Sean Penn Reveals That He Once Torched A Van With A Molotov Cocktail on ‘Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney’
For all the prestigious acting awards that grace Sean Penn’s trophy case, there isn’t an Oscar statuette in the world that’s worth more to him than the statute of limitations.
Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney. The loosely scripted, mostly off-the-cuff talk show just closed out its inaugural run with an episode entirely focused on teens’ issues, meaning that Mulaney just had to get the youth of America’s most cherished performer on the show — enter the 64-year-old Penn, smoking like a homicide detective while wearing what looked like a POW’s combat jacket.
Don't Miss
During the talk about “What Is on the Minds of Teens?,” Mulaney invited Penn to open up about his own adolescence, to which the two-time Oscar-winner replied with an insane story about protecting his turf on the beaches of Malibu by any means necessary, up to and including felony arson.
Mulaney, who would go on to fight three teenagers at the end of the Everybody's Live finale, asked Penn if, as a teenager growing up into Malibu, he ever found himself in a scrap. “Everybody did then,” Penn answered. “I might have won once in a while, but I getting fought a lot, yeah."
“We had this whole — we were meant to be good stewards of the ocean and not let people who were toxic from the Valley come and surf there,” Penn said of his Point Break-esque surfing turf wars as a teen. “It was, specifically, Point Dume versus anywhere else.”
When Mulaney pressed Penn to explain exactly what would happen if a teen from another part of Los Angeles County wandered over to the shores guarded by Penn and his friends, the actor replied, “Well, it’s better to be a teenager, because we’re gonna be a group that’s gonna intimidate you away. If you’re a big guy, you’re gonna meet my wrist-rocket sling-shot from the back, and then you’re gonna paddle all the way to Zuma while we go Molotov cocktail your van.”
As Penn explained, that wasn’t some idle threat — he actually did torch some guy’s van, “one time.” Penn reflected facetiously, “It seems kind of reckless now.” According to Penn, he could count on the sheriff’s deputies in the area to be relatives of either him or his friends, so he felt more than comfortable committing a class E felony over a favorite surf spot.
After hearing about Penn’s past proclivity for pyromania, about a dozen different paparazzi must now feel like they got off pretty easy.
