Notes on Charlie Sheen and the End of Empire

Mar 15, 2011 10:25 PM EDT

Bret Easton Ellis

With his tweets, his manic interviews, his insurgent campaign against the entertainment
world, Sheen is giving America exactly what it wants out of a modern celebrity. In the full version
of an article that appeared in this week’s Newsweek, Bret Easton Ellis explains how you are
completely missing the point if you think Sheen's meltdown is about drugs.

“Drugs” is the first word Charlie Sheen utters in his only scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day
Off, an epic from the summer of 1986 whose ad line was “Leisure Rules,” and the one John
Hughes teen movie that has remained the least dated. This four minute scene, expertly written
and directed, takes place in a police station where Jeannie Bueller (Jennifer Grey), waiting to
get bailed out by her mom and, fuming about brother Ferris’s charmingly anarchic ways (he
breaks all the rules and is happy; she follows all the rules and is unhappy), realizes she’s
sitting next to a gorgeous (he was!) sullen-eyed dude in a leather jacket who looks like he’s
been up for days on a drug binge. But he’s not manic, just tired and sexily calm, his face so
pale it’s almost violet-hued. Annoyed, Jeannie asks, “Why are you here?” and Charlie, dead-
panned, replies, without regret: “Drugs.” And then he slowly disarms her bitchiness with his
outrageously sexy insouciance, transforming her annoyance into delight (they end up making
out).

That’s when we first really noticed Charlie Sheen, and it’s the key moment in his movie
career (it now seems to define and sum up everything that followed). He hasn’t been as
entertaining since. Until now. In getting himself fired from Two and a Half Men, this privileged
child of the media’s sprawling entertainment Empire has now become its most gifted prankster.
And now Sheen has embraced the post-Empire, making his bid to explain to all of us what
celebrity means in that world. Whether you like it or not is beside the point. It’s where we are,
babe. We’re learning something. Rock’n roll. Deal with it.

Post-Empire started appearing in full-force just about everywhere last year while Cee Lo
Green’s “Fuck You” gleefully played over the soundtrack. The Kardashians so get it. The cast
(and the massive audience) of Jersey Shore gets it. Lady Gaga arriving at the Grammys in an
egg gets it, and she gets it while staring at Anderson Cooper (Empire!) and admitting she likes
to smoke weed when she writes songs—basically daring him: “What are you gonna do about
that, bitch?” Nicki Minaj gets it when she sings “Right Thru Me” and becomes one of her many
alter-egos on a red carpet. (Christina Aguilera starring in Burlesque doesn’t get it at all.) Ricky
Gervais’s hosting of the Golden Globes got it. Robert Downey Jr., getting pissed off at Gervais,
did not. Robert De Niro even got it, subtly ridiculing his career and his lifetime achievement
trophy at the same awards show.

What this moment is about is Charlie Sheen solo. It’s about a well-earned mid-life crisis
played out on Sheen’s Korner instead of in a life coach’s office somewhere in Burbank.

John Mayer (the original poster boy for post-Empire) gets it in his legendary Playboy
interview and his TMZ appearances (he was the first celebrity to get what a game changer
TMZ was) and one of Mayer’s leftovers, Taylor Swift, gets it, taking on Mayer (who casually
used and dumped her) and even Kanye West (whose interruption of Swift on the VMAs scored
a major post-Empire moment as well as creating the masterpiece post-Empire single
“Runaway”) in two devastating songs about them on her latest record. James Franco not
taking the Oscar telecast seriously but treating it with gentle disrespect (which is exactly what
the show deserves) totally got it. (Anne Hathaway, unfortunately, didn’t get it, but we like her
anyway for getting naked and jiggy with Jake G.) Post-Empire is Mark Zuckerberg staring with
blank impatience at Empire Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes and telling her how The Social Network
and its genesis story (he creates Facebook because he was rejected by a bitchy girl!) got it
totally wrong (which it did; he was right; sorry, Empire Aaron Sorkin). Empire is complaining
that the characters in Jonathan Franzen’s great 2010 novel Freedom aren’t “likable” enough.
And it should also go without saying that Banksy gets it more than just about anyone right now.
For every outspoken I-don’t-give-a-shit Empire celebrity like Muhammad Ali or Andy Warhol or
Norman Mailer or Bob Dylan or John Lennon, there were a dozen Madonnas (one of the
queens of the Empire who was never real or funny enough to get it—everything interesting
about her now seems in retrospect dreadfully earnest) and Michael Jacksons (the ultimate
victim of Empire celebrity—a tortured boy lover and drug addict who humorlessly denied he
was either). To someone my age (47) Keith Richards (67) in his memoir Life has a kind of rare
healthy post-Empire geezer transparency. But for my younger friends, it’s no longer rare; it’s
now just the norm. What does shame mean anymore? my friends in their 20s ask. Why in the
hell did your boyfriend post a song called “Suck My Ballz” on Facebook last night? my mom
asks. But nothing yet compares to the transparency that Sheen has unleashed in the past two
weeks—contempt about celebrity, his profession, the old Empire world order...

Post-Empire isn’t just about admitting doing “illicit” things publicly and coming clean—it’s
a (for now) radical attitude that says the Empire lie doesn’t exist anymore , you friggin’ Empire
trolls. To Empire gatekeepers, Charlie Sheen seems dangerous and in need of help because
he’s destroying (and confirming) illusions about the nature of celebrity. He’s always been a role
model for a certain kind of male fantasy. Degrading, perhaps, but aren’t most male fantasies?
(I don’t know any straight men who fantasize about Tom Cruise’s personal life.) Sheen has
always been a bad boy, which is part of his appeal—to men and women. There’s a manly
mock-dignity about Sheen that both sexes like a lot. What Sheen has exemplified and has
clarified is the moment in the culture when not giving a fuck about what the public thinks about
you or your personal life is what matters most—and what makes the public love you even more
(if not exactly CBS or the creator of the show that has made you so wealthy). It’s a different
brand of narcissism than Empire narcissism. Eminem was post-Empire’s most outspoken
character when he first appeared and we were suddenly light years away from the
autobiographical pain of, say, Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks (one of Empire’s proudest and most
stylish moments). It’s not that we’ve moved beyond craft, it’s just that there’s a different kind of
self-expression at play—more raw, less diluted. On The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem rages
more transparently than Dylan against the idiocy of his own flaws and the failure of his
marriage and his addictions and fantasies than any Empire artist (and let’s include Empire
Bruce Springsteen and his great Tunnel of Love album while we’re at it)—by recording
fearlessly the fake murder of his ex-wife at his own enraged hands, a defying act that Bob or
Bruce would never have even considered. Blood on the Tracks and Tunnel of Love have an
Empire tastefulness and elegance that in post-Empire has no meaning. That doesn’t deny their
power or artistry. It just means we’ve moved on. And, hey, that’s okay. Let it go.

We extol celebrity at a time when it has never seemed more fleeting or meaningless. A
lot more people are famous now for doing, well, nothing—and, so what? Fran Lebowitz in her
Empire HBO documentary (Produced by Graydon Carter! Directed by Martin Scorsese!)
complained—and I’m paraphrasing—that what has really been lost in American culture is
connoisseurship: the ability to tell the difference between what’s genuinely good and what’s
mediocre. She’s bemoaning the fact that we don’t seem to be at that point anymore where the
ability to be very good at something and to be rewarded for that talent (with attention, respect,
money) exists. That era is not really gone—at least not in the alarmist Empire way Fran thinks
it is, even though every day in American culture it feels like it may have evaporated—but only
if you have an Empire viewpoint. When you’re “being” a housewife on a reality show, your
fame shelf-life is short because so many other people can do what you do and you can be
replaced instantly (and they are every season and everyone’s okay with it). Very few people
become famous today because they can actually do interesting things and Charlie Sheen has
been, admittedly, not one of them. Charlie Sheen staggers amiably through a bad sitcom. He’s
fine. He’s inoffensive. Sheen barely engages with anyone on Two and a Half Men. He retains a
semi-stunned look of restrained disgust at the shoddiness and unearned smarminess of the
proceedings. If Sheen was allowed to give Charlie Harper more personality—a spark, a
genuine leer—he would probably throw the sitcom woodenness of Two and a Half Men off
balance.

His admitted contempt for the material makes the show (now) more interesting than it
ever was, but not enough to actually endure an episode. Sheen has admitted that this “comfort
TV” is a “tin can” of a show (he’s actually called it much worse), but do the fans of Two and a
Half Men give a shit if its star does blow, fucks hookers, and allegedly abuses women (who
keep coming back again and again and again for more abuse)? Every time there’s a lapse in
Charlie Sheen’s imaginary moral clause (he doesn’t have an actual one) the show does better
than ever in the ratings. Trudging through an awful sitcom that Sheen has to appear in to make
the big bucks—and that he knows is no good—has got to be its own kind of princely
nightmare. (It’s not like he’s playing Don Draper so, hey, it’s worth it. It’s not even like he’s
playing Jack Donaghy! He’s playing an unamusing watered-down version of Charlie Sheen
and that must kind of suck.) If I had to perform these scenes or deliver these one-liners week
after week after week, I’d probably want to lose myself in drugs and alcohol and hookers as
well. (Actually, I want to lose myself in drugs and alcohol and hookers anyway. What man
doesn’t?) And I would expect the people who have hired and rehired and rehired me and
helped make them an enormous amount of money to ignore my weekend escapades and let
the cameras roll when I show up to work on time Monday morning. Which, as of now, Charlie
Sheen no longer has to do.

You are completely missing the point if you think the Charlie Sheen Moment is really a
story about drugs. Yeah, they play a part, but it isn’t at the core of what’s happening. Drugs are
not why this particular Sheen moment is so fascinating. I know functioning addicts. They’re not
that rare or that interesting. Let the flameout begin, but let’s also take his five kids and the
horrible wives out of the picture—they also don’t have anything to do with The Sheen Show.
They’re really not a part of the narrative that has been unfolding. This isn’t about them. (I think
most of us who have gone through our parents’ traumatic divorces aren’t going to find anything
more outrageous than our own experiences here except that Sheen’s has been played out
publicly and our parents’ tortured divorces were not.) No, what this moment is about is Charlie
Sheen solo. It’s about a well-earned mid-life crisis played out on Sheen’s Korner instead of in a
life coach’s office somewhere in Burbank. The mid-life crisis is the moment in a man’s life
when you realize you can’t (won’t) maintain the pose that you thought was required of you any
longer—you’re older and you have a different view of life and this is when the bitterness and
acceptance blooms. Tom Cruise had a similar meltdown at the same age in the summer of
2005, but his was more politely manufactured (and, of course, he was never known as an
addict). Cruise had his breakdown while smiling and he couldn’t get loose, he couldn’t be
natural about it. He’s always essentially been the good boy who can’t say “Fuck You” the way
Sheen (or even someone as benign as Cee Lo) can. Cruise is still that alter boy from Syracuse
who believes in the glamour of Empire earnestness, and this is ultimately his limitation as a
movie star and as an actor. (Could Cruise be hiding something? That would explain why he
was so great in Magnolia as the liar who gets caught.) Tact might have worked in the Empire,
but something like Knight and Day just doesn’t fly in post-Empire. And Les Grossman gyrating
on the MTV Movie Awards (by the way, totally Empire) is not Tom Cruise getting post-Empire
loose. Les Grossman taps into a giant part of how Cruise actually comes off in the press—
Empire control freak at its most monstrous. This is why some people think Les Grossman is
funny because the character parodies a side of Cruise that is recognizable. Face it: Cruise was
a king of the Empire and not even Les Grossman is going to erase that. Sheen was a minor
member of the Empire by comparison. Who would have thought that he would be the one
solidifying and paying the price for this transitional phase of post-Empire celebrity?

So what is another Les (Moonves) thinking about Charlie Sheen now? Well, on one
level Les must have “approved” some of the following for a long time up until the official firing.
The arrests? The accidental overdose? The half-hearted stints in rehab? Martin Sheen’s teary-
eyed press conference? The briefcase full of coke? The Mercedes towed out of the ravine?
The misdemeanor third-degree assault on the third wife who also went to rehab—she was
addicted to crack, for God’s sake? Sheen allegedly threatening same wife to cut off her head
and put it in a box and send it to her mother? (It sounds like something he would say and it
always cracks me up.) Sheen chain-smoking on TMZ, gesturing to the 24-year-old
“goddesses” he’s shacked up with, both alternately bored and enjoying himself, railing against
CBS and Warner Brothers who have decided to cancel the rest of Two and a Half Men’s
season, and later that week fire him? The priceless dialogue? (On CBS executives: “They lay
down with their ugly wives in front of their ugly children and look at their loser lives.”) The
September 11 conspiracy theories Sheen believes in and being a member of the 9/11 Truth
Movement? (Oh, well.) Shooting Kelly Preston in the arm? (Maybe the impetus for her to
gravitate to gay dudes, a friend has suggested.) Fucking Ginger Lynn and Heather Hunter and
Bree Olson? Being a regular client of Heidi Fleiss? Refusing to admit he has hit rock bottom
(“A fishing term,” Charlie says dismissively.) Admitting—gasp—that his PR guy lied about the
“medication mix-up”?!?

And yet he always managed to show up to work and has not hurt the reputation of Two
and a Half Men despite the drugs, the whoring, and the mid-life crisis. Compared to Cruise,
Sheen has put on a mesmerizing and refreshing display of mid-life crisis honesty—he’s just
himself, an addict, take it or leave it (the Empire regime at CBS decided to leave it no matter
what the legalities are). On Piers Morgan and 20/20 and the uncut TMZ interview Sheen
doesn’t seem like he’s on drugs. Look, you don’t do drugs and then want to give TV interviews.
You do drugs and want to bang hookers in Vegas while smoking a carton of Marlboro Lights
and downing three bottles of Patron Silver. You don’t do blow and then chat with Andrea
Canning on ABC who looks both horrified and also, um, charmed. (Hey? Wanna know a
secret, Andrea? Partying is fun. Addiction is hell but partying is a fucking blast.) These
interviews don’t seem erratic to me. (He’s taken various drug tests and passed them all.) The
TMZ interview is a major post-Empire triumph and I thought he looked great on CNN. Piers
Morgan, after an uneven month (try watching the Empire attitude of the Winklevoss twins and
not cross your eyes) seemed, finally, happily excited with Sheen’s aggressive transparency.
Compare this to how bored Piers was with Janet Jackson’s Empire interview, complete with
evasive pauses that lasted so long you could have rolled boulders through them, and Sheen’s
honesty made Piers seem almost positively orgasmic. (Imagine Sheen being interviewed by
Oprah. Sheen refusing to bow and apologize to the Empress might actually cause her face to
melt off and her head to explode.) Sheen seems like a genuinely interesting person now.
Maybe a wreck, but REAL. Transparency: that’s where Charlie’s at—sorry, Dr. Drew, it’s just
not as logical as you think it is. So Sheen is in the strange new position of defining what that
exactly means for a celebrity in post-Empire.

It’s thrilling watching someone call out the solemnity of the celebrity interview, and
Charlie Sheen is loudly calling it out as the sham it is. He’s raw now, and lucid and intense and
the most fascinating person wandering through the culture. (No, it’s not Colin Firth or David
Fincher or Bruno Mars or super-Empire Tiger Woods, guys.) We’re not used to these kinds of
interviews. It’s coming off almost as performance art and we’ve never seen anything like it—
because he’s not apologizing for anything. It’s an irresistible spectacle, but it’s also telling
because we are watching someone profoundly bored and contemptuous of the media
engaging with the media and using the media to admit things about themselves and their
desires that seem “shocking” because of society’s old-ass Empire guidelines. No one has ever
seen a celebrity more nakedly revealing—even in Sheen’s evasions there’s a truthful
playfulness that makes Tiger’s mea culpa press conference look like something manufactured
by Nicholas Sparks.

The people unable to process Sheen’s honesty can’t do this because it’s so unlike the
pre-fab way celebrity presented itself within the Empire. Anyone who has put up with the fake
rigors of celebrity (or has addiction problems) has got to find a kindred spirit here. The new fact
is: if you’re punching a paparazzo, you now look like an old-school loser. If you can’t accept
the fact that we’re at the height of an exhibitionistic display culture and that you’re going to be
blindsided by TMZ (and humiliated by Harvey Levin, or Chelsea Handler—princess of post-
Empire) walking out of a club on Sunset at 2 in the morning trashed, then you’re basically
fucked and you should become a travel agent instead of a movie star. Being publicly mocked
is part of the game now and you’re a fool if you don’t play along with it and are still enacting the
role of humble, grateful celebrity instead of embracing your fucked-up-ness. Gaga’s little
monsters, anyone? Not showing up to collect your award at the Razzies for that piece of shit
you made? So Empire. This is why Charlie seems saner and funnier than any other celebrity
right now. He also makes better jokes about his situation than most worried editorialists or late-
night comedians. A lot of it is sheer bad-boy bravado—just saying shit to see how people
react, which is very post-Empire—but a lot of it is transparent, and on that level, Sheen is, um,
winning. And I’m not sure being fired from Two and a Half Men and having to wear those
horrible rockabilly bowling shirts for another two years is, um, losing…

What do people want from Charlie Sheen? Knowing more details about the benders and
the porn stars and the trumped-up anti-Semitism (well, yeah, maybe, whatever) and being a
“womanizer” (what the fuck does that archaic term mean)? What has been labeled “freakery” is
really just a bored, pissed-off celebrity whose presence helps make a TV network an insane
amount of money and by comparison is paid accordingly. When I tweeted “I love Charlie
Sheen” on February 28 after watching him on the Piers Morgan show (and no, I wasn’t being
ironic), the number of tweets I received agreeing with me (not ironically) from both men and
women was a surprise. (It was the fastest I had been RT’d since something I tossed off about
Angry Birds a couple of months ago.) Look, I’m not denying he has drug and alcohol problems,
and perhaps even struggles with mental illness, but so do a lot of people in Hollywood who
hide it so much better or that the celebrity press just doesn’t care enough about, and I’m not
denying that Sheen is exploiting a problematic situation that he has helped create. But you
can’t step around the fact that the negativity certain people feel about Sheen has never
outweighed our fascination with the hedonism Charlie enjoys and which remains the envy of
any man—if only women weren’t around to keep them liars. His supposed propensity for
violence against women hasn’t hurt his popularity with female fans either (and if you want to
get into what that means then that is a whole other story for another article—or about fifty
books. Jezebel.com take note.) And, of course, if Sheen was a rock star (another anachronistic
term from the Empire), not many people would be paying attention.

Do they really want manners? Civility? Empire courtesy? No. They want reality, no
matter how crazy the celeb who brings it on has become. And this is what enflames CBS and
the Empire press (but also gives them boners while they’re wringing their hands): Charlie
Sheen doesn’t care what you think of him anymore, and he scoffs at the idea that anyone even
thinks there’s such a thing as PR taboo. “Hey suits, I don’t give a shit, you suck,” is what so
many of the disenfranchised have responded to. Charlie Sheen blows open the myth that men
will outgrow the adolescent pursuit of pleasure, the dream of a life without rules or
responsibilities; even if they have children, a flicker of that dream always remains. Charlie
Sheen: Truth! Score! We’ve come a long way in the last ten days: Charlie Sheen is the new
reality, bitch, and anyone who’s a hater can go back and hang out with the rest of the trolls in
the Empire’s dank graveyard. No one knew it in 1986, but Charlie Sheen was actually Ferris
Bueller’s dark little brother all along…