Who's To Blame For Lindsay Lohan?

Lindsay Lohan is a popular figure on my blog, making very regular appearances for her deeds and, most of all, her misdeeds. I've always wondered about the spoiled brat mentality; those people who think they are entitled to certain things because they have a certain 'something', which in Lohan’s case is a level of fame; fame that is mostly now notoriety.

So I was intrigued by the NYT Magazine article, written by Stephen Rodrick [original article HERE and well worth reading] and his thoughts on Lohan; who she is and what she's become because of her parents, because of the Hollywood machine, and because of Lindsay Lohan herself. He was allowed access to the set of Lindsay's first starring role in a feature film in several years, the soft-core porn film noir The Canyons, written by Bret Easton Ellis.

It all began innocently enough. Lindsay Lohan met with director Paul Schrader--he, himself, in desperate need of a comeback--and producer Braxton Pope to discuss a role in The Canyons. They met at the Chateau Marmont, where Lohan was racking up a $46,000 bill she would end up not paying and  Lindsay sat down and said, instantly, “Hi, how are you? I won’t play Cynthia. I want to play Tara, the lead.” 

And they were off. Pope and Schrader had heard the stories about Lohan; the arrests, the house arrest, the rehab stays, car crashes, and criminal activity. Schrader’s daughter begged him not to use Lohan, and one of his casting-director friends stops the conversation whenever Lohan's name is mentioned. So you know this won't end well.

Still, Schrader, Pope and Lohan talk details: Lindsay will be paid $100 a day--you read that right--and an equal share of any profits; there would be no trailers on the set. Lindsay is contracted to do one four-way sex scene in the film and would have no vote in decision-making. Those last two clauses are nonnegotiable.

On the say of the first read-through of the script Schrader sat at the head of the table, with Ellis and Pope sitting nearby; the other actors, including porn star James Deen, Lindsay's love interest, and Nolan Funk, part of their onscreen love triangle took their seats. There was no Lohan. Schrader said, “Lindsay said she couldn’t make it today, and I told her that was fine, but I have an actress in Paris waiting by the phone.” He smiled, and then said, “She’s on her way.”

About 20 minutes later, Lohan arrived with an assistant following her. As she took her seat, across from Nolan Funk, he noticed that his name had been crossed out in Lohan’s script and underneath were the names of three or four actors as possible replacements. Ellis saw that Deen’s name also had a line through it. Apparently Lindsay thought of this as not being involved in the decision making process.

At the end of that day, Lohan headed outside to smoke, and stopped to speak with Stephen Rodrick: “I’ve missed this so much. I’m in a good place now. I mean it’s Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader! It’s a dream. When it’s done, I want to go somewhere far away, maybe Africa. Uganda? But right now all I want to do is work, work.” A few minutes later, she said goodbye and got into her rented Porsche and disappeared for a few days.

With filming scheduled to start, Schrader arranged for Deen and Lohan to meet him and discuss the movie’s sex scenes. Lohan canceled the first day but promised to be there the next morning; she never showed. Schrader and Pope texted; there were no responses, so Paul Schrader fired Lindsay Lohan before filming began.

From the NYT Magazine piece:

‘He went back to his room at the Orlando Hotel in Beverly Hills and left it to Pope to deliver the bad news. Pope finally reached Lohan, telling her she was done. Lohan began to cry and begged for another chance. Pope told her that Schrader had made up his mind.

Lohan headed for the Orlando. She pounded on doors until she found Schrader’s room. As she banged on his door, she texted him manically. Schrader could hear her crying but wouldn’t let her in. He texted her instead.

“Lindsay, go home.”

The hotel manager rang up to ask if he should call the cops. Schrader told him no and sat down on his bed. Lohan stayed out in the hall sobbing for another 90 minutes before she finally left.’

Later that night, Pope, Lohan and Schrader met at a bar in the Orlando. Lindsay explained that she missed the meeting because she had been discussing the script with Nolan Funk until 3AM and then took a sleeping pill. Schrader told her that if she had one more misstep she'd be gone. If she thought she was unhirable now, wait until he threw her off a microbudget. But then, rather than being worried about his lead actress and her casual use of sleeping pills, Schrader counseled her on the math of when to take sleep aids. It wasn’t about Lindsay, the person, it was about Lindsay, the commodity, and the movie.

But, Lindsay, the person and the commodity, also had a problem co-starring alongside a porn star. As filming progressed, she thought Deen’s performance would overshadow hers; and it did.

From the NYT Magazine piece:

‘She retreated to a walk-in closet a few feet from the bed where the scene would be shot. Lohan had just fired her assistant and was now holed up with an old friend named Gavin.

Schrader waited a half-hour and then went to see if Lohan was ready to shoot. Gavin explained that Lohan was uneasy working with porn stars and actually, truth be told, was uneasy working with Deen.

Schrader lost it.“The thing that’s going to explode from this film is James Deen!”

Lohan screamed from the back of the closet.

“That’s what I’m afraid of!”'

Lohan spent a great deal of time blowing up at director Paul Schrader [“I hope you got my triple chin on that one,” Lohan said. “That shot was hideous.”] and then blasted Deen for doing the same thing just once.

from the NYT Magazine piece:

‘The scene was to be shot at “magic hour,” the hour before sunset, and as usual, Lohan was running late. It had been an endless week of switching day for night, and everyone was on edge, including Deen.

He had reached his limit with Lohan. During rehearsal, Deen and Schrader argued loudly over how Deen was playing the scene. After Deen remarked for the fourth time that he disagreed with how the scene unfolded, Schrader screamed at him. “James [expletive ]Deen, play the scene as I goddamn tell you.”

The two stepped outside and talked for a minute and came back in with sheepish grins. (Later Deen told me, “We yelled at each other because we couldn’t yell at the person we both wanted to yell at.”) Lohan shook her head disapprovingly at Deen.

“That’s unprofessional to treat your director like that. Just very disrespectful.”’

But, Lindsay made have had her own reasons for disliking James Deen, and blowing up at him. Talk is that Deen, the porn star, was the most professional actor on the set of The Canyons, and, worse still, talk is that Deen’s performance far outshines that of “professional” actress Lindsay Lohan. In fact, both Lindsay and Dina went all Jimmy-Crack-Crazy seeing the finished movie.

From the NYT Magazine piece:

‘Inevitably, our conversation turned back to Lohan. [Schrader] showed the film to Lindsay and her mother, Dina, in October at his New York City apartment. They were both so furious about how the camera lingered on Deen that Schrader had to move Dina to another room to get through the screening.
….I asked Schrader if he regretted casting Lohan. He shook his head. 

“No, she’s great in the film.”

Schrader then told me a secret. Until the screening disaster, Schrader had been in talks with Lohan to star in a remake of John Cassavetes’s “Gloria,” about a woman on the run from the mob.

The director lighted up, childlike; hope triumphing over memories of being stripped naked. “It doesn’t involve a co-star. She would be perfect for it.”’

This is Lindsay. She’s a mess. She has problems with drugs and alcohol. She has problems with authority; she has problems with people she thinks of as ‘beneath’ her, like a porn star. But, and this is where I might drive y’all crazy, it’s not all Lindsay’s fault.

I kind of feel sorry for Lindsay Lohan. There was promise; there was a child star who could. Mean Girls is a great example of that; Prairie Home Companion also showcases Lohan's talents. But then her talents were swallowed up by drugs and alcohol, and ego; parents and spokesmen and assistants and "friends". Suddenly Lindsay wasn't an actress, Lindsay was a joke--a weekly joke, here on ISBL, by the way,

She’s got parents who coddled her, spoiled her, lived off her, and through her, rather than being her parents. And she was sent to work in an industry that doesn’t value the person for being a person, but rather for the amount of income that person might generate.

Directors like Paul Schrader coddled her, and gave her drug-taking advice so she could still show up to work. Producers let an actress who was being paid $100 a day charge a $600 lunch to the production.

There is no responsibility, and where there is no responsibility, you have Lindsay Lohan. But, Lindsay is as much too blame for this as anyone else. A spoiled child continues to act spoiled until they are punished; then they might change. But a spoiled child who doesn’t really ever get punished—think of all Lindsay’s issues and crimes and court dates, then ask yourself if you’d get the same treatment—will never stop acting out.

And acting badly. And being a bad actress.