Though my proudest moment was the realization that “embarrassment is highly overrated”, I do feel a bit played out when I say that I am a Big Fan of some people—mostly actors, directors and Jay-Z. It’s fine to be a fan, I tell myself, but only adolescents put pictures on their walls and act a fool about say, Sean Penn. Hell, nobody does that over Sean Penn... His is not a hypothetical name I just threw out there either… Let’s just come clean. I’m Sean Penn’s biggest fan. I love him. I have a picture of him on my fridge door.
About Sean. How to begin? My love of movies is deep and so is my love of actors—as artists. I think that what they do is profoundly life-changing for those who watch (like me) and I think the good ones pour huge amounts their own humanity into the work; I find the profession noble in that way, sacrificial and alive and everything that art should be. It’s love: it’s hard to explain why you love something without sounding like a rambling dumbass. Anyway so I have deep love of many actors, Sean foremost among them. The year of “21 Grams” and “Mystic River” was a perfect year for me, for instance, because the whole world was loving Sean Penn’s greatness—there was no escaping his genius and you had to be some kind of asshole to miss how much he was laying on the line in those performances. For your benefit. And mine. Love that. Love him. This isn’t celebrity fascination though I can do that with the best of them, and this isn’t some one-sided fascination that precludes me from understanding that other professions are objectively more noble and more great. I have lots of admiration to go around, but I am human too, and so I play favorites.
Yesterday I was diligently fixing the tape that secures Sean Penn to my fridge, or rather a photo of him. After that, of course, I had some lingering Sean thoughts on my mind and they led me to have a recurrent Sean dream I have, which involves that lovely show, The Actor’s Studio—where a kid can be a kid, or rather where an actor fanatic can be made happy by James Lipton’s shameless enamorate rendition of the Proust questionnaire: what is your favorite curse word? Sean’s episode is one of the all time best ones of that show. So what are the odds that, after a Sean-filled evening and night, I would come to work to find the following Village Voice horoscope for me (courtesy of the great Rob Brezsny):
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Last Christmas Day, I had dinner at a sushi
restaurant in downtown San Rafael, California. The place was deserted
except for a drunk at the bar, me and my two companions, and the table
next to us, which was occupied by actors Sean and Robin Wright Penn and
their daughter. I thought of going over to compliment Robin on her work
in various films and to tell Sean how much I loved his articles in the
San Francisco Chronicle about his travels in Iraq, but I decided
against it. Don't follow my example in the coming week, Gemini. Express
your appreciation to those whose work has inspired you, even at the
risk of appearing foolish. It's a perfect moment to explore the
emotions of admiration and respect, and to pay homage to your influences.
That is deep. I hear you laughing at me, but that is deep. What am I talking about? I’m on my way to San Rafael, is what I’m talking about. I’m kidding. I’m not one of those people. I did write him a very sincere fan letter once, full of incoherent praise and appreciation. I, mortified at myself, tried to Google some fan mail address to where I could send the letter, and to my surprise I found a Malibu home address. I was shocked that it could be so easy to write Mr. Sean Penn a letter, but then I subsequently found out that this was his old address, for the house the he shared with Madonna back in the day and which, Google said, burned down. So I never sent the letter and I just threw it out. But in my James Lipton dream, the letter appears. And he loves the letter, of course…
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