After Charlie Sheen’s professional life fell apart in front of the whole world, he took his show on the road — the road straight to his people.
The actor’s now infamous Twitter posts and his poorly produced online TV episodes were only the start of his self-obsessed highway. The ridiculed “Violent Torpedo of Truth” tour, which plays the Wells Fargo Theatre on tonight, has driven Sheen — and the rest of us — even further in a show of just how weirdly accessible celebrities have gotten in the last few years.
It’s not just Facebook pages, but actual, in-person tours that TV and movie stars are increasingly using to further their careers, push their agendas and develop new business.
“There’s no better way to connect with your fans than being in the same room as them,” said Justin Levy, a Denver-based promoter with Mills Entertainment, a company that produces several celebrity tours. “It’s a pretty amazing opportunity for a lot of these artists.”
If Sheen’s breakdown had happened a decade ago, we would have seen the edited clips on “Good Morning America” and that’s it — until the recovery. But these days, there’s a whole system set up for taking the show live.
Think about the triumphant, live-in-person underdog reinvention of Conan O’Brien and the TV-to-concert reincarnations of “Glee” and “American Idol.” Even the ship captains from the series “The Deadliest Catch” and chef Buddy Valastro from “Cake Boss” have gone on tour.
The routine: They will tell stories or answer questions, sing, dance, flirt, joke, show films, often with live music as part of the mix.
Sheen certainly gleaned a lesson from them all — most obviously O’Brien, who toured extensively when his “Tonight Show” was dumped by NBC.
Sheen’s tour, of course, is different. The failures of his anecdote- heavy act have been documented plentifully. But there is a way to do these kinds of shows right. And this relatively new live-entertainment spectacle has added even more depth and dimension to our modern, if expansive, definition of a concert.
“Sometimes it’s obvious,” said Mike Mills, the president of New York-based Mills Entertainment, “like the ‘Last Comic Standing’ tour we do for NBC. It’s a reality show, but it’s the finalists of a stand-up comedy competition. Other times it’s less obvious, like with ‘The Cake Boss,’ which has been a really successful tour for us. Buddy really delivers on stage, even if it’s not obvious to some people to go and see him live.”
A unique experience
Mills has produced shows for a diverse performer base including comedian Chelsea Handler, dog whisperer Cesar Millan and real housewife of New York Bethenny Frankel. (He doesn’t handle Sheen’s tour.) The public wants to be in the same room as these celebs, and he’s all about making that happen.
It’s happening in Colorado, where Levy telecommutes for Mills after his stints at Comedy Works, House of Blues Concerts and other Denver entertainment companies. Mills’ “Cake Boss” show sold out the Paramount Theatre last November, and its “Captains’ Tour” — which features three captains from “The Deadliest Catch” — is slated for a July 22 show at the Pikes Peak Center in Colorado Springs.
Well-known authors have consistently toured, the likes of David Sedaris and Anthony Bourdain, but only in the past decade have we seen shows such as “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” hit the road. “The Guy Fieri Road Show”? It wouldn’t have happened a decade ago.
“Some of these personalities, like the captains from ‘The Deadliest Catch,’ these are not paid actors or Hollywood-type people,” said Levy. “They’re true, salt-of-the- Earth fishermen, and it’s a unique experience for both sides — the fan who gets to see the never-before-seen home videos they shot on their boat, and the captains who get to see these folks who they would have never interacted with had they not been on the TV show.”
For Capt. Andy Hillstrand, the skipper of the 298-ton Time Bandit crab boat, the live shows are just another one of life’s challenges. Can he speak in front of 2,000 people? Can he play his original songs in front of a house that big? Indeed. And when it comes off like an intimate conversation, they know they’ve done something right, he said.
“These shows are almost like sitting around a bar with us,” Hillstrand said. “On TV, they only see 43 minutes of seven boats. They see this little glimpse of what’s going on. But at these shows, they hear stories they’d never hear.”
While some might not want to sit around a bar with Sheen, they might want to hear his stories. Fans are after that connection with their favorite stars — that opportunity for eye contact, a moment.
Levy is a self-professed “gleek” — a fan of TV’s “Glee” — and he said he was disappointed when the show’s live tour skipped Denver.
” ‘Glee’ is a perfect example,” he said. “I’m a fan, and there are millions of fans around the country, and a chance to see these personalities that you get to know a little bit on a weekly basis and have that interactive experience with live is something pretty cool.”
TV screen to rock scene
Suddenly your favorite scripted TV show — or that addictive reality TV program — is like a rock concert.
“It’s similar to music in that you get to bond with your fellow fans,” Levy said. “You get to have that experience together as opposed to just in your own living room.”
And these TV celebs, whether it’s Capt. Andy Hillstrand or warlock Charlie Sheen, are our new rock stars. But what separates “The Deadliest Catch” tour from Sheen’s “Violent Torpedo of Truth” tour? Preparation, mainly.
“The reality is that we’ve worked with these guys to shape a really great show,” Mills said. “When we do it right, we start six to 12 months out, find the right venues, book a couple of limited dates to test the marketing and the creative on a show, and then we go dark and tweak the show. To really do it right, it takes time.”
It’s no secret that Sheen rushed his tour to production. His professional situation worsened in January, and that continued through early March. He announced the tour in mid-March, and he was playing his first date by early April.
“It rolled out in very short order, and when I heard about the tour, I thought, ‘This seems like it could be a train wreck,’ ” Mills said. “But I didn’t know what skills he had up his sleeve. Maybe he’d done some public speaking or something?”
Sheen’s tour has gotten progressively better, critics say. But the show that Denver fans will see on this evening will be unique compared with any other concert he’s given — and that’s part of the beauty of these stars entering the always-unpredictable live arena. Unlike their televised counterparts, every stop gets a unique take.
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com
Charlie Sheen.”My Violent Torpedo of Truth” Tour.
Wells Fargo Theatre, with special guests. 8 p.m. Tonight. $62.45-$106.50.
