[www.hollywoodreporter.com]

Sheen was booed off stage by a hostile crowd after delivering a poorly planned show filled with faux-Biblical preaching and extended video clips.
DETROIT, MI -- Call it tiger blood or Adonis DNA if you will. Just don’t call it entertainment.

Kicking off his 20-city tour April 2 in Detroit, Charlie Sheen pulled a stunt that even by his standards was a little extreme. He alternately pandered to and antagonized an estimated audience of 5,000 people at the Fox Theatre in a blatantly cynical attempt to cash in on his craziness. Roughly paraphrased, his excuse for having barely worked out the blueprint for an act was, “Hey, you guys paid for a show when you didn’t know what you were getting!”

What the audience got was egomania gone wild. Grandiosely titled “My Violent Torpedo of Truth: Defeat is Not an Option,” Sheen’s haphazard act was neither standup nor confessional memoir, despite repeated promises that he was going to dig deep and dish secrets. It was closer to a motivational seminar, but one in which the speaker was also the key beneficiary. Early in the evening, before the crowd turned sour, there was a creepy atmosphere that suggested group indoctrination into a cult.

The audience was packed with beer-guzzling fans who cheered Sheen on at first as he benignly nodded approval of the girl-on-girl lip-lock from his “goddesses,” two Christina Aguilera clones who promptly disappeared.

The crowd remained somewhat supportive as Sheen launched into a rant that began with, “They took my awesome children. They took my sometimes groovy job. They tried to take my brain and my heart and my titanium spine.” There were promises of “A night of pure magic, a night of winning.” But despite Sheen’s assurance several times that things were about to get radical, they just got boring. When you pledge to unlock the Vatican assassin inside each and every audience member, you better deliver something.

What Sheen delivered was the overwritten, faux-Biblical preaching of a self-anointed Messiah, who views himself as the most truthful person in the universe. Maybe, but not this universe. He opened up to audience questions and then deflected most of them as too lame to merit his attention, the chief exception being from a young woman who requested to come up onstage for a hug.

Whether Sheen was thrown off by the steadily increasing hostility in the audience is unclear. But the impression is that beyond the video content that made up more than 50% of his 70 minutes of stage time, there didn’t appear to be much of a plan. The Two and a Half Men debacle was referenced only in one or two indirect swipes.

Sure, some of the video mashups and rap tributes were funny, but there was little that can’t be enjoyed while surfing YouTube. And the scratch remix with comic inserts of Sheen’s 20/20 interview with Andrea Canning was a succession of self-serving cheap shots. Irrespective of the vague information supplied about the show in advance, it seems dishonest to promise a night of soul-baring and deliver a lot of rehashed Web fodder.

There’s a certain trainwreck fascination in watching a meltdown in progress, but this anthropological study of the homo loco species wore very thin very fast. And Sheen appears to have known it. As the booing, and the shouts of “Loser” and “You suck” grew more insistent, and the walkouts increased, he said he would take a music break and return when the crowd had woken up. Rather than the rumored guest appearance of Snoop Dogg, rapper Simon Rex appeared and barked a little, followed by Snoop performing on video. There was never any chance of Snoop showing up in person given that he was performing with kids TV band Big Time Rush at Nickelodeon's Kids Choice Awards in Los Angeles at the time.

Afterwards, Sheen did not return (reports that he reappeared on stage after the end are false). House lights came up. No bow. Show’s over. Half the audience sat there looking stunned for a time, watching the road crew clear the stage. On the way out, I overheard someone say, “Dude, that was seriously the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.”

The opening montage that introduced the star threaded together clips of his father Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now with images from Jaws, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Dirty Harry, Die Hard, Carlito’s Way, National Lampoon’s Animal House and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, giving a pretty clear indication of how Charlie Sheen sees himself these days. That would be warrior, law enforcer, killer, psychopath and party animal. But this thrown-together, insanely self-indulgent showcase merely reveals someone far more sad and delusional.

Venue: Fox Theatre, Detroit



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-04-03 13:39 by Max'sKansasCity.

Sounds like a great show. Hey, whaddaya expect for 80 bucks?

WINNING!! ><

This is superb!

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Big Al
This is superb!

That is freekin hilarious, until the ad at the end
A video like that is about all the Charlie I can stand at one time.

I found ( and posted) the original article interesting because it shows
that putting on live shows is a tough job, traveling is hard, performing
live is hard, and being great and live, Like our Stones are great live is rare.

Live shows are particularly difficult if you are not a musician, or a standup comedian, and are instead a film and television actor with no training or background in live theater.

I like Charlie Sheen but only an idiot would pay for something like that and really expect something substantive. You get what you pay for.

He would have been better off having an interviewer sit with him.

Live shows can also be especially troublesome if you haven't bothered to rehearse the material that no one has bothered to write.

If there were 5000 people attending then Sheen was the 5001st stupidest person in the house.

What possible redeeming value could there be for anyone to spend any money for that kind of so called entertainment?

The man is the second coming of PT Barnum. There's a sucker born every minute and 5,000 Michiganders happened to stroll along at the right time.

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MKjan
What possible redeeming value could there be for anyone to spend any money for that kind of so called entertainment?

It's like paying to go see a train wreck. Seeing it and then being upset because it wasn't messy enough.

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sweetcharmedlife

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MKjan
What possible redeeming value could there be for anyone to spend any money for that kind of so called entertainment?

It's like paying to go see a train wreck. Seeing it and then being upset because it wasn't messy enough.

That's about it. Given his recent headlines...they were paying to see a total implosion and didn't get that.
Now the ancient games at the colosseum, that was value.

I think of back in the day poetry readings by Charles Bukowski or "lectures" from Hunter Thompson -- you'd go anticipating chaos. But the difference is that their talent may have been somewhat compensating.

my brother saw Thompson speak many years ago. someone in the audience yelled out "talk about Nixon!". i'm sure some people last night were thinking "why isn't Sheen acting crazy? act crazy, dammit!".

Oh, he's back.

Why would anyone be surprised that this is a big con?? I guess the " tour" will be ending soon!! Too bad for all of those suckers who bought tickets!

Live Nation's involved with this train wreck. If Sheen tries to bail in mid-tour because things aren't going so well, they'll sue his ass off for breach of contract for all the cancelled shows. His contracts probably only provide for cancellation based on impossibility of performance. Second thoughts wouldn't get him off the hook. That is, he's may have to see this humiliation through to the end!

Geez just ignore this loser!

I actually would not mind seeing him. I think it would be good for a laugh. I just hope he doesn't end up dead. His eyes look scary and he is obviously suffering from addiction. Not sure he is all there mentally either.

Charlie should hang with Dylan for awhile .... He's good with words....



ROCKMAN

So let me get this straight: People go to a quickly-conceived show by a recently-dismissed drug-addled train wreck of an actor, and then get mad when they do not feel sufficiently entertained. OK.

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Max'sKansasCity
clips of his father Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now

Hey, at least the audience got to see a couple minutes of actual talent.

He should have opened in a place like Omaha, who picked Detroit?

One of his nostrils seems bigger than the other, wonder why that is, it never used to be.

Charlie Sheen is comedy gold – I’m hooked. ‘Winning’, ‘Vatican Assassin Warlock’, ‘Duh!’ ><

He supposedly did much better on Sunday in Chicago. Then again, it couldn't get much worse than the clips I saw from the Detroit performance on youtube.

In Chicago, he used more of a Q-and-A format. It sounds like he went from LOSING at least to TYING!

At least he didn't just play the same old warhorses

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vudicus
At least he didn't just play the same old warhorses

You gotta have had a hit at one time to play a warhorse.

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ab
He supposedly did much better on Sunday in Chicago. Then again, it couldn't get much worse than the clips I saw from the Detroit performance on youtube.

In Chicago, he used more of a Q-and-A format. It sounds like he went from LOSING at least to TYING!

Makes you wonder why he didn't have some kind of clear concept of how to do a show in the first place.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-04-04 19:39 by sweetcharmedlife.