hollywoodland

Sean Penn: A Prison Escape, The Night Stalker, and Madonna’s True Blue Bad Boy

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In this episode

In the summer of 1985, Sean Penn’s marriage to preeminent material girl Madonna was an epochal moment for ‘80s-era Hollywood. The bad boy from Bad Boys and the boy-toy pop superstar blissfully brought together the worlds of movies and music on a Malibu bluff overlooking the Pacific. But their subsequent attempt to make a movie together was anything but blissful. A wild film shoot in China would lead to even wilder things, like the time Sean dangled a photographer upside-down from a ninth-story balcony. Or the time he escaped a prison in Macau and had to have a pardon from the government negotiated by a former member of the Beatles. Or the time he spent in an American prison, where he found himself passing notes with a fellow inmate down the hall…one who happened to be one of the most notorious serial killers in history.