The Penn is mightier
Rex Murphy imagines his own ‘interview’ with Sean Penn
The first time he escaped from prison, Joaquín Guzmán, the infamous Mexican drug dealer known as El Chapo, did so in a laundry hamper. It is not widely known, but that’s when Sean Penn’s first interview with the high lord and executioner of the drug business took place.
Hollywood’s greatest long- form journalist really prepped for the first encoun- ter. He called in Geraldo Rivera as executive consultant, and both lounged by the pool at the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas for days. They dissected Geraldo’s groundbreaking séance from the 1980s, with the empty safe that was once Al Capone’s, and took all the lessons that an empty strongbox and a false alarm have to offer the diligent interviewer.
Having worked out the details, particularly the tricky bit (Penn outside the prison, El Chapo inside — this was a real challenge ) of both getting inserted into the dirty laundry at the same time ( David Copperfield was on cellphone alert), they thought they had a real winner.
“It just didn’t work out for either of us,” Penn confided in me later. “Karma can be a real bleach sometimes. The bedsheets interfered with the sound quality, and besides we weren’t well situated. Either of us. He was head down in the cart. It was a challenge to position the boom mike, let me say.”
After they got out of the prison area and untangled themselves, Penn continued, “we both decided to call it a wrap. I sent the tape to Matt Damon for safe- keeping. Matt agreed the audio didn’t cut it, but nonetheless it was ‘ creatively uplifting.’ Said studying my ‘re-asks’ helped him a lot with his dead stare in The Bourne Dilapitation.”
The second effort wasn’t that long ago, and has also not been previously disclosed. It was in the now world- famous tunnel that Penn set up the next one-onone. “I went for the Charlie Rose approach that time,” said Penn. “Did a lot of research. Musta watched Waiting for Sugar Man 50 times — great documentary. Loved the poetry: ‘ Silver magic ships, you carry/ Jumpers, coke, sweet Mary Jane.’ I wanted to get a real feel for the street life. Listened to a lot of Marty Robbins, too. Journalism 101, man. You gotta know your guy.
“We assembled a great red rosewood table plank by smuggled plank, but the lighting was really sh-tty and I put the kibosh on the whole thing. Quality is everything in these matters and besides, the damn table got in front of that motorcycle on rails.
“Juan got really pissed for a moment. I thought he was going to go all Tarantino on me. Said he didn’t bring over German engineers and hire a whole team of deep ground excavators to get effed up by a damn rosewood table and a lighting crew from Burbank. ‘ This is a tunnel, you moron — not the Mall of America.’ He’s very expressive when he’s angry. A real poet. Like me, I suppose. I tried to distract him and talked a little about Madonna. That made him worse. He said, ‘ Hey, I just escaped from prison — Madonna! Keep this up, I’m going back.’
“We did make a roughcut,” he said. “I sent the outtakes to Charlie Sheen.”
They both agreed after the second attempt it would be only right if he could rest awhile, so Penn cut him some slack and told him to hole up and recuperate. It was months before Penn got the real interview.
It ran, of course, in Rolling Stone, offering us some of the finest English outside of Tiger Beat or a poetry slam at the Modern Language Convention. As was only right when dealing with the highest rank criminal in all the Western world, Penn offered the right of editorial approval to the drug lord himself, and Rolling Stone, in keeping with its recent journalistic standards, gave Penn 9,000 words to mystify its readers and downgrade the idea of journalism for a whole generation.
The real upside of all this, is that Guzmán’s vanity, wedded to Penn’s, and their common wistfulness towards a buxom Mexican soap actress, only led to El Chapo’s return to the cell he had so recently spent a fortune to leave. So there’s that. I don’t know what the future holds for Penn, perhaps managing Hillary’s campaign — if he isn’t already, considering its state — or maybe buying Al Jazeera America, not that the Sheik of Qatar regrets so deeply giving Al Gore $ 500 million for a channel boasting at most 30,000 viewers.
That’s not a lot. But with Penn in charge, I’m fairly sure he can bring that number down.
Just a note on George Jonas’ passing. I did not benefit from any real acquaintance from him, though he was once, in person, on my radio show Cross Country Checkup. That said, like so very many, I genuinely admired his elegance, his lucid prose, his manner and wit. And, from a distance, I admired ever more, his steadfast presence with our colleague Conrad Black, whom Jonas so faithfully stood by during the former’s tribulations. He was a living parable of true friendship, and that is as good memorial as any would wish to own.