Actress Lindsay Lohan.
Credit: Reuters
According to “The Canyons” director Paul Schrader, working with Lindsay Lohan is worth all the headaches.
“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,” Schrader writes in an essay for Film Comment. “
“All the drama, the mishegas, all the stress — that means little. A director can shoot around misbehavior. He can’t shoot around lack of charisma. I just wish it was easier for Lindsay.” In fact, Schrader sees a lot of similarities between Lohan and one of her doomed role models, Marilyn Monroe. “Monroe and Lohan exist in the space between actors and celebrities, people whose professional and personal performances are more or less indistinguishable,” Schrader writes. “We call them ‘troubled,’ ‘tormented,’ ‘train wrecks’ — but we can’t turn away.”
Lohan andSchrader were dragged through the mud in a revealing (and seriously gossipy) article in the New York Times Magazine entitled “Here is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie” in January of this year. Some of the highlights of their three-week shoot, as exposed by the article? Lohan fails to appear on set (a sleeping pill taken at 3 a.m. is to blame). She is hungover (Lady Gaga is to blame). She locks herself in a closet, screaming (co-star James Deen is to blame).
Ah yes, that Lohan magic. That Lohan mystery. That Lohan train wreck.
Follow Metro’s Managing Editor Dorothy Robinson on Twitter@dorothyatmetro.
