If I’m not mistaken, the trailer for Roman Coppola’s follow-up to 2001’s quirky sci-fi romance CQ, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, dropped just yesterday. The film, scheduled to be released on my sister’s birthday in February, stars Charlie Sheen—in a bad wig, it has to be said—as a heartbroken man who goes on crazy adventures with friends and strangers (is Bill Murray playing John Wayne or Rooster Cogburn?). Anyway, according to the Internet Movie Database, Swan’s a graphic designer, but he looks like a 70s porn king to me, which is a role I can more easily see Sheen playing. He did, after all, come close with Rated X.
As with most of my astute—and by that I mean “trivial”—observations, the one I am going to tell you about now occurred to me with water running in the background. While washing my cereal bowl and spoon just a few moments ago (yes, I let it go unwashed from 6 am until now and thereby let the residue from my quick, cold breakfast meal calcify along the walls of the bowl over the course of a day), I realized that perhaps it’s not so strange that Charlie Sheen, now a caustic hack/rabble-rouser of an actor, should appear in a (R.) Coppola film. For there’s a family connection: Roman’s papa Francis memorably directed Charlie’s dad, Martin Sheen, in Apocalypse Now. Perhaps the famous offspring have known each other for years; they may have even grown up together. Perhaps the new film was shot before Sheen went crazy in public… for the sixteenth time. Regardless, it remains an open question whether or not his unstable persona will promote or damage the film upon its release.
If we further draw out the family connection, then we must remember that Charlie played a version of himself in Being John Malkovich, which was directed by Roman’s then-brother-in-law Spike Jonze. Small world? I think not. So there you have it. I think I figured out the reason why Sheen is in this “quirky” (W.) Anderson-lite picture.
The Rumination Refinery 