2012 American film directed by Roman Coppola
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III is a 2012 American comedy film written, directed, and produced by Roman Coppola. It stars Charlie Sheen, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Katheryn Winnick and Patricia Arquette.
It premiered at the 2012 Rome Film Festival and had a limited release on February 8, 2013 in the United States, being the first release under the independent distributor, A24. It was a box-office bomb and has garnered a largely negative reception since its release.
Plot
In the 1970s, successful graphic designer and ladies' man Charles Swan III (Sheen) is dumped by his girlfriend Ivana (Winnick), and it throws his life into a tailspin.[1] He does not know whether he loves her or hates her or wants her back or never wants to see her again.[2] Along with his best friend, Kirby (Schwartzman) and his manager, Saul (Murray), Charles starts to suffer from nightmares, fever dreams of past relationships and hits rock bottom as he tries to recover from the recent breakup and tries to turn his life around.[3]
Production
If you've ever been through a bad break-up, all you want to do is think about it and process. That's kind of what the project is. A character study of a guy in this state of mind with Charlie as a very dynamic and imaginative character, so there's a lot of fantasy sequences and crazy shit.
—Roman Coppola[3]
Roman Coppola began development on the film in 2004.
Filmed on location in Santa Clarita and Los Angeles, California.
Music
The soundtrack of A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III was written by pop musician Liam Hayes, of whom director Roman Coppola is a fan.[5] It is Hayes's first and only soundtrack.
Release
First premiered at the Rome Film Festival in November 2012.
On January 8, 2013, the film was released through video on demand and was released in a limited release in the United States on February 8, 2013.
Home media
It was released on Blu-ray and DVD on May 14, 2013 in North America.[6]
Reception
Box office
The film opened at #64 with US$12,000 in its limited release at two theaters the week of February 8.[7] The following weekend, the weekend of February 15, Charles Swan III expanded to 18 theaters and gained an 81.6% increase.[7] As of July 11, 2013, the domestic total of A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III is US$45,350, and in Russia the film has grossed $134,473, with an additional $26,999 in Mexico.[7]
Critical response
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III received an overwhelmingly negative response from critics. The film holds a 16% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 56 reviews, and an average rating of 3.5/10. The site's consensus reads: "Tiresomely self-indulgent and lacking any storytelling cohesion, this Glimpse Inside the Mind finds little food for thought."[8] Metacritic gave the film a 28/100 "generally unfavorable" approval rating based on 22 reviews.[9]
Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club gave the movie an F, saying that "it isn't a movie so much as a feature-length perfume commercial for a Charlie Sheen signature cologne with gorgeous packaging and absolutely nothing inside."[10] The Dallas Observer said that the film "might generously be described as cut-and-paste – or more accurately as 'throw stuff to the wall and see what sticks'" and it was "a clunker".[11] The New York Daily News gave Charles Swan III one star out of five, saying that "you want to swat it away" and that "maybe with this out of his [Coppola's] system, he'll think up something better."[12] Time said that the film "does not lead to a deeper understanding of Charlie Sheen. It does, however, demonstrate his compulsion for poor judgment and bad choices. But weren't we already convinced of that?"[13]
Lisa Schwarzbaum, reviewer for Entertainment Weekly, gave the film a C and a milder response, writing, "The idea of this home-movie-with-higher-production-values directed by Roman Coppola is no less sweet for being unoriginal ... The execution, on the other hand, is perilously self-absorbed, a private party involving friends, family, too many fantasy sequences, and an abundance of costume and set design to create a notion of a stylized L.A. spritzed with eau de Playboy."[14]
