Emilio Estevez directs and co-stars with his real-life brother Charlie Sheen in RATED X

HARD CORE BROTHERS

B Y IAN S P E L L I N G

Beginning in the early 1970s, brothers Artie and Jim Mitchell made their mark on filmmaking and First Amendment rights. And they did so with, of all things, a string of porno flicks produced in San Francisco. As they grew famous -- on the spiked heels of such epics as Behind the Green Door, which starred their nubile discovery, Marilyn Chambers -- so too did their appetites for money, drugs and carnal knowledge. In the end, however, marriages shattered, egos clashed and one brother ended up in a body bag.

It was all just so... Hollywood. And now the sordid saga of the brothers Mitchell arrives on the big screen courtesy of Emilio Estevez, who directs and co-stars in Rated X as Jim opposite his real-life brother Charlie Sheen as Artie. Financed by Showtime Networks as a made-for-cable movie, Rated X will world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. "I'd never heard of the Mitchells before reading the script, but I had, of course, heard of Behind the Green Door, " Estevez says. "In fact, I'd seen it before I was of age. I knew about Marilyn Chambers.

The book (X Rated: The Mitchell Brothers, A True Story of Sex, Money and Death) and the script were sent to me and I just thought it was this extraordinary Cain and Abel story set in the porn world. It was a world I was not familiar with and didn't really want to know too much about.

"It's a fascinating world, though, and a sad world. These guys were victims of their own excess. I thought it was a perfect vehicle for Charlie and me. We hadn't worked together in about 10 years (since Men at Work, also directed by Estevez). We'd literally been estranged for the last 10 years because of our... different lifestyles. Mine has been much more sedate and mellow and I've not been in the scene. This movie brought us closer together. We talk to each other every day now and if we didn't talk for three or four months in the 10 years before the movie, that wasn't unusual."

Sheen recognized a good project, and a second chance, when he saw them. The most attractive elements for him were sharing the screen and taking direction from Estevez. "He's really smart," Sheen praises in his familiar gravel-laden voice. "He doesn't interfere with the actors if they're doing something good. You'll do a couple of takes and ask him for some direction, and if he thinks you're on the right track, he'll say, 'I don't want to interrupt what you're doing.' He has a great eye. He works a lot like I do. It's all from the gut. I did a TV pilot last year that didn't get picked up and I was kind of at wit's end. Emilio said, Let's go give this a shot.' It was the best material I'd been offered. Emilio was the only director in town willing to take a chance on me. I was a year sober when we shot it. Even though this town is forgiving and everybody loves a comeback, Hollywood still needs a couple of good behavior movies in the can before you get bondable again.

"I also wanted to take part in this historical presentation of these guys. The story always intrigued me. I'd been up to (San Francisco) several times in the late 80s and early 90s. I've met Artie a couple of times. I don't have real clear recollections of our time spent together because we were both in the zone. But I was impressed with what they'd done. After doing a little research about their background, I always thought their story would make a great film."

Estevez and Sheen poured everything they had into Rated X. They gave up their salaries in order to extend a 25-day shoot to 35 days. They both put on weight and shaved their heads in order to convincingly depict 30 years in the brothers' lives. "When they were about to shave our heads," Sheen recalls, "I looked at Emilio and said, 'This is no fucking vanity project.'" Estevez toiled to stretch a TV movie budget as far as he could, transforming modern-day Toronto into 70s San Francisco, not to mention shooting in 35mm, 16mm, and on the fly during a post-production publicity photo shoot, in 8mm.

"We shot it with every intention of putting it on the screen," Sheen notes. "We watched some of the Showtime movies. We watched that big NBC 60sshow (The 60s), which was just shit. We showed a couple of the Haight-Ashbury scenes from The 60s to all the head of the departments (on Rated X) and said, 'Anybody who thinks this is what we're making, you're fired right now.' We just knew we could do something that was a cut above. Showtime's motto is 'No Limits.' We took that to heart. We were really going to test them. I think they'll be proud to have it out as a film."

"In my mind, I never saw this as a TV movie," adds Estevez, whose directing credits include Wisdom, Men at Work and, The War at Home. "I pushed the envelope wherever I could, in terms of the language, nudity and sex scenes. I treated it like an NC-17 feature. We haven't taken it in front of the ratings board yet. My guess is that MPAA boss Jack Valenti will have a heart attack when he sees what I bring him."

Rated X promises another layer of authenticity that's simultaneously uncomfortable and, in a twisted "let's watch them remove the corpses from the train wreck" way, titillating. Estevez and Sheen have both already touched on it, it being Sheen's former fondness for the vices --drink, drugs, and dames-- that destroyed Artie Mitchell. "It was pretty intense on the set," Estevez acknowledges. "Charlie had a year of sobriety (before shooting Rated X) and every day we were smoking a joint, snorting coke, or had naked women shaking their moneymakers in our faces. Every day I thought, 'Jesus Christ, what am I doing to my brother? Is this worth it?' Our father (Martin Sheen) was very, very concerned. He thought I was setting the stage for Charlie to (relapse). "To Charlie's credit he looked at me and said, 'Man, there are no accidents. There are no coincidences. I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to do.' He was looking the Devil right in the eye. We also feared critical backlash for Charlie and his performance, in that he could be criticized for basically playing himself. But that wasn't the case. He created a very colorful character and, I think, a very authentic character."

Sheen doesn't beat around the bush, either. "It wasn't easy," he notes. "Some days were more difficult than others. I kept connected to my group back home, to certain people I rely on for sober and spiritual guidance. If things were feeling a little surreal, on lunch or on a break I'd call home and check in, just to be reminded of what I'd been through. It heightened my gratitude on a daily basis to do all these things as this addicted, insane person and then go home at night knowing that I don't have to live that anymore. They got their money's worth because I wasn't only the second lead, I was the technical advisor. 'Any drug questions, just go to Charles.'"

And now it's on to Sundance. "I've never been to Sundance," Sheen says. "I've never had a film there. I'm really excited that people will get a chance to see that Emilio and I are still both alive and kicking, especially myself. I hope people appreciate the performances, appreciate the story. I think they'll be intrigued by the directing style, by the visual look of the film. I think they'll get a sense --if we've done our job-- of a freer time in this country, when things weren't so Moral Majority, weren't so taboo, when there was genuine freedom of expression." "This is my 20th year in the business and I feel like I've finally been invited to the party," Estevez says of Sundance. "I'm absolutely thrilled. I was at the festival two years ago, but didn't have a film there. I'd basically gone to party and snowboard. In a perfect world, going this year with Rated X will help us find a distributor, a distributor that knows what to do with it, that gets it and sees the film's potential. I think it's very marketable. I think Charlie's performance is extraordinary. It's a quirky little movie that I think is really entertaining."

Article typed by Sean for PRESENTING...EMILIO