Sean Penn on AIDS, telethons, and his long running feud with Stallone

"The last time I did a telethon was more than twenty years ago when AIDS hit the public consciousness big time. But there were still a lot of misconceptions about the disease, and I couldn't idly stand by watching heroin junkies die sharing needles as they wore condoms for protection, so I rallied the Hollywood troops and we set out to do some good.

The hour is upon us for another Sean Pean anecdote. Shall we proceed?

Now at the time I was embroiled in a massive feud with that peacocking son of a gun Sylvester Stallone. He dissed Shanghai Surprise, and I did an interview with Variety magazine and called Cobra a low-rent Beverly Hills Cop with all the charm of a ruptured anus. 

Hell, I don't even remember how it started, but the name calling was getting out of hand quicker than a hackeysack at a Burmese leper colony. We were doing drive bys on each other's houses, throwing eggs at the front door, and pulling knock and run manoeuvres. 

Old school tinsel town beef for the burger, Wally, there's nothing quite like it.

Anyway, I was answering the phones that night in the studio, taking pledges and generally doing my bit to rid the world of AIDS and the Italian Stallion thought it would be funny to prank call the hotline, donating money in the name of Phil McCracken and Amanda Blomiov, all the while giggling to himself in that thick as soup goombah accent like some retarded water buffalo.

Now don't get me wrong ... I like a good laugh as much as the next guy. Are you a piece of string? No, I'm a frayed knot! Ha ha ha!! But AIDS is no joke, son. 

So I hopped in the convertible and sped over to Stallone's pad in the hills and kicked through his front door cowboy style. He knew what he did was wrong, and started whimpering like strawberry shortcake leeking out her first period in a 7-11 bathroom on Figueroa. I chased him up the stairs then started pounding the steroid chomping fucker like a cleaver through week old meat.

People think Stallone finally brought some thespian chops to his role as the beleaguered half deaf Sheriff Freddy Heflin in Cop Land, but I can assure you that the dim-witted and dribbly persona you saw on-screen was no act. That spicy meatball fuck was still reeling from a thermonuclear beatdown from yours truly.

I guess what I'm saying is that some topics just aren't suitable for jokes. AIDS, for one, and mostly stuff of a sexual nature. Except this joke: What do 9 out of 10 people enjoy? Gang rape! James Rebhorn told me that one back in '93. Keep on truckin' Wally."

Sean Penn on Billy Bob Thornton

“Wally, I've dealt with plenty of deluded hacks during my tenure as a Hollywood chancer romancer and disco dancer. Ever since Tarantino made Reservoir Dogs on the cheap, every mentally disturbed shitbag armed with a camcorder has gone the Orson Welles route. 

Back in the early 1990s there was an up and coming actor/director in Hollywood, who despite being some banjo-strummin' bucktooth yahoo with a beer gut the size of Nebraska still somehow managed to smash some primo cooch in his day. 

He also has three names, the true hallmark of many a crazy sociopathic fuck. Lou Diamond Phillips, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sarah Jessica Parker. The list is endless.

I'm talking of course about Billy Bob Thornton.

That squeal-like-a-pig hillbilly shithead approached me about a film he was working on about some windowlicker armed with a scythe who goes all samurai on some poor fucker, but instead of being a gentleman about it he decided to try and alpha male me, talking about how great his film was, how everyone wanted in on it, etc etc, carrying on like Don King Viagra-ed up in a Saigon whorehouse, but the fact of the matter was this Waylon Jennings-listening nutcase couldn't have got laid in a vagina storm.

But then he started up about all the fine Hollywood trim he was pounding, insinuating ol' Sean here was picking up stinky seconds.

Well hot damn I wasn't about to sit around listening to this chodeslapping redneck try to son me about whatever poontang he may or may not have been up in, so I went to town on his stupid cornpone ass, throwing jabs and hooks like Leon Spinks in his prime.

It wasn't Billy Bob Thornton, it was Billy Bob Thought you were hot shit but you just got served motherfucker.

People think that Thornton's dribbly affectations of being retarded in Sling Blade were a fine display of acting, but the truth was that his cousin-fuckin' cornbelt ass was still reeling from a gorilla style thumping from your boy SP."

Sean Penn on Vince Vaughn

“Wally, I've said it before but it bears repeating... I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I'm not. Vive la difference, as they say in Israel.

Anyway, I've had to deal with my fair share of grumpy downriver motherfuckers during my time in the spotlight. 

For instance when I was directing Into The Wild with the talented Emile Hirsch, there was a co-actor of his, a squareheaded douchebag with the cojones to question my on-set methods even though he spent his career playing second fiddle to a talentless creep like Owen Wilson and getting gangbanged by Jennifer Aniston.

I'm talking of course about Vince Vaughn.

So this bargain bin Ray Liotta motherfucker starts coming on strong like King tittyfucking Kong, trying to tell me how to frame this shot here, set up the lighting on that scene there, on and on til the break of dawn until I snapped like a Kit Kat on LSD and beat his stupid ass so hard he looked like one of Rosie O’Donnell’s tampons. It was the balled-fist equivalent of Chow Yun Fat bursting into a Hong Kong tea room with a pair of sawn off shotguns.

I told Vaughn that he better go cry into his banana daiquiri and nurse his wounds and think about how he was just on the business end of a world class Sean Penn smackdown.

I've towered over Hollywood for more than twenty years like Jack Palance in a midget factory, and wasn't about to let some johnny come lately start calling the shots on my own film.”

Sean Penn on Jennifer Jason Leigh

"Trust me Wally, I could Scheherazade the living bejeesus out of the information superhighway with tales of crazy strumpets all up in my shit like undigested kernels of sweetcorn.

For instance, back when I was in short pants filming Fast Times at Ridgemont High, there was one young chica that was always throwing herself at me like Hindus under the bus at the Ratha Yatra festival.

I'm talking about Jennifer Jason Leigh. 

Hot damn, she was one crazy lady, always purring at me suggestively with those big banjo eyes, stroking my leg between takes and generally looking to get scribbled on with white ink by the almighty Penn.

She was some primo trim back then and would probably still trap a thick one now post-Jaeger bombs, but I've been around the world like Lisa Stansfield and seen more shit than an on-call proctologist at a curry festival, and best believe I can spot damaged goods. Poor JJ was crying out for a daddy figure, probably cos her own pops was some type of cold emotionally unavailable douchebag.

But like Sir Mix-A-Lot once said, "don't call me dada!"...I got no time for crazy girls with their Freudian fucknuttery. She got the message and soon moved on from her fixation with me and started up with Forrest Whitaker. 

God damn he wrecked that shit son, imagine an F18 stealth fighter jet smashing through a side of beef. It was unseemly.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that having some basketcase all on your jock like genital herpes ain't no thing to be boasting about to all and sundry like a Dickensian town crier with ADHD. Think of it like Pizza Hut - we've all been there, and it's nothing to get too excited about really."

Sean Penn on TLC and emotionally charged incidents of arson

"Understanding: it begins with U. When someone burns down a house, Wally, it’s always an attempt to ‘light up’ a path for better dialogue between them and the homeowner. That individual was obviously not in a good place, and no I don’t mean Wisconsin. 

Now ... I've had some dealings with emotionally scarred firebugs before, so let me break it down like retarded enzymes. 

Time for another Sean Penn tale. Let’s go.

The year was 1994. I had just finished up on Carlito’s Way and was taking a well deserved break from the pitfalls of Hollywood before I threw myself into my next critically acclaimed role as Ray Poncelet in Dead Man Walking.

I was sitting at home pouring myself a single malt and leafing through some scripts when the phone rang. It was none other than Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes from girl supergroup TLC. I had contacted her through a mutual agent weeks earlier, offering to dip my Penn in her ink once we wrapped on Carlito.

But no, this wasn’t a booty call, she was struggling with demons. Not like Keanu in Constantine, I mean the demons of drugs, drink and a lifetime of regrets.

Left eye was having a crisis: her relationship with Andre Rison was falling apart quicker than a staircase made of diarrhoea. He was going upside her head and generally acting like a complete douchebag and if there’s one thing that drives me mad aside from the foreign policy of the US government in Central and Latin America it’s a motherfucker that likes beating on women.

Anyway, I told her the best thing to do is to take something of his and burn it. It's what the   Native Americans used to do following the death of a loved one to help them pass through from this realm into the next. I told her that I did this with some of Madonna's brassieres back when we went splitsville, and I found the whole experience to be healing.

Jesus, even Usher wrote a song about this very process.

Unfortunately the crazy bitch decided to do this inside the house and ended up torching the entire mansion. She phoned me back and asked for advice on how to put the fire out before it spread and I told her to not go chasing waterfalls but stick to the rivers and the lakes that she’s used to. HAHA! Well, she never called me again."

When Sean Penn met the Beastie Boys and David Lee Roth

"Hot damn Wally, I don’t know where you found that relic but let me assure you...this was a night to remember, as 80s fruity funkanauts Shalamar once sang. 

In fact they might have even been at the same party, I forget! All that disco dandruff floating around buddy, quite frankly my memory ain’t what it used to be.

Anyway, what I do recall is meeting the Beastie Boys when they were opening for Madonna on her US tour back in 1985. 

You gotta remember kids, this was a different time and place. Crack was cool and the Cold War was on like donkey kong. Wang Chung were a force to be reckoned with in the pop charts and I was married to Madonna for fuck’s sake! 

 

So we were all hanging out, getting loaded and shooting dice at an afterparty for the Spies Like Us premiere somewhere in the Bowery. Some idiot on the door let Dave Lee Roth in, and he was clinging to me all night like an autistic child with his mum at a fun fair, out his mind on Quaaludes and mumbling about going solo. 

I was hanging with Ad-Rock and the crew by the bar, and I believe that’s when the photo in question was taken. Yauch was going crazy that night, downing jaeger bombs and getting into fights with anyone about anything. 

He bitchslapped Eric Stoltz for making jokes about Gorbachev and Perestroika. Then he headbutt the construction worker from the Village People, screaming “Free Nelson Mandela!” before he smashed a bottle of Jack Daniels across the bar and started swinging at the one dressed as an Indian chief. The other two were later seen screaming "WHY MCA?!" on the corner of 14th and Madison.

Things got a little hazy after this.

Next thing I knew it was morning, the sun peeking through the Manhattan skyline like a rapist through curtains. I was in the courtyard below, face in down in a rosebush and covered in what I hope was my own vomit. Fuggin New York, it always brings the worst out in people.

So I stumbled back into the party…which was still going strong. Chevy Chase was naked on one of the tables, dancing to ‘Like A Virgin’ with an ashtray as a codpiece. Judd Nelson and the rest of the Breakfast Club were cheering him on, stuffing dollar bills up his ass crack while Ringwald did lines of blow off her own tits. It was insane.

I found Yauch and the rest of the Beasties upstairs chilling with Dave Lee Roth and Steve Guttenberg. I asked them what the fuck happened, they start laughing and tell me that at some point last night I bet everyone in the room a thousand bucks I could fly.

Before anyone said anything I ran and jumped out the window, smashing through glass and landing in the garden below. 

'What the fuck?!' I asked Mike D. 'Why didn’t you assholes stop me??!'

Dave Lee Roth just looked at me and said: 'Sean bro, I bet them all TWO thousand bucks you could do it!'

So I checked into rehab a few days later."

Literary Review with Cookie Monster: Lush Life by Richard Price

Me was big fan of The Wire at time, even if now it is favourite programme of working mothers, liberals and hipsters. So me always keen to read novels of writers on that show.

However, after bad experience with George Pelecanos book me not so sure. Pelecanos, he average to terrible writer with no verbal flair and tin ear for speech of black characters. 

Anyway, me decide to read some Richard Price next. Lots of white people call him Lord of Urban Fiction, whatever that mean. White people usually wrong about many things, but me give it a go anyway.

Bad idea. Mr Price, he worse than Pelecanos. This book Lush Life terrible in places and downright offensive in others.

Now, me must make clear that me think Price is gifted writer, but he more concerned here with writing social document about New York than actual novel.

Many critics, they like Price. They call him modern day Balzac. Honestly me think he less Balzac and more ballsack. Ha! Ha! Many critics also from New York just like Price, so me think they enjoy hearing about themselves and their big bad city. New Yorkers always very self absorbed and myopic bunch.

Critics like to talk about gritty realism of Lush Life and fantastic dialogue. Dennis Lehane, also crime novelist who write on The Wire, he say Price write best dialogue of anybody today. Me think Lehane need to read more.

Anyway, this book he write has many clichés of crime fiction genre. Price write about divorced and worldweary cop. He write about sassy female partner of ethnic background with balls of steel but heart of gold.

But he also cram in vignettes of social history, immigration and gentrification to remind reader that New York is cosmopolitan, vibrant and also greatest city on earth.

Me think you can’t dust sugar onto shit then call it cookie. The whole book like episode of CSI guest written by Studs Terkel.

And me also find his portrayal of black people in Lush Life offensive like Heckle and Jeckle cartoon.

They say ridiculous things like “gotta get dat cheese, partna” and me wonder if this meant to be urban gangster or capitalist mouse.

Me also wonder why it is middle age white man who write about black people that celebrated as Lord Of Urban Fiction while black writers ignored by mainstream press unless they Colson Whitehead.

Maybe Price, he watch re-runs of In Living Color or Good Times and think this how black people talk. Me not sure. And when me hear white critic talk about how authentic this is, it leave bad taste in mouth like three day old cookie. Not good.

So me give Price 2 cookies out of 5. Then me eat one cookie because me hungry. It hard work reading Lush Life.

Literary Review with Cookie Monster: Nobody Move by Denis Johnson

OK, me welcome you to new addition to Wally Donuts blog. Is review of bookie with Monster of Cookie! Ha! Ha! Me like to rhyme, some of the time. Here me talk about pros and cons of different books me read. Me actually highly literate and well read for a monster, and me almost like books as much as me like cookie!

Me first choice for blog is book called Nobody Move by Denis Johnson. Me not know too much about Mr Johnson except his name also slang for me big blue penis. Anyway, Mr Johnson he written very cool crime fiction novel with noirish feel. 

Blurb on cover by Lionel Shriver say: “Think Reservoir Dogs or Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. Think Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy.”

Me think: Ignore blurb on cover by Lionel Shriver. Me think Lionel Shriver throw names around like food fight and see what sticks. Poor Lionel, she have boy’s name and thus very confused about everything. This book nothing like Tarantino film, or Raymond Chandler or James Ellroy.

Me no like Raymond Chandler anyway me prefer Dashiell Hammett, and me is reminded of quote by none other than James Ellroy: 'Chandler wrote the man he wanted to be - gallant and with a lively satirist's wit. Hammett wrote the man he feared he might be - tenuous and sceptical in all human dealings, corruptible and addicted to violent intrigue.'

Anyway, me digress.

To be fair to Lionel, me say Nobody Move at least a little bit like No Country for Old Men. Features cat and mouse scenario across the empty American landscape with hapless protagonist chased by some very bad guys. But no Javier Bardem with salad bowl haircut. A shame because me like Javier Bardem.

But Mr Johnson he make Cormac look like Dr Seuss, which is no easy task me can assure you. He make book like All The Pretty Horses look like My Little Pony. Ha! This book Nobody Move is tough as nails, or even three day old cookie, and me like it very much. 

Me like the sparse but clever prose and me like the sense of dread that pervades the book from start to finish. 

Me like also the grizzly swagger of sentences like ‘Ruthless neon on the wet street like busted candy’.

Me think this is book for reader who like serious crime fiction, not low rent stuff me see for sale at supermarket when me go to buy me cookies. So in conclusion, me give this book 4 cookies out of 5. Me have to deduct one cookie because me was slightly let down by ending. 

Sean Penn on Haiti and Wyclef Jean

"Ini Kamoze! Now I’ve been the victim of a media hatchet job on many occasions Wally, but this article about me in the Chicago Tribune is a bloodbath. Worse than anything my man Wes Studi did in Last Of The Mohicans."

But then I’d rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I’m not, as a wise man once said. I think it was Tupac. Possibly it was Thomas Jefferson or that backing dancer who was married to J-Lo for about ten minutes. What was his name? Trevor or something.

Now what that reporter from the Tribune failed to understand is that I’m always frank and earnest with women. In California I’m Frank and in Mexico I’m Ernest! HAHA .

All jokes aside, the humanitarian situation in Haiti is a stain on the conscience of the world. Worse than Darfur. Hell it’s worse than that Battleship film. Call me the plumber, cos I’ve seen some shit, but Port Au Prince is like a thief in a bakery my friends. It takes the cake.

Well … I’m not one to idly stand around while my fellow earthlings descend into barbarism, so post-earthquake I hotfooted it down to Haiti on my private jet, armed with nothing but food, medicine and a sense of blinding righteousness. And a 38 special loaned to me by Mad Dog Madsen.

I leave the photo ops to these Johnny come lately A-listers like Brangelina. Fuck that, I like to get my hands dirty, so I hit the mean streets of the city to do some good.

There was one shanty town that was said to be in a total state of lawlessness. Death, decay, people swimming in their own filth, it was complete anarchy on the streets and no hope in sight. Sort of like Glasgow on a Saturday evening.

I marched in there with a few boxes of protein bars and some drinking water and they received me as a God. But what I didn’t expect was some no name rapper fuck trying to steal my thunder. None other than that douchebag Wyclef Jean, a true buzzkill and champagne socialist motherfucker.

That asswipe flew over the shanty town in a US military chopper, yelling “one tiiiime!” at the top of his lungs, festooning its residents with remaindered Fugees albums on CD. 

Jumpin’ Jesus, it was like a hailstorm of shitty music and polycarbonate plastic.

Anyway, I was determined to set that dreadlocked bumbaclart straight when I got back to the embassy. I started cracking skulls like pistachios, slowly working my way through his bullshit entourage. His cousin Pras stepped to me but I dropped that one hit wonder cunt quicker than he was dropped by his record label.

Wyclef was acting a bigger bitch than Lauryn Hill in Sister Act 2, and that pussy got himself airlifted Saigon '75 style with some extended Duvalier family members only moments before I caught his $5 ass and made change.

He's trying to play it cool these days, but rest assured when I catch that low rent Urkel motherfucker I'll massacre him, worse than how the Fugees massacred that Bob Marley record back in 1996."

The Voice

In modern culture’s current race down the toilet, the latest and greatest shitstain on our senses is BBC’s The Voice. Pitched as an alternative to The X Factor, from what I can tell it is basically The X Factor with a few minor changes. 

Mercifully, one of these changes is that there is no Simon Cowell. But don’t get it twisted - this programme is still the mental equivalent of being circumcised with a wooden spoon dipped in caustic soda, even without that permatanned human fannypack strutting about the place like a modern day Louis XVI.

The premise is still essentially the same. An army of proles comes streaming into the studio with delusions of musical talent, and it is down to the judges to set them straight. The hook this show prides itself on is that the first round is what’s called a blind audition.

Unfortunately this doesn’t mean the contestants are all blinded with a metal spike, but that the judges have to listen to them warble with their backs turned. The idea is that these wannabe singers are judged solely on their voice (hence the title of the show) and not their appearance.

Which is ridiculous really, because this is a superficial show for superficial people in a superficial world. The only way this would work is if I went around blinding everyone in the country that watches this show with a metal spike just so that we’re all on the same page.

Being a pop star invariably has a lot to do with image, and you can see the horror in the judges’ faces when they select someone and turn around only to see that the person in question looks like Rosemary West.

Anyway, after all the contestants have been whittled down to the 40 least annoying pub singers, jailbait wank fodder and Butlins employees, we get to what’s known as The Battle Stage.

I was hoping for a Thunderdome-style fight to the death on live TV with axes, flails and chainsaws but instead was treated to a bunch of talentless idiots screaming at each other in front of a braying audience. Honestly it was like the House of Commons but in karaoke format.

And unlike the lower house of Parliament, these goons aren’t even subject to an arbitrary public vote. No, the fate of the known universe is left in the hands of the judges. Now let’s meet them.

Urkel is that you?

First we have will.i.am. Now this guy can’t even get to grips with the simple fucking fact his name is William. He has to jazz it up with full stops in all the wrong places, as if retarded punctuation somehow makes you cool and edgy. 

Presumably he’s impressed by the fact that William broken down says Will I Am, which most boys named William probably figured out when they were 4 years old. Just after they figured out they were gay.

He was a member of the Black Eyed Peas alongside some weird Hiawatha-looking bloke and a woman named Fergie who’s not the Duchess Of York but nonetheless equally contemptible. 

The Black Eyed Peas were named for a vegetable no-one’s ever heard of, and this would’ve been William’s fate too except that the group somehow struck pop gold.

I’m reliably informed that he has co-written many hit records, and one would therefore assume that ASCAP keeps William's rent paid. So why he’s doing this reality TV shit is a real Agatha Christie mystery.

Bingo wings dude

Next up is Jessie J. Presumably the J stands for Just fuck off already. 

She’s some Johnny come lately pop star, a shouty council estate version of Pink who thinks that bobbing her head around constitutes having an interesting personality. 

Well if that was the case sweetheart, I’d be having in depth conversations about the world with a Pez dispenser and I haven’t done that since 1993 and my last LSD binge.

She also appears to be making a fashion statement each week, and that statement is obviously something along the lines of ‘What the actual tittyfucking Christ am I wearing?’ I think her stylist is going for a look of middle aged Nigerian man dressed up as Carmela Soprano for Halloween.

some no-name Paddy fuck

Now this bloke. I don’t even know what to say. When he first popped up on the screen, both me and your mum’s pet owl went ‘who?’ 

From what I gather his name is Danny and he is an Irish singer-songwriter who had some hits at some point although I'll be fucked if I could name one. So right, he’s a bargain bin Bono then. Well much like Bono he’s a supremely irritating fucker. That’s all I’ve got.

Seriously, fuck this guy. Whoever he is.

It's very unusual, actually.

Lastly we have Sir Tom Jones. This is what upsets me the most about The Voice because Sir Tom Jones has actual talent and charisma. Watching him on this show is like watching a nuclear physicist scrub the urinals at Burger King.

This man is a living legend and at his age has probably had bouts of constipation that have lasted longer than the careers of everyone else involved in this BBC-funded carnival of stupidity. He's been making records since forever. This is a guy who got loaded and shot dice with Sinatra. He has banged at least one of The Supremes.

If Fred Goodwin can be stripped of his knighthood then the same rules should apply to Sir Tom for his involvement in this televised whirligig of runny faecal matter.

Sean Penn on Larry Fishburne and domestic violence

"God dammit Wally, now if there's one thing that makes my blood boil aside from the neocons and their fascist agenda its guys that hit women. I'm more of a lover than a fighter ... but when it comes down to violence against the fairer sex I will split some wigs like its the War of the fuckin' Roses up in here.

This type of loutish behaviour reminds me of when I was filming Mystic River with a gang of alphas on location in south Boston. Heavens to Murgatroyd, the testosterone levels were off the charts! Bacon, Robbins and I were all trying to outdo each other in front of Clint in what was very clearly an exercise in Oscar bait.

Tensions were high, and it was only a matter of time before one of us erupted in a Krakatoa-like spew of aggression.

But then sometimes there's a dark horse in the race, and that horse was Larry Fishburne. That's not meant to be a black joke by the way. 

I dunno if it was the pressure of being on set with an unparalleled stable of high calibre thesps or if he was simply feeling the strain of Clint's upfront directorial style, but homeboy was losing his cool quicker than a bowl of Chunky Monkey in the Sahara.

Anyway, the lovely Laura Linney was filming with us too, looking like her radiant self, and ol' Larry thought he was in there like swimwear. But he'd obviously got some mixed signals because she wasn't having any of his superfly 'call me Larry Rugburne, baby' styled chat, no siree Bob.

The pent up sexual anger he felt suddenly undid him like a slinky in the oven, and Larry Fuckburne started ranting and raving, smashing up the set like Keith Moon on uppers, calling Linney a dirty flyover state cocktease and snarling at her like a wounded lion. 

He started winding up his arm like Popeye after a spinach binge and I've been around the world to-ni-y-y-ight so knew what was coming next.

It was time to let this misogynistic asshole feel the wrath.

I launched myself at Fishburne and beat his worthless ass to the ground Leon Spinks style, left right, left right, working that body like an old disco queen from the 70s. By the end of my savage beatdown he was left toothless and broken, looking less like Morpheus and more like MC Shan.

Needless to say Fishburne never stepped to another woman with that mack daddy bullshit, no, not on my watch pal."

Strange Sightings - part 1

Imagine the absolute last guy you would expect to turn up as the romantic male interest in an early 1990s R&B music video that's not Pauly Shore, and then double it. In fact, Mary J Blige jonesing for Pauly fucking Shore would probably be less weird than this. Jesus, old Eskimo women breastfeeding reindeer and listening to dubstep would be less weird than this. 

This is almost as bad as the time Peter Sutcliffe was in the 'No Scrubs' video, and certainly adds a whole new dimension to a song called 'Love No Limit'.

Tom Sizemore, bitch

Now I'm known to hand out epic beatdowns like Jim Jones did Kool-Aid, and often with similar results, but there are simply some motherfuckers I would never ever in my life step to. Sean Penn is one, not only because he is a dear friend and frequent contributor to this fine blog but honestly the guy is unhinged.

Michael Madsen is another. Turns out Mr Blonde from Reservoir Dogs once removed a tattoo off his arm on the piping-hot exhaust of his Harley just because he changed his mind about it.

But there is one fucking guy who trumps even Mad Dog Madsen. He looks a bit like Madsen, which obviously helps in the badass sweepstakes, but has also never starred in some shit like Free Willy. The dude I'm referring to is 250 pounds of pure rabble-rousing lunacy and unbridled mayhem.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Tom Sizemore.

This is him running shit in 1995's Heat, what film school dropouts working at Starbucks would refer to as a highly stylised and epic meditation on good versus evil and/or the porous line between cop and criminal in the morally ambiguous modern world, but I simply describe as  an exercise in cinematic ownage. 

Here he is again, this time looking a bit like Sinatra's white trash skullfucking younger brother. I actually mean that as a compliment.

Originally a Detroit native like other notable 20th century badasses like John Lee Hooker and Elmore Leonard, Tom first starting making waves in a film all about making waves, Point Break. He also starred in True Romance, Natural Born Killers and Passenger 57 where he of course always bet on black.

As the 1990s gave way to the new millennium his output can only be described as patchy, but  that's mostly because he's been too busy being awesome in the real world drinking bourbon, consuming shitloads of illegal substances and making an eight hour sex tape. Eight fucking hours worth of Sizemore balling some hapless cooch I shit you not.

He also beat the living bejeezus out of Hollywood supermadam Heidi Fleiss, who was his girlfriend at the time. Now think about that. Most other dudes would be paying for it but he was banging the madam of the house. 

Now say what you like about his penchant for bouncing a strumpet like Fleiss off the walls like human badminton, Sizemore's got serious fucking game. Honestly he makes Chuck Sheen look like Gandhi by comparison.

And just last year he was questioned by police regarding the disappearance of a female  acquaintance about half his age, and on any given Friday night his name will be the answer to a question in a film-themed pub quiz somewhere in the UK.

Tom Sizemore, bitch.

More Character Actors

"Hi my name is Stephen Tobolowsky and I am one of the greatest character actors to ever walk this planet. Yet despite this you may only recognise me from pretty much every low rent TV series in the last decade or so. Heroes, Glee, Entourage and Californication are all notable stinkers I've graced with my presence.

Now don't get it twisted I've also appeared on shows such as Deadwood, Curb Your Enthusiasm and the current flagship of televisual ownage Justified, and shit nigga I've also done big screen work on films like Memento and The Insider.

But anyone with any semblance of all that is good and decent in this world will take one look at my bespectacled JC Penney-shopping ass and say: motherfucker that's Ned Ryerson! BING!"

"Hola! My name is Joaquim de Almeida. Now I  know a name like that makes me sound like a character from some Don Quixote revival but in fact I pay the rent by impersonating a South American drug baron in quite frankly any Hollywood film that will have me, even though I'm actually Portuguese. 

And if you ask me whether I'm Javier Bardem or not I will actually shoot you, I'm not even fucking kidding."

Sean Penn on Eric Stoltz and maintaining artistic integrity

"Whoa ... artistic integrity versus the clarion call of cheddar! Hot damn you've touch a nerve here Wally, because this is a constant battle in Hollywood, trying to find that balance between turning in a powerhouse performance and simply paying the bills so that you're not ending each day with a bowl of ramen noodles for dinner and a 38 Special to your head.

Now back when I was trying to break into the film game, there was always the temptation to make a quick buck doing commercials for Doritos or Lucky Charms, basically selling your ass like a two-bit hooker on Sunset.

And some people begin to doubt their abilities, and they wonder if they're cut out for the life of an actor, well that's when they start out on that slippery slope chasing the cash, shucking and jiving for the cameras like a minstrel with haemorrhoids.

Eric Stoltz was one of these guys. 

Back on the set on Fast Times At Ridgemont High he was already doing bit work on the side for advertisers, prostituting himself for the green. He was always trying to rope in the other actors on the set too, taking their eyes off the prize for some quick financial gain.

When he started whispering in Judge Reinhold's ear about a $500 gig hawking Soda Streams, I knew I had to step in and lay it down.

I took Stoltz to one side and told him that some of us are in this for the love of the artform, not to peddle Mars bars and convince some douchebag in the flyover states that they feel like Chicken Tonight.

I said that he had better put the brakes on that commercial bullshit pronto around me. Motherfucker kept running his jibs about getting paid like Johnny Kemp on a Friday so I went off like a hurricane on his stupid fuckin' ass, chopping and swinging like Paul Bunyan on angel dust.

People think he spent hours in makeup getting prepped for his role as Rocky Dennis in Mask, but the truth is that Stoltz was still reeling from the gorilla style smackdown he got from yours truly.

Anyway, fuck that guy. There's only room for X amount of redheads in Hollywood and Stoltz is like friendster to Caruso's facebook."

Sean Penn on Roger Ebert and film criticism

"Everyone's a critic these days aren't they? You put yourself out there, either as an Academy-award winning actor or a social crusader, the price you pay is the slings and arrows of some irrelevant boner goblins I guess.

It's easy to point the finger and be a jackass, but much harder to actually put your heart and soul on the line when it counts.

Reminds me of when Roger Ebert slammed my performance as idealistic gubernatorial candidate Willie Stark in 2006's All The King's Men, calling it - and I quote - 'a scenery chewing performance of biblical proportions.'

That jelly-jawed buffoon has always had it in for me since my riproaring salad days in the eighties. He lambasted my turn as the Django-styled guitarist Emmett Ray in Sweet & Lowdown, and called my performance in 21 Grams 'even worse than a Tabasco-drenched cocktail umbrella down the japseye during unprotected bestial sex.'

But it was when he coldly savaged my directorial skills on The Pledge in an issue of Variety magazine that I knew I had to step in.

I caught him at the premiere of Mystic River and rained down upon him a maelstrom of violence, the likes of which had not been seen since the Battle of Thermopylae.

I was pounding his marshmallow head on the concrete like Whitney pounding a crackpipe. The front of Mann's Chinese Theatre looked like a Jackson Pollock joint when I was done with his tweedy Jimmy Buffett-listening ass.

Ebert goes around telling people that his recent facemelt appearance is due to thyroid cancer, but that's bullshit. I can assure you its because he was on the business end of a kingsize knuckle sandwich smorgasbord from yours truly."

Sean Penn on Kevin Spacey and violence against women

"Wally, I know we haven't spoken in a little while now. I've been too busy kicking ass and taking names with those snaggletoothed limeys and their imperialist claim on the Malvinas.

It ain't the 19th century, England, and you sure as shit ain't Lord Nelson, so you might as well direct that energy into fixing your country's cocksmoking Flintstones-era infrastructure before you start trying to lord it over others like King fuckin' George VI.

But enough of that. I'm here now to drop some jewels like a burglar with Parkinson's. Time for another Sean Penn tale from the trenches of Hollywood. Let's go.

The year was 1998. Cher was riding high in the charts with that tweeked out vocoder shit and I was filming Hurly Burly with my good friends Chazz Palminteri and Gary Shandling. Unfortunately I was sharing top billing with that overrated wannabe Brit and closeted fruit cup K-Space.

That hammy fuck has always been a fly in the ointment you know, a true party pooper and buzzkill. Spacey also has some serious issues with women, most notable of which is that he doesn't like penetrating them.

Now I'm no reactionary bigot. Love of any kind in these crazy end days of ours should be embraced, even if its of the homme sur homme persuasion. Nobody deserves to be gunned down for their sexual orientation by some disgruntled public servant hopped up on Twinkies and self-loathing. Yeah that was a reference to Harvey Milk.

But that limpwristed cockjockey Spaceman took it one step too far. He started blaming everything that went wrong on set with the lovely Anna Paquin, calling her a she-Devil, shouting at her with his trademark pomp and bluster. One time there was a mix-up with the catering crew, and it looked like he was about to get all Ike Turner on Paquin like white on rice. 

You think I'd stand about and let a beautiful woman take a beating from some second rate Redford? Hell to the N-O.

I jumped Spacey and tore him about six or seven new assholes before he even knew which way was up. I'm not a violent man by nature but there's NEVER an excuse for a grown man hitting a woman.

By the time Shandling pulled me off that Keizer Soze pink doughnut fuck, he was bleeding from every orifice as though he'd just been cockpumped by a dozen hardcore bodybuilding motherfuckers out the back of Studio 54 like it was '77 again.

Spacey took off to England not long after, hiding out at the Old Vic in some pencil-pushing job as their artistic director. He claims he wanted to get back to his theatrical roots, but mainly he knows if we cross paths again it'll be on like Donkey Kong."

A Special Valentine's Day Message From Sean Penn

"Now I like some candlelight and canoodling as much as the next guy, but Valentine's Day is nothing but a ploy for corporate douchebags like Hallmark to line their coffers with the hard earned wages of the working man.

You don't need a sanctioned day in the calendar to get your inner freak on, buddies. Like my friend the gregarious child-baiter Roman Polanski always says, 'ever-ree day is zee ... 'ow you say... jour de Valen-teeeeen.'

Now all this talk of hackneyed romantic sentiment and vapid consumerism takes me back to the 1980s, back when I was in over my head with the Material Girl herself. Yep, it's time for another Sean Penn morality tale from the trenches of Hollywood. 

Now I'll be the first to say that I was young, dumb and riding on the Hokusai wave of my ego. I was in my twenties, had a stomach you could carve bread on, plus I still kicked off each morning with a boner the size of the Seattle Space Needle.

You wouldn't think it now with her leather saddle face and goosehonk Jersey Shore accent, but back then Madonna was some primo fuckin' trim my friends. I mean, even before I met her I was spilling gallons of man milk to that Lucky Star video.

So anyway we finally met at the MTV Video Music Awards in '84, I fingerbanged her while Wang Chung were onstage performing and it was on like Donkey Kong.

Amour Fou, as the French call it. That whole time was intense. The combination of that smelly Eye-tie pussy and all the disco dandruff floating around Hollywood sent me temporarily insane. She was always on at me to buy her shit. Cartier this, Vuitton that. And like a fool I complied.

Then coming up to Valentine's Day it all popped off. She said she wanted a diamond encrusted dildo and a romatic sejourn in the Maldives, complete with two white stallions we would ride around the island on in between bouts of frenetic sex.

That's when I had to stop giving in and start getting real.

I took Madonna to one side and told her that being with Hollywood heart-throb Sean Penn should be enough for any woman. Material possessions won't fill a spiritual void. 

And even if she had some grade A poontang that was whistlin' dixie, the Platinum Amex was going back in the wallet with the quickness.

She went berserk, shouting at me through her nose about how she was the greatest music star in the world, the Queen of Pop, and so on and so on and so on until I broke out my Louisville Slugger and went Babe Ruth on her ovaries.

And that was that. We got divorced later that year. I guess what I'm trying to say is, just as Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson confirmed on the Mo' Money soundtrack, 'the best things in life are free'. Love, democracy and clean potable water for the developing world. 

So this Valentine's Day, you can either drop some major benjamins on a fancy restaurant and let them do the heavy lifting ... or you can run your girl a bath, slip on Sade's Diamond Life LP and get all Gene Simmons on her map of Tasmania. You tell me which one is guaranteed to have her painting the walls white."

Sean Penn on Dogtown and the challenges of voiceover work

"It's a tough gig doing voiceovers. You do it wrong and you can destroy an otherwise good project, do it right and people will hardly notice you're there.

Pretty thankless role to play for the most part, like a job as a fluffer on some 3rd rate porn set in the Valley or being English.

Of course, I've tried my hand at narration for my good friend Stacy Peralta on his epic skater documentary Dogtown & Z Boys. That was a clusterfuck of truly biblical proportions. Let me break it down, Steve Hawking-style.

Now for my main man Stacy, this was a true labour of love, a heartfelt rumination on his youth and the emergence of a new kind of physical poetry on the mean streets of 1970s Venice Beach. For the rest of us living in the real world, it was just a bunch of hep-c riddled latchkey brats zipping round on skateboards and acting like shitheads.

Alva was no help here either, these two middle aged has-beens egging each other on like Leopold and Loeb, so convinced they were of their cultural importance and overall badassery.

When Peralta insisted I refer to him as 'the Proust of the half pipe', I knew I was gonna have to drop some serious truth bombs like Brando in Apocalypse Now. Oh the horror, the horror.

I took Stacy to one side and told him that it wasn't my job as the voiceover guy to try and add gravitas to his project, I was just there to call it like I see it. Once the narrator starts pushing some trumped up agenda, your film goes down the toilet quicker than a 12-week Denise Richards scrape job.

Tony Alva started playing the big man of course, dude must have had an acid flashback and thought he was 19 again and started peacocking.

I slapped that fuckin' goose down quicktime and let him know what the fuck was what. I've done time in county jail, and I wasn't gonna be sidelined by some white man in his forties rocking dreads in this day and age... for fuck's sake he looked like Rob Zombie beaten down with the AIDS bat.

Needless to say, Peralta got his act together and we cleaned up at Sundance that year. Like Shakespeare once wrote, 'an empty vessel makes the loudest noise'. Have a think on that one, and I'll catch you on the flipside."

Sean Penn on Michael Douglas and sex addiction

"Hot damn, you thought Ashton Kutcher's mum was up for it 24/7, well she don't have shit on the Dougster back in his prime. When we were filming The Game it was intense. Sexually. 

This was before he got married to Catherine Zeta Jones, and he was on a roll back in the nineties with hit films like Falling Down and The American President.

The combination of playing the POTUS and some beleagured defense contractor who goes batshit with a Louisville Slugger obviously hotwired his brain somehow, and Douglas was out of control like a monkey on Viagra. 

Fincher would talk us through the day's scenes, and Douglas would be rubbing his crotch on the nearest camera stand, whispering "maaaamy" and staring off into the distance. At lunch he would hit the catering table, cock out, stuffing egg salad sandwiches down the front of his pleated Armani trousers and insisting the staff call him "Bad Spanky" and then spit on him.

When he cornered James Rebhorn and insisted he stick two fingers up his rectum and shout  the lyrics to 'Tubthumping' by Chumbawumba in his ear while Douglas beat himself off with a soft fruit peeler, I knew I had to step in.

I took MD to one side and set him straight. I said just because he has some weird Freudian deal due to catching his dad rimjobbing the pool boy as a young lad didn't give him the right to foist his demented proclivities upon the rest of us. Keeping it in our pants is what separates us from the animals. And the French.

Needless to say, he got his act together, zipped up, and delivered a stellar performance as bewildered investment banker Nicholas Van Orton."

Sean Penn on lightning, Aaron Eckhart and the great outdoors

"I've seen a grown man struck by lightning, and let me tell you... it changes you forever. A lot like a backalley sex change in Slovenia or the first time you watch the redux version of Apocalypse Now on mushrooms.

It was 2001 and I was up in British Columbia directing The Pledge with Jack Nicholson, Ben del Toro and Aaron Eckhart. I decided that we had to keep it real. No trailers, just tents. 

There's nothing like the Canadian wilderness to keep that motley crew of pampered Hollywood douchebags on their toes.

One night when we'd wrapped up filming, I was in my yurt, getting the mother of all tugjobs from Patricia Clarkson. A truly lost art in the twenty first century I'm sure you'll agree.

The rain was intense, biblical, like thick sheets of water cascading from the heavens, pounding the earth with all the subtlety of an epileptic fit in a paint factory. Thunder sliced through the night like a post-Grand Slam breakfast at Denny's fart.

Suddenly lightning struck. I heard screaming and I poked my head out of the tent to see Eckhart convulsing on the ground. At first I thought he'd just seen Helen Mirren doing her cleveland steamer thing, but wisps of smoke rose off Eckhart's body like he was some square jawed sausage on the grill.

Bam! Another bolt came down and fried the fucker, like God herself was reaching down to touch Eckhart with a electric finger.

Poor guy was all fucked up after that, even with the best psycho and physio therapy  that Hollywood bucks can buy. He would sign up for infomercials selling pet accessories, forgetting he was already an established film star.

Then there was that romcom abortion with Catherine Zeta Jones, where his behaviour on set was erratic to say the least. He was once caught humping Michael Douglas' leg and trying to sniff his crotch. Douglas of course was game for it, the creepy geriatric fuck.

So I guess what I'm saying is that you dance with mother Nature, she calls the tune... it's all fun and games until you get an electrical current course through your entire body, rearranging your meatloaf to the point where you actually think you're a fuckin' dog."