Sean Penn Brings It
For an actor known for his want of privacy, Marin's own Sean Penn seems to be making a lot of news lately. Locally, Penn has thrown himself into the murky world of San Francisco politics by filming a very short film coming out against Proposition L. The thirty-second trailer will play in local theaters starting this weekend. Proposition L, which bills itself as the "Save our Theaters" initiative, calls for taking $10.5 million that's earmarked for the SF General Fund and using it to buy, preserve, and run local neighborhood theaters. Now, you might think the usual suspects would support this initiative, but you'd be wrong. Pretty much everyone is against this initiative- the Mayor, the entire Board of Supervisors, the San Francisco Film Society- even the San Francisco Neighborhood Foundation. So Penn, along with other notable San Franciscan film figures- Philip Kaufman ("Quills," "The Right Stuff") and Peter Coyote (some stuff in the 60's that nobody remembers) have joined together to fight Proposition L. In the thirty-second trailer, Penn states that "proposition L claims to save our theaters. In fact, it would hijack $10 million a year from city funds and give it to a group that has never managed a theater and didn't exist until they wrote this proposition."
But that's really not where the action is. Not even close. Sean Penn, in fact, just might have set off one humdinger of a Celebrity Spat as it also involves Matt Stone & Trey Parker, the guys who do South Park and the makers of the upcoming Team America, a movie we are almost giddy about the thought of seeing (puppet sex!). We’re not talking about some lightweight Lindsey Lohan vs. Tara Reid battle here, we’re talking a bare-knuckles, knock-down, drag out spitball fight between two heavyweights. We're talking Jeff Spiccoli vs. Eric Cartman. Beef Cake! Beef Cake!
This whole thing got started when Matt Stone & Trey Parker raised the not so silly idea that people who don't really know what's going on in the world or don't care maybe shouldn't vote (and idea we think has some merit considering the people we keep on electing). This raised the hackles of Mr. Penn who wrote a "private" letter to Stone & Parker, a letter that soon found itself on the Drudge Report. In the letter, Penn starts off nice and polite, then quickly plays the "I know you're young" card, followed in quick succession by the "you'd understand if you had kids" card and then the "people are dying all over the world" card. After telling Stone & Parker what they can go do to themselves, Penn offers an invitation to take the two boys travelling throughout the Middle East.
In response, Parker & Stone haven’t said much, other than thanking Penn for helping publicize the movie. Then again, they don’t really have to say much because the taunting has already begun in the guise of the advertising campaign, a campaign that announces to the world that Team America is a movie Sean Penn doesn’t want to you see. We’re also guessing that Penn makes an appearance, or at least a puppet of Penn, in the movie. Which all goes to show you that if you want to pick a fight with someone, don’t do it with two guys making puppet movies.