A Signature Charlie Moment In It's Always Sunny Was Stolen Directly From Sean Penn
"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is full of homages to other pieces of media, though some are a little more obscure than others. For every reference to "Die Hard" or "Rambo," there's a deeper cut to something like "Serpico" or "All the President's Men," and that makes watching the series a total blast for movie nerds. There's one reference that may have slipped by even the most hardcore cinephiles, however, and it has to do with Charlie's big moment at the end of his musical, "The Nightman Cometh." After the rest of the gang finishes singing "Dayman," Charlie (Charlie Day) descends from the ceiling riding a giant sun, dressed in a fabulous lemon yellow suit, and it turns out that the moment comes directly from... Sean Penn?!
On the "Always Sunny Podcast," Day was joined by co-stars Rob McElhenney and Glenn Howerton, along with writer/producer Megan Ganz and special guests Lin-Manuel Miranda and Cormac Bluestone, and they talked about all things "The Nightman Cometh." While discussing Charlie's bizarre final song, Day revealed that he stole the idea from a 1999 Sean Penn comedy, but it totally works.
From one obsessive musician to another
According to Day, he was inspired by the Woody Allen mockumentary "Sweet and Lowdown," which stars Sean Penn as an alcoholic jazz musician who falls in love with a mute laundress. Early in the film, Penn's character comes down on a big sparkling moon, which became Charlie's big yellow sun. Day explained:
"Descending on a sun. I stole that from 'Sweet and Lowdown,' where Sean Penn descends on a moon and has a great sequence where, you know, he wants to, he's making this big deal about he's gonna descend on this moon and then gets like, he's really proud of it and then a stagehand comes by and he's like, 'That's a hell of drop, man could break his neck,' you know, and then he gets nervous and his descend is so like — but I was watching that because I couldn't remember if we, if I did drop down or if I didn't."
Bluestone and McElhenney assured Day that he did drop a little bit, but that they cut away too fast for anyone to really catch much of it. Apparently Day had to be strapped to the sun rig for the final "Nightman Cometh" song, which meant that in order to step off of it he had to be unstrapped, necessitating a cut. That makes the joke a tiny bit harder to recognize, since Penn's descent is a total disaster, but it's still funny anyway. After all, who wouldn't laugh at the director of a play suddenly appearing on a big cardboard sun to propose to a woman that loathes him? Maybe in season 17, Charlie and the Waitress will get mental subtitles a la "Annie Hall"...