Martin Sheen isn't a stranger to the kind of "psychotic" spiral his son -- who shall remain nameless because we at Movieline have repeated it scores of times at the expense of your faith in humanity -- is going through. In an interview with The Telegraph, Sheen noted, "I know what hell he's living in... I've had psychotic episodes in public. One of them was on camera -- the opening scene of Apocalypse Now." Well. Let's re-watch the damn thing.
Of course, the filming of Apocalypse Now was one of the most grueling in cinematic history -- Typhoon Olga wrecked sets, the six-week shooting schedule ended up taking 16 months, and Marlon Brando made things worse by being Marlon Brando. Sheen also suffered a heart attack in March of 1977, and the movie's first scene is part of an unscripted stretch where Sheen drunkenly punches glass, suffers a breakdown, and attacks director Francis Ford Coppola. Wisely, that last bit was left on the cutting room floor, but if you've seen Apocalypse Now, you know the onscreen trauma is all quite real.
If this is really comparable to one Two and a Half Men star's staggering decline, I'm only sort of surprised. The TMZ-aided traumas already feel like a hot cup of morning napalm.
ยท Martin Sheen: Charlie is 'Emotionally Crippled' [PopEater]