What’s left of Charlie Sheen took the stage at Radio City Music Hall on Friday night a half hour late. The theater was not full. I managed to move down from Row T to Row RR, two free seats on the aisle and there were plenty around me.
And those people booed Sheen from the beginning despite a half-hearted standing greeting. The “show”–it’s not a show, but an interview with a friend–lasted under an hour including a ten minute or so video in which Sheen has re-recorded his answers in an ABC interview, demeaning and mocking reporter Andrea Canning. When ABC News gets a load of this, it will be yanked.
Sheen was prodded by his friend on stage to tell stories–salacious ones, please– but came up with very little. Gone was the fast talking Thesaurus of a human being. He was either very stoned or completely not stoned; Sheen seemed like he’d prefer to be asleep. The audience jeered him, and he cussed back at them for not listening closely. To what, I don’t know. Sheen’s major themes are that he’s had a lot of sex with hookers, strippers, and the like–which isn’t hard, if you pay them. And that he’s done a lot of drugs, which we know.
On stage, he lit up a cigarette despite New York City anti-smoking laws. Or maybe because of them. (Photo c2011 Ann Lawlor/Showbiz411)
Gone now are the diatribes at ex wife Denise Richards. He informed the audience he’d received lawyer’s letter, and so it’s over. Instead he took shots at Oliver Stone, the Weinsteins, and even his own brother, Emilio Estevez. “Is Emilio here?” he asked early on. “I thought we banned him.”
Putting on sunglasses, Sheen told the audience he wanted his job on “Two and A Half Men” back. He offered an open invitation to the show’s creator, Chuck Lorre, to come on Sunday to Radio City and hash it out with him. Sheen asked the audience, didn’t they want him to return? There was very little enthusiasm, and a lot of booing. A shirtless male fan ran down the center aisle, waving his t-shirt over his head. He was followed by a young woman. They were caught by security and removed.
Otherwise, the audience–buzzed on beer served everywhere in the theater– was nonplussed. This is New York, and so they waited for Sheen to produce some reason for their $100-plus tickets. He had nothing. Time and time again, the interviewer tried to start new areas of conversation, only to be shot down. Sheen did recall that at age 9 he explained what the Prince song “Head” meant, to his parents. No one bought it. He called the New York hooker he got in trouble with, Capri Anderson, a “hosebag.” Nicolas Cage is “a genius who went broke” and also revived the term “goddess.”
Also: “Tiger Blood” is a reference to a scene in “Apocalypse Now,” his father’s film. Dennis Hopper, he says, was “high on 97 tabs of acid all day” while making that movie, too. He said he’d been “Weintsteined” by Harvey and Bob, who evidently forced him to make “Scream 3.” And he railed against Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” sequel, saying it was so bad they used a line from the first film for this one’s subtitle: “Money Never Sleeps.”
The only, ahem, celebrity, in the audience was Kelly Benssimon, of “The Real Housewives of New York City.” But three blazing blondes, all strippers with extraordinary fake breasts, shiny manicures, and stiletto heels sat front and center. They were like characters from a modern “Guys and Dolls.”
It was, as a friend of mine likes to say, a “shit- show.”
Outside Radio City, when the show was over, two young women were hailing cabs. They’d paid $70 apiece for their tickets. One of them said, “I felt like I was watching Charlie Sheen dying…on stage.”
Here’s the link to the spoof video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LtBSqGzi3o&feature=player_embedded
