Sometimes the headlines just write themselves.

I watched the Charlie Sheen interview/documentary, AKA Charlie Sheen, on Netflix. It was exactly as entertaining as I could have imagined. Somewhere in the second part, Chuck Lorre describes Sheen as having the kind of dark charisma that Dean Martin had. That’s accurate. Sheen, even at 60, retains the boyish insouciance, the absence of shame, that made him a great performer. He’s fun to watch; always has been.

He lacks shame, but he does not lack guilt. He is upfront about his sins, the damages he’s done, the people he loved that he’s hurt. He shies away from nothing, pours his life on the table, and does not blame anyone else for his actions.

Which is to say, he’s doing the sober version of his post-Two & 1/2 Men Twitter and Live Shows. Then as now, there’s a compulsive need to air all the dirty laundry, leave no muck-covered stone unturned. The difference is that back then, he was triumphant, reveling in his bad-boy persona, crowing about Tiger Blood. Now, he doesn’t act that way, and winces when confronted with it.

The handling of this, I feel, missed a trick. For myself, I never gave a shit about his shenanigans or romantic dramas. Actors in Hollywood are self-destructive narcissists, who cares? Their lives are their own problem and really none of my business. it’s the art that matters.

However, there was something glorious about Sheen’s online meltdown, something that spoke to the people. Sure, 80% of it was pure coke frenzy, but it represented a refusal of the popular narrative, a refusal to be a good boy and do what you’re told. This was 2011 the peak of the Obama era, and the response to a famous man unashamedly speaking bluntly and calling out the powerful who sit and collect was like a drink of water in the desert. Yes, it was a mirage, sound and fury signifying nothing of value. But like sonar, it indicated what lay beneath the depths. You won’t convince me that Donald Trump (who appears in the doc, a longtime critic of Sheen, telling how he warned the parents of his last wife not to let their daughter marry him) didn’t see the explosion and ponder the possibilities.

He’s seven years sober now, a boring dad (and grampa) in Malibu. This is, in some ways, most ways really, a win, a redemption from the pit. But one cannot help considering what could have been. An actor with talent and good looks who got everything he wanted and dodged death’s final bullet is in many senses, #winning. But could he not have done more? What body of work does he leave behind? Sure, there’s Platoon, and Wall Street, and the Hot Shots movies are fun. But what else? Is Two and a Half Men for the ages? The Chase? Scary Movie 4?

And this doesn’t mean I need a quantity of Significant and Artistic Cinema. A lifetime spent playing cowboys was enough for John Wayne, and the fruits of it are readily available to anyone with eyes. Arnold Schwarzenegger talks like an Austrian Oak in every film he’s ever starred in, and I’ll rate his filmography above Sheen’s any day of the week. Even if you do consider Platoon and Wall Street great cinema, I’d rather watch Full Metal Jacket and The Wolf of Wall Street (or maybe The Big Short).

At no point in the doc, after discussing the work he put in for his big break in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, does Sheen say anything about the craft of acting or the art of cinema. It all takes a back seat to the hysteria. It’s like he never really cared about it, like it came to him so easily that it had no value in his mind. What else was there to do but refuse it, destroy it, over and over again, an act of meta-performance that became the real performance? Hollywoods Golden Heir burning his career to the ground, because why the fuck not? He’s more famous now than he’s ever been as a result, more famous than his father or brother. He got to live like John Barrymore and retire like Lionel.

And that’s the only story worth telling.