The_Hollywood_Reporter__February_07_2018

hugging me, telling me how much he missed
me,” explains Dykstra. “I could tell he was lit
up but in good spirits.”
Over just a few frenzied months that spring,
before being taken into custody in June,
Dykstra found himself operating as a Thomas
Cromwell-style fixer in the erratic Beverly
Hills court of King Charles. When the actor
ended up in an embarrassing cash crunch
while attempting to purchase film producer
Mike Medavoy’s Mulholland Estate house
for nearly $7 million, Dykstra claims to have
secured a hard-money lender at the last minute.
After Sheen went on Alex Jones’ Infowars
radio show and disparaged his Two and a Half
Men showrunner Chuck Lorre as “Chaim
Levine,” Dykstra begged him to apologize.
Sheen didn’t, and Warner Bros. Television fired
him soon after.
Despite his best intentions, Dykstra
says most of his efforts to act as the star’s
3
unofficial manager were met with resistance.
He says Sheen, despite his urging, snubbed
a $2 million cameo on the Australian iteration
of Big Brother and could not be persuaded
to perform his infamous “Violent Torpedo
of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option” speaking
spectacle as a Las Vegas residency. “He turns
it down to go play a bunch of fucking rinkydink
cities. It was crazy.”
Dykstra also cooked up a series of licensing
deals, including a vaping product called Nico-
Sheen and a caffeinated liquor, Sheen Vodka,
which were to be hawked on an umbrella web
portal titled Planet Sheen. He says that Sheen’s
personal manager at the time, Mark Burg,
and former business manager, Barry Klarberg,
kiboshed the whole thing.
“Lenny was a friend of Charlie’s who tried to
get more involved in his life, and I don’t think
he ever wanted that,” explains Burg. Klarberg
did not respond to requests for comment.
In a March 21 email to Dykstra reviewed by
THR, the actor pulled the plug on Planet
Sheen: “The pressure I’m under from my business
team to NOT pursue this with you, is
tsunami-esque.”
Dykstra’s tussles with Sheen’s circle continued
after he returned from serving out
his three-year stint. He asserts that Burg,
Klarberg and Sheen’s then-attorney Marty
Singer put the brakes on Dykstra’s most
audacious gambit of all: a complex $85 million
play to sell the note on what remained
of the actor’s Warner Bros. financial package
to solve Sheen’s cash crunch. He insists it
was sabotaged late in the game when they
realized what the document-review process
might expose. Before he could bring anyone
in on the details, “Marty put an NDA together
that was so vicious, so stacked, that no one
would sign it,” explains Dykstra, still fuming.
1 Sheen and his ex-fiancee, porn star Scottine Rossi,
in 2014. 2 The actor bought this estate from Medavoy
in 2011. 3 Dykstra was arraigned June 6, 2011, at the
San Fernando Courthouse on felony charges, including
grand theft auto and possession of a controlled
substance. 4 Dykstra played center field and hit leadoff
for the world champion Mets.
4
“I finally get one [potential investor] to sign
it and what do they send him? Dick. Nothing
relevant.”
Singer disputes the claim as “absurd and
ridiculous. The NDAs were appropriate,” adding,
“As far as I understand it, Lenny likely
had an NDA, too, and I don’t believe he’s living
up to it.” Dykstra responds that he doesn’t
“give a shit” about breaking its terms “because
I was saving Charlie’s fucking life.”
All of this time, Sheen’s drug use was worsening.
During the manically loquacious interview
spree in early 2011 that bequeathed pop
culture the catchphrase “Winning!” Dykstra
claims the actor was high on OxyContin:
“When [the pills] are at their peak, it’s a euphoria,
where you’re smart and you’re creative
and you’re quick and you’re invincible.” But by
summer 2014, Sheen had locked himself in a
crack den hidden in his mansion for nine days.
Sheen warned
Dykstra to
“watch your
front side,
watch your
backside,
watch both
sides.”
“It was right out of a mystery spy thriller, with
a sliding bookcase,” says Dykstra. “I walked
in and Charlie was standing there with a glass
dick — a crack pipe — in one hand and his
phone in the other. I took one look around,
there’s all this stuff, cool paintings and Babe
Ruth’s ring, and I said, ‘Charlie, I have to
admit, if you’re going to smoke crack, this has
got to be the best crack den on the planet!’ That
broke the ice.”
By Dykstra’s account, Sheen soon confessed
to him that he had HIV, which
he believed he’d contracted from a transsexual
partner, and that he was being extorted
for millions over the secret. Dykstra urged
the star to go public about his health,
as Sheen’s parents, Martin and Janet, had
already been urging. “I said, ‘You can’t live
like this anymore — this isn’t even living.’ ”
Dykstra contends that he was crushed
by Sheen’s last-minute decision to pull out
of a news conference he’d helped arrange
that November for his friend to get out in
front of the diagnosis — a full year before
the National Enquirer would finally force
the issue. It was to be held at Sheen’s parents’
house, with Hollywood publicist Larry
Winokur brought in by Dykstra to orchestrate
the crisis management. Winokur,
whose casting-director wife had hired Sheen
on Major League and Lucas, confirms Dykstra
and Sheen reached out to him about the plan,
noting the sincerity with which Dykstra
approached the endeavor. “Lenny played team
sports very successfully, and if you’re on
Lenny’s team, I think he’d give you the shirt
off his back,” he says.
By the end of that year, Dykstra had come
to believe Sheen was suicidal. Dykstra was
reduced to attempting to rein in his buddy
via desperate, all-caps-laden text messages.
“Charlie, you are a fucking winner!” Dykstra
typed during an exchange on the evening of
Dec. 21. “Do not quit on me bro! I KNOW YOU
ARE NOT A PUSSY!” Sheen replied, “I’m too
tired bro going away now where no one can
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
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FEBRUARY 7, 2018