Skip to main content

How is Charlie Sheen Famous?

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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

White Privilege

This was a post I wrote on Facebook after surprisingly not seeing any moaning about the Documentary by Jose Antonio Vargas, titled White People Dayyum! I just scrolled my timeline and not a single white person got their feelings hurt by White People. I unfortunately haven't seen it, but the number of fake accounts that popped up on twitter, tells me it was a damn good show. Here's the thing. If someone of color aka non-white says "White Privilege," are you offended? If you said yes, then you are exhibiting white privilege. It has nothing to do with how hard you work or study, how you stayed out of trouble, because here's the thing, that is entirely the point. Somewhere out there, there are 100 Black, Spanish, Native American, Arab, Asian, who worked and studied as hard as you and never got in trouble, but they don't have what you "earned" or achieved. Stop looking at the one person you know who isn't white that achieved as your benchmark. Loo...

Quickie Review - Finding Vivian Maier

While I thoroughly enjoyed the film, especially the first 15-20 minutes, I was a little bothered by the way the film played out. The interviews with the clearly disturbed brother, sister and the mother, who obviously, was in for a cut, didn't need to be in the film. Then the woman who suggested abuse, yet seemed to have her life defined by Maier, as she tried to muster every ounce of emotion and fake guilt. Her friend, more than happy to be party of the charade. People who talk about abuse for the first time, usually don't do so on camera. The fact these scenes were so prominent, shows that they felt wronged that they were not rewarded. Maloof on the other hand, seems to disappear from the documentary during this part, almost hiding away from the fact, he went from complete praise, to even making money off of her, to destroying her personal legacy. He almost mentions the family of boys taking care of her rent, as an afterthought. Her burial spot, never shown, yet a video of her...

If You Listen To One Speech - Lana Wachowski

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/videos/lana-wachowski-opens-up-about-difficult-past-and-attempted-suicide-20121024 Today I saw a link to a video for a speech by Lana Wachowski.  The last name rung a bell, but I could't put my finger on it. Lana, used to be Larry, one of the writer, director, producers of the Matrix trilogy, V for Vendetta and the upcoming Cloud Atlas.  Lana is transgendered and has "come out" as a woman.  She was being honored by the Human Rights Campaign. I didn't know what to expect when this broad woman with crazy hair and a raspy voice began to speak.  She began with the usual pleasantries and told of her hair dresser. She then tells of her desire to be a quiet person and how hard the success of the Matrix movies made this.  The first ten minutes is telling of how she's not quite ready to be this spokesperson.  Then she speaks about the new movie Cloud Atlas and reveals the heart of the movie and this speech. She states,"The resp...