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AS AN ACTOR, SEAN PENN ENTERS THE PUBLIC ARENA THROUGH SATIRE
Sean Penn, an Oscarwinning actor, has other passions these days. “I’m not in love with the job of acting anymore,” says Penn, whose films include Milk (2008), Mystic River (2003), among others. “In fact, what I want to do is write books.”
Penn fears the world is so overwhelmed with “content” that even great movies are quickly forgotten. But he still believes in words. Penn joins acting peers as Tom Hanks, Ethan Hawke and James Franco, as an author of fiction.
Penn’s novel is called Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff, a title not out of place for someone whose off-screen adventures have led to encounters with everyone from Mikhail Gorbachev (Russian politician) to El Chapo (Mexican drug lord).
Bob Honey, its volatile and alienated protagonist like/ unlike the writer himself, is on a hot tour of the United States and beyond, as a Trump-like figure known as The Landlord rises to power and Bob Honey longs to be “Unbranded, unbridled and free.”
Penn says, “I needed to step away from the news cycle some time during 2015-2016. It was occurring to me more and more that the debates I had found even myself part of, in the public arena were dividing us as a country more and more, that we entered the conversations now as threeyear-olds and to be in the conversation was to be a threeyear-old. The only way I felt I could respond to it was a kind of satire — to choose to laugh, instead of a vent, or instead of rage.”
About his favourite authors: “I realised after I wrote this book that my reading of fiction has been — and I hadn’t thought about it before — almost entirely mono-cultural. It’s almost been entirely American men, the authors I have read. I’m anxious to change that... and I find that my interests do go beyond that.”
He adds, “I was a reader of Louise Erdrich, but I haven’t read any of her writing in a long time. I’m a big fan of Sharon Olds.” Would he like to see a movie adaptation of the book? “A couple of people have talked to me about that. I think that if one of these talented directors really wants to do it, then it would be a lot of fun to see them go do it.”