We did the interview in his man cave, the place he likes to serve vodka and discuss in regards to the world along with his mates. There’s a comfy circle of blue chairs and a settee and a plywood espresso desk Penn made. The partitions are chockablock with footage and letters, together with one from his good friend Marlon Brando. There’s additionally a photograph of Brando marching for civil rights.
The seaside home isn’t your typical professionally embellished film star manse. Penn has hung up pictures of mates and his youngsters, actors Dylan, 33, and Hopper, 30, along with his ex-wife Robin Wright; watercolors by Jack Nicholson; medals that belonged to his dad, Leo Penn, who flew 37 missions in World Battle II and acquired shot down twice; and work by his mom, Eileen, an artist and actress, and Hopper. He has a collection of head photographs above the hearth of his brother Chris Penn, the actor, who died in 2006. There are classic posters of the films of his father, an actor and director who was blacklisted (turned in by Clifford Odets).
And there’s an image of Andriy Pilshchikov, referred to as “Juice” and the “Ghost of Kyiv,” a member of a unit defending Ukraine from the air. The charismatic pilot, who was killed in a coaching accident, was featured in Penn’s documentary.
There are a number of clocks set to totally different instances all over the world, together with Ukrainian time.
The room is wreathed in smoke, as Penn alternates between chain-smoking American Spirits and noodling round his mouth with a dental choose. Within the rest room, he shows footage of his mates smoking, together with Dennis Hopper and Harry Dean Stanton and, justifying his cigarette dependancy, the Charles Bukowski quote “Discover what you like and let it kill you.”
The peppery Penn is aware of lots of people don’t like him “out of the gate.” He additionally is aware of folks don’t wish to be lectured on international ills — and hectored for donations — by celebrities. He is aware of quite a lot of followers and fellow artists assume he’s a show-off and he ought to simply deal with fulfilling his early promise as one of many nice American actors and hone his expertise as a director, and cease dancing on the world stage with leaders, dictators (Hugo Chávez and Raúl Castro) and even one notorious drug lord (El Chapo, whom he interviewed for Rolling Stone in a wild journey Penn later conceded was a failure as a result of it didn’t spark a dialog on America’s drug insurance policies).
