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."