Things have been especially weird in the entertainment industry lately. Big stars are falling, small ones are rising, shows are coming apart and it's all getting really difficult to track. Hell, we can't even rely on Justin Bieber's hair being all swept and dreamy anymore. That's why I have a multi-stage plan to rescue the entertainment industry in America from itself. It's not going to be cheap or easy, but I assure you, it's necessary.
The big news in Hollywood for the past couple weeks has been the very public, extremely weird meltdown of actor Charlie Sheen. Yesterday CBS officially handed down his pink slip concerning Two and a Half Men, though that was really just a formality. Everybody knew that the network could no longer sustain a tiger-blooded warlock like Charlie "Winning" Sheen, but that leaves us with a unique predicament. If Charlie Sheen goes away, we won't have anything as amusing as his particularly verbose style of insanity for a long time. We need to keep this guy in the limelight somehow, lest boredom overtake us all.
That's why I think it's clear that Charlie Sheen needs to join the cast of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. The permanently embattled Broadway show is mere inches from closing down. After being plagued with technical problems, safety failures and some of the most scathing reviews in recent memory, the show is now facing the likely departure of director Julie Taymore. Where others might see disaster in this latest news, I see opportunity. A production as quixotic and ridiculous as Turn Off The Dark doesn't need a pretentious spectacle-hound like Taymore at the helm, it needs a master of the inexplicable like James Franco.
Yes, there is nothing that could turn the fortunes of the Spider-Man musical and its rightful star, Charlie Sheen, around better than the involvement of artistic chameleon James Franco. The guy has a thousand little projects running right now and he's freaking everywhere in increasingly unusual formats. It's going to take his uniquely unpredictable touch to forge a new work of art out of the smoldering mess of Sheen and the biggest Broadway disaster in decades.
But there's one element missing from this pop culture alchemy. It needs something light, something special to balance the equation. That's why it seems overly serendipitous that Emma Watson, pixie-haired co-star of the Harry Potter movies, has announced that she's taking some time off school to concentrate on her acting career. Shocking, I know. We all assumed that Watson would really hunker down and focus on achieving a degree from Brown University instead of chasing the stardom, riches and ease of playing pretend for a living, but fate had other plans for her. Now that Miss Emma is ready to dive into her post-Potter career, she could really do wonders for the Sheen/Franco edition of Turn Off The Dark. She could serve as an airy, hopeful counterpoint to Sheen's dark intensity. A volatile mix? Yes, but James Franco can contain and focus it like a laser of pure art.