...Diet Cokes are poured at Sean Penn’s house. Small talk is made about how the coffee table in his living room looks like a junk drawer just exploded on it. There are sunglasses, prescription bottles and a device that shoots salt at mosquitoes. Nearby are photos of famous people, all smoking. They are opposite a poster for “A Man Called Adam,” a Sammy Davis Jr. film directed by Leo Penn, Sean’s father.
Another wall holds a frame containing a Ukraine Order of Merit medal. Penn is 63 and dressed in a simple T-shirt and blue jeans. His hair is now a shock of white.
d blue jeans. His hair is now a shock of white. He speaks of the United Nations, surface-to-air missiles and F-16s.
Mostly, Penn talks about his friend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the subject of his documentary“Superpower,”which premieres on Sept. 18.
He sounds like an affable, between-gigs diplomat enjoying some downtime before a semester at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
The era of good feeling passes.
Penn gets angry. OK, fucking furious.
He ignites over the Academy’s refusal to let Zelenskyy speak at the Oscars in 2022, shortly after Ukraine was invaded by Russia.
“The Oscars producer thought, ‘Oh, he’s not light-hearted enough.’ Well, guess what you got instead? Will Smith!” . . .
After winning his second Oscar for “Milk” in 2009, Penn remarked,“I want it to be very clear that I do know how hard I make it to appreciate me.”
This is a true statement. His face is now crimson; a vein in his neck tightens like a rope pulled taut.“I don’t know Will Smith. I met him once,”Penn says.“He seemed very nice when I met him. He was so fucking good in ‘King Richard.’”He lights another in an unchained melody of American Spirit cigarettes. “So why the fuck did you just spit on yourself and everybody else with this stupid fucking thing? Why did I go to fucking jail for what you just did? And you’re still sitting there? Why are you guys standing and applauding his worst moment as a person?” Someone pops a head in to make sure everything is OK. Penn waves them away. He is not done. “This fucking bullshit wouldn’t have happened with Zelenskyy. Will Smith would never have left that chair to be part of stupid violence. It never would have happened.” Penn tells me he became convinced his only choice was to destroy his Oscars.
“I thought, well, fuck, you know? I’ll give them to Ukraine. They can be melted down to bullets they can shoot at the Russians.”
Back in Malibu, Penn says he would have responded to 9/11 differently if he had been president. His proposal would not have been approved by Amnesty International.“I’d have let White House counsel know that they are on vacation,”Penn tells me.“I’m not consulting with them. If I have to go to prison, I’ll go, but I’m going to kill them. I’m killing everyone that did this. But only them. And we know where the fuck they are.”
Sean Penn and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Nov. 8, 2022Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Aggressive pop-offs are a Penn staple and not limited to global events. I ask him his thoughts on the Hollywood strikes. He is particularly livid over the studios’ purported lust for the likenesses and voices of SAG actors for future AI use. He has an idea that he is convinced will break the logjam. It starts with Penn and a camera crew being in a room with studio heads. Penn will then offer trade: “So you want my scans and voice data and all that. OK, here’s what I think is fair: I want your daughter’s, because I want to create a virtual replica of her and invite my friends over to do whatever we want in a virtual party right now. Would you please look at the camera and tell me you think that’s cool?” Penn pauses long enough for me to check if he is serious. That is an affirmative. . .
“It’s not about business,”he says. “It’s an indecent proposal. That they would do that and not be taken to task for it is insulting. This is a real exposé on morality — a lack of morality.”
These kinds of statements, no matter their moral righteousness, make Penn an easy target for the smirker set, who dismiss his Zelig-like appearances at the crossroads of conflict — Benghazi! Hollywood! Damascus! J6 hearings! — as epic grandstanding.
(Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s “Team America” movie lampooned his galaxy brain statements, to which Penn responded with a letter that he signed off with “Fuck you.”)
Some of Penn’s international drop-ins have lacked, let us say, a certain moral cohesion.
There was his romanticizing of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, who some saw as a Third World hero, but many others saw as a petrodollar-fueled demagogue.
(It should be noted that Penn did score pallets of morphine from Chávez that brought relief to thousands of Haitians after the 2010 earthquake.)
Sometimes it’s not clear what role Penn is playing as he appears live from this year’s hot spot: Journalist? Activist? Global gadfly?
Penn says he’s not a journalist — he wryly offers in “Superpower”that he’s no Walter Cronkite — but merely a concerned citizen who knows his celebrity status can provide him an all-access lanyard to international actors. . ."
The P+ Original documentary Superpower tells the story of how Sean Penn heads to Ukraine to learn more about comedic-actor ...
12,778 viewsSep 12, 2023
The P+ Original documentary Superpower tells the story of how Sean Penn heads to Ukraine to learn more about comedic-actor turned president, Volodymyr Zelensky. It was to be an amusing film – it has turned into a document of history. When Penn was brought into an undisclosed bunker in the Presidential Palace, the Russian invasion had begun. Penn talked to President Zelensky as explosions rocked the city. He became an inadvertent front-row witness to this historic ‘David and Goliath’ struggle. Through moments of levity, inspiration and on the ground storytelling, it becomes clear that Ukraine’s Superpower lies in the strength of its leader, its people, and ultimately, its heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment