Suddenly it all looked fake.
Remember when the apparently crazy, drug-addled, sacked Charlie Sheen came out on the roof of live-events company Live Nation in Beverly Hills, swinging a machete around and swigging a bottle of his now infamous “Tiger Blood”?
Sheen’s thumb was over the bottle’s top, which was tightly screwed on.
He was just having a laugh with his public – the million plus who follow him on Twitter, the fans who watch each Youtube video plotting the guy’s antics, the net users who search online for the latest crazy, extreme Sheen-ism from ‘tiger blood’ and ‘warlock fangs’ to ‘#winning’ and ‘whatshiscock’ – apparently Sheen’s new name for Two and a Half Men producer, Chuck Lorre.
His fans are loving the act. Loving the extremity of Sheen’s message that daily life is boring, drugs are great, porn actresses are goddesses to be enjoyed two at a time and anyone who says different is a dreary little troll.
As soon as I saw Sheen pretending to drink from the ‘tiger blood’ bottle, the penny dropped. Surely he’s copying Joaquin Phoenix, pretending to be crazy and out of control – but in fact it’s all an act.
It did look as though he was coming out with very carefully directed and scripted perfomances, interviews and catchphrases. If he’s simply trying to create an extreme persona, capture America’s imagination and also put a finger up to his TV bosses, then he’s doing a pretty good job of it. His every move and word is more and more extreme to the point that it’s become laughable. And not necessarily believable.
If it is all just a very extravagant act that would also answer a niggling question about Charlie’s apparent descent into total stupidity. Where was Martin Sheen as his son released weird diatribe videos on the net? Where was dad while Charlie was telling TV he’d taken more drugs than humanly possible? While he was planning to take his goddesses on his US Torpedo of Truth tour? You would think his dad would be going crazy himself, worrying about his son. But – if it’s an act, and dad knows it, that would explain why Martin Sheen was keeing pretty quiet.
It could be that Charlie’s just decided to develop a truly wild and extreme persona, building on his own reputation and that, with colleagues directing his publicity stunts, he’s simply accepting that along the way he lost his acting job and custody of his kids by Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller. Sheen could come back from both those problems fairly easily if he reveals the whole thing was a performance. He’d be such big entertainment news that he wouldn’t need the earnings from Two and a Half Men anyway. And he could get his lawyers to regain custody of his children for him using the argument that: “Sheen was only acting – he’s an actor – that’s what actors do.”
Plenty of people will say Nope, the guy really is sick and crazy. But there is evidence to suggest it’s all an act. He may be really losing it. But there’s just a chance, surely, that Charlie Sheen’s joaquin’…
