For a time, back in the ‘80s, actor Charlie Sheen was the hottest thing in Hollywood. But it didn’t take long for Sheen’s star turns in “Platoon” and “Wall Street” to morph into tabloid cover stories about his hard partying ways and bad boy exploits. In his highly engaging two-part Netflix series ”aka Charlie Sheen,” filmmaker Andrew Renzi (“Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?”, “Ready for War”) follows the mostly familiar downward spiral of Sheen’s life and career but also provides something quite unexpected: a sensitive portrait of a once lost man finally capable of self-reflection, regret and emotional depth.

 

Andrew joins Ken on the pod to talk about how an initially reluctant Sheen came to see the value in participating in the documentary and even granted Andrew access to the early Super 8  action movies that Sheen shot with his brother Emilio Estevez and childhood friends Sean and Chris Penn. Filled with insightful, sometimes painful, and occasionally funny interviews (Sean Penn, in particular), the heart of the film is Sheen’s own insights into what he calls the three-act structure of his life: “partying, partying with problems, just problems.”

 

“aka Charlie Sheen” is streaming on Netflix.

 

Hidden Gem:

“Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam”

 

The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

 

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