Lindsay Lohan’s 20-millionth comeback role comes out in August. I’m talking about the Canyons, that micro-financed Bret Easton Ellis-written, softcore p0rn film in which Lindsay was mostly drunk and high during filming. All you need to know about The Canyons was already said in that sad/crazy/funny New York Times behind-the-scenes piece published earlier this year. Basically, this film is a wreck and everybody is terrible (and drunk). But that hasn’t stopped the director, noted hack Paul Schrader, from trying to talk up his film by any means necessary. Even if it means playing into this ridiculous idea that Lindsay is anyway like Marilyn Monroe. We know Lindsay thinks she’s the second coming of Marilyn, so it’s extra-special when a hack director agrees with her. Schrader wrote an essay about it for Film Comment – you can read the full piece here, and here are some highlights:
While preparing and directing The Canyons I was reading James Goode’s book The Making of the Misfits, and I was struck by the similarities between Marilyn Monroe and the actress I was working with, Lindsay Lohan. (I wasn’t the only one so struck. Stephen Rodrick, a writer for The New York Times Magazine who was on set with us, titled his article about the film “The Misfits,” which appeared on the cover with the line: “This is what happens when you cast Lindsay Lohan in your movie.” Not even the Times is immune to the hurricane force of the LiLo phenomenon.)
Similarities? Tardiness, unpredictability, tantrums, absences, neediness, psychodrama—yes, all that, but something more, that thing that keeps you watching someone on screen, that thing you can’t take your eyes off of, that magic, that mystery. That thing that made John Huston say, I wonder why I put myself through all this, then I go to dailies.
Monroe and Lohan exist in the space between actors and celebrities, people whose professional and personal performances are more or less indistinguishable. Entertainers understand the distinction. To be successful, a performer controls the balance between the professional and personal, that is, he or she makes it seem like the professional is personal. It is the lack of this control that gives performers like Monroe and Lohan (and others) their unique attraction. We sense that the actress is not performing, that we are watching life itself. We call them “troubled,” “tormented,” “train wrecks”—but we can’t turn away. We can’t stop watching. They get under our skin in a way that controlled performers can’t.
I think Lohan has more natural acting talent than Monroe did, but, like Monroe, her weakness is her inability to fake it. She feels she must be experiencing an emotion in order to play it. This leads to all sorts of emotional turmoil, not to mention on-set delays and melodrama. It also leads, when the gods smile, to movie magic. Monroe had the same affliction. They live large, both in life and on screen. This is an essential part of what draws viewers to them.
Lohan has outgrown her adolescent roles. All those cute all-American girls with the all-American names (Hallie Parker, Annie James, Anna Coleman, Cady Heron, Maggie Peyton), they’re gone. And in their place is another all-American type, the tough-talking, cigarette-smoking, streetwise girl, the blowsy blonde—Gena Rowlands, Ann-Margret, Shelley Winters, Angie Dickinson. Yet shining from within remains the little girl from the Disney films—a sweetness that makes the hard shell vibrate. Just like Marilyn.
I’m sorry, I had to cut it off there. It’s offensive enough to see the Cracken lovingly compared to Marilyn Monroe, but to then extend it and sort of compare her to Gena Rowlands? Jesus. He must have been smoking crack WITH Lindsay.
Schrader goes on to say that Marilyn and Lindsay are different because of their surroundings and because of the changes in the industry. Schrader points out that Marilyn earned her status as an actress through hard work, and she maintained her status because of the studio system which protected her. Lindsay, on the other hand, lives in a world where she was given everything when she was just a teenager, and she learned how to make a living without having to “act”. And Lindsay doesn’t have anyone “protecting” her. While I agree with the basic point, that the nature of celebrity is different today and it would difficult for someone like Marilyn to thrive as an actress, I think using Lindsay as an example is a God-awful way to make that point.
Schrader then claims that it was a “treat” to work with Lindsay because she has “charisma” and a director “can’t shoot around lack of charisma.” I disagree with the word “charisma”. She’s watchable, yes. She IS. But it’s the watchable quality of a terrible car accident. And it’s been like that for years now.
Photos courtesy of Terry Richardson, WENN.
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