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"FacebookPinterest\n\nBobby is a big ensemble film, starring Sharon Stone, Anthony Hopkins, Lindsay Lohan, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, William H. Macy, and many others. Call in a few favors\n\n I didn't have to beg anyone. Lindsay's agents were rabid in attaching her to the movie. Rabid. They wanted to give her an extreme career makeover. Other actors came in at the eleventh hour. Helen Hunt, between the phone call and her literal arrival onset: seventeen hours.\n\nYou use historical footage of Bobby Kennedy. Had you thought about actually casting someone in that role\n\n My father played Bobby in The Missiles of October. But I always find that when you cast an actor in an iconic role\u2026as someone as iconic as one of the Kennedys\u2026oftentimes it comes across as being inauthentic. You always admire the actors who try, but it takes you out of the picture a little bit.\n\nIt's been a long seven years to get Bobby made. You had writer's block, there were production setbacks, and the Ambassador Hotel was demolished. Then there were disagreements over your script.\n\n There were big brawls with the producers about content and about length, and I basically told them to go fuck themselves. When these discussions were coming up, fifteen actors had already committed. So to talk about rewriting the script was not an option. It would have been fraud.\n\nThere was one battle you didn't win. A producer named Michel Litvak came on board with money, and you had to write his Russianborn wife, actress Svetlana Metkina, into the film.\n\n It was the cost of doing business with this particular financier. Initially, she was slated to play the Helen Hunt role\u2026married to my father. But she was too young. And she didn't have any real command of the English language.\n\nYikes.\n\n Yup. [pause] So I started to research who this person could be. You figure, it's the Prague Spring, and Dubcek had started this cultural and artistic revolution, and so potentially there could be a Czech reporter at the Ambassador following the campaign. I created this role for her, and I think she's fine in the film. It could have been a lot worse.\n\nBobby touches on racism, immigration, and\u2026via Vietnam\u2026Iraq.\n\n Once again we're in the middle of an unpopular war with a sitting president from Texas. It's kind of insane. Look what we got after Bobby died. We got Nixon. We got Watergate. It's no accident that we find ourselves repeating a lot of those same mistakes now. The heartbreak of this picture is that thirtyeight years later, we're still in the same damn place we were.\n\nHow much of this story is influenced by your own heritage \n\n In 1958 my father was forced to change his name. First of all, he didn't look hispanic. And even if he did, to have a hispanic last name or latino last name was not popular. The same could even be said in 1980 when I graduated high school and started to take this profession seriously. In fact, I battled with my father about using Sheen over Estevez. He said, Don't make the same the mistake I did, man. This is your name and you're entitled to use it. You'll get past people and their opinions. But not much has changed.\n\nHow did your brother end up using the Sheen name \n\n Charlie was never known as Carlos. He was always Charlie. And I think, Charlie Estevez maybe doesn't have the same tone.\n\nI was listening to the speech Bobby Kennedy made just after Martin Luther King was shot. It's incredibly moving. And he gave it off the cuff! \n\n At one point we had leaders who were inspirational, who were not afraid to speak their mind. I watched some footage of LBJ talking about the war in Vietnam, and I think he was sincere. He talks about how every night he goes to bed with the pain of this war and the pain of the issues that are facing America. It was the night that he revealed to the American public that he was not going to seek the nomination for a second term. I just wish that our current adminstration showed more compassion. Right now it's a power grab\u2014having power so that no one else can have it. The pundits are gonna have a field day with me. You want me to write the headline Having dealt with Martin Sheen for seven years on The West Wing, now we gotta deal with his son. \n\nYour dad campaigned for Bobby Kennedy. Do you remember where you were when he was shot \n\n We were in Ohio visiting my grandmother. We woke up in the morning to that news. I remember waking my father up and telling him that Bobby had been shot. He started sobbing. I don't remember if I'd seen my dad cry before that. I was six.\n\nAnd you understood the importance of that day \n\n The news was on every night in our house. I remember watching the draft lottery one night and seeing my birthdate come out of the hat. It just had a chiling effect. I was seven or eight.\n\nWhat's your relationship like with your dad \n\n I respect him greatly, but I've gotten in huge fights with my old man. Years ago I did a movie with Anthony Hopkins, Freejack. There was a premiere and I invited my folks. The next day I was with my father and we were driving, just the two of us, and there was this long silence, and he said, 'So, what do you feel about the picture' I had just come off of a big publicity tour and I was feeding him the party line. It was fun. I had a great time doing this. I think the movie is terrific. And my father just says, 'Bullshit, Emilio. Do you really think that was good Do you really think you gave a good performance Bullshit.' We have a history of being honest with one another.\n\nHe brought you to the Philippines for Apocalypse Now. I heard you and Laurence Fishburne would hang out and smoke. \n\n First I was hanging out. Then I was invited to be an extra in the Do Long bridge sequence. But Fishburne and I\u2014we were bad kids, man. I was 14. Fishburne was 14. And he and I would take a jitney into Manila\u2014alone\u2014and spend the weekend. What were our parents thinking! It was madness. Marcos was in power. Martial law was in place. And if you were seen on the streets passed one o'clcok you were shot\u2014on site. There weren't questions asked. Fishburne and I would end up at places, it would be late, and we'd have to stay over for the night. At 14! It's funny in retrospect but when you think about it in terms of today's world, it's unfathomable. Unfathomable. I mean, I have a 22yearold son and a 20yearold daughter and I wouldn't feel comfortable with them going into Manila, even now.\n\nIt's been more than 20 years since The Breakfast Club. Do you still have the same friends from the early days in Hollywood \n\n I don't. It's not as if there was some falling out. But like I said, I don't go out to parties. I'm out north of Malibu, north of where the madness takes place. I've got an acre of land. I've planted grapes. I'm growing pinot noir.\n\nYou and your brother have taken very different paths. \n\n You think (laughing) Different souls, man. Different interests. I guess it depends on who you are before all of that happens to you. Are you gonna be that person anyway Are you predisposed to want to abuse drugs and alcohol before you become a celebrity with a lot of money and the access to it\n\nYou weren't on speaking terms for some time. What happened \n\n He was in a very dark place and he'd had a stroke. It was coke\u2014a drug induced stroke. His publicist was trying to cover it up and my dad said, Bullshit. Once again. My dad is like this fucking truth meter.\n\nSeriously, you never indulged in women You were young, famous, wealthy\u2026 \n\n (laughing) I didn't have that much money. I have less now. I haven't had a paycheck on this film since January. And I did it for no money. Let's just say it's been a very difficult decade. I've done a lot of things to keep the wolves at the door in terms of trying to make a living. All of my suits, man, are from 1991. What, I'm gonna spend $2,000 on an Armani suit to wear in my living room No fucking way. I'm gonna go grape picking in my Armani suit Directing for TV\u2014for CSI, for Cold Case\u2014came as a real blessing because it allowed me to unwittingly prepare for Bobby. And so I'm grateful for those opportunities. I'm scheduled to go back and do Close to Home in October and Cold Case in December and CSI: New York in February. It's great insurance and it also keeps that muscle ercised.\n\nWhat we're really talking about is perception in Hollywood. You seem to be OK with your place in the game. \n\n Various managers and agents I had coming in and out of my life were saying, 'Well, you know kid, it's pretty much over for you in movies and it's time to start thinking about going to television.' And I said, Well, since when is television going out to pasture Look at The West Wing. Look at what my brother's doing. Great actors are going to television. I want to keep acting. But let's not throw in the towel on Bobby yet. It's difficult to wake up every morning with a sense of purpose when the people that you've employed to be out there trumpeting your name and trying to figure out what career path you're gonna take don't even support you. The compliments that I've received on Bobby, man, have been backhanded.\n\nThey're surprised it came from Emilio Estevez. \n\n Exactly. It's OK. I get it. In this thirst for who's on the cover of what magazine and where this person ate and what time soandso took a shit\u2014I think it's not about talent anymore. It's all about one big giant popularity contest and that's what drives the business unfortunately.\n\nYou'd been married to Paula Abdul. Ever watch American Idol \n\n I don't. I think that that's part of the machine that I object to. Bush said we're bingeing on oil. I think we're bingeing on gossip. It's gotten so far away from the work. Now people are just famous for being famous.\n\nOne of your first films, The Outsiders, was a big ensemble. Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze. Were you competitive \n\n Impossibly. Whether it was a wardrobe choice or combing your hair a certain way, who could curl the most weight to get the biggest bicep, who was the best at gymanstics\u2014because Francis Ford Coppola had us doing gymnastics for the rumble. He wanted that fight to look like a ballet. We were all just trying ot outdo one another.\n\nYou and Demi had been engaged in the 80s, and play a married couple in Bobby. Was it difficult to shoot those scenes \n\n No. Demi and I\u2014we're old pros.\n\nNot even with Ashton on set \n\n He had read the script a long time ago\u2014before Demi did. I guess it was floating around his agency at the time. And then it was never explored beyond that. Later I said to her, We're still looking for Fisher [the hippie]. Is this something that Ashton would be interested in Just so that, if he felt weird at all about she and I working together, I wanted him to know that I wasn't excluding him. In fact, if he wanted to jump in we'd be more than happy to have him.\n\nTwentytwo major roles and you couldn't find a part for Bruce Willis \n\n Bruce and I did talk about him being in the film!\n\nInitially Bobby was set to open on November 22nd\u2014the anniversary of JFK's assassination. Who suggested that \n\n I raised concerns about it. I said, This comes under the heading of really poor taste. We moved off that date. We're now opening in New York and Los Angeles on the 17th, and going wide on the 23rd.\n\nEver want to get remarried \n\n I'm engaged right now. I met a great gal from Michigan. We've been together for twoandahalf years. We're getting married sometime next year. She's a journalist. We met in Malibu. She helped me plant my vineyard. We make wine in the garage."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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