Skip to main content

The Daily Beast: "Charlie Sheen, Two and a Half Men, and the Hollywood Machine"

Yes, Charlie Sheen, the troubled star of CBS’ Two and a Half Men, has finally entered rehab, amid a production shutdown on his CBS sitcom, produced by Warner Bros. Television.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled, "Charlie Sheen, Two and a Half Men, and the Hollywood Machine," in which I talk to television industry insiders--from writer/producers to household name showrunners--about why the hell it took so long for Sheen to go into rehab.

And I look at the self-perpetuating system that enables stars like Sheen to indulge in such bad behavior as showrunners and producers--speaking on condition of anonymity--discuss their own culpability in the issue.
Labels:

Comments

wendy said…
Tragic all around. Everyone has lost their souls - how one could feel good about being involved with a project that is so rotten and where a central figure is disintegrating is beyond me. Money truly corrupts. Only thing is - remember Robert Downey. He was once in the same place and *seems* to have turned the corner.
1/29/2011
Anonymous said…
I know this will seem wildly inappropriate, but why not cover this very subject on the show? I imagine the number of people who have had to go through rehab and their family members would possibly find the (albeit dark) humor in the situation helped them get through it. It is not out of the realm of possibility that the character "Charlie" may have to go to rehab. I realize that the show is not groundbreaking (as All in the Family was, for example) but I think there is a possibility for at least "Charlie Harper" to have a good rehab outcome, and for a good series "arc" to take place around his absence, and therefore the many people who work on the show would continue to be employed.

Gosh I didn't mean to go on, but I have been thinking about this since first reading this article the other day.

Thanks Jace,
Amie
2/01/2011
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.
253 comments
Continue reading full story...

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season
135 comments
Continue reading full story...

In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj
55 comments
Continue reading full story...