Wednesday, February 16, 2011
LOVED YOU IN WALL STREET! We haven't had anything to say about the whole Charlie Sheen situation -- even now that we've learned that frequent ALOTT5MA bête noire ALOTT5MA Lenny Dykstra has worked his way onto Sheen's couch -- but Linda Holmes gives us a good jumping-off point with her piece yesterday on the moral and financial obligations of Sheen's producers/enablers as long as Charlie's Being Unrepentant Charlie. As Linda notes, "There's just so much money. People do amazing things when there's that much money."
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Related: do we at all judge Martin Sheen as part of this? Three-fourths of his kids ended up okay, from what we can tell, but those long shoots across the globe (Apocalypse Now most notably) can't have been a good thing.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping for an all-star remake of the classic "I learned it from You, Dad! I learned it from You!" commercial.
ReplyDeleteNonsense! Charlie Sheen is well over 40 years old. At that point, it is one's choice to remain an addict. Judging his father for this is foolish as holding him responsible for Charlie's lapsed Catholicism. Charlie Sheen has made it clear he has no interest in changing how he lives and that he feels everyone else is overreacting and attempting to fix what's not broken.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed how Charlie Sheen was chyroned as being "Actor / Avid Cincinnati Reds Fan" but when I googled it, it turns out that he's a longstanding fan: http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/story/sheen-treated-baseball-team-to-hookers-and-porn-stars
ReplyDeleteLinda's piece made me try to come up with analogous situations, with so much money and so little ability to fix things but the only thing I can come up with at this level is Michael Jackson.
I'd say Michael Jackson, Elvis, Lohan and a lot of other stars. So much money that no one wants to stop the revenue stream. I thought Martin Sheen was going to apply to take Charlie's money- ala Britney Spears' dad.
ReplyDeleteIf I ran CBS, and I thought that getting fired from Two and a Half Men would be just the wakeup call Sheen needed, and would lead to him reevaluate his life, give rehab a real shot, and get clean, I'd fire him in a second. However, I do not believe that. So, I'd let everyone else on the show continue to earn their livelihood, at least until Sheen becomes physically incapable of working. I guess what I'm saying is, I don't see the producers or network as enabling Sheen. He was a mess long before the show began, and will probably continue to be so long after the show ends, for however long he lives. It would be great to take a moral stand and say, "yes, he's going to use drugs no matter what, but not on our dime," but it's more complicated when so many other paychecks are involved.
ReplyDeleteAt this point, Charlie's choices are his own. What I was suggesting was that this isn't exactly a new direction for his life's arc.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, corporations have one and only one mandate - maximize shareholder value. Right now, keeping Sheen on the payroll is doing that, in part because the public continues to make it a very highly rated show no matter how horrible Sheen is. That doesn't mean that individual people shouldn't try to help him and maybe do extreme things to help him, but the corporation qua corporation is doing what it is supposed to do.
ReplyDeleteChuck Lorre has now devoted a few vanity card to the Sheen situation - most recently #330 and #329. http://www.chucklorre.com/index.php
Well said Jake. How many people are directly, fully employed because of that show? 50? 60?
ReplyDeleteI think you can feel Martin's anguish in the 1998 CNN.com article that Linda links to in her piece, and I doubt that anguish has diminished at all over the past 12+ years (!). He seems to come off as someone who has tried to do all that he can, then and now, to get Charlie help; Charlie obviously has decided not to accept recovery as a goal.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the concern is that thus far, Sheen has continued to show up for work and perform, but that these events make the likelihood of him being unable to do that in the future greater--the question comes whether the interest is better served with short-term gains or longer-term ones. The other problem the show has is that it's built around Sheen--you can't write around him or write him off for a while, which would make snse.
ReplyDeleteI mostly agree with that, Jake, except that my recollection is that a major selling point of the show, at its inception (caveat: I don't watch it and never did), was "Hey, we've got bad-boy Charlie Sheen more or less playing himself, but without family hour depictions of drug use!" So I'm not sure we can totally absolve the producers and network from the enabling charge, although maybe it's pre-nabling rather than current enabling.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I absolutely agree he was a mess before and will continue to be one after. It's hard to imagine it could get worse, but y'know, it could get a whole lot worse.
Also see #324.
ReplyDeleteIt's so complicated. I agree that it's obvious nothing will stop Sheen at this point and the livelihoods of others working there should be considered in a decision to cancel the show.I wish they could just fire him and recast.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it isn't the network's responsibility but I wish someone could say "This behavior is sad and scary and unacceptable. By continuing to have a show centered around this actor, we are indicating to the public at large that this behavior IS acceptable. Therefore, we are stopping production until a new actor for the role is found." Or something like that. Even if the public doesn't seem to care, shouldn't someone (i.e. a network head) in a position to influence so many people have some sort of responsibility to do so?
Again, it's completely complicated, and I don't know what the right thing is, but continuing the show with him in his current state to me implies an acceptibility factor -- even if cancelling the show or firing him would have no influence. ARGH.
Why is it the producers' or the network's responsibility to help Charlie Sheen? As long as he performs his duties to them in a way that THEY (not the rest of us) find acceptable, why does anyone have an opinion about whether they should fire him or not? His relationship with the show is an employment relationship, not a friendship or family relationship or anything else.
ReplyDeleteUpdate from Alan: Sheen's back to work on March 1, and Alan discusses the idea of the show without the actor.
ReplyDeleteIt's possible that working on the show is the only thing keeping Sheen alive. The fact that he has to be functional enough to show up at work and perform may be all that's anchoring him at this point, and if he loses that, he could be dead within a matter of days. (Of course, he may very well wind up dead anyway -- when you take the quantities of drugs that he presumably does, any day could be your last.)
ReplyDeleteI see your point about how Sheen's continued employment could send a message that his behavior is acceptable. Unfortunately, though, if entertainment productions had to shut down every time one of the stars engaged in socially unacceptable/harmful behavior, getting a movie or TV show made would become nearly impossible.
I think Lohan doesn't rise to that level. Sheen is making 1.something million an episode. Lohan was promising, but hadn't gotten there yet.
ReplyDeleteElvis, though...hmmm. Not knowing enough about him, I guess I don't know if it was "the money is too good to stop him" or "the money he has already makes it hard to affect him to get him to stop". The weird thing about this situation is that Sheen seems to need the job almost as much as the job needs him.
I don't watch the show, but I'm guessing that there are never any repercussions for Sheen's character. Maybe that's something Lorre and CBS can do to address whatever responsibility they have to the public, if not to Sheen.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely NOT! Do you judge a grown person's parents if said grown person has diabetes and refuses to manage their disease in a responsible manner?
ReplyDeleteCharlie Sheen is an adult, he seems uninterested in meaningful and long term recovery. I would imagine that as a parent who has been dealing with his child's particular disease for over a decade, and might have detached with love from Charlie's life as a way to deal with the havoc addiction can wreak on family relationships.
I hate the idea of the show without Sheen. And, although it seems like the consensus is against this show, I love the show, I love Sheen and I love Cryer Ducky. This show is funny but I don't think it would be without Sheen.
ReplyDeleteI don't watch any Lorre production but I just spend two hours reading those vanity cards. Captivatingly strange.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious to know how many people are tuning in just because they keep hearing about the show & what a trainwreck the star is.
ReplyDeleteis it possibly a cyclical effect where the show becomes a ratings juggernaught because of Sheen's highly publicized personal life?
I absolutely think it is all Emilio's fault. All Charlie's life, it was like, "look at your brother Emilio, having normal nonviolent relationships with unpaid women, honoring his grandfather with his choice of last name, and leading a team of misfits to the hockey championship in his spare time." He set such an impossible standard. And when Charlie had hit rock bottom, alone in his apartment with nothing but a large pink glamor-mural of his own face on the wall (because his furniture had been repossessed), windows open to the chilling breeze, did Emilio come to him? No, it was only Billy, it was always Billy.
ReplyDelete