Sometimes a dead weight fixture of the celebrity culture turns a corner and reveals unsuspected talents that are very different from those that are most useful in the area where he or she has been flaunting his or her inadequacy all these years. George Hamilton and Leslie Nielson become self-parodying comedians; Ben Affleck, to the shock of one and all, reveals that God and nature meant for him to be a director. Now Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards, both of whom once burned brightly as a mouthpiece alter ego for Oliver Stone and a walking pin-up in Wild Things respectively, before sliding very far very fast, have found their niche. Neither is going to be winning any Oscars or mistaken for a rocket scientist any time soon, but it turns out that they were put on this Earth to star in one of the splashiest public divorces since the golden days of Joan Collins and Peter Holm. ABC News and Sheila Markikar provide a handy timeline of the ongoing breakdown in the Sheen-Richards peace negotiations, which took a rocky turn this week with the premiere of Richards's new reality show on E!, It's Complicated. "She is out there bringing the issues up again by appearing on TV; he should understand at this point that any communication with her has a risk of going public and that's true for her too," said Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred, who may or may not have offered her comments while sitting on a lawn chair on Rodeo Drive next to a cardboard sign reading, "WILL TALK ABOUT CELEBRITIES' LEGAL PROBLEMS FOR FOOD". "Obviously, it's the divorce from hell."
Richards, 37, and Sheen, 42, married in 2002 and filed for divorce in April of 2006. Their legal battles, which have now been going on for half as long as the marriage did, center on custody of their two daughters, thee-year-old Sam and two-year-old Lola. But a close examination of the evidence makes you wonder if, parental issues aside, these kids don't still have deep feelings towards one another, one way or the other. "Sheen," writes Markikar, "accused Richards of asking for his sperm; Richards called said sperm 'prostitute-tranny infested.' Sheen claimed Richards calls him for no reason; Richards said Sheen sent her a text message telling her to 'get cancer' and 'rot in hell'." She considered sending him a text message back telling him to start looking like a scary lesbian with dyed black hair and a botched face lift so that he'd be reduced to taking a job in a sitcom with the guy who played Duckie, but then she realized that there are things no one should ever say to the father of one's children. There have been lulls in the action since 2006, period when both parties tried to make nice and showed that they were getting on with their lives by going on talk shows and refusing to shut up about their ex. But then things flare up again, with shrapnel flying in the direction of innocent bystanders, such as their kids and Richie Sambora. Sheen has been engaged since last year to Brooke Mueller, a real estate investor who refuses to comment on rumors that she's just using him to get to Duckie. It was around that time that Richards told Harper's Bazaar that she and her ex-husband may have been incompatible because, "I've never done drugs, never been around a prostitute, never known any porn stars. I couldn't even fathom that lifestyle. I grew up in Illinois, not L.A." (Maybe Richards used a stunt double for every minute of her performance in Wild Things except for saying the line, "It's warm today.") Now things are flaring up again because of the E! show; Sheen, having failed to get a court order barring Richards from allowing their kids to be shown on-camera, issued a call for a boycott through People magazine. (For her part, Richards, promoting the series on Larry King, made this clarifying statement: "I have nothing against Charlie's sperm...but I don't want anymore of it." Dissatisfied with this response, Sheen told ABC "that he's going to get a 'computer DNA expert' to prove on live television that Richards did indeed e-mail Mueller asking for Sheen's sperm." It is good that, this election year, our C-list celebrities are doing what they can to keep Americans focused on the issues that matter.