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Lorre
I cannot now find what seems the prescient piece by a TV producer which explains the Oedipal rage a sitcom star feels when the originating producer moves on to new and possibly more profitable productions. It's almost a sexual jealousy, truly Oedipal, and it's one of the things I remembered in reading the Charlie Sheen lawsuit against Lorre. It states -- in a typical Hollywood departure from measured legal rhetoric into psychodynamic rhetoric -- Lorre wished to punish Sheen by cancelling the shows and then firing him, because the profits from the new girls, Mike and Molly and The Big Bang Theory were more lucrative.
Meanwhile, the Lee Strasberg trope that all acting is Freudian psychiatry still has Hollywood by the balls. It permits all kinds of very creepy behavior beginning with the star system whereby the star's personal personna -- their privileged and deeply tormented lives -- becomes the vehicle on which roles and entire productions are formed. So that when Charlie Sheen pops into Lorre's mind as the actor for his sitcom, based on Lorre's pitch of what would happen when a degenerate and a child are thrown together, what Sheen is being paid $1.2-$1.8 million an ep for is to maintain degeneracy in his personal life.
Meanwhile, due to the illusion of authenticity in The Method, Lorre feels empowered to vent his frustration against Roseanne, Brett Butler, Cybill, and Sheen in his vanity cards. Sheen's lawsuit has intelligently trawled the vanity cards to accuse Lorre of longstanding harassment. The Method question is, having purchased -- and reupped, as the law suit points out, in May 2010 when Sheen was under felony indictment -- Sheen's personal, and suicidal, degeneracy as the essence of his star, on which the entire narrative arc and production of "Two and a Half Men" was based, according to Lorre's own testimony, isn't Lorre's legal and financial position one of enabling Sheen to behave in the method Lorre bought his ass for in the first place?
Don't we pay them to pill out and screw jailbait and to have that curiously bottomy, tabula rasa, not very well-educated, unschooled, energy? The criterion for hiring actresses is, as is well-understood, is she fuckable? Which is approaching the kind of energy I'm talking about -- which Sheen has. And is that not now the model for sitcoms based on a standup's personna -- Seinfeld, Roseanne, Raymond, etc.? (Interesting that Seinfeld's only diva-like perq was the uncontaminated stacked Jewish virgin Shoshana whatshername.)
There's also a psychiatric Method arc in the Lorre biographical material. He says he was so disturbed by his run-ins with the castrating bitches Roseanne, Brett Butler and Cybill Shepherd that he designed his next big star personna, Jenna Elfmann for Dharma and Greg, to be drama free. He also designed it to gouge Elfmann and the rest of the cast and crew out of their fair profits.
Having created the Jenna Elfmann drama from Roseanne's rib, Lorre went on to create the degenerate Charlie Sheen drama, complete with a vicious mother, self-admittedly modeled on his own, and peen 'n' poop jokes Lorre somehow feels are cutting edge. He writes, in the vanity cards, about how brave he is to make them in the teeth of the bad old CBS censors, while consciously promulgating the multicam sitcom production values of Jackie Gleason, long after the pomo singlecam era of Seinfeld has taken TV comedies based on the standups' personnas in a different direction. You could call Lorre's post-Seinfeld productions -- Dharma and Greg, Home Improvement, Two and a Half Men, Mike and Molly, The Big Bang Theory -- the fascist backlash against the Roseanne (content)/Seinfeld (anti-content) revolution.
All this is proudly based, I would argue, on the Strasberg method which pilled out Marilyn Monroe.
Here's the entry with that allegation:
Charlie, take a break dude. Go to Greece, Paris, China, look at great art and lay low. you got fired, dude. anybody can do your job, really. other guys are funny and not repulsive to intelligent women, though those shit chuck lorre lines could choke a fucking horse, and render any actor who recites them stone cold soul dead. No grown man could really look himself in the mirror knowing that he delivers shit jokes and adolescent sniggering over breasts and women's body parts lines to the Tea partier types who are big fans of Chuck's hilarious hijinx. I fired Chuck Lorre for being a big drunk on my show, and he went on to become one of tv's most successful writers (about dick jokes). Maybe Charlie can start producing porn movies now!!
But several hours later, Barr decided to put out a longer hit on Lorre:
I was going to guest on 2 and a half men once, but when i got the script, it was putrid, so they got cam manheim to do it.
Chuck got pissed off at me for refusing to be part of his brilliance, and insulted me in the nyt, saying that I "beat the wit out of him." Then, right after he did that, he asked me to make a videotaped presentation honoring him at a vanity dinner. I never really worked with him, as he was mostly drunk when he was on my show, and too busy making deals with my producers for shows that copied mine (grace under fire, and Cybil's show that copied AB FAB, which I once owned, and therefore sunk my hopes of producing) to turn in too many good scripts.
I feel sorry for Charlie Sheen, (and brett and cybil, both of whom were often out in the parking lot screaming at Chuck and crying) who has to not only be the bi-polar wizard Charlie Sheen, but had to toil as a tool for Lorre Enterprises Inc. and the preternaturally large Julie Chen's very old comedically incontinent husband, Les, the power behind cbs, the network of choice for the dentally challenged.
Worst of all, though, Charlie had to be so degraded as to mouth some of the shittiest dick tit pussy and shit jokes that ever dribbled out of an actor's mouth, rolled down his chin, and stained his shirt, thereby making ingesting knock out drugs a must in order to sleep shamelessly at night, and then snorting nose cavities full of stimulants upon waking to mask the soul decay that stared back at him in the morning mirror. After beating up prostitutes, and testifying against Heidi Fleiss, who supplied them unknowingly for his beating pleasure, Charlie was scouted by Chuck to help bring sexism back to tv and the culture at large, under a little known MKULTRA program designed to control the 'minds' of chronically masturbating males, ages 14-94.
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/03/roseanne_barr_charlie_sheen.html
Roseanne Barr defends Sheen, blasts Lorre
Roseanne Barr has defended Charlie Sheen in a post on her blog.
The comedienne wrote a post titled "charlie sheen makes me look sane (sic)" following Sheen's dismissal from Two and a Half Men.
In the post, Barr suggested that Sheen was not on drugs but was rather on a "manic high" and suggested that Sheen take a break from show business.
"Charlie is not on drugs, though he can get them from the porn star goddesses that come and go, but his urine shows clean - i think charlie is in a manic high, and is unable to get any drugs to bring him down anymore - his tiger blood statement is from that 'eye of the tiger' focus that manics have," Barr posted.
She added: "Manics can really work hard and play hard at the same time, until they hit a wall, and then they are in bed and depressed for a long time, so they start taking drugs again to get energy to work."
The former sitcom star also criticised Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre, the producer that Sheen made controversial comments about in recent weeks. Lorre and Barr worked together on Barr's ABC show Roseanne.
"Anybody can do your job, really. other guys are funny and not repulsive to intelligent women, though those s**t chuck lorre lines could choke a f**king horse, and render any actor who recites them stone cold soul dead," she posted.
The actress criticised Lorre's writing as "adolescent sniggering" that "Tea partier types" enjoy, before claiming that she fired him "for being a big drunk on [her] show".
http://www.datalounge.com/cgi-bin/iowa/ajax.html?t=10229579#page:showThread,10229579
MARCH 10, 2011, 3:46 PM
Sheen Files Suit Against Lorre and Warner
By BILL CARTER
Reuters/Reuters Charlie Sheen, right, has filed a lawsuit against Chuck Lorre, left, the creator of the hit comedy “Two and a Half Men,” and Warner Brothers for firing the actor from the show.
Charlie Sheen escalated his war with the creator of his hit comedy “Two and a Half Men” and the studio that produces it by filing a suit Thursday demanding more than $100 million in damages for first halting production on episodes planned for this season and then removing him from the show.
The suit, which was obtained and posted by the celebrity gossip Web site TMZ, is in response to the decision this week by the studio, Warner Brothers, to fire Mr. Sheen from the comedy, citing both his behavior, which has included drug use and accusations of violence toward women, and his comments about the show’s creator, Chuck Lorre, and studio executives.
Mr. Sheen’s chief lawyer, Martin D. Singer, filed the suit on Thursday in Superior Court in Los Angeles. In it, Mr. Sheen goes on the offensive, especially against Mr. Lorre, saying Mr. Lorre first stopped production on the series and then forced Warner to dismiss Mr. Sheen “to serve his own ego and self-interest.”
Despite the fact that Mr. Lorre himself stood to make many more millions of dollars if the show had completed the eight episodes eliminated when production was halted, the suit contends that Mr. Lorre refused to write and supervise production on those episodes out of an “egotistical desire to punish Mr. Sheen” and because he had better financial arrangements on two other comedies he produces for Warner.
The suit labels Mr. Lorre “the proverbial 800-pound gorilla” who could make the studio do anything he wished. Warner declined to comment Thursday afternoon.
In a statement to TMZ, Mr. Lorre’s lawyer, Howard Weitzman, said, “The allegations in the complaint against Mr. Lorre are as recklessly false and unwarranted as Mr. Sheen’s rantings in the media.”
“These accusations are simply imaginary,” he added. “This lawsuit is about a fantasy ‘lottery’ payday for Charlie Sheen. Chuck Lorre’s concern has been and continues to be about Mr. Sheen’s health.”
The action by Mr. Sheen’s legal team intensifies one of the fiercest recent legal battles in Hollywood and comes at the same time Warner and CBS, the network that broadcasts “Two and a Half Men,” are known to be seriously planning to continue the comedy — the most popular in television — with a new actor replacing Mr. Sheen.
The suit filed Thursday also includes a novel claim of damages on behalf of the entire cast and crew of the series for lost income because of the decision to shut down production this season, even though Mr. Sheen’s lawyers do not represent — at least at the moment — anyone else on the cast or crew.
To counter the claims Warner made this week that Mr. Sheen had breached the terms of his contract with his behavior and comments, the suit cites the studio’s eagerness to sign Mr. Sheen to a new contract in May 2010 for two more years on the series even though he faced both felony and misdemeanor charges at the time.
The suit contends it was only after Mr. Sheen began making disparaging remarks about Mr. Lorre — which included an apparently gratuitous reference to Mr. Lorre as “Chaim Levine,” a Hebrew variant of his real name, Charles Levine — that any action was taken. Mr. Sheen was “provoked into criticizing Lorre in response to his harassment and disparagement campaign, which had been going on for years,” according to the suit.
As evidence of that campaign, the suit included several comments Mr. Lorre wrote on what he calls “vanity cards” that appear at the end of each episode. Among those were suggestions directed at himself like “Go to an Al-Anon meeting;” one directed at viewers urging them to “avoid degrading yourself by having meaningless sex with strangers in a futile attempt to fill the emptiness of your soul;” and another asking the audience to pray for people working on the series: “Feel free to pick whomever you think is most in need.”
Copyright 2011 The New York Times CompanyPrivacy PolicyNYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018
Somebody frightened Roseanne into taking down her Lorre hit list post. I would be very very interested to know what she thinks about Mike and Molly, Lorre's latest, which is about two fat people getting it on. That is the whole concept.
Roseanne dealt with this a generation ago, the subtheme of a show with many more layers of real life content. She was absolutely vilified and treated like shit by the producers on account of it. Because she wasn't fuckable. As Elaine Benis, Julia Louis-Dreyfus says, was as bad as the boys.
This is the major reason TV is better than movies. It can be, sometimes, feminist.
Meanwhile, the Lee Strasberg trope that all acting is Freudian psychiatry still has Hollywood by the balls. It permits all kinds of very creepy behavior beginning with the star system whereby the star's personal personna -- their privileged and deeply tormented lives -- becomes the vehicle on which roles and entire productions are formed. So that when Charlie Sheen pops into Lorre's mind as the actor for his sitcom, based on Lorre's pitch of what would happen when a degenerate and a child are thrown together, what Sheen is being paid $1.2-$1.8 million an ep for is to maintain degeneracy in his personal life.
Meanwhile, due to the illusion of authenticity in The Method, Lorre feels empowered to vent his frustration against Roseanne, Brett Butler, Cybill, and Sheen in his vanity cards. Sheen's lawsuit has intelligently trawled the vanity cards to accuse Lorre of longstanding harassment. The Method question is, having purchased -- and reupped, as the law suit points out, in May 2010 when Sheen was under felony indictment -- Sheen's personal, and suicidal, degeneracy as the essence of his star, on which the entire narrative arc and production of "Two and a Half Men" was based, according to Lorre's own testimony, isn't Lorre's legal and financial position one of enabling Sheen to behave in the method Lorre bought his ass for in the first place?
Don't we pay them to pill out and screw jailbait and to have that curiously bottomy, tabula rasa, not very well-educated, unschooled, energy? The criterion for hiring actresses is, as is well-understood, is she fuckable? Which is approaching the kind of energy I'm talking about -- which Sheen has. And is that not now the model for sitcoms based on a standup's personna -- Seinfeld, Roseanne, Raymond, etc.? (Interesting that Seinfeld's only diva-like perq was the uncontaminated stacked Jewish virgin Shoshana whatshername.)
There's also a psychiatric Method arc in the Lorre biographical material. He says he was so disturbed by his run-ins with the castrating bitches Roseanne, Brett Butler and Cybill Shepherd that he designed his next big star personna, Jenna Elfmann for Dharma and Greg, to be drama free. He also designed it to gouge Elfmann and the rest of the cast and crew out of their fair profits.
Having created the Jenna Elfmann drama from Roseanne's rib, Lorre went on to create the degenerate Charlie Sheen drama, complete with a vicious mother, self-admittedly modeled on his own, and peen 'n' poop jokes Lorre somehow feels are cutting edge. He writes, in the vanity cards, about how brave he is to make them in the teeth of the bad old CBS censors, while consciously promulgating the multicam sitcom production values of Jackie Gleason, long after the pomo singlecam era of Seinfeld has taken TV comedies based on the standups' personnas in a different direction. You could call Lorre's post-Seinfeld productions -- Dharma and Greg, Home Improvement, Two and a Half Men, Mike and Molly, The Big Bang Theory -- the fascist backlash against the Roseanne (content)/Seinfeld (anti-content) revolution.
All this is proudly based, I would argue, on the Strasberg method which pilled out Marilyn Monroe.
Here's the entry with that allegation:
Charlie, take a break dude. Go to Greece, Paris, China, look at great art and lay low. you got fired, dude. anybody can do your job, really. other guys are funny and not repulsive to intelligent women, though those shit chuck lorre lines could choke a fucking horse, and render any actor who recites them stone cold soul dead. No grown man could really look himself in the mirror knowing that he delivers shit jokes and adolescent sniggering over breasts and women's body parts lines to the Tea partier types who are big fans of Chuck's hilarious hijinx. I fired Chuck Lorre for being a big drunk on my show, and he went on to become one of tv's most successful writers (about dick jokes). Maybe Charlie can start producing porn movies now!!
But several hours later, Barr decided to put out a longer hit on Lorre:
I was going to guest on 2 and a half men once, but when i got the script, it was putrid, so they got cam manheim to do it.
Chuck got pissed off at me for refusing to be part of his brilliance, and insulted me in the nyt, saying that I "beat the wit out of him." Then, right after he did that, he asked me to make a videotaped presentation honoring him at a vanity dinner. I never really worked with him, as he was mostly drunk when he was on my show, and too busy making deals with my producers for shows that copied mine (grace under fire, and Cybil's show that copied AB FAB, which I once owned, and therefore sunk my hopes of producing) to turn in too many good scripts.
I feel sorry for Charlie Sheen, (and brett and cybil, both of whom were often out in the parking lot screaming at Chuck and crying) who has to not only be the bi-polar wizard Charlie Sheen, but had to toil as a tool for Lorre Enterprises Inc. and the preternaturally large Julie Chen's very old comedically incontinent husband, Les, the power behind cbs, the network of choice for the dentally challenged.
Worst of all, though, Charlie had to be so degraded as to mouth some of the shittiest dick tit pussy and shit jokes that ever dribbled out of an actor's mouth, rolled down his chin, and stained his shirt, thereby making ingesting knock out drugs a must in order to sleep shamelessly at night, and then snorting nose cavities full of stimulants upon waking to mask the soul decay that stared back at him in the morning mirror. After beating up prostitutes, and testifying against Heidi Fleiss, who supplied them unknowingly for his beating pleasure, Charlie was scouted by Chuck to help bring sexism back to tv and the culture at large, under a little known MKULTRA program designed to control the 'minds' of chronically masturbating males, ages 14-94.
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/03/roseanne_barr_charlie_sheen.html
Roseanne Barr defends Sheen, blasts Lorre
Roseanne Barr has defended Charlie Sheen in a post on her blog.
The comedienne wrote a post titled "charlie sheen makes me look sane (sic)" following Sheen's dismissal from Two and a Half Men.
In the post, Barr suggested that Sheen was not on drugs but was rather on a "manic high" and suggested that Sheen take a break from show business.
"Charlie is not on drugs, though he can get them from the porn star goddesses that come and go, but his urine shows clean - i think charlie is in a manic high, and is unable to get any drugs to bring him down anymore - his tiger blood statement is from that 'eye of the tiger' focus that manics have," Barr posted.
She added: "Manics can really work hard and play hard at the same time, until they hit a wall, and then they are in bed and depressed for a long time, so they start taking drugs again to get energy to work."
The former sitcom star also criticised Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre, the producer that Sheen made controversial comments about in recent weeks. Lorre and Barr worked together on Barr's ABC show Roseanne.
"Anybody can do your job, really. other guys are funny and not repulsive to intelligent women, though those s**t chuck lorre lines could choke a f**king horse, and render any actor who recites them stone cold soul dead," she posted.
The actress criticised Lorre's writing as "adolescent sniggering" that "Tea partier types" enjoy, before claiming that she fired him "for being a big drunk on [her] show".
http://www.datalounge.com/cgi-bin/iowa/ajax.html?t=10229579#page:showThread,10229579
MARCH 10, 2011, 3:46 PM
Sheen Files Suit Against Lorre and Warner
By BILL CARTER
Reuters/Reuters Charlie Sheen, right, has filed a lawsuit against Chuck Lorre, left, the creator of the hit comedy “Two and a Half Men,” and Warner Brothers for firing the actor from the show.
Charlie Sheen escalated his war with the creator of his hit comedy “Two and a Half Men” and the studio that produces it by filing a suit Thursday demanding more than $100 million in damages for first halting production on episodes planned for this season and then removing him from the show.
The suit, which was obtained and posted by the celebrity gossip Web site TMZ, is in response to the decision this week by the studio, Warner Brothers, to fire Mr. Sheen from the comedy, citing both his behavior, which has included drug use and accusations of violence toward women, and his comments about the show’s creator, Chuck Lorre, and studio executives.
Mr. Sheen’s chief lawyer, Martin D. Singer, filed the suit on Thursday in Superior Court in Los Angeles. In it, Mr. Sheen goes on the offensive, especially against Mr. Lorre, saying Mr. Lorre first stopped production on the series and then forced Warner to dismiss Mr. Sheen “to serve his own ego and self-interest.”
Despite the fact that Mr. Lorre himself stood to make many more millions of dollars if the show had completed the eight episodes eliminated when production was halted, the suit contends that Mr. Lorre refused to write and supervise production on those episodes out of an “egotistical desire to punish Mr. Sheen” and because he had better financial arrangements on two other comedies he produces for Warner.
The suit labels Mr. Lorre “the proverbial 800-pound gorilla” who could make the studio do anything he wished. Warner declined to comment Thursday afternoon.
In a statement to TMZ, Mr. Lorre’s lawyer, Howard Weitzman, said, “The allegations in the complaint against Mr. Lorre are as recklessly false and unwarranted as Mr. Sheen’s rantings in the media.”
“These accusations are simply imaginary,” he added. “This lawsuit is about a fantasy ‘lottery’ payday for Charlie Sheen. Chuck Lorre’s concern has been and continues to be about Mr. Sheen’s health.”
The action by Mr. Sheen’s legal team intensifies one of the fiercest recent legal battles in Hollywood and comes at the same time Warner and CBS, the network that broadcasts “Two and a Half Men,” are known to be seriously planning to continue the comedy — the most popular in television — with a new actor replacing Mr. Sheen.
The suit filed Thursday also includes a novel claim of damages on behalf of the entire cast and crew of the series for lost income because of the decision to shut down production this season, even though Mr. Sheen’s lawyers do not represent — at least at the moment — anyone else on the cast or crew.
To counter the claims Warner made this week that Mr. Sheen had breached the terms of his contract with his behavior and comments, the suit cites the studio’s eagerness to sign Mr. Sheen to a new contract in May 2010 for two more years on the series even though he faced both felony and misdemeanor charges at the time.
The suit contends it was only after Mr. Sheen began making disparaging remarks about Mr. Lorre — which included an apparently gratuitous reference to Mr. Lorre as “Chaim Levine,” a Hebrew variant of his real name, Charles Levine — that any action was taken. Mr. Sheen was “provoked into criticizing Lorre in response to his harassment and disparagement campaign, which had been going on for years,” according to the suit.
As evidence of that campaign, the suit included several comments Mr. Lorre wrote on what he calls “vanity cards” that appear at the end of each episode. Among those were suggestions directed at himself like “Go to an Al-Anon meeting;” one directed at viewers urging them to “avoid degrading yourself by having meaningless sex with strangers in a futile attempt to fill the emptiness of your soul;” and another asking the audience to pray for people working on the series: “Feel free to pick whomever you think is most in need.”
Copyright 2011 The New York Times CompanyPrivacy PolicyNYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018
Somebody frightened Roseanne into taking down her Lorre hit list post. I would be very very interested to know what she thinks about Mike and Molly, Lorre's latest, which is about two fat people getting it on. That is the whole concept.
Roseanne dealt with this a generation ago, the subtheme of a show with many more layers of real life content. She was absolutely vilified and treated like shit by the producers on account of it. Because she wasn't fuckable. As Elaine Benis, Julia Louis-Dreyfus says, was as bad as the boys.
This is the major reason TV is better than movies. It can be, sometimes, feminist.