number and call them up and we set the deal and they send the girl, right? And she shows up. About 26. Tits. Ass. Legs. A fucking red-haired bombshell sent from the heavens. A lot like Polly Walker, by the way. One girl for the both of us. We're gonna share her. Not at the same time, mind you."
I get the picture. Then what happened? "We go into the room. She was cool. She knew right away it was my maiden voyage. My knowledge was like, 'Do this and repeat if necessary,' like straight out of the sex manual. As brief as it was, it was crazily enjoyable. It was also immediately addicting. Right down my alley, man. Anyway, I wait in the bathroom while Joey goes to do his thing and then we go do the payment thing. The problem is, we don't have the $400. So, I went into my father's room and swiped his credit card. She sees my pop's name on it and says, 'Where is he? Can I get an autograph?' I say, 'He can't know about this.' Anyway, she was cool and she split. About two weeks later, Pop got his credit card bill and there's this $400 charge for 'Entertainment Plus' or something, so I had to confess."
What did Pop extract as penance? "He didn't make me go out and pick up dog shit for five years to pay him back. There was no back 40 to make me hoe. He was pretty cool about it, but Pop's famous for getting you in a car when he wants to talk to you because, like, where can you go? You're going to listen to him whether you like it or not. So, over the eight-track blaring Bob Dylan, he tried to explain sex versus love and how I had to understand where sex fits in and doesn't fit in. I said, 'Pop, it fit in pretty fucking good.'
"Love, lust--I mean, he talked about understanding the difference between the two," Sheen continues, his face turning serious. "And to this day, I'm not sure I know the difference. I think maybe I've been in love, but I don't know. Maybe I have been in love with the idea of being in love. Maybe I've been in love with the lust of love. But I've never really had my heart broken, you know." Sucking on a cigarette, he tells me how he and actress Meredith Salenger recently busted up, and about a poem, titled "Whatever Blues," he penned to commemorate the split. He tells me the poem "ends with a guy socking down spoonful after spoonful of cyanide-filled Jell-O. It's a metaphor for something, I don't know what."
I suggest that he might want to rethink dating other performers, making Sheen ask, "Do you date an actress because she understands what you do and what you go through, even though I have dealt with that 'actress' shit--hearing about her fucking auditions and callbacks and readings--and that's driven me absolutely fucking crazy? Or do you date a waitress or the telephone operator who doesn't know shit about what you do, can't relate to it? But at least [doing] that's cool because, when we get home, she's not gonna talk about a fucking audition or a photo shoot--all that shit you don't want to hear. I mean, sometimes you just want to go home, fuck, and watch baseball."
On the other hand, Sheen says, "Some things have really worked for me. I had a fucking crazy, really bitchin' relationship with Ginger Lynn." Ah, yes, Ms. Lynn, the body beautiful shown to spectacular effect in numerous movies in the "Adult" section of your local video store. Exactly how bitchin' was his relationship with Lynn, which, reportedly, did not sit well with his parents? "The physical, sexual aspects of it were completely insane, fucking phenomenal," he recalls. "To tell you the fucking truth, it was out of hand. Getting head? Beyond fucking thunderdome. The hang level? One-hundred percent. My friends fucking dug her because she was a great resource. If one of my friends was curious about something, they could say, 'Ginge, look, my girlfriend, the blow jobs just aren't there. What do I do to get her to improve the blow jobs?' And she'd just tell them. The sexual stuff was so fucking phenomenal, it fucked me up for anything after it. You know, you get accustomed to eating prime rib and if somebody starts throwing cheeseburgers your way, it's not gonna cut it, man."
Sheen throws back his head laughing, slapping the table. "There's now probably a couple of girls out there going, 'So, I'm a fucking cheeseburger, pal?' Sorry! But, hey, maybe compared to the prime rib they were used to, I'm a fucking cheeseburger to them, too." So, what made him give up his prime rib? "She had to figure some shit out on her own," he says of Lynn, with considerable tenderness. "I needed to give her some time to just let her get to know herself a little better. There was also a lot of judgment, a lot of pressure. From my family. From the press."
Speaking of the press, Sheen's gotten less ink lately about his earlier high living and carousing. "Nobody can tell you anything about the stuff that comes your way," he says, jamming out his cigarette. "You can batten down every fucking hatch, but, when you're at sea, the ocean is a motherfucker. I feel bad for Darryl Strawberry," he says about the ballplayer who's had drug troubles and got dropped by the Dodgers. "But man, you've got six months to fuck off and six to put people on the seats and play some good baseball. Having been through the whole deal, I understand that sometimes you just don't give a fuck. You've gotta feed that appetite, find that temporary satisfaction that feels like an absolute necessity at the time. I've been the guy at the bar until 5 a.m., picking up some girl, knowing I've got a photo shoot at 7, figuring, 'Fuck it, I'll wear shades.' But, with Strawberry or me, it's like, there are so many fucking guys that wanna do what you do, it's not fair not to be at the right place."
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.