Charlie Sheen appears on the cover of my new Rolling Stone magazine and it made me seriously contemplate one question. How is this guy famous? He is a perennial ensemble actor in good movies and on occasion has been a good co-star, but has never carried a movie. His television show was awful and basically just him being himself, a jerk. If you need confirmation that his show was awful, just know it was the #1 rated show in America for years. Enough said.
Aside from being a good looking man, who has aged pretty well, what does have going for him? He seems to be of average intelligence. He's a drunk. He's a womanizer. He's basically everything we would hate in someone we know. The funny thing is that our society reveres these types. We make them famous for their inadequacies rather than their actual abilities.
In his early career he had bit parts in tons of teen/twenty-somethings movies. He had some starring roles in movies that were absolute duds, such as The Boys Next Door, The Wraith and Three for the Road. He did actually a decent 80's, Miami Vice style movie called No Man's Land, but every scene was stolen by his co-star, D.B. Sweeney, who for some unknown reason is doing bit parts in TV shows. His small part in Platoon could be called memorable, but it was because he got the but end of a rifle to his face. Pretty unimpressive start.
His big break came in Wall Street. Now I'm not saying he wasn't decent, but this movie is all about the scenes with Michael Douglas. The Sheen scenes lagged on and on and made us want Gekko back on the screen. By the end of the movie, I was happy it was over. Nobody walked out of that movie thinking about Charlie Sheen, they walked out thinking "Greed. For lack of a better word. Is Good."
Then he does more ensemble stuff, like Young Guns and Major League. You take away his haircut (which he needed a stand-in for - no seriously) and he actually detracted from the movie. Then he ran through a horrible string of B-movies such as Navy Seals, Men at Work and my favorite, The Chase. The Chase is so painfully bad, but fortunately you are almost distracted enough not to notice or hear him. Thank You Kristy Swanson.
He did a few more years of horrible movies and then got Two and a Half Men. Now some people might find it funny, but I would call those people misogynistic morons. The show has three premises. Make fun of hard working single parents who are only looking for good things to happen to them and their children and praise drunk guys who sleep with so many women they can't remember their names. The last one is the best, lets laugh at the fact that a kid, who seems to be afforded more luxuries than most, is a complete and utter moron. Honestly, what does it say about our society and the millions of people who watch this show? Sure, I get it, every episode has one or multiple women who would never give you the time of day, but who cares? The sad reality is that the guys who are like Jon Cryer's character don't get those girls. The good guys, who actually care about people and their feelings, have become the laughingstock. The guys who don't care, who got rich almost by mistake, who drink, do drugs and think monogamy is a curse word, they are the ones getting the girls.
Charlie Sheen is worth something crazy, like $70 million. He may be the world quietest philanthropist for all I know. He may help old ladies across the street and work in soup kitchens when he's not doing blow off a strippers ass. Who knows what he does when he's behind closed doors. From the legal proceedings that have plagued him, I'm guessing it's not much different from his outside persona. One thing I can say. He's a fairly bad actor. Despite this one fact, he's marketed himself in a multimillionaire. He's done it by doing what most people wouldn't. He's become despicable. Imagine that. He's become what everyone should hate, but we don't. We praise him and worship him and in doing so, we make him richer and more famous. Imagine if that were the way real life worked. Wait, it is. I just find it hard that someone with so little talent had make a 30 year career out of being a dick and you all love him for it. Sad.
Aside from being a good looking man, who has aged pretty well, what does have going for him? He seems to be of average intelligence. He's a drunk. He's a womanizer. He's basically everything we would hate in someone we know. The funny thing is that our society reveres these types. We make them famous for their inadequacies rather than their actual abilities.
In his early career he had bit parts in tons of teen/twenty-somethings movies. He had some starring roles in movies that were absolute duds, such as The Boys Next Door, The Wraith and Three for the Road. He did actually a decent 80's, Miami Vice style movie called No Man's Land, but every scene was stolen by his co-star, D.B. Sweeney, who for some unknown reason is doing bit parts in TV shows. His small part in Platoon could be called memorable, but it was because he got the but end of a rifle to his face. Pretty unimpressive start.
His big break came in Wall Street. Now I'm not saying he wasn't decent, but this movie is all about the scenes with Michael Douglas. The Sheen scenes lagged on and on and made us want Gekko back on the screen. By the end of the movie, I was happy it was over. Nobody walked out of that movie thinking about Charlie Sheen, they walked out thinking "Greed. For lack of a better word. Is Good."
Then he does more ensemble stuff, like Young Guns and Major League. You take away his haircut (which he needed a stand-in for - no seriously) and he actually detracted from the movie. Then he ran through a horrible string of B-movies such as Navy Seals, Men at Work and my favorite, The Chase. The Chase is so painfully bad, but fortunately you are almost distracted enough not to notice or hear him. Thank You Kristy Swanson.
He did a few more years of horrible movies and then got Two and a Half Men. Now some people might find it funny, but I would call those people misogynistic morons. The show has three premises. Make fun of hard working single parents who are only looking for good things to happen to them and their children and praise drunk guys who sleep with so many women they can't remember their names. The last one is the best, lets laugh at the fact that a kid, who seems to be afforded more luxuries than most, is a complete and utter moron. Honestly, what does it say about our society and the millions of people who watch this show? Sure, I get it, every episode has one or multiple women who would never give you the time of day, but who cares? The sad reality is that the guys who are like Jon Cryer's character don't get those girls. The good guys, who actually care about people and their feelings, have become the laughingstock. The guys who don't care, who got rich almost by mistake, who drink, do drugs and think monogamy is a curse word, they are the ones getting the girls.
Charlie Sheen is worth something crazy, like $70 million. He may be the world quietest philanthropist for all I know. He may help old ladies across the street and work in soup kitchens when he's not doing blow off a strippers ass. Who knows what he does when he's behind closed doors. From the legal proceedings that have plagued him, I'm guessing it's not much different from his outside persona. One thing I can say. He's a fairly bad actor. Despite this one fact, he's marketed himself in a multimillionaire. He's done it by doing what most people wouldn't. He's become despicable. Imagine that. He's become what everyone should hate, but we don't. We praise him and worship him and in doing so, we make him richer and more famous. Imagine if that were the way real life worked. Wait, it is. I just find it hard that someone with so little talent had make a 30 year career out of being a dick and you all love him for it. Sad.
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