Inside the Mind of Charlie Sheen

Comments (0) By Karina Longworth Thursday, Jan 31 2013

...continued from page 5

Coppola interrupts: "Well, there was a sense of satisfaction . . . "

"Fuck, yeah, there was!. Yeah!"

Kevin Scanlon

Charlie Sheen

A scenes from A Glimpse inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, directed by Roman Coppola and starring Charlie Sheen

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"You do the work and you feel you're connected with one another and the other performers . . ."

"I felt I was leaving something good behind," Sheen concurs. He points at Coppola. "And I wasn't letting him down. I wasn't a detriment to the material."

Sheen's concern with his legacy seems to be what's driving him through Anger Management's unusually grueling schedule — they've shot 27 episodes, and plan to crank out 70 more (or about three full regular reasons) in the next 18 months. "I've considered retirement after Anger Management is over," he says. "I need to spend time as a dad. Spend time as a guy who isn't on somebody else's clock." But "I couldn't have the other mess be what I left behind as a legacy in television."

At this point, do you care about how you're perceived?

"Can't control that," he answers. "It's how I perceive myself. It's like in Apocalypse: 'Willard, are you free of the opinion of yourself, are you free of the opinions of others?' It's like, people that don't know Apocalypse suck at life." Sheen turns to Coppola for approval. "Right?"

"I'm with you on that."

On my way out, I overhear Coppola stressing to Sheen, as he did to Solters, how important it is for Sheen to talk about the movie when he does interviews — as though this is Sheen's first time at this rodeo. When they first started talking about making this movie, Sheen was the biggest star on TV, and he would have been taking a chance by expending his celebrity capital on his old friend's unconventional indie. By the time they shot the movie, it was Coppola who was taking a chance on uninsurable damaged goods. Now that it's time to sell the movie, what is Charlie Sheen worth?

Two nights later, Sheen is a guest on Late Show With David Letterman. Over the course of two full segments, "the meltdown" is recycled into a set-up/punch line comic routine, and thereby decontaminated.

Letterman gives him a chance to blame his behavior of 2011 on "crack cocaine." "I wish it was crack cocaine," Sheen responds. "It was just that my brain kind of separated into itself, and I had to take a stand for what I knew was right."

"Are you a different person now?"

"I am."

"Are you embarrassed about any of this?"

"Of course! Did you see some of those interviews?"

There's no mention of Coppola or the movie until Letterman starts to wrap up. Shaking the host's hand, Sheen blurts out: "I also have a film coming out on February 8. It's on VOD now — A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III." Letterman looks surprised. It's as if he wasn't aware Charlie Sheen was selling anything other than Charlie Sheen.