The Shrine

Anyone see this?

There are shades beyond shades of crazy levels of shit going on here. Cryer dishes manifestly on Sheen's descent into self-destruction. Shades of Truman Capote, Hollywood-style. You know this is fairly salacious gossip, put in a bestselling memoir - and yet it is delivered so non-judgmentally and with such a wounded air, about the million manifest injustices of watching Charlie get paid more than anyone else on TV to implode and fizz into a million dangerously HIV-positive pieces, that it comes off more as a well-intentioned warning about the dangers of self-destruction than anything. And the quotes are unreal.

I began to imagine scenarios in which I [had] enthusiastically agree[d] to go to Mary Poppins with [Charlie, the night he was arrested for assault]. Then afterward, when he says, "Thought I'd head back to the room with a prostitute, get really f—ing high, decimate the place, then toss her in the closet," I say, "No, I don't think you should do that." Then he says, "You're right. Let's get ice cream." Then everything is better.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/featur ... ane-782410

For what it is worth, Charlie's behavior is doing more to make me see the error of my past ways here than anyone here even could. I have been wincing looking at some of the old posts from my twenties, noting the similarities between the way I lost it back in '06 or so and the way Charlie would for several years after that.

The difference is, sadly, that an ego trip fueled by tens of millions of dollars and the onetime adulation of almost the ENTIRE COUNTRY is that much more correspondingly hard to get off of.

Charlie is apparently not learning one damn thing, having just basically physically threatened Chuck Lorre in response to the Two And A Half Men finale.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/c ... o-a-780588

The guy certainly is entertaining (though not intentionally).

Hopefully his HIV diagnosis serves as a wake up call.

I kind of see it as what I'd describe as an "INT 16, WIS 2" issue. I get it because I often have the same problem set, which I'm sure surprises no one here in the least.

Sheen is actually incredibly talented and brilliant at his best, even his critics don't deny that. But as a result of his ability to produce he can be incredibly selfish - I understand that one too. Thanks to this place and conversations here and other experiences I've had, I'm thankfully moving past the notion that being able to produce things of value or use must also entitle one to be selfish and/or haughty or worshiped because of it.

Charlie has not had that. His Two And A Half Men character was written specifically for him, and very much as the that-crazy-guy, hookers-and-drugs-and-trashed-hotel-rooms version of him that IS Charlie at his entertainingly worst. So, instead of the world chastising him appropriately when he went off the rails, it first poured about $100 million down his throat, went "You so funny, Charlie!" - and only winced when Keith Moon turned into Fatty Arbuckle.

That ending-of-Wall-Street scene where Bud Fox goes "I'm going to jail, dad" and his dad's character goes "Maybe this will be good for you, son" - it really wouldn't be a bad idea for a real-world version of that to happen at long last, though the reality is probably that many people have already tried and failed to get through to him, given what Cryer's saying. I am among those who would want to see him pull out of this ten-year tailspin, but old hookers-and-coke Charlie has got to go at this point. It's not charming anymore to be that life-of-the-party, sex-crazy guy when you're HIV-positive, in a personal or societal sense. Dude's gotta find some charity work or something to throw himself into...he's gotta find a way to care more about the world and less about himself.