aka Charlie Sheen (2025) | Transcript

aka Charlie Sheen (2025)

After 7 years sober, Charlie Sheen candidly discusses his rise to fame and public downfall, joined by family and friends who share untold stories of his journey through stardom, struggles, and redemption.

* * *

Part one

 

[old film projector whirring]

[“Two and a Half Men” by Dennis C. Brown and Grant Geissman playing]

♪ Manly men, men, men ♪

♪ Men, men, men, men, manly men ♪

♪ Oohhoohoo, hoohoo, ooh ♪

♪ Men, men, men, men Manly men, men, men ♪

♪ Men, men, men, men Manly men, men, men ♪

[vocalizing]

[song ends]

[Jon Cryer] I worked with Charlie Sheen for eight years, and if you wonder what it’s like to work with Charlie Sheen for eight years, uh, when I started, I had hair.

[audience laughter]

[Jon] I had some trepidation about participating in this, partially because part of the cycle of Charlie’s life has been, uh, that he messes up terribly, he hits rockbottom, and then he gets things, uh, he gets things going again and brings a lot of positivity in his life, and that’s when he burns himself out again, and he just can’t help but set that house on fire.

And I didn’t want to be a part of that cycle.

I’m not here to build him up and I’m not here to tear him down.

[aircraft engines increasing power] But I sure hope this doesn’t go bad.

[anticipatory music playing]

[plane engine revving]

[Charlie Sheen] It seemed it was going to be like any other flight.

I wasn’t like sloppy drunk, but I was already pretty half in the bag, you know.

It was my first honeymoon.

And Donna wasI guess she was still reeling from the absence of romance in our soggy freaking wine excursion.

Platoon and Wall Street were huge in Japan, and so I was selling Madras shoes, Tokyo Gas air conditioners and heaters, and Parliament cigarettes.

Donna was the model in the Parliament commercial.

Yes, tensions were high. We were a little short with each other.

I finally just said, “Fuck it.” I needed something quick and strong.

So I power probably four, five, six shots.

[ice cubes clinking] Of course, a lot of people recognize me.

[thud]

[gunfire] The navigator was outside the cockpit.

[in French accent] “Mr. Sheen, would you like to come meet the captain?”

I’m like, “Hell yeah!” Right?

[tense music playing]

[Charlie] I go into the cockpit, and the captain gets up and he says, “Can we get a photo?”

And I said, “Yes, but it’d be really cool if I was in your captain’s jacket.”

He’s like, “Oui, monsieur.”

“It’d even be cooler if I was wearing your cap.”

He’s like, “Of course.”

I said, “If we’re gonna do this, let’s go all the way.”

“Can I sit in your seat?”

But I’m approaching pirate drunk.

[photo ejecting from instant camera] The sun is just starting to peek through the horizon.

And just rested my hands on the controls.

[magical music playing] George is flying the plane.

That’s like international code for autopilot, right?

And I said, just making a joke, I said, “So is George still flying the plane?”

And the copilot flicks a switch…

[click echoes] …and says, “Not anymore.”

I’m sitting there thinking, “Fuck.”

I’m there, drunk, close to 300 people asleep behind me, an angry bride 20 feet behind me, and I start guiding this plane.

Very, very subtle adjustments.

[magical music continues] And this just perfect, magical flying machine responding in a way that I cannot put in words.

And then they saw that maybe this might get away from them.

[alarm blaring]

[people screaming]

[screaming continues] And the copilot turned George back on.

And so then I felt the plane just kind of settle back into where it knew that it needed to be, you know.

[gentle music playing] I sat back down, owning this experience.

And I just knew that trouble was on the horizon.

[reporter] After just five months, Hollywood bad boy Charlie Sheen and model Donna Peele are calling it quits.

[interviewer] Drunk off your ass…

Drunk.

[interviewer] …flying a passenger plane, 400 people behind you, are you thinking to yourself, “Holy shit, I’m untouchable”?

Does that happen? Does that go through a guy’s mind when he has that power?

Yes.

[“Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega feat. DNA playing]

♪ I am sitting in the morning At the diner on the corner… ♪

[Charlie] Know the best about diners?

[interviewer] What?

[Charlie] There’s no surprises.

If you walk into a diner with unrealistic expectations of what they have to offer…

♪ Doodoodoodoo, doodoodoodoo Doodoodoodoodoodoodoodoo ♪

…go fuck yourself.

Cheers.

[interviewer] Are you sober today? How long have you been sober?

I knew you were gonna ask me that.

[interviewer] Yeah.

I am sober today. In my seventh year, which is pretty good.

But by the time people see this, unless things go tragically sideways, uh, that will still be the case.

Oh, we’re ready to go?

[audience cheering]

[interviewer] How do you imagine structuring the story of Charlie Sheen?

I think we could break it down… [chuckles] …into these three portions or these three sections.

It was partying, partying with problems…

Fucking A, man!

…and then just problems.

Last time I took drugs, uh, I probably took more than anybody could survive, you know?

What are we talking about? How much?

I don’t know.

I was banging sevengram rocks and finishing them. That’s how I roll.

I have one speed, one gear. “Go.”

Charlie Sheen was among the clients of her $1,500 hookers.

[interviewer] Is there gonna be anything offlimits?

No.

You know there are a lot of rumors out there right now, and you would like to address them headon.

I’m here to admit that I am, in fact, HIVpositive.

When you got a lot of shame about a lot of stuff, shame shame is suffocating.

[911 operator] Your husband’s name?

[Brooke] It’s Charlie Sheen.

But in the same way, shame can turn into someone’s North Star, you know, or their South Star.

Or the Death Star, you know? Um…

[interviewer] Where are you with that?

I’m, uh…

[reporter] He spent much of Christmas Day on lockdown.

[Charlie] The stuff I plan on sharing, I had made a sacred vow years ago to only reveal to a therapist.

You judged me, condemned me, discarded me.

Well, not anymore. Winning!

I think there’s so many stories and many ingrained images in people’s minds about the concept of me.

Not even, like, think of me as a person.

They think of me as a concept or a specific moment in time.

[bouncy music playing] There’s only one person alive that has the answers to… to so many people’s questions about me.

And that’s…

[“Leave It” by Yes playing]

♪ I can feel no sense of measure ♪

♪ No illusions as we take ♪

♪ Refuge in young man’s pleasure ♪

♪ Breaking down the dreams we make ♪

♪ Real ♪

[playing distorted riffs] Fuck, somebody call “Action.”

♪ One down, one to go ♪

♪ Another town and one more show ♪

♪ Downtown, they’re givin’ away But she never came back ♪

I was born dead. Yeah, I had the umbilical wrapped.

There was no signs of life.

[alarm blaring] Dad was a devout Catholic, and he was already looking for a priest to deliver some last rites.

Mom was way more optimistic. She had faith.

And the doctor beat me black and blue until there were signs of life.

So… [chuckles] …good start.

[“Leave It” continues playing]

♪ Leave it ♪

When your life starts like that, basically doesn’t start, it can do a number on your head.

[gentle music playing] My birth name is Carlos Irwin Estevez.

And Irwin came from the doctor that delivered me and saved me.

There’s four of us.

I’m third, and Ramon is right above me, and Emilio’s above him, and my sister’s below me.

You must believe me.

I’m telling the truth.

Oh, you’ve lied so much.

[Charlie] The mission focus was Dad and his job.

Can you help me?

I’m gonna get ahold of Frank Kamer, have him take a look at you, run some tests.

[gunshot]

Ladies and gentlemen, Martin Sheen!

[Charlie] Lived in New York ’til I was three.

And then Dad, well, he decided early on, “Sell the furniture, it’s time.”

“We’re… we’re outtie.”

Malibu was very rural at the time, and kind of removed from Los Angeles and all of that hubbub.

There was a freedom of spirit in the air, and the place wasn’t overrun, it wasn’t super crowded.

You could travel the highway any time of day with relative ease.

It wasn’t a community of mansions.

I met him before he was Charlie Sheen.

I met him when he was Carlos Estevez.

People think that just because it was Martin Sheen that they grew up very rich.

That’s far from it.

I used to go to his house and stay in, what do you call those, beanbags?

There was nothing extravagant about what they had.

They didn’t grow up with that life.

So you had auto mechanics and school teachers on your street.

Nothing like today.

Like I say, it was great because it was kinda like Huckleberry Finn by the water.

We shared a moment of youth that’s magic.

Let’s go, man.

[Charlie] We were surrounded by an air of just a general freedom of expression.

I mean… they’ll hate me for revealing this, but, you know, my parents, maybe for a month, or five, I don’t know, they practiced nudism, you know?

So yeah, I’m five, walking in the kitchen, and…

there’s my naked parents. [chuckles]

[Janet Sheen] What are you doing?

MomCut it out, Mom.

[Charlie] My parents gave us our first Super 8 Camera when I was six or seven.

Hey, brother, did you guys out there ever try this new American Continental hairdo, man?

It’s the newest style, man.

You see, they just take a wet rag, man, and they rub it through your hair.

It’s like a dinosaur’s tail, man.

It’s really weird, man.

[“Fox On the Run” by Sweet playing] We started instantly with, “All right, here’s how much time we have.”

“Here’s our cast. Here’s the plot.”

“Soandso has done something to this person, “and so this guy has to seek revenge.”

♪ I don’t wanna know your name ♪

♪ ‘Cause you don’t look the same ♪

[Charlie] My brother, Emilio, was always with me.

♪ The way you did before ♪

♪ Okay ♪

The Mighty Ducks!

♪ You think you got a pretty face ♪

[Charlie] It was really the only time that he and I were focused on a common goal.

Everything outside of that was pretty uncommon.

We had a rivalry that, um, that went on for a long time.

[“Fox on the Run” continues]

♪ Fox on the run ♪

♪ You scream And everybody come arunning ♪

♪ Take a run and hide yourself away ♪

Charlie, is there film in there?

[Charlie] Hell yeah.

Fuck you.

[Charlie] And those Super 8 films, that was our canvas.

[introspective music playing] Being on location with Dad really became our film school.

Especially during Apocalypse Now.

It was just one of those lifechanging experiences, you know?

[Ramon Estevez] My dad made that very clear that he wanted us to be with him in his work.

He didn’t want the family dynamic to suffer just because he had this job somewhere else.

And I thought we were incredibly lucky to be able to go along with.

[Charlie] So I’m in the Philippines, on Apocalypse.

I think I was 11 by then.

The scope of the production, the length of the production, the exposure to the talent.

…afraid to say something…

[Charlie] Written by, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

[Merv Griffin] Our most influential and important filmmaker, the man responsible for The Godfather.

His current giant film took three and a half years.

[interviewer] Your dad was struggling with substances, right?

Yeah.

[interviewer] That was that story.

Yeah.

[interviewer] Did you know that?

I sensed it.

There is a moment, um, in the Philippines that is as crystal clear as though it happened yesterday.

And we were outdoors at lunch early at one of the tables, you know?

I remember Dad sitting down right next to me.

I remember I could smell it. I could smell the booze.

And he wasn’t home, he wasn’t there. And he had a KaBar knife.

And he put it between his teeth.

And he turned to me with that knife between his teeth.

And I was just like…

It was He was He had departed.

So then I come to find out that that was in the middle of the opening sequence.

[shatters]

[wailing]

[shouting]

[Coppola] Come back!

[sobbing in desperation]

[Charlie] He was there for a couple of months without us, and then started hearing rumors that Dad was sick.

[Coppola] Dave Salven let Melissa tell Barry Hirsch Marty had a heart attack.

What the fuck is that?

Do you know that’s gonna be all over Hollywood in half an hour?

If Marty dies, I want to hear that everything’s okay until I say Marty is dead. You got it?

When we came back to the Philippines and saw him for the first time, he was taking baby steps on a cane.

And he was crying, and he was devoid of that dad light.

It was gone, you know?

I had brought baseball gloves. I was playing baseball at the time.

So we’d go out somewhere on the grounds, and we’d start throwing the ball.

The first day, it might have been at five feet for ten throws.

Next day it might’ve been at ten feet for 15 throws.

And this went on and on and on until we were at a decent distance, and, you know, just playing catch.

He credits me with having a major hand in helping him during his rehab.

To get his strength back, his focus back, just get his life back.

Yeah, this fucking mattered.

Yeah, it was, um…

It just redefined that ageold moment of a fatherson playing catch.

But it’s hard not to visit that and not get a little choked up because I know what it meant to him, what it still means to him, you know?

[gentle music playing] I think it’s hard for sons to always, you know, share with their fathers what’s truly in their heart.

I hope he sees some of this as the love letter to him that it is.

Emilio and Dad, they fully support me.

They’re rooting for me in ways you can’t even imagine.

But I can’t expect people to revisit all the drug abuse and all the shitty choices that hurt the people I love.

Yeah, would I love them both in this? Absolutely.

But I completely understand why they chose not to.

You got me smoking now.

It’s your second heart attack, Dad.

I guess I never told you.

But I love you, Dad.

We kept making Super 8 films back on the ranch.

[young Charlie] What are you doing?

[Charlie] And after Apocalypse, the Super 8’s got way darker.

[interviewer] A lot of murder in your movies.

[“Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” by Cher playing]

[Charlie] Look what was happening to our dad.

We were basically duplicating, emulating what Dad was doing.

♪ I was five and he was six ♪

♪ We rode on horses make of sticks ♪

♪ He wore black and I wore white ♪

♪ He would always win the fight ♪

♪ Bang bang, he shot me down ♪

♪ Bang bang, I hit the ground ♪

♪ Bang bang, that awful sound ♪

♪ Bang bang, my baby shot me down ♪

[Charlie] We got, I don’t want to say numbed, but we kind of grew accustomed to watching our father die on film.

[gunshot] Oh my God!

[Charlie] But I think we recognized early on, those types of plot lines were compelling.

No! [sobbing]

[Emilio] What you are seeing here is a man in great pain, beaten by the Mob and dying.

[Martin] If you decide to do it, I got to know by tonight.

[man] What about the money?

Money’s no problem.

Martin was a big thing for all of us.

Don’t you have anything better to do?

[child] I wanted to…

Do you have to push?

I know whose dog that is. I know what you did to my little brother.

Son of a bitch!

I’m doing nothing, man. I’m here and I’m doing nothing.

So it’s a little boring. I mean

It’s a lot boring.

[screaming]

[Sean Penn] So I guess it felt like we were close to the actual world of it.

It’s important to note that in and around a lot of the Super 8 film productions…

[funky music playing] …there was a lot of weed involved.

So that was really the first drug. There was a lot of pot.

[Sean] Drugs played a large role in it as they got older and started experimenting with, uh… everything.

Well, it’s weird, I drank the stuff, and I just…

I can’t seem to remember what happened next.

But yeah, and you know, just the typical booze habits that kids that age would have.

I think my first drink was a Mickey’s Big Mouth. Remember those?

Yeah, I downed like two of them, thinking this is how it’s done, you know, and then spent the next hour puking.

And then I guess the normal person parks it and says, “That didn’t work out.”

The abnormal person says, “I’m feeling good enough to try again, hopefully with a better result,” you know.

[interviewer] You have this other friend in Tony Todd, who had nothing to do with that, right?

[Charlie] No, none of it.

♪ Doodoodoodoodoo ♪

Tony’s one of my favorite people ever. One of my best friends in this lifetime.

He’s as reliable and compassionate and loyal and committed as anyone could ever ask for, you know?

Well, every person needs a Black friend, so…

I’m just kidding. But I think they do.

What brought us together was our passion for sports.

He’s very competitive. I’m competitive.

[Charlie] Tony’s never done a drug in his life.

I think he’s had a sip of one drink.

Never had a drink with him.

I’m just there for him because I’m a friend.

[Charlie] He’s been the most consistent.

[interviewer] In your whole…?

Yeah, he’s touched every decade, every era, every…

All of it, you know?

Now, we want you to sort of go up to the car like that, weave through.

I would think that we’re going to be up high.

[reporter] Emilio Estevez doesn’t normally ride motorcycles, so he’s listening very carefully to stunt coordinator Nate Long.

This is Emilio’s first major acting job, but he is no newcomer to the movie business.

If you look closely, he bears a good resemblance to Martin Sheen, one of Hollywood’s most soughtafter actors and star of Apocalypse Now.

He uses his real name and keeps it a good secret about his famous father.

Emilio and Dad had a huge fight about Emilio using Sheen or Estevez, and Dad wishing he’d stayed with Estevez to honor his heritage, that good stuff.

And then Emilio said, “Okay, there is a better ring to Emilio and Estevez.”

Emilio Sheen didn’t have a flow, you know?

It was a house on fire for him, man. It was… [exhales] He had opportunities that none of us had even imagined before that.

[cackling] I beat you!

[laughs] Emilio pulled the focus quite a lot, and he deserved it.

I don’t know if that inspired Charlie.

But I think he did see that, “Maybe that’s something that’s available to me too.”

He’d done legitimate work, he has this dough, and now he has freedom.

The prom king of Santa Monica High School. Please welcome Emilio Estevez.

I get it. I see all the girls. All the fun. I see all the excitement.

And that was intoxicating.

You know, I couldn’t have been more jealous.

High school for me, yeah, that was a mess.

But I may hold the record.

I have an attendance record of somewhere in the 30 percentile range and a GPA…

I think it’s like a 1.2.

Oh, yeah.

Charlie didn’t graduate from high school.

[chuckle] And then his dad was on his case about, “You’ve got to get out and get a job.”

All right, fine.

So I told my parents, I said, “Look, let me explore the acting thing.”

“Let me audition this first summer. Let me do this.”

“Look what Emilio and his friends are doing.”

You dick!

“And if it shits out, then I will figure out a way to, you know, get a GED or something, and I’ll go on to a university and I’ll study film.”

“I’ll become an editor or a cinematographer or a freaking… Something.”

They were like, “Okay, deal.”

So I was Charlie Estevez all the way through high school.

But personal disappointments, you know, school, girls…

Yeah, it just It felt like it was time to clean that slate and start moving forward with a different… identity.

And so I went to Pop and I said, “I think that someone needs to carry the name on,” you know.

And then I said, “I think Charlie Sheen just, you know, rolls off the tongue a little easier.”

“I can see it in lights, Pop.”

[lively music playing] It’s like, “This is a role for him, maybe, you know?”

It’s It’s the role of Charlie Sheen. And, uh, it’s a good one.

[Charlie] My first summer of auditioning, I like to say that I got the first job that I went on.

Oh, my God. I’ve got a blister on my big toe.

[Charlie] Backpack… Come on, Tina. Do me a small favor.

What?

Put a lid on it.

[interviewer] Could you tell us what that movie is and what…

It’s shit.

[growls] It’s called Grizzly II: The Predator. [chuckles]

[growling]

[screaming] It’s a sequel to Grizzly.

[tense music playing]

[growling] Jesus Christ!

Somebody help me! Somebody help me!

[gentle waltz playing]

[Charlie] And there’s Laura Dern and George Clooney.

Pretty good company, right?

We’re in the first scene as these three campers.

They’re dating, and I’m third wheel guy.

Lance…

[Charlie] We shot the film in Budapest.

Right before I left, I had this audition. That was the biggest project in town.

And I fucked it up.

It was a mess.

And the director, he saw it differently.

Because he wanted to know how fast you can get into karate training.

I’m like, “Okay, for what?”

“One of the hoodlums on that team of bad guys?”

And they’re like, “No. Danny. For the guy.”

[yelling] I was offered the lead role in The Karate Kid.

Yeah, so that was a big deal.

[tense music playing] This was like a huge moment. This would’ve been a starturning moment.

I said, “I’ve got to go to Budapest.”

I took it to my dad and said, “Hey, man, I got this thing.”

“It’s a lifechanging opportunity and so, um…

they want me in karate training, like, tomorrow.”

He said, “Well, there’s a problem here.”

“You gave this other company your word.”

I said, “But it’s forgettable. It’s a thing, like eight lines.”

He said, “None of that matters. You gave them your word.”

“Your word in this business is going to carry you further than one big movie.”

So we politely told The Karate Kid people, if they could wait two weeks, I’m all in.

They said they couldn’t.

They said they couldn’t.

So that that went away.

[interviewer] Ralph Macchio.

Got it.

[interviewer] Correct?

Perfect.

And I had to sit with that.

[reporter] But it was The Karate Kid in 1984 that turned Ralph Macchio into a star.

It also turned him into a teen idol, gracing every cover of the top teen magazines.

You know, it it goes like that sometimes.

It was It sucked.

[interviewer] And in that moment, tell me about your mindset towards your dad.

I was pissed. I was pissed.

I thought I was terribly misled.

So what if you’re wrong?

What if one day the sun didn’t rise in the east, the birds didn’t fly south for the winter, and for once, your compass was off?

[interviewer] How about now?

Not one bit.

Do you feel…?

Not one bit. Yeah.

Yeah, it went on to burn down the world and spawn, what, five sequels or whatever.

And he probably made $20 million.

However, I don’t know that it necessarily, um, opened up a lot of doors to maybe other stuff that he was passionate about.

I don’t want to say I dodged a bullet. Maybe I dodged a back kick. [chuckle]

[groans] An interesting thing that happened around that time, he becomes a dad.

[interviewer] There’s probably people who don’t know you have daughters or sons…

Yeah, no, I have, uh… I have five…

I’m sorry.

I have five children and, uh, three granddaughters.

Cassandra, my first child, will be 40 this year, which is… [chuckling] You know.

At the time, I didn’t feel like I was ready for that.

And that contribution was a whole other energy for our family, that now he had a daughter.

And my niece’s mom was also very young.

And my parents helped raise her, um, a lot.

[Charlie] The stakes had risen to a place that I was illequipped to navigate.

But being aware of… that there was a lot of love in the room, a lot of support.

And I’m thinking, “It’s time to focus my sights forward.”

If there’s a Hollywood director who has a creative finger on the pulse of today’s high school kids, it’s John Hughes.

With Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, he endeared himself to the teen crowd.

I think he’s very honest. He doesn’t try to show us for something that we’re not.

[crew member] Rolling.

[Charlie] One day, I get this strange phone call from Jennifer Grey, who was a friend.

I told you I was telling the truth, Daddy.

She says, “I’m doing this big movie,” which was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, right?

“We’re filming in Long Beach. You should come down, and I recommended you to John Hughes.”

“It’s only one scene or two scenes, but they’re both pretty memorable.”

“They’re both with me.”

I’m like, “What? Who is this guy? What’s the scene?”

She’s like, “Don’t worry. Just read it, prepare as best as you can, and get your ass down there.”

So Ramon was going through this punk rock phase, right?

He had a leather jacket I wanted to borrow.

He was a smoker at the time.

So I dug into his ashtray and darkened my eyes with cigarette ash.

[pop music playing]

[Charlie] Jennifer greets me, and Matthew Broderick comes out of his trailer, and she introduces us just at a distance.

So it’s literally Hughes now walking across the parking lot.

I got the sides, the jacket, the thing. I got the hair going on.

I’m like, “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hughes.”

And he’s like, “Wow, look at you.”

“You look great, kid. Uh, see you next week.”

I’m like, “Yeah, see you next week.”

Jennifer’s like, “Good job!” I’m like, “What the fuck did I do?”

“All I did was get out of my car.”

So I got this gig. But this other opportunity arises.

[pop music continues] And this kind of just dropped in our laps.

Martin and Charlie Sheen are going to take on the great Michael Jordan, the great basketball player.

Dad’s publicist was tight with Dick Van Patten.

Dick was hosting this sportsthemed show called War of the Stars.

It pitted actors against athletes.

Do you have any tactics?

Uh, just primarily to score, if at all possible.

[chuckling] So the day of this event, and I’ve got the sides, and I say, “Dad, can we work on the scene in the limo on the way down to playing Jordan?”

He says, “Yeah. Okay, what do you got?”

“So you’re pissed off ’cause he ditches and doesn’t get caught. Is that it?”

So we read it once.

“You ought to spend more dealing with yourself.”

“A little less time worrying about what your brother does.”

He says, “Okay, all right, you got it.”

I’m like, “Yeah, but I don’t know it.”

He says, “No, exactly what you just did is what you need to do when you film it.”

I said, “But I did nothing.” He says, “Exactly.”

There’s no acting today. It’s all for real.

[cheering]

[Charlie] A high school gymnasium, the bleachers are filled with kids that go to that school.

The competition, it was broken down into three sections, and it’s free throws, it’s a game of HORSE, and it’s a twoonone.

Dad and I can shoot free throws. We’re not worried about that.

We’re good from the stripe.

The HORSE game, we figured, that’s him. We don’t have a shot there.

He’s gonna do things we’ve never seen before, right?

But twoonone.

He cannot guard two people at the same time.

We’ve got to spread the floor.

We’ve got to come together and show this dude what we’re made of.

[“Training Montage” by Vince DiCola playing] I missed the first shot.

[commentator] A miss.

But the universe that day had some give.

[man] Woo!

[commentator] Right on. Two for three for Charlie Sheen.

The young girls here really like Charlie.

And he’s putting on a good show for them.

[Charlie] Then I proceed to hit eight in a row.

[commentator] Perfect!

I guess the detail that I omitted is he had to shoot with his eyes closed.

But come on, we’ve got to introduce handicaps.

[commentator] He needs just one more.

[triumphant music playing]

[commentator] And he does it!

Martin and Charlie Sheen defeat Michael Jordan in foul shooting to take a onenothing lead in their threecontest match.

[Charlie] So the next section was a game of HORSE.

Jordan steps up to halfcourt, and as though he’s shooting a free throw, just… nothing but net.

And Dad… [chuckles]

[upbeat music playing] …nails it.

That was that moment when you know there’s something bigger than us in the mix here.

[commentator] Charlie with the rebound.

Out to Martin.

Baseline, left to Charlie.

It’s good! And look at Charlie Sheen. Is he ever happy?

That’s it, folks. The Sheens are victorious.

Ten to five is the final score.

[Charlie] It’s like trying to process, “I just made a basket being defended by Michael Jordan.”

The whole ride back home felt like a magic carpet.

It was intensely surreal.

And the story with Michael does not end there.

He becomes a bit of a through line.

Now I got a few days to get ready for my big cameo in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

And the night before, I’m trying to figure out who this guy is.

He seems like he’s from the other side of the tracks.

So I’m going to stay up late.

I just figure if I show up looking tired, that that’s going to be an asset.

“I know what’s wrong. I just want to hear you say it.”

There was no booze, no dope, nothing involved in that night preparing for this.

“You ought to spend more time dealing with yourself.”

“Less time worrying about what your brother does.”

This was just purely organic method approach, you know.

“I need to look tired, so I’m gonna be tired.”

My call time down there was like 6:00 a.m., and I set my alarm for 4:30.

I was going to leave at 5:00, give myself an hour.

And I did that stupid thing where the alarm went off and I was like, “I’ll just grab that extra ten minutes.”

[sucks air in] And that extra ten minutes turned into an extra hour and a half.

The next time I saw the clock, it was 6:30, and I’m in a fucking panic.

[tires screeching] So, there were no cell phones. You couldn’t really let anybody know.

They’re all there, like, “What happened to dude?”

And I finally get down there. It’s probably like 7:007:15.

And there’s Jennifer Grey, man.

[chuckling] And she’s pacing. She’s back and forth.

I pull up, and I kinda get out of my car and sheepishly approach her.

She fucking lays into me, man. “What is wrong with you?”

“I go out on a fucking limb to create this opportunity for you, and you do this.”

So I go through makeup, I go through wardrobe.

And I finally get to the set.

I’m expecting a dressing down from him as well.

And he looks at me.

He says, “Okay, good, you’re here. Let’s get started.”

Did that give you any kind of, like, “I can do this and get away with things”?

Maybe subconsciously.

We rehearsed it a couple times, and he just started rolling camera.

And action.

I got very little direction that day.

I had this thing where I used to crack my knuckles.

[cracking] He had a couple cameras on the scene, and his guy drifted down to that.

That’s in the movie.

[crack] I think I came close to honoring what Dad recommended to the approach to the scene.

So you’re pissed off because he ditches and doesn’t get caught. Is that it?

Basically.

Basically.

Then your problem is you.

Excuse me?

Excuse you.

You ought to spend more time dealing with yourself.

Less time worrying about what your brother does.

And that scene turned into a thing that I couldn’t have possibly anticipated, expected, or predicted.

[man] You ever held another job before?

Yeah, some trash in the city.

And you lost that one?

I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t.

[Sean] I think if you look at Charlie’s movies, there’s been kind of a connecting thread to thematics and environments that were the movies they grew up watching their father shoot.

[upbeat music playing] Ferris Bueller is running now. It is so funny.

I wait for that scene when you come on, it is the best thing in the film.

Thank you.

So funny.

I don’t know about that, but I appreciate that.

Everybody loved the movie overall.

One lady in particular, I can’t remember her name…

But at the very end of the review, she says something like, “Special attention needs to be made for Charlie Sheen in his one scene.”

And then her one line was, “He smolders, no joke.”

And I thought, “Huh.”

Yeah, I’m onscreen for, I don’t know, three minutes, four.

And the whole world suddenly goes, “He’s the fucking guy.”

And imagine what that did to my head.

[Sean] I remember I had no awareness that Charlie was developing such a career.

And then I was at one of these family holidays at my parents’ house, and there was Charlie, a foot taller, chiseled jaw.

He looked like a baby version of George Washington when he was a kid.

You know, a little blimpy, you know, face.

And here he was, this handsome, tall young man who was starring in movies.

I thought, “Wow, isn’t it great?”

You know, to see someone you knew in your childhood finding a big zone of expression and having so much to offer it.

[interviewer] You’re about 21?

I am 21, yeah.

People your age, do they know much about Vietnam in your own experience?

Yeah, uh… to a certain extent, what they… teach you in history in high school.

I had auditioned for Platoon, and it was a train wreck.

And then Platoon was greenlit shortly after that.

And Emilio was going to be playing the lead role.

Then they lost their financing.

And the director, Oliver Stone, decided just to put the brakes on for a minute.

Then it came back around, and that’s when Oliver asked me to come back and do a second audition.

[interviewer] Did you have a moment with your brother about this?

It’s just the way things had to go.

[interviewer] What’s that smirk on your face?

There’s something here, like…

It’s the way things had to go.

Do you have a sibling rivalry?

As far as film competition, I think that’s allIt’s a waste of time. We’re not up for the same parts.

We don’t play the same types.

[introspective music playing] You were on the set when your dad was shooting Apocalypse Now.

[Charlie] Right.

Was this similar?

I was witnessing this Coppolaesque $40 million production as an 11yearold.

And now going back, uh, ten years later to do Platoon, like, my version, um, it was kind of scary, but it was like a strange, symbolic homecoming for me.

Dance! Dance!

[gunshots]

[shouting] Dance! Onelegged motherfucker!

[screams] During that shoot, I was presented with a contract written on a napkin in the Philippine jungle from Oliver Stone to commit to Wall Street.

I said, “I know where Wall Street is. What’s the movie about?”

He said, “It’s the story of a young trader seduced by the promise of quick gains.”

I’m like, “Alright, that sounds pretty cool.”

Look, Dixon, relax. It’s not illegal to buy stock or to be accurate.

It’s not that unusual to be spotchecked on a big buy.

Say you did your homework and thought the stock was a sound investment.

The nominees for Best Picture are…

Platoon…

I was in New York filming Wall Street, watching Platoon up for Best Picture, you know, on a Sunday night.

And the winner is…

There’s before Platoon and there’s after Platoon.

Platoon.

[applause]

[interviewer] I mean, Best Picture at 20, you know what I mean? It’s like, uh…

Yeah, it kind of sets the stage.

[“Wild Thing” by X playing]

You know who he is. Charlie Sheen!

[audience cheering] Just indescribable opportunities.

The place goes crazy for you, don’t they?

[Charlie] It’s a little embarrassing.

He just became a mega superstar.

[all] ♪ Wild thing! ♪

It’s Charlie Sheen, man. The hugest star in the world.

♪ Wild thing! ♪

[Charlie] I was on a level that couldn’t be touched.

[“Spooky” by Dusty Springfield playing]

[Charlie] One night, I decide to head out on the town with a few of my mates, and we catch wind of this party in West Hollywood, right?

We get the address, we get there. I think it’s the right spot.

You know, everything was really dark and back alleyish.

And I see a guy.

♪ In the cool of the evening When everything is gettin’ kinda groovy ♪

[Charlie] And he’s talking to this really cute girl.

And he keeps saying to the girl, “What do you think of my watch?”

“How do you like my watch?” And I recognize the voice, right?

And I’m like, “Nic?”

[exclaims] I lost my hand!

♪ Love is kinda crazy With a spooky little boy like you ♪

Hey, Birdy.

We got some dancing to do.

[presenter] Nicolas Cage!

[cheering] I admired how he’s not interested in anybody’s opinion.

He’s not looking for anyone’s approval.

[cheering] Our friendship, that’s the symbolic springboard into the next… [chuckles] …chapter of complete and total chaos.

[foreboding music playing] We bonded in a way that was about the party, it was about the excitement, but was also about respect for each other.

But mostly the partying.

Snorting cocaine and tons of booze.

Poppers. Ecstasy.

That’s great.

[Charlie] Just the menu was filled with options.

Our gang. And we got the tattoos. We got the jackets.

We’d go at 100 miles an hour.

[exclaims]

[yells] We were warped. And that’s what kind of just… [chuckles]

[reporter] Charlie Sheen, Hollywood’s wildest bachelor.

His scandalous women. His party nights out with the boys.

[Sean] The circus that Charlie brang.

Charlie was a different kind of life at the party.

♪ So good ’cause I got you ♪ Woo!

[Charlie] We were like this runaway train.

[train whistle blowing]

It’s like we were all…

Something was missing.

And by this connection, suddenly it wasn’t.

And, uh, that’s a lot of responsibility to everybody’s American knight.

[old film projector whirring] We wound up on an airplane to San Francisco.

[percussive music playing] Everybody was high as shit.

[exclaims]

[Charlie] And then it happened.

Nic got ahold of the intercom handset.

There was no warmup.

He launched into, “This is your captain speaking.”

“Uh… I’m not…”

“I’m not feeling well.”

[tense music playing] “I’m losing control of the aircraft.”

[passengers exclaim]

[laughing] And we heard this, and I knew we were instantly in shit city.

He had taken it to a place, whatever his intentions were, that just were wildly inappropriate.

And you can hear people screaming, demanding information from the flight crew.

You can’t… Good Lord.

No.

And then when we landed, the pilot came out and he said, “Not cool, not f***ing cool.”

So we were in big trouble, man.

At which point the door to the aircraft whooshed open like a nuclear gateway to a bank vault to reveal six fully armed police officers.

[Letterman] Oh, buddy.

And what Nic didn’t know is that I had over an ounce of cocaine taped to the inside of my leg.

And standing there, sweating and really concerned about what’s going to happen next.

One of the guys was a big enough fan of mine, big enough fan of Nic’s, and he just decided to, uh, you know, “Make sure this doesn’t happen again, young man.” Um, and we got through.

You know?

[interviewer] Yet another experience of the perks of the job.

I guess, yeah. I think anybody else, that would have been, uh… Phew.

[Jon] Charlie always managed to walk a tightrope.

You wanted to like him, um, because he was really charming and smart and terrific at what he does as an actor.

You know, but also, uh, you know, there were incidents that you were like, “Wait, what happened?”

Like, you know, when he shot Kelly Preston, you know? [chuckles] Charlie Sheen and Kelly Preston seem to be a nice couple.

Each is a successful, attractive actor.

Each is upset now about stories circulating since Kelly suffered a gunshot wound earlier this month.

[reporter] There’s nothing better than talking directly to the source.

And that’s exactly what we did.

No. Sorry.

We’re glad you’re okay.

Thank you.

Go over it. We’ve heard so many accounts.

The truth is, it was a complete accident. It fell, it went off.

Then Kelly said at the time, “Oh no, that was an accident.” [chuckles] You know? So there’s this part of you that goes, “Okay…” You know? Uh…

There’s always this tightrope of, you know, I don’t know the whole story.

Is he the guy who he appears to me to be?

Or is there some… some much darker thing going on?

[“Alpha Beta Gaga” by Air playing]

[Charlie] I get invited to my dad’s birthday party.

I think Mom called me.

“Dad’s got things to do, so we got to do it early.”

She’s like, “We’re thinking 9:00.”

I’m like, “A.M.?” She’s like, “Yeah.”

I’m like, “Uh… okay.”

“What should I get him?” “He doesn’t need anything.”

“You know your father. He’ll give it away.”

You can hear this car coming a mile away, right?

And so Mom hears me pull in the driveway.

[car door closes] And she comes out, and she gives me a hug.

She says, “I have to ask you something.”

I’m like, “Yeah, anything.”

She says, “Are you armed?”

[“(The Forgotten People)” by Thievery Corporation plays]
I thought she was joking, right?

I said, “No, why would I?”

“No, Mom, come on. Maybe there’s something in the trunk, but no.”

She says, “Okay, good. I just had to find out, you know?”

[clears throat] So she brings me in the house.

And I’m looking for balloons, looking for a cake, for funny hats.

I’m looking for something that screams “birthday party” and there’s nothing.

And as I get kind of coming around the corner, I see the living room has this really expertly organized circle of people.

And I think I’m recognizing all of them.

But it’s a weird mix.

Why would Dad have my seventhgrade history teacher, Mr. Vincent, at his birthday party when no one’s seen the guy for, I don’t know, 15 years?

There’s Bikram Choudhury, my yoga instructor.

Rob Lowe is there. Okay, there’s a familiar face.

And then Emilio and Renée, Ramon, my parents.

And this fucking guy. I think his name was Jim.

And there’s one chair that’s open.

And this guy named Jim says, uh, “Welcome, please be seated.”

I was never involved in any of those, uh, interventions.

And, you know, I was not, you know, walking a perfect trail of my own in some regards.

And…

I haven’t said a fucking word, because there’s a lot to process.

I’d kind of heard about these things, but never been this close to an intervention.

And they go around the room.

They’ve all got something written, and it’s very emotional.

I said, “Uh, is this a situation where now I’m given some time to think about this?”

They said, “No. This is a decision we’ve made for you that has to happen today.”

What you have just seen is a good lesson in what not to do in a situation of this nature.

Who can tell me what they did wrong? Come on, come on, you know.

Charlie had the audacity to be pissed about that.

I don’t know if he told you. He was mad that all these people were trying to tell him what to do with his life.

Why? Huh?

Nothing more than a complete and total pain in my ass!

Feeling is mutual, son.

[Todd] You can tell someone until they’re blue in the face.

I don’t care if it’s your mom, your dad, whoever.

Until you decide to make that decision, it’s not going to happen.

And I was figuring, “All right, if I just agree to this, just to get out of this situation, I can probably hatch a plan somewhere away from here.”

Dad goes in the office, and he sticks his head back out the door, and says, “Someone on the phone wants to talk to you.”

I thought it’d be a family member.

And I’m like, “Hello?”

And it’s a very recognizable, very globally familiar voice.

And it’s Clint.

I ain’t going to lose this one.

Now you can either stand out of my way, or you can be my partner and back me up.

[Charlie] He said something to the effect of, you know, “You got to get the train back on the tracks, kid.”

You know. He said, “You’re, uh, you’re worth saving.”

Yeah, it was really powerful.

And I thanked him and gave the phone back to Dad, and said, “All right, let’s go.”

We were in a car on the way down to rehab.

Dad driving, Mom in the front, a couple of people on either side of me.

I was in a people sandwich because they knew at the first red light I was probably gonna be that guy.

The intervention was inconvenient because later on that night or the next morning, Nic Cage and the rest of our gang were scheduled to be honorary judges at a Hawaiian Tropic bikini contest in Palm Springs.

So I’m in a pickle. I got the whole crew on standby to make this move down there, and I’m stuck in this intervention.

I’m thinking, “What does it matter if I get sober, like, that day or a day from then?”

There’s a night nurse.

It was this Black gal in her 40s. She was all business, you know.

I told her, I said, “I’m not bound by law to be here.”

“I got this thing with my buddies down in the desert, and I will come walking back into this facility tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m., or I will give you a million dollars.”

And she took it in.

She took it in.

And she just said, “Deal.”

Thinking, she’s probably looking at the better end of the stick, right?

♪ I put a spell on you ♪

[Charlie] And so there’s a pay phone, and I’m able to kind of get word to the guys.

I said, “I spoke to this gal. We got this covered.”

He’s like, “Cool, man.”

And so… [chuckles] I mean, thanks, Nic. You could have said, “You know, Charles?”

“We’re probably going to pull the plug on that.”

And he didn’t. And I don’t blame him.

♪ Because you’re mine ♪

[announcer] Palm Springs, California!

[cheering] It’s fantabulous and sexy and as exciting as it could have been.

[announcer] Number 13!

[Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” from Die Walküre playing]

[rock music playing] And I get back to St. John’s at about 7:40.

And she sees me walking up, and it is such… [chuckles] I mean, she’s kind of happy that, you know, that this guy, he’s committed to this, and he showed back up.

So she was happy for me, but disappointed for herself.

She kind of was like, “All right, well, whatever.”

“You’re a man of your word. Welcome back. We kept your room for you.”

[propulsive music playing] My agent, he visited me in rehab with the Hot Shots! script.

This fell out of the fucking sky right in my lap.

I don’t need your help or anybody’s help. I’ll be just fine.

And it was a bit of a game changer.

Are you okay?

I think it might have been the first time I noticed that there was a pattern to go through all this shit, come out of the fire, and there be an opportunity on the immediate other side of it.

It really flattened the concept of genuine consequences.

[music continues] I was able to just… turn it off.

And to this day, I don’t know how, but I did.

I was at Nic’s castle, for lack of a different description, up in the Hollywood Hills.

The neighborhood was kind of sketchy, but the place was fabulous.

I asked Nic one night, “Why did you choose this place?”

He was like, “Charles, look at the view.”

“Look at the view and just think how much closer I am to the crime.”

I was like, “All right. That makes me want to leave, um…”

So I had spent the night, and I woke up.

He wasn’t up yet. I went down to his kitchen.

And I opened his refrigerator. There was a Foster’s lager sitting there.

Lit perfectly, slow push in on it, you know.

Reverse, push in on me.

I’m like, “Shit, it’s Dad’s birthday. It’s my birthday too, let’s celebrate.”

[uneasy music playing]

[Charlie] Cracked that fucker and downed it.

Yeah, celebrated one year.

Come on, man. That was an accomplishment.

That beer was there for a reason, right? That opened the door a little bit.

I would pull waitresses aside, give them a decent tip and say, “I need a little wine in a coffee mug,” you know.

At the same time, I was trying to project an image of responsibility.

Is your act pretty cleaned up now?

More or less, yeah.

Is it?

Yeah, no, I’ve, uh, spent a little more time at home eating a Wolfgang Puck Spicy Chicken than I do in a bar.

“I just need to take the edge off a bit. It’s not going to lead back to all the freaking shit that got me in this mess.”

Yeah, it’s funny how secret wine in a coffee mug just turns into everything it wasn’t supposed to be.

[old film projector whirring]

[Charlie] There was a club that was really popular called On The Rox, and it was above the Roxy.

The place was a little sketchy, but it was the spot.

There was one night, there was a group of girls there I hadn’t seen there before.

And lined up properly, they were each hotter than the other, dressed nicely, and wearing all the right accessories.

They would always wind up back at this one table.

And at the head of the table was a gal that seemed like she was kind of, for lack of a better description, like their chaperone.

She was a little bit older.

She wasn’t trying to prove anything or impress anyone, you know.

And so I finally got to talking to one of these girls.

[enticing music playing] I said, “Do you have any plans after this?”

She says, “Yeah, that’s where it gets a little tricky.”

“I got to go talk to my friend and see what that looks like for us, you know?”

I’m thinking, “That’s kind of strange. You come here with your mom, whatever.”

Then it clicks.

Okay, these are call girls.

That lady over there is their madam.

Actually, that stuff never bothered me.

What you looking at?

In fact, I lost my virginity to a pro when I was 15 years old.

I borrowed Dad’s credit card to pay for it.

It’s 1980. I’m in Vegas.

[enticing music continues] I’m pretty sure her name was Candy. [echoing] So, I have to say, Candy, if you’re out there somewhere, um, thank you.

[interviewer] How do you unpack that moment and kind of where it goes from there?

Candy, you know, probably cost me upwards of 100 million, conservatively.

Can I ask you something, just one guy to another?

You know, I’ve never hired a woman.

I’d just think it’s like a blind date, really.

Except that you know that it’s going to be successful.

Yeah. I think Cary Grant said it best way back in the day.

He said that he’s not paying for the sex.

He’s paying for them to leave when he’s done, you know. Um…

In the immortal words of Cary Grant.

Yes. Yeah.

[“Violet” by Hole playing]

♪ And the sky was made of amethyst… ♪

[Charlie] Which brings us back to that fateful night at On The Rox.

♪ And all the stars Were just like little fish… ♪

The same night I was introduced to the infamous madam.

♪ You should learn when to go ♪

I said, “I’m Charlie Sheen. Nice to meet you.”

She says, “Hi, my name is Heidi.”

♪ You should learn how to say no ♪

♪ Go on, take everything ♪

♪ Take everything, I want you to ♪

♪ Go on, take everything Take everything… ♪

[Heidi Fleiss] Hey!

[parrots squawking]

[Fleiss] Come here.

[squawking] Hey, come here, babies. Come here.

Hey, what’s your problem? Come here.

Come here.

I’m born and raised in LA.

Everything was a perfect storm to make me the perfect madam.

I was young, arrogant. I was the best. That’s how it is.

I’m not gonna start naming all the actors I’ve dealt with, but everyone you think is doing it is doing it.

Big deal. What guy doesn’t want to get laid?

And they’re paying for adults doing adult things.

It’s not Jeffrey Epsteinlike pedophile thing.

I wasn’t Ghislaine Maxwell driving around junior high schools.

There’s none of that.

And the women came to me in droves.

When they were like $10 cum buckets, I’ve got them $100,000 a night.

I have no talent, no skill.

Everything with me has to be created by imagination or luck or persistence and determination.

She was really cool. She was really smart.

She was pretty business savvy. I don’t know.

She had a decent sense of humor. She was never sloppy.

You know?

Charlie is a crybaby pussy bitch.

I’ve been on the cover of Time with the Manson girls.

I’m in the criminal category.

People remember the criminals. That’s what they know.

Look, at 27 years old, I was arrested.

I knew I’d get arrested one day for running an illegal consensual sex empire.

But I didn’t think it would ever happen the way it happened.

[Charlie] With Heidi, I always just used cash.

And everything was fine. For a while.

Nobody got hurt. Nobody got arrested.

For a while.

Then I was too hammered to go to the bank.

I’m pretty sure I was using…

American Express traveler’s checks. Don’t leave home without them.

I said to her, “We probably shouldn’t do this.”

“Is it cool if I just write a check?” She’s like, “Yeah, yeah, no problem.”

“No problem whatsoever.”

[tense music playing] Big problem, oh, so ever.

[reporter] In Vanity Fair magazine, Fleiss breaks her silence about customers for her highpriced callgirl operation.

She claims actor Charlie Sheen wanted prostitutes dressed as cheerleaders.

Let me explain the Charlie connection.

[interviewer] Yeah, please.

His name would have never, ever come out. Ever.

For the simple fact, a long time ago, there were things called traveler’s checks.

And I guess Charlie was away making Hot Shots! Part Three, or something.

I don’t know.

And he probably had traveler’s checks on location, that was considered like money.

So when he returned, he called me, I don’t know, for some girls and paid with traveler’s checks.

They were in my Gucci planner, along with traveler’s checks from Saudi royal families, stuff like that.

Those kinds of people, the cops don’t know who they are, but they know Charlie Sheen.

So that’s the only reason his name came out.

Otherwise, it never would have come out. I wouldn’t have said anything.

I’ve never said anything about anyone.

Hollywood actors are so scared about being named in this thing.

Do you realize, since they cracked down on her, some of the best acting is going on? People going, “Heidi who? No.”

[reporter] Heidi has indeed become famous, attracting the attention of the news media from all over the world.

Let us through.

[reporter] It was an intense struggle for Heidi to get into the Division 30 courtroom.

Everyone wanted to capture a shot of Heidi.

[clamoring] The day after I was arrested, I was sitting out by my pool, looking over the whole city.

I lived in real Beverly Hills.

I bought my house from the actor Michael Douglas.

[laughing] I’m sitting looking at it, just bailed out, going, “How did I fuck up the best job on earth?”

[Charlie] They had the checks.

Yeah, that’s the part that sunk me.

That’s the part I couldn’t talk my way out of.

I had meetings with the U.S. Attorney, and they said, “We will grant you immunity, but you have to roll on her.”

So… you know, I didn’t want to be a rat, but there was no other way out of it.

[Heidi] Robert Mitchum, he was arrested for marijuana.

They said, “Tell us your dealer.” He said, “Charge me with a crime.”

Charlie should have said, “Charge me.”

He’s a crybaby rich boy. He’s a rich kid from Malibu.

They’re not gonna do shit to him. He’s Charlie Sheen.

He was at his peak then. They’re not going to do anything to him.

Are you kidding me?

They threatened me.

They said, “Look, just so you know, it’s a misdemeanor to hire a gal, but if you get a couple of gals and give one to your buddy, that’s pandering.”

“That’s three to five.”

I said, “Well, no, I would never pay for gals for my pals.” You know?

They said, “We have proof that you did.”

That was the deal.

That was a thing that was like, yeah, of course, a couple of two, three girls show up and you’re with your buddies and it’s…

You know, you get to be a hero, right?

And so I didn’t know doing that was such a potential severe violation of whatever that law is, you know.

So, yeah, I was in the soup, man.

[Heidi] It was a really difficult time.

When you’re facing, like, seven and a half years in jail, might as well be a death sentence, because at that young age, you know, it just seems like eternity.

[reporter] He testified he spent more than $50,000 in three years soliciting prostitutes from Fleiss.

Was he a good client, Charlie Sheen?

[Charlie] When I said, “Are you really trying to put this lady away for basically running a successful business that’s one of the oldest professions on Earth?”

They said, “It’s not really about that. It’s about tax evasion.”

So I sat with that, and I felt like… that that, um…

that really kind of on her at that point.

He testified against me, and I went to jail.

[foreperson] We, the jury, find the defendant, Heidi Lynne Fleiss, guilty.

[reporter] Heidi Fleiss was sentenced to 37 months in jail and a $400 fine for cheating on taxes and laundering profits for her call girl service.

[Heidi] Before I went to prison, I moved to the beach and opened up like a lingerie store like Juicy.

Opened up on 3rd Street Promenade and Old Town Pasadena.

And that was just to switch everything.

And then, so one evening, Charlie’s dad, Martin Sheen, came in the store.

And he’s telling me to go easy on Charlie.

And I’m thinking, “Go easy on Charlie? I’m the one going to jail. I was never” “The best deal I was offered was seven and a half years.”

“And he’s telling me to go easy on Charlie?”

But that’s just a father’s love for his son.

And it’s totally understandable.

We’re not taught as children how to deal with success.

They always say, if at first you don’t succeed, try again.

That’s dealing with failure, you know.

Nobody ever said, “If at first you succeed… what do you do?”

You know?

[host] Yeah. What do you do? [laughs] I don’t know, run and hide.

[snorting]

[Charlie] The work, the money.

Back in circulation, huh, Charlie?

Oh, yeah. My circulation’s fine.

It kept happening.

Sheen reportedly took home between three and five million dollars.

[Charlie] There were no real consequences.

[screaming] We proudly welcome to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Charlie Sheen.

[cheering and applause] Woo!

Damn, you got a lot of pull in this town.

[Chris] Charlie Sheen, man.

He’s always been loyal to me from the start.

Charlie was executive producing the movie.

And the studio wanted to give Charlie first billing.

And he was like, “No, Chris should have first billing.”

“I’m having second billing.”

He’s this huge star, you know, not being selfish.

Who does that in Hollywood?

We good?

[cameraman] Yeah, we’re great.

Charlie Sheen, Chris Tucker on the set of Money Talks.

The movie started great, and we were cooking with gas.

[cameraman] Let’s do it again.

Then it got away from me, like it usually does.

I remember one day he didn’t show up to work, but I was late too, so I was like, “I’m glad he didn’t, so they stay off of me.”

It was one of those things.

But when he showed up, we were ready to work.

One day, I got an 18hour nosebleed from doing too much cocaine.

And that’s usually kind of the threshold where you go and get it checked out.

And I didn’t. I just kept kind of blotting it.

There was one night where it dripped onto my shirt during a scene.

And I got the director, Brett Ratner, to agree to, you know, make that shot go away forever.

He did, because we’ve never seen it, right?

And that’s when it starts to get that the priorities are, you know, couldn’t be more wonky, you know?

Hey, Larry. Come here.

I was taking jobs to just fuel the habits.

I don’t know about you, but I got a bad feeling about this.

I was in Montreal and I was shooting this movie called Free Money.

I found a dope connection as soon as I got to Montreal.

[interviewer] Remind the audience that you refer to dope as something different…

It’s cocaine, yeah.

So I had overshot the mark.

And it got to the point where I literally could not keep my eyes open.

I felt they were so burned and so heavy.

The director kinda spotted it.

He says, “You look like you’re falling asleep on camera,” which had never happened before.

I said to him, I said, uh, “I need a glass of ice.”

He was like, “Okay.”

He gave me a glass of ice. I said, “I’ll be right back.”

There was a little bathroom.

And I went in there, and I took an ice cube, and I shoved it up my butt.

I’d never done that before. And man, I was wide awake.

[groans] Just enough to get back on the mark and finish the fucking scene with an ice cube in my ass.

Making the big money run in a couple weeks, right, Louis?

Yes, sir. With assistance.

You’re shitting me.

Between the Midwest provinces and the U.S. banks?

[man 1] That’s us. Right, Louis?

[man 2] Yes, sir. With assistance. You sure don’t want a beer? [laughs] Can I buy you guys a beer?

My theory has always been that I don’t know that he believes uh, that he deserves what he’s got.

I think there’s a part of him that throws it all away just to see if he ever deserved it.

That is what drives people crazy who are close to him, is that there’s so many great things about him.

If he only believed it, he might stop burning it all down.

[Sean] I’m going to tell you something very candid.

And this is one example, and it’s biological.

Most people, men…

who do cocaine…

copious amounts of cocaine…

have extremely enhanced sexual fantasies, but extremely derailed sexual competency at that time.

Thank God for anybody that describes that their dick don’t work when full of cocaine.

What the fuck would it be like if it was the opposite?

Ask Charlie Sheen.

[uneasy music playing]

[Charlie] There’s a young gal that C. Thomas Howell and myself were kind of seeing at the same time, and she was really sweet and sexy and adorable.

She reached out to me one night.

I’m still in my condo in Malibu, and she said, “Hey, I’m in a spot that I need to be extracted from at once.”

So I went over there.

It was this kind of semirundown apartment just over the canyon.

Woodland Hills, maybe.

And I pull up, and it’s about ten o’clock at night.

She’s in there, and she’s in there with this guy.

And the vibe of the place was not pleasant at all.

It was eerie, and it felt really unsafe for me.

I can imagine what she was going through to make this secret call.

He was like, “Who the fuck are you?”

I’m like, “Hey, man, I don’t mean to barge in, but I’m a friend of Sandy’s, and she said she needed to get out of here.”

“So I’m here to facilitate that, you know?”

And he says, “Well, hold on a minute.” And he…

He fucking grabs her and pins her against the wall.

And the dude was pretty big.

And he’s yelling at her about a bunch of shit, you know, and something about money she owes him, or…

And I’m like, “Oh, this is moments from getting away from everybody.”

So he’s now looking at me, and my car is really close, so I go back to the car, and I got an HK P7 M13 9 mil in my glove box.

I put that in my waistband. I come back in the house, and I said, “Whatever’s going on, let’s just call it quits.”

“She’s coming with me now.”

[uneasy music continues] So we get back to the condo.

She falls asleep on the couch. I let her rest for a couple hours.

The next morning, I’m giving her some juice and, you know, a snack, whatever, trying to be hospitable.

I really like this girl.

And she says, “If you don’t mind, I’m starting to jones a little bit, and I kind of need to just get back up on my shit, you know.”

And I’m like, “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

She pulls out her pipe and loads it up, and takes a big hit.

[smooth music playing] And just lies back on the couch like she’s inside the best moment of all time.

I’m a little curious.

I’m a little bit curious.

I’ve done a lot of cocaine up to that point, just not in that form.

She says, you know, “I don’t want to talk you into anything, but if you’re curious, I think you might really enjoy this.”

And I said, “I don’t know, man.”

“It’s like, you know, I’m trying to I got a lot of shit coming up.”

At that point, she’s feeling the sexual charge from her hit.

So she’s starting to undress, and she’s almost completely naked at this point.

So she says, “Well, let me combo this up for you.”

“Let me do something for you while you’re doing this.”

How do I present this with, uh, any class?

Um…

[interviewer] We’re past that.

We’re past that. Yeah.

She decides that giving me a blowjob while I’m taking my first hit of crack is going to be an experience.

[euphoric music playing] And so it was indescribable.

It took me to a place in my brain and in my body, and what she was doing, and it all made sense on a level that I was really excited to finally embrace.

But in that same breath, in that same experience, I’m deathly afraid of how far this could get away from me.

I was aware of that.

[interviewer] In the moment?

In the moment, yeah.

The duality of those two conflicting forces…

Banging sevengram rocks and finishing them.

…was something that, uh, to this day, just were peerless, you know?

I mean, I got kind of a little… shaky telling that.

[interviewer] Yeah.

Not like I’m a fucking sissy, and I got shaken up by my own story, but I could feel some of that shit coming back up.

Um…

Sadly, she died.

She died, yeah. She OD’d on that shit.

[interviewer] She OD’d?

Yeah, I think shortly before or right after her 30th birthday.

You know, it was just such a loss.

Such a waste.

[interviewer] Is crack the thing you just wish had never entered your life?

Yeah, if I could, um…

Ifif… if I could just kind of… carve that one out or just erase it, just take it completely… out of the equation, um…

yeah, I think it would haveI probably would have avoided some, uh…

some pretty awful situations, you know?

The party was over. I just didn’t know it yet.

[tense music playing] I’d tried everything.

Why not try shooting up cocaine?

It felt cinematic. It felt dangerous.

It felt, you know, like it had to be such a secret.

I drew it up just like, you know, Tarantino taught so many of us.

I had a Japanese tattoo that was the colors of war.

Black and red.

And wow.

Things changed… [exhales] …so quickly.

[tense music rising] It’s as though I was suddenly falling forward, and I could hear all the blood in my body rushing as though I had both ears covered with seashells at the beach.

My legs are shaking so badly that I’m taking these twoinch, like, I don’t know, fucking Joe Biden steps, right?

My bodyguard, Zip, was still on the premises.

I said, “You’ve got to call 911 because this is beyond both of us.”

[ambulance siren chirps]

[reporter 1] He was admitted to Los Robles Regional Medical Center at 5:30 a.m., accompanied by his father.

[reporter 2] Rumors ran rampant that the younger Sheen had a stroke and died, one reason why his father wanted to set the record straight.

First I want to assure you, my son, Charlie Sheen, is very much alive.

[Charlie] I was kind of in and out, and sedated, you know.

And so he was doing all that without my knowledge.

My son was admitted here yesterday as a result of a drug overdose.

It felt like it dumped a bunch of gas on the fire.

We are in the stages right now of recovery.

[Charlie] I had a huge resentment about that.

I said, “Give me a little bit of space and mind your own fucking business.”

“I can get a handle on this.”

We’re going to have it out, you and me, right now, son!

[Charlie] Dad is so freaking frustrated, thinking he and I were coming to fisticuffs, right?

So he took out his teeth because he didn’t want to damage them.

Somebody said, “Martin, hold on. Violence is not the answer.”

Everybody was super frustrated.

The time expired that they could hold me, legally.

I said to Zip, “Get me to the condo.”

Yeah, I wanted to stay high.

[Martin] It is my hope that he will accept recovery and become free.

Do anything you can to get between drugs and your kids.

It’s not an easy moment in our lives, but it is a very important one, a very necessary one.

Actor Charlie Sheen skipped the drug rehab center.

Sheen left with his friends over the weekend to go partying.

The addiction has gotten to a point where I’m scared at this point.

I’m asking all of his friends and fans to pray for him.

[Charlie] We’re up three, four days, and I didn’t want the party to end.

And the phone rings.

“There’s a warrant for your arrest. The marshals are en route.”

[reporter] Sheen’s father, actor Martin Sheen, asked California police to make the arrest to help his son overcome his drug problem.

[Charlie] I didn’t have a plan.

I didn’t know how long I could push this thing.

I think maybe then it was perhaps considering Mexico.

Meanwhile, Dad’s running around doing all he can.

I want to get out of the way of this thing, so that, uh…

uh… a healing can occur.

Three words, “I love you.” That was his parenting style.

Fear is useless.

Faith is necessary.

Love is everything.

[Charlie] We wound up, just a little pit stop, at Slash’s house.

He said, “I don’t know that I’ve seen anyone before in this kind of shape.”

This is Slash, right? Uh… [chuckles] GNR rock god.

Uh, the life he’s led.

He said, “You’re out of options. You’ve got to get the rehab.”

“You’ve got to save yourself, man.”

Coming from him, the way he presented it, “Whoa.”

Um… message delivered.

Dad, I’m going to jail and you know it.

It’s the best thing that could have happened to you.

[man] And with the current circumstances, in light of what I perceive to be his ingestion of controlled substances, he needs to be in a rehabilitation program.

Hearing about certain things on the news, it was, uh… it was out there.

Yeah.

It caught up with his life at that point.

[Chris] I was definitely concerned. I would try to talk to people around him.

See how he was doing, where he was at.

But I wanted him to get better and to be safe.

And thank God for his family, that his father, man, just stuck with him.

[Charlie] They take me from the courthouse, they deliver me to rehab.

And they sedate me heavily.

The equivalent of let’s put the elephant to sleep for a weeksized dose.

Man, there was a guy watching me sleep, and how he tells the story, it was like Michael Myers in the background.

[chilling music playing] Just waking right up and kind of taking in my surroundings.

I said, “I got to I need some air. I got to take a walk.”

And…

I managed to get a hold of my trusty limo driver, Dylan.

I’m like, “My chariot has arrived!”

[police siren blaring] Behind us, it’s just cherry top.

[officer 1] Stand up!

[officer 2] Turn around!

Hands above your head. Don’t move.

[Charlie] It’s hard to have that much power out in the world and then have it taken away in a flash.

They got me medicated pretty severely.

They wean you off the meds that they put you on.

I’m on, like, day 11, and it’s the first day I’m off everything.

And I start to fucking panic.

Those were the most difficult moments to navigate, kind of having to accept that the party was over.

I get a hold of my bodyguard, Zip.

And Zip goes through my condo and breaks everything out of it.

Sticks it in a bag.

In one of the quietest nights I’ve ever existed in, this bag comes, like, skittering through the night air so fucking loud you couldn’t believe it.

And this thing hits the mud.

Sober gods were like, “All right, man.”

“You’re gonna get a bit of shit on you for this one.”

I have one hit, and it’s not great. Nothing at that point is great.

I remember sitting in the room, staring at the freaking ceiling, this beige concrete ceiling.

There was no high left.

[silence]

[loud knocking on door] Yeah, I get a knock on my door, and I knew that was coming.

And I had this Dick Tracy fedora that I’d been wearing around town.

They were like, “Where’s the dope?”

So I basically just take my hat off and give them the dope.

And I said to him, “I have but one request.”

There was a crucial game six, JazzBulls.

And I said, “All I want to do is be able to sit down and watch that freaking game.”

Are y’all ready for Air Jordan?

[upbeat music playing]

Air who?

Air who?

[Charlie] He said, “All right, that’s actually a good sign.”

“I’m encouraged that you’re still seeking an interest in something that grounded.”

[commentator] To Malone, they double him. Jordan knocks it away from him.

Jordan’s got it. The Bulls could win it right here.

[Charlie] And I did watch that game.

[commentator] Michael against Russell, 12 seconds.

11, 10, Jordan.

Jordan at the line, fires.

And he hit The Shot.

[upbeat music heightens]

[commentator] He scores!

He stayed the course and I didn’t.

[commentator] …to Martin, baseline, left to Charlie.

It’s good!

[Charlie] I knew after that, that game was going to be my new sobriety date.

Things were gonna be fucking different.

[music fades] Yeah, a… a lot different.

[highpitched tone rising] I had no idea how badly this could blow up.

I’m doing all right.

Every time the bell rings, you gotta take a shot.

Why?

[bell rings] Because the bell rings.

[laughter]

[bell keeps ringing]

[ringing quickens]

[tense music rising]

[urgent beeping climbing]

[final bell ring] Untreated crazy over time doesn’t get better. It gets fucking worse.

[inhaling] Winning!

[driving, stringheavy music playing]

[music ends]

* * *

Part two

 

[old film projector whirring]

[reflective music playing]

[Sean Penn] Let’s talk turkey.

When we talk about truth, there’s a person’s truth, and then there’s a drug’s truth, right?

Those are very different things.

For a while, the country was transfixed when all of the chaos happened over the…

It’s tiger blood.

…Two and a Half Men period that led to the Tiger Blood, um, era and all of that.

He’s in the fight of his life here.

[gargling] And he was not sober.

And then you started to smell the fumes of some shit that was going on.

But now, I think, to have that same gifted person, uh, being able to talk directly to us sober, the only thing I know or feel myself very strongly is…

if you ask Charlie, did he do this, he’s gonna tell you the truth.

[old film projector whirring]

[dramatic music playing]

[Charlie] It’s a good day to be alive.

[blades whirring] I’ve been able to reembrace life through this program.

I want to thank my family for their support, my friends.

I want to thank my fans for all their support and their letters, kind words, and, um…

the next time we do this will be at a premiere.

He was in rehab, right?

And he gives me a call, like, “They’re letting us out.”

You know what he wanted to do?

He wanted to go to the baseball field.

[gentle music playing] Who brings him to the baseball field from rehab was Martin.

As we arrived, there was a game going on at the field.

Like a Sunday league game.

Of course, I’m egging them on to let Charlie play in the game, right?

And then finally, they see who it is. “Oh yeah, of course he can play.”

And this was one of the best moments. This was…

[exhales emotionally] My man gets up during the game.

[music turns emotional] He hits a home run in front of his dad.

Just leaving rehab.

That does not hap I could not believe that actually happened.

I wish I had the ball, but…

[Charlie] It’s nice to have a second shot, a second chance.

They say that success tasted the second time around is so much sweeter.

I plan on tasting that.

[man] See ya.

[applause]

[“Our House” playing]

♪ I’ll light the fire ♪

♪ You place the flowers… ♪

[Charlie] The only parts that were being offered to me coming out of rehab were forgettable, supporting shit.

I was looking for structure.

♪ Staring at the fire… ♪

A ninetofive job.

I was looking for consistency.

Looking for something that just felt like it would present its own rhythm, that I could naturally kind of slide into.

I’d grown up on sitcom television and was a huge fan of it.

♪ Our house Is a very, very, very fine house ♪

♪ With two cats in the yard ♪

♪ Life used to be so hard ♪

[Charlie] And always drawn to it as a medium that presented scenarios in a way that were digestible.

Okay, this is the most romantic disease I’ve ever had.

But felt harmless because of all the humor, you know?

So you could still come away with it touching some part of you, but without feeling like, you know, you had to dig through… [exhales] …to such a depth to find it.

[“Here Comes the Night” by Streetheart playing] And I got the call.

Let’s start looking into alternative dump sites.

Vacant lots, barges… New Jersey.

They’re shutting down Spin City because of Mike’s health.

Did you know, of all the brain disorders, Parkinson’s is the one that scientists believe may be closest to a cure?

Yet we still need funding.

And they’re thinking, would you be open to stepping in?

♪ Oh, here it comes ♪

[applause]

♪ Here comes the night ♪

[Charlie] Those aren’t just big shoes to fill.

Those are like stepping into the boots of the fucking Jolly Green Giant.

What did you say your last name was again?

Whoa, let’s not rush things.

They built in a backstory that’s pretty cool and pretty fucking funny.

I was the guy showing up that had a few skeletons, you know?

And that was cool because they were tying into us, actually, finally, me being in on the joke about all the shit that everybody had read about and heard about.

So, this is what it’s like to be the sober one.

[audience laughter] No wonder I was so unproductive in the ’90s.

It was a good feeling for me because during Spin, The West Wing was going on, right?

[chuckling] So Dad would come to the condo on Tuesday nights, I think, but we were able to watch Spin and then watch his episode.

And the ratings the next day, The West Wing destroyed us.

I’m… I’m really nervous and excited, and I’m happy to be here.

Then I got nominated for a Globe?

Not bad. You remember what I taught you.

[interviewer] Is it the first major award that you won throughout your career?

It’s the only one.

[interviewer] The only one. To this day.

That’s it.

I’ve never been invited before. I’m with my lovely fiancée, Denise.

Yeah. Hi, I’m Denise Richards.

Charlie Sheen, Spin City.

[audience cheering] Denise, you were right.

My lovely fiancée had a dream I was gonna win.

[“Denise” by Fountains of Wayne playing]

♪ I know this girl named Denise ♪

♪ She makes me weak at the knees ♪

♪ Shalalalalalala ♪

♪ When she holds me ♪

♪ Shalalalalalala ♪

♪ Won’t you tell me ♪

♪ Do you love me, Denise? ♪

♪ Whoaoh, do you love me, Denise? ♪

[interviewer] I feel like so many people are going to be surprised that you would be in this movie.

Why are you here?

There’s a lot of stuff that I know and I’m privy to thatAnd Charlie knows that I am.

I want to be honest.

Peel the layers and be honest, because otherwise this movie is going to be a fluffy, you know, glossedover, sugarcoated piece of shit.

My dad brought my sister and I to see Platoon when I was a teenager because my father’s a Vietnam vet.

And whNo offense, my dad should’ve brought us to see a movie with girls and makeup and stuff.

Dirty Dancing.

He brings his daughters to see Platoon.

And I said to my dad, “Would you ever have thought that bringing me and Nellie to go see Platoon, that I would marry that fucking guy?”

Right?

[Charlie] I met Denise on a film set.

It’s kind of a forgettable film called Good Advice.

So we can enjoy the life we deserve and more.

And more.

It’s an instant fantasy. I mean, she was, yeah, the hottest woman alive at the time.

He was, like, beating around the bush and was shy.

I was just like, “Spit it out. Do you want to go out to dinner or what?”

And then I think he got nervous about that.

That’s the thing people would be very surprised by.

Charlie can be very shy.

Then he told me about this game.

“Are you a baseball fan?” [clears throat] She was like, “Not so much.”

“Do you know who Barry Bonds is?” She was like, “I’ve heard of him.”

I said, “He’s on this epic recordchasing run right now.”

“The night you want to get together, he’s going to be in Houston sitting on number 69.”

She’s like, “What does any of that mean?”

“It means I can’t miss this game.”

“If you wanna come over, we’ll get some takeout.”

I didn’t want to be the reason why he missed that game.

He didn’t want to cancel our evening together, which I thought was very sweet.

And so, against what my dad advised, me going over there, I still went over to Charlie’s house and watched the game with him.

[beep] We microwaved our plastic meals.

I brought mine that I had delivered from my delivery service. [chuckles] He had his. He was on The Zone Diet. I was on a different one.

It was very romantic.

[Charlie] We’re watching the game.

And like that entire season, I think he probably walked his first two atbats.

And I remember it was later in the game, might’ve been seventh or eighth inning, the pitcher made a mistake. He threw a strike. [chuckles]

[commentator] Sixtynine home runs for Barry Bonds, the 11.

There it goes! There it goes!

Number 70 for Bonds!

[crowd cheering] Over the rightcenter field bullpen of the Houston Astros…

I think we both kind of saw that as maybe a sign of something.

So, the game ends, and we had a nice time together.

I walked her to the door, at my condo in Westwood.

And I said, uh, “Well, excellent, cool.”

“Let’s do this again sometime soon. No pressure.”

He had a calmness about him.

And he seemed very grounded.

I was not making that first move.

I’m a little oldfashioned that way.

He wasn’t the guy that people read about. He was very different.

Especially sober.

You’re still trying to figure out, like, how your body moves through space.

She starts to turn away… [chuckles] And she grabs the back of my head and just pulls me into a kiss, you know?

Yeah, it was on.

[“Got You (Where I Want You)” by The Flys playing] And more! And more! [laughs]

♪ Got you where I want you ♪

I didn’t have sex with him.

What’d you say if I told you I’d leave you if you didn’t let me?

There was such a connection with he and I.

[Tony] When Denise and Charlie were married, they both seemed so very happy.

I said, “He’s gonna be together with this woman for the rest of his life.”

It’s all there.

It’s all there and the bells are ringing.

[bells ringing] My first guest, of course, stars in the hit sitcom Spin City, which will air its hourlong season finale next Wednesday on ABC.

Please welcome Charlie Sheen.

[crowd cheering]

[Charlie] In that moment, life’s pretty great.

Then… we got the call.

Spin City…

canceled.

[interviewer] Did you take that personally?

Little bit, yeah.

[interviewer] Yeah.

[grunts] We decided we’re going to parlay that into putting the word out that I’m gonna continue in this space, and I want to have my pick of the litter.

And I get a call. “Chuck Lorre wants to sit down with you.”

[intriguing music playing]

[Conan O’Brien] You have somehow hit the sweet spot.

I think you’ve created twothirds of the television shows on the air.

Not just to [laughs]

I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.

[Lorre] The idea for Two and a Half Men involved two brothers, one of which was a Job character, the biblical Job.

He was a hardworking, good man to which endless shit happened.

One of which was a Dionysian character, a hardpartying kind of guy.

He was the god of merriment and wine and sex and whatnot.

When my partner on this project and I went to CBS to pitch the idea for Two and a Half Men, I explained the character of one of the brothers as a Charlie Sheentype character, to which she said, “Can you get him?”

[audience laughter] Oh, is she staying over? ‘Cause I may have parked behind her.

[audience laughter]

♪ Men, men, men, men Manly men, men, men ♪

[playful music]

[Jon] I remember our first shoot.

He sort of took me aside and said, “I know there’s a lot of stories about me.”

“I’ve been sober for two years, and it’s incredibly important to me to be faithful to that.”

“And I’m really trying to change my life.”

And I thought it was interesting he felt the need to express that to me.

He felt the need to say, “I’m gonna be serious about this. Don’t be worried.”

Sometimes in the middle of the day, for no reason at all, I like to make myself a big pitcher of margaritas and take a nap out on the sun deck.

[audience laughter] Ah.

[audience laughter] Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

Say his name, and everybody knows what that means.

So everybody expects this, the lothario guy.

This guy who’s got the quip handy.

He could party all night, show up an hour late, breeze through makeup, saying hello to everybody, who’s always gonna be the cool guy in the room.

But you start to realize, “There’s a lot going on there that he’s covering.”

Charlie’s actually this mass of fears.

Once I understood that, I understood a lot more about Charlie.

But he goes in and out of being able to have a healthy way of dealing with that, and then an incredibly destructive way of dealing with that, which is the drugs and the partying.

[trumpet flourish] At the risk of dating myself, there is a Dean Martin quality, an effortlessness.

He played a guy who was inebriated with great class, which Charlie did as well.

I think Charlie made what otherwise would be a disreputable character…

lovable.

Charlie’s Angels.

[Chris Tucker] That’s Charlie Sheen’s brilliance.

That’s his comedy chops. That’s his acting skills.

Let’s have a look.

In my defense, it’s a little cold in here.

I thought he was always going to maybe be more of a comedic guy because he had that natural ability that you can’t teach someone.

He had that.

He’d love to have that last line before he walked out of the room.

I didn’t know how that television world worked, but I knew it was a lot of work.

This is a support group, Charlie.

You’re the only one who’s pretending it’s about Scotch and cigars.

[audience laughter] And even though I knew his humor, the way he was able to own the medium and do it where he’s leading a show, he’s leading the comic timing with very good assist plays, I guess I was surprised and delighted by it.

You’ll have to forgive my brother.

He thinks with his penis, and his penis isn’t very bright.

[audience laughter] That’s true. Anybody who knows me will confirm that.

This didn’t build.

There was an audience for it almost immediately.

Keep your hands off my wife.

Obviously it was a huge hit right away.

We kinda killed it out of the gate.

And I remember watching football that last Sunday before we hit the air, we were every other commercial.

They were pumping us, yeah.

It’s difficult to sort of temper your confidence because it all feels so easy.

“It’s funny. This is funny, you know. Easy to be funny. Everybody loves us.”

And when it feels that easy, it’s easy to sort of get lulled into the sense that this is always going to be this easy.

[Charlie] They brought the idea to me.

“How do you feel about having Denise on the show as a romantic interest?”

I’m like, “Cool.”

It’s the easiest way not to get yelled at when you get home about kissing a girl.

“Come to Mama” bums me a little.

Can we make it, “Come to Catholic schoolgirl”?

Yes, Monsignor.

Hallelujah.

Denise, she struck me as somebody who was just way more practical than Charlie.

She’s the anchor he needs in his life.

[gasps] Aww.

Look at what good poopy you made.

[Charlie] There needed to be a baby in the scene, and we had Sam.

She must have been a couple months old, and she was cooing at the time.

And the strangest thing happened, where she didn’t make a peep during our dialogue.

Chuck pointed this out when he was in post with that episode, that he said, “Your daughter inherited your timing, because she didn’t speak over a single, not just a line, a single word between you and her mom.”

[Sam cooing]

[chuckling]

Would you throw this away?

Sure.

[audience laughter]

[Jon] I could sense there were things that he was never going to be that suburban, being more of just a regular married guy.

I felt like it might be, you know, fighting against the tide.

What’s wrong?

Nothing.

[Jon] At one point, Denise showed up unexpected.

I get this frantic knock on my door.

[knocking] And it’s Charlie. I opened, and I was like, “What’s up?”

He’s looking around frantically. I mean, the guiltiest look around.

I mean, it’s like a cliché, and he said, “Hey, man. Can you hold this for me?”

It’s a brown paper bag, and I’m like, “What is it?”

“I’m not gonna hold it. Is it legal? What…”

And he said, “No, it’s legal.” I was like, “Oh, okay.”

So I put it in my dressing room, and I closed the door.

And the bag is just sitting there looming.

Uh… [laughs] And I was, like, “What could possibly be so embarrassing that Charlie Sheen doesn’t want his wife to see it?”

Finally, I couldn’t help it and I looked in the bag.

It was legal. It was Barely Legal, the porn magazine.

Uh… [chuckles] How? How do I push you away?

I felt bad that Charlie’s relationship with Denise was going south.

You can’t commit!

Hey, I can commit.

Oh, yeah? Prove it.

[Denise] As soon as the show started getting really successful, I think the pressure of that changed him.

It was almost like he was sabotaging the success and sabotaging our family.

When things started to go good, I felt like things were being sabotaged.

Try one of these. It’ll relax you.

Oh, perfect.

Charlie, you can’t just pop a pill without knowing what it is.

She just said what it is. Thanks, Mom. Gotta go.

I was feeling squirrelly, you know?

I was looking for anything that could be justified but not completely derail what I was trying to do.

And pills showed up as the answer.

So I thought.

[interviewer] When you say “pills,” what are we talking about?

Hydrocodone, like a Norco or Vicodin.

It always starts with the doctor, usually for some type of pain somewhere on your body that you could probably navigate with just, you know, Advil and ice.

[interviewer] Did you know you were an addict and potentially going down this road?

How did you process? You didn’t think about consequences?

I thought about it, but I negotiated the hell out of it with myself, you know.

“Yeah, okay, that thing went a little far, but maybe if I just make these few changes here, I think it can be much more manageable.”

You know?

And that’s that’s the fiction that we start to, uh, embrace as reality.

You can see the soulless emptiness in that shark’s eyes.

[gasps] Ooh!

Two and a Half Men!

You can see the soulless emptiness in Charlie Sheen’s eyes.

[Charlie] Sadly, the pills, they do create a lot of just irrational anger.

When it started to change, it was quick.

I remember reaching out to his sponsor and saying I was concerned.

But people in his circle were like, “It’s your hormones. You’re postpartum.”

If I don’t behave the way you want me to, you think it’s hormonal.

Not every time, but you’ve gotta admit there is a pattern.

I was like, “No. There’s something fucking wrong.”

That’s when I started to see that people in his life were trying to, I felt, kind of pit us against each other, even though we were married and we had a kid, and another baby on the way, and it wasThat was very difficult for me.

And I’m not just this quiet wife.

I, you know I’m very I’m a strong woman, and I’ll…

Like, something is not right.

[rock music intro playing] Sheen versus Richards on top in G.

A California judge ordering Charlie Sheen to keep at least 300 feet away from his estranged wife, Denise Richards.

Yeah, I had the snap aggression.

Because you’re not mad at the person, you’re mad at the fact that the second dose you had to take just to get right, just to feel kind of normal, didn’t give you the pizzazz or the bump that the first two or three gave you.

And so you spend the whole day, night, weekend, whatever, just chasing that, kind of, that first warm jets.

Like in a… Like in an invisible jacuzzi.

You’re just warm jets, you know?

He got very, um…

kind of aggressive.

[reporter] What she claims happened behind closed doors is remarkable.

[photographer] Charlie and Denise!

[reporter] The most explosive charge, Richards says Sheen threatened her life.

I mean, what I went through, what he did put me through, I don’t know how I’m here, to be honest.

And I think the only way through tragedy, what I was going through, was having a fucking sense of humor about it because it was so bad.

It was so bad.

So… And we can joke around, like, stupid shit.

I know outside people would think we’re crazy, making fun.

“Remember when you took a baseball bat to all the TVs?” Shit like that, whatever…

It’s like It sounds horrible and very dark, but for us, it’s…

[chuckling] That was the life getting through.

I think that if I wasn’t a strong person, I would have gone down a very dark road just to deal with all this shit.

It was a lot.

I made it a lot more difficult than it needed to be, you know?

And I own that.

And I’m not I feel awful about that to this day.

[reporter 1] Do you think he cares about the kids?

[reporter 2] Does court ever get any easier?

Um… no. No one wants to be down here. This isn’t for publicity.

This is embarrassing and humiliating, and it’s for my kids.

[Tony] At that time, Denise and Charlie, they had two daughters.

I said, “If he’s getting a divorce, it probably had to do with him being back on something.”

Denise and Charlie, it was like, “Unbelievable.”

[reporter] But now what’s unbelievable is how ugly and nasty the divorce battle between Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen has become.

[Charlie] Because of the problems Denise and I had when Lola was born, I didn’t have a chance to, in her early part of her life, to really bond with her.

[Lola] I always wanted him to be sober growing up.

And just because you can’t really have a real relationship with someone who is going through addiction, it’s hard ’cause they’re not in the right frame of mind, and they can’t talk to you the way they’d want to.

So… yeah, I really was never really close with my dad when I was younger.

I was always the one who was told less, I think, ’cause they wanted to protect me.

I did want us to just pretend like everything was fine in front of the kids.

It’s not their fault we got divorced.

They didn’t ask to be born into a broken family.

They didn’t ask to be born into a family that is super public and all this shit.

[sighs]

Sorry.

[interviewer] It’s all right.

Sorry, you guys.

[interviewer] Why don’t we take a break?

I don’t care if they record.

[interviewer] I know. I do.

No, they should record.

[interviewer] I know, butThey should. You’re doing a fucking docuseries.

They should. It’s fine. I don’t care. [exhales] Because it’s true.

If you’re gonna get the truth, get the fucking truth. The truth is… It’s…

[voice breaks] I feel like my life with Charlie is three stages.

It’s… the time I met him and married him.

Then my divorce, and then the aftermath of it, you know.

Sorry to get so fucking emotional.

[interviewer] No, it’s all right.

Because it was a lot, and I’ve had to fucking hold it together.

[Schubert’s “Andante con moto” from Trio in EFlat Major playing]

[indistinct chatter from crew]

Like this?

[interviewer] You’re good.

[Brooke] Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

You know what I remember him from, to being young?

Oh, he was the hot football stud. Lucas?

[interviewer] Yeah.

[Brooke] He was theI loved Dirty Dancing.

I was a dancer growing up. So I remember him from that.

[interviewer] To make sure we’re clear, he wasn’t in Dirty Dancing.

[paparazzi calling]

[Brooke] Oh my goodness.

So I think they literally had just gotten divorced, and that’s when I met him.

She showed up like a lighthouse in a freaking storm.

I was at a party at a friend’s house.

We talked, spent an hour together.

Casually found out she was five years sober.

And I got her number, and we talked a few days later.

Then I went to her house, we hung out, said good night.

All very oldfashioned, you know?

I just dug her spirit, man. I dug her light. I dug her energy.

[Jon] When Charlie got remarried to Brooke, I was not able to be there because I was on a movie, so my wife went.

My wife called me afterwards and said, “Oh my God.”

[chuckling] “I have concerns,” is what my wife said.

She said, “I just wanna tell you the toast that Martin Sheen made at the wedding.”

And I said, “Okay,” I braced myself. [chuckles] And he apparently stood up, uh, said, “I hope you two know what you’re doing,” and sat back down. [chuckles] That was the entirety of Martin Sheen’s toast at Charlie Sheen’s wedding.

Brooke is from Palm Beach.

And I told the parents, “Don’t let your daughter marry him.”

“I think he’s wonderful, but a disaster. Don’t let your daughter marry him.”

You know, one thing leads to the next thing, and marriage and children. [chuckles] When the boys were born, they both had these heart problems.

They couldn’t get the show to shut down.

So I was basically sleeping at the hospital, and trying to learn my dialogue there, and going and checking on them all hours of the night, and trying to show up for rehearsals and runthroughs.

And, you know, on the phone with Brooke in between every take, and just really generating a ton of resentment that the show still mattered that much, when the star’s kids at birth were in tremendous peril.

The kids are fine. It was a temporary thing.

They got through it, they’re tough as nails.

But yeah, at that time it was… Phew.

It was scary, man, you know.

I’m not placing any blame.

I’m just, you know, trying to trace, kind of, the way things developed or unraveled, or both.

I remember the night that nine years of no crack came to a tumbling, spectacular close.

She’s in the bathroom with this girl. I hear them doing blow.

I start banging on the door, and they’re like, “What do you want? Don’t be a party pooper.”

I said, “If you’re gonna do this shit in my house, you need to stop wasting it.”

“You need to do it properly.”

“Let me show you how to cook this shit up.”

And it was on.

[foreboding music playing]

[Brooke] I thought I was gonna die for one hour.

[911 operator] Okay, what’s your name?

[Brooke] Brooke.

[911 operator] And what’s your husband’s name?

[Brooke] It’s Charlie Sheen.

[reporter] This is Charlie Sheen’s mugshot from the Aspen Police Department.

He spent much of Christmas Day on lockdown after his wife called cops to their rented vacation home.

[Charlie] It’s important to note there was a moment before I got on the plane to go there where Dad, like, drove to the airport.

And I remember I was, like, walking to the plane, and he says, “Don’t go. Do not get on this plane.”

I said, “What, is it going to crash?” He says, “No. No, but I just…”

He says, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

So he was the messenger that was sent to prevent all that heartache, you know?

I can’t talk too much about… because…

we don’t really know what how she if she wants to speak to it, you know.

[911 operator] Tell me exactly what happened.

[Brooke] You know, my husband had me… with, um…

With a knife, and I feared for my life and he threatened me.

We went hard fast.

Here you are, husband and wife, in this tiny room, not leaving that room because we’re doing so many drugs for so long, that everyone starts becoming crazy and paranoid.

And all kinds of bizarre behavior starts to happen, unfortunately.

She blew a 0.13 blood alcohol level, which is legally drunk, and she has recanted, uh, a good part of that story.

So the whole issue, I think, is really up in the air right now.

[Brooke] You know, I quickly recanted it.

[interviewer] You recanted at the time?

Oh, yeah, I went in and that’s how he got off.

Yeah. Because I… I had to recant my story, and I remember the DA being very upset with me.

[interviewer] What do you mean you had to? Tell us about that.

Well, if I didn’t recant my story, then he could have gotten into a lot of trouble.

[interviewer] So you felt like you had to just from the standpoint of protection of the situation that you were all in?

Well, of course. Not only is he my husband, but also I was so incredibly screwed up on serious drugs for a very long time, How I can’t sit there and say, “Okay, I know for a fact this happened, and this is how it happened,” or anything like that because of the mind.

So once I sobered up and I saw, “Whoa, what position did I put us in and who the fuck was I?”

Excuse my language.

And then I can’t even recall.

That’s another It’s not like I have these specific memories of the night, and I was like, “This happened, and this definitely happened, and I’m the victim because of…” No.

In fact, I saw myself as very psychotic.

I… I have my part in it. Sure. Fuck yeah.

And I’ve made amends with Brooke about it over and over.

And, uh… Yeah, we’re past it.

Um…

It sucks that it couldn’t have just stayed between us.

I don’t think it’s fair just to pick up these moments at Charlie’s lowest and define him as a human being based on those moments.

Especially with a history of substance abuse that alters your behavior and character.

After that incident, it just blew us apart.

[reporter] The rocky marriage of Charlie Sheen and Brooke Mueller may be coming to an end.

Sheen filed for divorce from Mueller on Monday.

Sheen was charged with domestic violence following a Christmas argument with Mueller.

[sighs] That was the first time I thought of leaving.

Because I didn’t want to enable violence, and there was violence involved in that.

I think I had a talk with Chuck about it before sitting down for the table read.

And he said, “You need to do the right thing.”

“You need to gather everybody and apologize.”

And I said, “I’m not doing that.”

They have to… have that, you know, glom on to that with this big presentation that would have just been a fucking performance piece anyway.

[Tiger Woods] I brought this shame on myself.

I hurt my wife, my kids… my mother.

Tiger Woods’ career tanking after his scandal, but Charlie Sheen’s career taking off, even as his troubles continue to pile up.

Two and a Half Men topping the ratings on Monday, days after his assault arrest.

[reporter] Sheen’s not hiding himself, and the public has kind of accepted it, whereas a guy like Tiger Woods, we imagine him as a squeakyclean, perfect athlete, so he does something wrong, and the public turned against him immediately.

It makes enormous amounts of money for CBS in ad revenue.

155 million last season, all told.

They’d rather not have to put up with Charlie Sheen’s behavior, but they’re sort of stuck.

Well, Les Moonves showed up to his house at nine o’clock in the morning with the head of Warner Bros. Television, and they said, “Here’s two statements.”

“Either we’re putting out a statement that you’ve gone to rehab and we are going to resume filming when you come back, or this statement is, uh, ‘The show is canceled and we’re done.'” He’s in the midst of falling apart in every way I can imagine, and he’s renegotiating his contract for another year of a show I’m supposed to be on too.

[answering machine beeps] Charlie, it’s Alan, your brother. No big deal.

[Charlie] I remembered saying, “Dude, I don’t know, man. I just, uh…”

“Feeling emotionally done there, and I get there’s a ton of money at stake, and I get there’s a lot more juice to be squeezed out of this thing, but, uh, I don’t know how much juice is left in me, and I do fear if I go back it’s going to go terribly wrong.”

I said those words.

Apparently, they had presold a couple of extra seasons of the show.

Um, so… you know, it was worth their while toto spend this astonishing amount of money on Charlie.

[phone rings]

Historical. What was that called?

It was a game of telephone…

Yeah.

…between Moonves, my lawyer, and myself, and us, you know, rejecting, rejecting, rejecting, and really calling his bluff.

[militaristic march playing]

[Jon] The dictator of North Korea was a guy named Kim Jong Il.

He acted crazy all the time and thus got enormous amounts of aid from countries who were so scared of him that, uh, they would shovel money at him.

Well, that’s what happened here.

His negotiations went off the charts because his life was falling apart.

Me…

[laughs] …whose life was pretty good at that time, I got a third of that.

[photographer] Over here, guys.

Happy to have him back.

He can’t stop smiling.

Absolutely. Absolutely. He’s my cleanup hitter.

[photographer] Charlie’s the man.

Nice.

[reporter] CBS was really asking for it, and they got it.

Charlie Sheen has signed a twoyear deal to return to Two and a Half Men at two million an episode, making him the highestpaid TV star in history.

[Denise] They made the biggest deal in history for any other actor on television at that time, and I think to date, actually.

After his big contract, I was actually upset with his people.

Like, “Why are you guys putting him on a show right now? Like, he’s not well.”

But they just see the money and just want to keep on going.

It was all anybody could focus on, that he was going to be the highest TV paid star of all time.

Yeah. That was a lot.

It was too much money to give a guy like me in that mindset at that time.

[chuckling] It was a… a recipe for a disaster.

[“One Hour with You” playing]

♪ How I would love… ♪

[man on TV] …good does not always triumph.

Sometimes, the dark side…

[dog barks]

[interviewer] Where are we?

[Marco] We’re, uh, sitting in my condo in Hollywood, California, which I got from Charlie while I was kind of working for him.

I went from being a petty dealer to making so much money I didn’t know what to do with it.

Marco, aka Phil Heinz, um, spelled just like the ketchup, is a… is a friend of mine.

And, um… I don’t remember exactly how we met.

[Marco] I had just got out of prison, and I get a phone call.

He goes, “Hey, man.” I’m like, “Bro… who are you?”

He’s like, “It’s me, Charlie Sheen.”

I’m like,”Oh God, this has got to be a fucking prank.”

But I kinda recognized his voice because the only shit they played in prison was Cops, George Lopez, and Two and a Half Men.

At that time I told my friend Barbie.

I’m like, “Hey, are you down to go party with Charlie Sheen?”

And she’s like, “Oh, hell yeah.”

“Charlie Sheen? I’ll fuck him for free,” she said.

Every night for, like, the first two weeks, then to, like, every other night, and each time I would go to him, it was $15,000 every single time.

Sometimes 20, sometimes 30.

It was just like…

It was just like amazing, like, “Oh my God.”

[Charlie] There were some nights when it was just he and I.

Just hanging out, drinking, watching movies, and listening to music.

Just doing, like, normal, kind of fun shit, but just super high.

It was a tough decision because I had just got out of prison for a transporting charge, and I just wanted to walk in the right direction in my life.

But then… this opportunity came up and, like, it was just like, kind of like winning the lottery, I mean, like…

who wouldn’t want to do it?

Every now and then, he’d start to do little things, like he’d miss a day of rehearsal.

In the back of your mind, you’re always wondering, “Well…” I obviously want to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He shows up on Friday when we shoot in front of the audience.

He knows his lines, and he does a great job.

Will you admit you’ve got a problem?

I really don’t know.

[laughter] I think the last couple of years of the show, uh, I was certainly aware that things were coming unglued and… you know, I was probably in a great deal of denial about it as well.

Your mind goes into denial thing because your livelihood depends on his livelihood.

“Everything’s gonna be fine.”

“We’re gonna be fine. It’s all gonna be fine.”

Give me the phone.

Aw.

Give it.

It’s here somewhere. Hold on.

Okay, let me just set this. Sorry. It’s a deep pocket and all that.

[laughter]

If you know what I mean.

[laughs] They would call me all the fucking time to go there because I can’t get fired.

I was your exwife. I was already fired.

When they were desperate, they were like, “Could you please come over and see if he’s alive?”

“We haven’t seen him for two days.”

And so then I would pound on his door.

[knocking] And then I’d keep pounding. I’m like, “Open the fuck up!”

[loud knock] And I remember I brought food, and Jon Cryer was there when I get there.

And I’m making sandwiches, and Jon was super nervous.

And he goes, “What are you doing?”

I go, “Well, he hasn’t eaten, and I’m making sandwiches.”

And then you see two or three hookers come downstairs.

And I remember Jon asking me, “Are you making them sandwiches?”

I go, “Well, yeah.”

I mean, what am I going to say? Um…

“Sorry, because of what you do for a living, you don’t get one of my white trash mayo, mustard, turkey, cheese, lettuce sandwiches”?

[chuckling] It wasn’t like I was making a gourmet sandwich.

Like, I’m trying to help get keep him good.

[Marco] That’s the chair you just fucking broke, made you bust your ass.

What you doin’ with it?

Um, of course it is.

Sometimes he would smoke so much crack he couldn’t even speak.

He would speak in tongues.

Spinning round…

He’d call me… [speaks gibberish] Like, “What?”

Piece of crap.

[Jon] I wake up one morning, and TMZ is reporting that Charlie’s Mercedes is at the bottom of a ravine.

And I’m like, “Holy crap. Did he drive off a flipping cliff?”

I go into work that day, he comes in, like, “Hey, man.” I’m like, “Hey…”

I’m looking him up and down to see if there’s scratches.

I assumed he was loaded, he drove off the cliff, somehow survived, and then had to climb up the cliff to get back home.

Um… that is not what occurred.

[reporter] Charlie Sheen’s Mercedes was stolen from his home in Hollywood Hills, then pushed off a cliff along Mulholland Drive.

And then it happened again.

Twice in four months.

[man] Yeah.

The same cliff.

But he just appeared to take it in stride.

There’s gotta be something else going on in the world now.

There’s so much about his life that I will never understand.

I I could not live with that in my life.

That somebody stole my Mercedes and drove it off a cliff twice would make me have a hard time sleeping at night.

And then it was starting to show in the work.

Look, I understand your concerns, but it’s not like that.

****.

[Jon] I could see his timing was off.

He was clearly overcompensating, uh, for being loaded.

He’d come in and be super friendly to everybody.

“Hey, everybody. How’s it going?”

He’d hug crew members who were like, “Hey, hi, Charlie. Good to see you.”

What?

Eh Great. ****. Okay.

[Jon] That’s when I was worried about Charlie every day.

I was like, “Is this the day that we’re gonna lose him?”

I considered Charlie a friend, not just a colleague at work.

But there was fear that, um, tragedy was right around the corner.

[Nassif] Yes, hi. My name is Dr. Nassif. I live in Beverly Park in Beverly Hills.

[operator] Yes, sir.

[Nassif] I just got a call from the residence of Charlie Sheen.

He was very, very intoxicated.

Also, apparently in a lot of pain.

It’s kind of weird, the phone call I received.

[operator] All right, sir.

[reporter] Troubled 45yearold actor Charlie Sheen is back in the spotlight.

Yesterday morning, he was rushed to CedarsSinai Hospital in Los Angeles.

His father, Martin Sheen, was spotted there later that day.

TMZ reports Sheen was taken out of his home on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance.

You’re hearing things from TMZ, you don’t know what’s true, you don’t know what kind of shape he’s actually in.

[reporter] He’s in detox after a cocaine and alcoholfueled party a witness says lasted for days.

[witness] I’ve never seen someone so selfdestructive.

I thought maybe it was almost like a suicide binge.

We were all sure that he had OD’d and that he was probably very near death.

And it was terrifying.

But he just kept saying, “No, I’m in the hospital now, but next week I’ll be ready for the show.”

Guy eventually shows up, and he opens up his bag, and he just dumps open, I’d say about five, maybe about this big.

A tennis ball size?

A tennis ball size of cocaine.

I’d party with him for weeks at a time, which turned into months.

And sometimes it just My body just wouldn’t take it no more, and I would go home and sleep for a week or two.

And then when I would go back to party, he was still partying every single night.

I thought to myself, “Damn, this guy’s not human.”

Charlie Sheen’s biology, whether you’re talking about that or just surviving the kind of stuff that he has, it’s a different chemical reaction.

And I think that there is something biologically different about him.

We’re all sort of We’re looking at each other like, how do you deal with this, with somebody so intent on bringing themselves down?

And he did this interview with Alex Jones, and I was stunned.

[Charlie] Let me just say this. It’s nothing this side of deplorable that a certain Chaim Levine, yeah, that’s Chuck’s real name, mistook this rock star for his own selfish exit strategy, bro.

I later found out part of the reason he was going on those crazy rants was that he was using testosterone, um, that that combined with the drugs that he was doing at the same time, and drinking, which he was all doing again, led him to just go on these manic episodes.

I mean, my testosterone was probably like 4,000.

Normal high is like 710.

So yeah, that put me into crazy brain. Fucking crazy brain.

I’m a peaceful man with bad intentions.

Okay, last I checked, Chaim, I’ve spent, I think, close to the last decade, I don’t know, effortlessly and magically converting your tin can into pure gold.

He’s the cool guy you want to hang with. There’s something magical about the man.

All that went away and was replaced by, you know, what one might call a disease.

What I’ve come to really embrace in all this time since, so much of the anger in my personal life, and the anger and the frustration of two failed marriages and four new children, and just never not finding any real success in those pursuits, um, I decided to take out on Chuck.

And Chuck took it upon himself to shut the show down.

[Charlie] Are you taping this? Are you taping everything now?

I have to go look at it and decide.

What’s up?

[tense music playing]

I got terminated by Warner Bros.

[Tony] My phone’s going crazy.

So is mine. This guy says, “Any words for Warner Bros?”

I said, “See you at Fort Knox.”

“That’s the only place with enough gold to pay off your treasonous ways.” Winner!

Fired! Fired!

[Tony] Congratulations.

Give it up! Fuck that show, man.

That show was beneath me the fucking time I was there.

They never understood the fucking genius they had.

They abused it, then dismissed it, and now they’re gonna lose.

Because they’re not…

winning!

[Tony] By the studio telling him no, I think that took his addiction to a higher level.

And he’s just like, “Well, okay, I’ll show them.”

[Charlie] It’s the weapon of the troll.

Okay. I’ll use it against him one day.

Find a way to harness it into 50caliber strafing runs.

[photographer] Charlie!

[crowd cheering] Bring it.

[crowd] Bring it!

[man] Tony Todd for president!

So much of the public were cheering it on.

[fan 1] You’re my hero, Charlie! My hero!

[cheering] People get excited by train wrecks, unfortunately.

[fan 2] What do you say, Charlie?

If I knew, I’d be wearing it.

[fans cheering]

[fan 2] Way to go, Charlie. You’re a champ!

They wanted to see the train wreck because we were in this new age where they could see all of it.

Now that I have your lazy fucking attention, world, sit back and rejoice, for the Malibu Messiah, the condor of Calabasas, the fucking warlock of your jealous face sits before you.

God knows, you offer it, people will take it.

And take it and take it and take it.

[announcer] Charlie Sheen, in his own words.

ABC’s Andrea Canning was the first to sit down with him this past Saturday morning.

There with him, as our cameras started rolling at 5:30 in the morning, and he sweated through an intense morning workout.

And at the end of our shooting, we wondered, as you no doubt will, what did we just witness and what will happen next to Charlie Sheen and his family?

All these radio rants have people thinking Charlie Sheen has got to be on drugs again.

Sure. Yeah.

Yeah, III am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. [chuckles] It’s not available ’cause if you try it once, you will die.

Your face will melt off, and your children will weep over your exploded body.

Um… too much.

It was stupid. It’s embarrassing, um…

Get him off camera, keep him indoors, get him some help.

Put this train back in the station immediately.

Not just on the tracks, bring it in for repair.

Tell me, last time you took drugs.

Last time I took drugs?

I probably took more than anybody could survive, you know?

What are we talking about? How much?

I don’t know. I was banging sevengram rocks and finishing them because that’s how I roll. I have one speed, one gear, “Go!”

When Charlie said that he was smoking sevengram rocks, he was smoking sevengram rocks.

I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

How do you survive that?

Because I Because I’m me.

I’m me, I’m different. I have a different constitution, I have a different brain, different heart. A different Tiger blood, man.

There’s a handful of peopleIn fact, most of the people that were at my level or Charlie’s level are dead.

We are like the last…

survivors.

If he had cancer, how would we treat him, you know?

The disease of addiction is a… is a form of cancer.

I don’t care if it’s my dad, a guy down the street, or someone that fell out of the sky.

No interest. I don’t care if he’s my dad. Back off with your judgment.

You know, he just made the choices he made, and, um, I don’t know if he knew what the consequences would be or anything.

Aren’t you getting that I’m not interested in the past at all?

It’s just part of who you are, and what’s led to this place, so…

Yeah, kinda, but that’s another paradigm I’d like to smash.

It got away from me.

We win so radically in our underwear before our first coffee, it’s scary.

[reporter] Sheen calls them his goddesses.

Are you antiSemitic?

No. No, I’m not. Why would I be? I mean, based on what? No, that’sThat’s a mindset that I would never entertain.

[Andrea] He goes by the name Chuck Lorre. His real name is Charles Levine.

[Charlie] Right.

You chose to call him Chaim Levine.

You took the Hebrew version, which I think people were wondering, why would he do that?

I read it off the vanity card, said it as a joke.

I didn’t make a big deal about it.

[reporter] Sheen says he saw the name on one of the title cards Lorre inserts at the end of each episode of the show and was simply trying to be funny.

It got away from me, and the public outcry to keep it percolating, to keep it thriving, to keep it crazy, was where I was taking my cues.

Your passion is coming off as erratic to people.

Well, you borrow my brain for five seconds and be like, “Dude, can’t handle it. Unplug this bastard.”

Yeah, because it fires in a way that is, um, I don’t know, maybe not from this particular terrestrial realm. You know?

When you got tiger blood and Adonis DNA, man, it’s like…

Get with the program, dude.

You’ve been given magic, gold.

It was intoxicating the response to that one interview.

Charlie Sheen is getting more popular by the day.

He gained more than one million followers on Twitter in 24 hours.

[reporter] It’s the “Sheening” of America.

We’re “Sheening” our heads off.

Sorry, middle America. Losers. Winning. Byebye.

[reporter] Sirius Radio devoted an entire channel to him for a day.

[announcer] Tiger Blood Radio.

[CNN reporter] The Bakersfield Condors hosted Charlie Sheen Night.

Buy one, get one Tiger’s Blood Icees and snow cones, and “Dress up like Charlie, get in for two and a half bucks.”

Winning.

Just winning.

Winning, duh!

[all] Duh, winning!

The troubled star continuing his assault on pop culture.

Kind of a gnarly image. I’m burning my own face, but I can’t feel the heat.

But it’s his references to warlocks, and himself as one, that has some people in Salem a little upset.

You shall speak the names of the craft no more.

Charlie Sheen is not a warlock, for a warlock is a wise person who understands the ways of the spirit world.

Duh, winning. Winning.

♪ I’m winning, I’m winning ♪

♪ Winning, winning ♪

[reporter] As one poster on TMZ put it, “Parents, make your kids watch this.”

“If that doesn’t scare them away from drugs, nothing will.”

[Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” from Die Walküre builds and climaxes] I went over to the computer and pulled the cord out.

Went over to the thing, turned off social media, turned off all of it.

You know, had to just keep the faith and the thought that he knows we love him.

We know he loves us.

Hopefully that’s enough.

[reporter] Police removed his twins from the home, prompted by a restraining order from his exwife.

The incident was caught on tape by Radar Online.

With the boys, they didn’t have anyone, and I’m like, “It’s either that or they end up in foster care.”

So I took them for almost a year.

[reporter] What about as a dad? Your kids were taken away.

Are you hurting at all?

Uh… Yes, I am, but, uh, on a battlefield, it’s emotion and ego and panic thatthatthat get in your way.

I was pursuing a lifestyle that didn’t fit the reality.

There was a huge lawsuit at the time with the studio.

And so they were hanging on to a bunch of dough that they owed me.

And I had, you know, bills to pay, child support, all that fucking shit, and I couldn’t pay it.

My managers approached me and said, “We got a call from Live Nation, and they’re curious if you’d like to do a tour?”

I was like, “A tour of what?”

[reporter] The troubled actor is taking his bizarre behavior out on the road for Charlie Sheen Live: My Violent Torpedo of Truth.

What your name is synonymous, and I don’t mean this in a negative way, is trouble.

And I think, like, Torpedoes of Truth is so brilliant because it’s likeIt just sounds exciting.

I think you are an American outlaw.

I think the reason you got more Twitter followers than anybody on the planet is that.

Hold on the lights. Stand here.

We’re ready to go?

[lively music playing]

[cheering]

[Jon] I think a lot of people in the audience enjoyed Charlie Sheen vicariously.

That he’s living the life that they want, and a lot of them enjoyed the fact that he could have the highestpaying job on the Earth, say this to his boss, say this to his boss’s boss, give everybody the finger, live his life, do every bit of drugs that he wanted, and they were mad that anybody was holding him to a limit.

That anybody was stopping him, really pissed them off.

This looks pretty good. I’ll eat that.

Whatever.

You know, untreated crazy over time doesn’t get better. It gets fucking worse.

What do you say to the people who say that you’re crazy or bipolar?

You address it in the show…

They don’t know me.

[crowd cheering]

[tango music playing] I was called bipolar.

Well, you guys know I’m biwinning, right? Yeah.

[crowd cheering] I’m not sure what the fuck “bipolar” even means.

[Charlie] Or I let that thing take me. In these 100 days, maybe?

It’s 100 days that really fucking hurt the people I love.

Put them through a lot of shit.

That was very hard to be in school because I would hear about things that I didn’t even really know.

I never really felt normal at school.

I don’t really have any friends from school except for, like, one.

Rock on, Charlie Sheen.

Winning!

“Yeah, you know, he’s a breath of fresh air.”

Like, no, he’s a guy who got everything he ever wanted from this business, he just lost it, and he’s having a tantrum.

This whole thing happened because, uh…

because I told my boss to fuck off.

[woman] Yeah!

In so many words.

It feels weird.

It feels like I’m watching somebody else.

And I don’t look at that stuff by design.

Um…

It just creates such… The shame shivers, you know.

[announcer] Did you have a good time?

Show sucks!

Should’ve worn Kevlar tonight.

New York’s tougher. LA’s the toughest.

[crew member] The good news is Chicago’s his number one city for Twitter fans.

They’re there to fucking see him.

There’s an old movie called Weekend at Bernie’s.

The dead guy…

And there were times where it made me sad going to Charlie’s house when he would have a bunch of people around, and I felt at times they would just prop him up, get him to sign shit.

[man] Can I get some room, please? We need some room.

Back up.

[clamoring]

[Tony] Was he in any condition to be out there like that?

No.

I don’t think so.

You want to see a certain… creature, if you will.

You want to see a certain bad person doing crazy, insane, bad shit and glamorizing it in some bizarre way and feeding it, and then at the same time, um, demonizing.

[crowd booing] Everybody in every other city that bought tickets, you just lost your money.

He ain’t gonna show up.

He’s losing!

Charlie sucks!

That would’ve been nice, if somebody had stepped in, like, “Whoa, hey, whoa, this is not…”

“This is not a spectacle for everyone’s folly.”

“This is a man that’s in trouble.”

It was a bunch of babble that no one could even understand.

It was so stupid.

I feel sorry for anyone who pays for these tickets for other cities.

If one more fucking person tells me, “Just tell stories,” I’m gonna tell the story of their firing.

But again, you know, I had to agree to all that shit.

You know, I… lit the fuse.

I kind of had to deal with the concussion, the size of the blast.

[camera shutters clicking]

[man] That’s it. All right. Next group.

People excel at hypocrisy, and trending thought, and being part of a pack that is better than, is more than.

And destruction…

I don’t think it adds to anybody’s happiness.

But it’s very stimulating when you do it.

People are looking for that stimulation, and on the other side of it, things get injured, like Charlie.

And he’ll be the first to say he took part in that.

[Charlie] When that tour ended, man, I had a ton of shit I had to suffocate, I had to drown.

And, I wanted to disappear.

I just wanted to get into a dark room with a bag of dope and not come out.

[uneasy music playing]

[Tony] He was just really, you know, effed up at the time, and, uh, he would start crying. I would just give him a hug, like, “Hey, man. I’m here for you, man. Bottom line, I’m here for you.”

[Charlie] Tony Todd, he was always a friend.

And a true one.

I was there just trying to support him and just be by his side, man.

[Charlie] He would get criticism from different people about that he was just around me for the fun shit, you know, for the bonuses and the trips and all this stuff.

But I think he went also knowing that this group ain’t going to handle any of the stuff that I’ll be looking for.

You know, I was glad that he was there, down the hall, in case some shit went bad.

But I did always feel he deserved to be in the presence of just better things.

I mean, it’s been nights where he kicks everyone out of the house.

“Everyone, get out.” But I’m there. I’m still there.

When I was staying at his place, I always had the closest room to him.

Of course, in the back of my mind, I always thought that, “Man, one day, I’m just going to walk in that room and he’s gonna be gone.”

He’s gonna be gone, and I don’t know how I would be able to take that, but…

I… I… I…

I just couldn’t leave.

I couldn’t leave, and I don’t think he wanted me to leave.

You know, as a friend, man, I can’t let this person die on my watch.

Oh, man. Sorry, I just…

[interviewer] It’s a big story, you know? So…

It’s tough, man. I was getting ready to break down right there, man.

He got really sick.

He thought it was because he was detoxing from coke, and I said, “No, I’ve seen you detox before. This ain’t it.”

The kind of fucking pain I was in, and Denise, I don’t know if she spoke to this or not, but headache and full body sweat that…

that… shouldn’t exist while you’re still alive.

I go, “There’s something wrong,” and I said, “I don’t want to scare you, but when was the last time you have been tested for HIV?”

I thought it was meningitis, brain cancer.

I thought it was stomach, liver, some fuckingSomething where they were going to walk in and say, “Get your affairs in order.”

And when they didn’t say that, when they said it, the HIV diagnosis, I was kind of fucking relieved, because I knew that the technology and the medicine had gotten to a place where you can live, you can have a normal freaking life, um…

And in some cases, it’s more treatable than diabetes.

I’d already had five friends with the same situation.

I had to keep it to myself.

I didn’t have to sign like an NDA or anything, but had to keep it to myself.

And I was happy to keep it to myself. I didn’t think it was anyone’s business.

The advice I was being given at the time spoke to keep this under wraps.

As long as possible.

I don’t think any of us thought that Charlie would survive it.

It was that bad, and his body was breaking down.

Everything. It was terrible.

He… he knew he was loved.

Through all of that.

It increases. It’s just more outreach, more love, more support.

Um…

No shame, no judging. It’s just, you’re here.

You’re loved. Let’s move forward.

In that moment, I should’ve become a fucking vegetarian, and instead I became a “cracketarian.”

You know, stupidly.

I just became very fond of him.

Like, “Damn, that’s my bro right there.”

“I can’t let that dude die. He’s too fucking cool.” You know?

His drug counselor at the time told me, “Is there any way that you can make it less potent for him?”

And I told him, “I’ll try.”

So, little by little, I started to reduce the amount of cocaine that I was using to cook the crack.

It looked exactly the same, but it was just less potent.

In my mind, I was purchasing and going through the same amount, but the percentage was being gradually reduced.

So they were trying to get me off of crack by making weaker crack.

It took about a good… year and a half, but that’s how he got sober.

He actually just got tired of smoking bunk crack, which he thought was good crack, and he just…

He just stopped doing it.

He wanted to stop all of a sudden. He was like, “It’s just a waste of time.”

I was quite impressed when I found out later.

I didn’t know when it was going on.

Talk about being forced to think so far out of the box that you land on that.

You know, “He’s not going to stop. That’s been established.”

“So… how do we get involved in a way that… at least puts him at, you know, less risk.”

It speaks that I’m savable.

I’m worth saving.

[restrained emotional music playing] I don’t like to think of people by the worst thing they’ve done and the worst person they’ve been.

Um, we’re all complicated, we’ve all done things we’re not proud of, and we’ve all done things that we are, uh…

And… I try not to judge.

And seeing, you know, somebody you know is capable of being a regular guy go off into that, you sort of go, “Oh, okay.”

You know…

“Something is broken in him that may not ever be able to be repaired.”

[interviewer] All right. There we go.

Hey, everybody, we’re going to clear this whole room out entirely for this part of the day.

So everyone’s got to be out of the room, if that’s cool.

Thank you so much.

Now let’s get into all the things you’ve never publicly talked about.

[Charlie] Yeah, last night, knowing that we were on the eve of doing this, and what this part was going to involve, I was trying to remember what the feeling was.

What was the What were the feelings I was…

that were really familiar.

And what I connected it to was the night before I had to go testify in the Heidi Fleiss mess.

And just what was expected of me then, and what I knew I had to do, and what my marching orders were.

[interviewer] There was a gun held to your head at that moment.

Sure.

And in this situation, you’re walking into that discomfort, right?

Yes, because, um… just certain things, certain, um, certain behaviors, certain, um, instances, memories have just for too long had too much power over me, and I’m tired of being held hostage by them.

The Corey Haim allegation, did that happen?

Absolute fucking bullshit.

This is where everybody’s going to, like, pause the doc and go find the fucking story, and go for it, um…

At that point, they’ll have read more of it than I have.

[tense music playing]

[announcer] This is The Rumor Report with Angela Yee.

Corey Feldman had premiered his documentary last night at a screening in LA.

He says that Corey Haim said actor Charlie Sheen had raped him while they were making the movie Lucas.

[reporter] In a scene that drew gasps from the audience at the premiere, Feldman names Charlie Sheen as Haim’s alleged rapist.

I should have taken legal action against Feldman.

There’s a lot of good people in this industry.

But there’s also a lot of really sick, corrupt people in this industry.

But I didn’t feel like, uh, giving that clown that much more… you know, content.

He just went out of his way to, like, launch this thing, and we were friends back in the day, or so I thought.

It’s a piece of vile fiction, is what it is.

The guy’s mom came out and said, “This is impossible.”

“This is impossible.”

So yeah, no, that one, just, ugh… Blegh.

Fuck off, you know?

[news intro music playing]

[reporter] ET can confirm exporn star Brett Rossi is suing her former fiancé, Charlie Sheen, with the lawsuit claiming he hid his HIVpositive status while they were together.

[interviewer] You were sued multiple times for allegedly exposing women to HIV.

Was there, like, a knowing sexual appetite when you were diagnosed that you weren’t being clear with people about?

No. No, I was…

I was up front.

There are some watching now who are probably thinking having sex with Charlie Sheen is like playing Russian Roulette.

Were you worried at all having unprotected sex with him?

He was very open with me initially about this, um…

I think that’s important to note.

Mmhmm. So you knew the risks?

Yes, in fact, I did.

I think it’s just a lot of social stigma that came from back when there wasn’t treatment for this, and this was a death sentence.

Nowadays, it’s more of a comorbidity if regulated properly with the right medication.

And I was wearing condoms and just…

By then, I was completely undetectable, so I was checking every fucking box.

And… they’d be going into the drawers of my bathroom and photographing my meds, you know, and there’s onlyThose meds are only used for one thing in this life, you know?

And so they were sitting on, like, these insurance policies.

Then I’d stop seeing them for myriad reasons, and um, and then that’s what would come out.

The threat of, “We’re going to expose your thing.”

I had to pay these Pay them. Pay them more.

[interviewer] Do you remember how much money was a part of those kinds of transactions?

Uh, if I got off cheap, it was half a mil.

[interviewer] For a single person?

Yeah, and that was getting off cheap.

That was getting them to agree, like, during the first conversation.

There was one that was 1.4.

But, you know what, in all the craziness, there’s only one person in the entire fucking mix that still has this thing, that has it, period.

And that’s this guy.

Nobody got this from me.

Period. The end. Full stop.

So, whatever anybody was threatening or what they were claiming on that front was absolute fucking bullshit.

[interviewer] That’s important. You’re saying it’s never been passed on?

No.

Never.

No.

[interviewer] So then in your own words, tell us where did your sexual journey ultimately take you.

[Charlie] The tour is important because that crack cave I had to go into, coming out of the insanity…

Um…

that’s when a lot of the hypersexuality occurred.

I think the best way to describe it is, you know, crack is a very or base cocaine, the higherbrow version of crack, um, is a very sexual drug.

And… you know, if you’re looking at a menu, at some point, you’re going to turn that fucker over. “Oh!”

“Oh, shit. What’s all this?”

Huh!

“Yeah, let me start with the…”

“Let’s go with that as an appetizer.”

“You know what?”

“Yeah, you know, here’s what I’m thinking, um…”

“Let’s just go with one of each.”

“Just bring me the chef’s surprise, you know?”

So, rather than really talking about what’s on the other side of the menu, or what dishes I specifically ordered, um, I think there’s enough people that are gonna come out of the fucking woodwork, when they hear me present that, and, you know, claim a lot of stuff.

And some of it will be true, other parts of it won’t be.

But at that point it’s out of my hands, and, uh, I guess I encourage them to just have at it.

[introspective music playing]

[interviewer] This is the first time you’re speaking publicly about having sex with men.

Pretty crazy shit.

[interviewer] How does it feel?

It’s liberating.

It’s fucking liberating. And it’s…

[interviewer] Finally be able to say things?

Just talk about stuff.

You know, it’s like a train didn’t come through the side of the restaurant, a fucking piano didn’t fall out of the sky, no one ran into the room and shot me.

And, so, no, it’s… uncharted.

[interviewer] Did the sexual journey wander into both men and women just at that time, because of crack, or had that been going on for a while?

No, that’s what started it.

[interviewer] Oh, okay.

That’s where it was born.

Or it sparked, and then, you know, whatever chunks of time that I was off the pipe, trying to, you know, navigate that, trying to come to terms with it.

Like, where did that come from? Why did that come from…?

Or why did that happen? You know? Um…

And then just finally being like, so what?

So what?

Some of it was weird. A lot of it was fucking fun.

And… life goes on.

Look at the state of the fucking world.

Look at the unflushed fucking toilet that we live in today, and where we’re headed.

And, like, this… [chuckles] This, the other side of that menu really fucking matters?

It really fucking matters?

So what, someone doesn’t hire me because, “Oh, he did all that shit.”

Whatever. Didn’t want to work with you, anyway.

[interviewer] It’s not as though you were sitting here being like, “I fucking hate that that happened.” You know what I mean?

Now I want to nuke the other side of the menu?

No, I don’t. I don’t, because that wouldn’t make any sense.

Yeah.

[chuckling] Just doesn’t.

[interviewer] I think this…

Nothing rational about that.

[interviewer] So walk us through how we end up here today, eight years sober.

[Charlie] I knew that the hourglass was down to its… final few grains, you know?

That, um, yeah, I could just feel it.

And I was one of these people that was still, you know, carrying the torch for, “I’m not doing crack. Not taking pills.”

“I’m not doing all that garbage.”

“I’m just going to drink. I’m just going to drink.”

[exhales]

Jaden.

I’m Charlie.

[Jaden] Nice to meet you.

Sorry I’m hammered.

[Jaden] You’re cool.

How are you?

[Tamara] How are you?

Your name?

Tamara.

Tamara?

Uhhuh.

Hi.

Hi.

Awesome.

Wow. Yeah.

No, that I think booze is the gnarliest drug on the planet.

You know?

I had been drinking in the morning, and Sam called and said that she had a hair appointment up in Moorpark, you know, and she was 12 or 13.

And she had to be there in an hour.

I was like, “Shit!” I never drank and drove.

So, Tony was close by, and I said, “We’ve got to get Sam up to this thing.”

“I can’t drive. Had a few pops.” And he was like, “You got it.”

So we got her up there, we were on time, and everything was smooth and cool, but it was the drive back, you know…

It was the drive back that broke my fucking heart.

Um…

Because I could see her, like, in the…

I wasn’t driving, so I couldn’t see her in the rearview, but I could catch little pieces of her in the side view.

And she was just back there, and this is…

I don’t think she was on a device of any kind, she was just I justI knew that she was back there wondering, “Why isn’t this just a me and Dad trip?”

“Why is Tony involved?” Nothing about Tony with her or whatever, but just about why did there have to be this added element?

And I’m Just the way I felt in that moment, after that moment, thinking back on that moment, it was… It felt like I’d let her down.

[emotional music playing] I carried that moment forward.

I just thought, “Okay, what can I do?”

Scheduled or spontaneous, when she or any of my other kids need something, I’m I’m the guy.

I’m the goto.

“What can I do to ensure that that’s the case?”

And it was pretty obvious.

Quit drinking.

Let’s see where this takes us.

[old film projector whirring]

[distorted guitar riff playing] Well, I only, like, recently started, like, living with him and stuff, so…

We’re kind of opposites right now.

[interviewer] Yeah.

I forget everything, he remembers, so…

Like with bottles, I always open bottles a little bit and then don’t finish it.

And then I accidentally leave the bottle out and then get another bottle to drink, and it drives him crazy.

Even though a lot of our personalities are really different, they kind of, like, fix, like, each other’s mistakes.

When she’s sober, she’s great. So, like, as long as she’s sober, I’m happy, so…

Her timeline for recovery is just different from mine.

That’s all, and so, um, you know, she’s chased the dragon a little longer than she probably should have, um, but she’s starting to see that, you know, if you keep trading people for drugs, at some point you’ll just be left with the drugs.

Yeah, Charlie really stepped up when my stuff was going dark.

And it was really dark.

And, uh, he had all the reasons not to be there for me.

‘Cause when you’re not in your right mind, you become a terror for other people in your life.

And… now he’s taken the role of the one who is the responsible protector.

Especially with the boys.

Shit, they’re filming me.

[interviewer] We popped up.

Hold on.

[Brooke] I didn’t know.

Hey, how are you?

Hi!

Hey, good to see you. Wow.

How’s the interview for the documentary going?

It’s going great. Thank you for asking.

Awesome. Good, good.

Well, we’re honored to have you participate.

Well, thank you. The honor is all mine.

And so now he has this role that is very different than the role he used to have.

And it’s pretty beautiful, magical, and I think it’s like a perfect living amends.

He’s already gone bigger and better than anyone ever can.

That’s called his kids, right?

There’s no bigger movie than that, right? No bigger stardom than that.

[“Our House” by Graham Nash & Joni Mitchell playing]

[Lola] I always call him when I need something.

Anything.

I always feel like he’s the first person who will answer the phone immediately.

Um, and he’ll also drop everything to come help me.

We started getting pedicures and smoothies together every three weeks to a month.

It’s just nice because I never used to have oneonone time with him.

I feel like it’s a deeper connection than most kids have with their parents.

Just want to say hello.

[Charlie] Well, I hope it’s going well.

Oh, it’s going great.

Okay, good.

[laughs]

♪ Our house Is a very, very, very fine house… ♪

I still love him.

♪ With two cats in the yard ♪

♪ Life used to be so hard ♪

♪ Now everything is easy… ♪

There’s supporting players that are more important in the story than myself.

♪ Our house ♪

♪ Is a very, very, very fine house ♪

♪ With two cats in the yard ♪

♪ Life used to be so hard ♪

♪ Now everything is easy ’cause of you ♪

♪ And now ♪

♪ I’ll light the fire ♪

♪ While you place The flowers in the vase ♪

Not yet, lady.

♪ That you bought today ♪

I can’t imagine being my dad.

Can’t even imagine it.

We banged heads a lot over the years.

We haven’t for a long time.

We came to a place that’s been beautiful.

It’s been, um, nourishing.

What is true is that I’m proud of you.

You’re my boy.

And I love you.

[Charlie] If I could put it in one word…

gratitude.

♪ Our house ♪

♪ Is a very, very, very fine house ♪

[atmospheric music playing]

[music fades]