L.A. Man by Joe Donnelly

Author:Joe Donnelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Published: 2018-03-21T19:19:44+00:00

“Sean Penn, With His Own Two Eyes”

A version of this story was originally published

in the LA Weekly, September 19, 2007.

Author’s note: For awhile there, it seemed like Sean Penn was everywhere—kayaking to the rescue in New Orleans, railing publically, unapologetically, and sometimes hilariously against the Bush administration, and releasing Into the Wild, a beautiful film he adapted, directed, and coproduced. I admired Penn’s righteous dissent and his willingness to take action in service of it. On a September afternoon when we both seemed to need a timeout from our lives, we cruised around in his battered Range Rover, smoked cigarettes, shot pool, and discussed what it means to be an American in opposition.

Let fury have the hour, anger can be power

D’you know that you can use it?

—The Clash, “Clampdown”

The drive from Oakland to Mill Valley sends you across the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge. It’s worth the four-dollar toll for its breathtaking views of Mount Tamalpais, the sentinel of Marin County, and the gilded burgs over which it watches. Near the end of the bridge is another landmark: San Quentin State Prison, a place that teases the hard cases locked in there with a panorama of Mt. Tam that, from the prison yard, feels so close you’d think you could reach out and touch it. I don’t know if that’s irony or cruelty, but I do know prisons sure are given prime real estate in these parts. One of Sean Penn’s best friends is stuck there in San Quentin, maybe for good, and Penn cites this unfortunate fact as one of his main reasons for choosing to live in this corner of Marin County. He simply wanted to be closer to his friend.

I don’t think Penn cared much about being closer to the Acqua Hotel in Mill Valley, where we are to meet, a place that looks like it was dreamed up by a set designer for the James Bond franchise. Even with its backside views of a San Francisco Bay inlet and its sun-splashed interior, the Acqua feels sterile, its elegance—all clean surfaces, unmolested bright walls, lots of light, and sharp lines—contrived. It’s tragically hip, and it seems like an odd place to be meeting Sean Penn. It’s more like a place one of his characters would inhabit, like the bright and soulless loft Jack Nicholson’s bereft Freddy Gale retreats to for booze and bad sex in The Crossing Guard.

When Sammy Hagar, the man who achieved the impossible by killing Van Halen, pulls up in a black Maserati and emerges wearing extra-long shorts, bad footwear, and a T-shirt promoting some bunk product or event, and is urgently greeted by a severe blond publicist type straight out of central casting, the whole thing starts to feel absurd. I poke my cigarette into the air, thinking some dimension will surely burst. It doesn’t.

Actually, it does. About fifteen minutes later, when…well, picture if you will a sleepless and forlorn journalist chain smoking in front of the all-glass doors of the David Lynchian Acqua Hotel.

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