[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 re-embrace 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 nine-to-five 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 ♪
-♪ Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la ♪ -♪ When she holds me ♪
-♪ Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la ♪ -♪ Won't you tell me ♪
♪ Do you love me, Denise? ♪
♪ Whoa-oh, 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 that--
And 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,
glossed-over, sugar-coated 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 wh--
No 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 record-chasing 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 at-bats.
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] Sixty-nine home runs for Barry Bonds, the 1-1.
There it goes! There it goes!
-Number 70 for Bonds! -[crowd cheering]
Over the right-center 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 old-fashioned 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 hour-long 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 two-thirds 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 hard-partying 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 Sheen-type 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 was--
That 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, but--
They 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 E-Flat 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 the--
I 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 old-fashioned, 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 run-throughs.
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 squeaky-clean, 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 pre-sold a couple of extra seasons of the show.
Um, so… you know, it was worth their while
to-to 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 two-year deal
to return to Two and a Half Men at two million an episode,
making him the highest-paid 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 ex-wife. 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 45-year-old actor Charlie Sheen
is back in the spotlight.
Yesterday morning, he was rushed to Cedars-Sinai 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 alcohol-fueled party
a witness says lasted for days.
[witness] I've never seen someone so self-destructive.
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 50-caliber 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, I-I-I 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 seven-gram rocks and finishing them
because that's how I roll. I have one speed, one gear, "Go!"
When Charlie said that he was smoking seven-gram rocks,
he was smoking seven-gram 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 people--
In 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 anti-Semitic?
No. No, I'm not. Why would I be? I mean, based on what? No, that's--
That'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. Bye-bye.
[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 ex-wife.
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 that-that-that 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 like--
It 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 highest-paying 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 bi-winning, 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 fucking--
Something 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."
So yeah, no, that one, just, ugh… Blegh.
Fuck off, you know?
[news intro music playing]
[reporter] ET can confirm ex-porn star Brett Rossi
is suing her former fiancé, Charlie Sheen, with the lawsuit claiming
he hid his HIV-positive 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.
Mm-hmm. 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 only--
Those 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 higher-brow 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? -Uh-huh.
-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 just--
I 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 go-to.
"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 one-on-one 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]