Bret Easton Ellis, novelist (Less Than Zero, American Psycho) wrote the screenplay for the suckfest known as The Canyons, and he’s blaming Lindsay Lohan for its suckage. He’s not saying that she was bad in it. He’s saying that the problem is, basically, that she even existed. Here’s what he said on his podcast, via Radar:
I think where we went wrong was with the casting of Lindsay Lohan. Now I don’t mean she wasn’t good in it, she was very good in the movie. I mean that suddenly The Canyons has become the Lindsay Lohan film.
And Lindsay’s reputation followers her everywhere. And the moment that we casted Lindsay Lohan, the movie became something else. It stopped becoming the DIY movie that could make it into part of the trainwreck of the Lindsay Lohan narrative. And we thought the movie was ultimately going to step out of that shadow, that it was going to speak for itself and that people would be more interested in how we made this movie… But we didn’t. We didn’t step out of the Lindsay Lohan shadow, and it did affect the way the movie was perceived.
I think the hatred for the movie when it initially came out was so disproportionate to what the movie actually was… I think at a certain point, people were rooting for the movie to fail. And I think that’s why when the movie was eventually released, people were gleeful about massacring it.
Dude. Your movie? Sucked. It was like watching a very painful very slow very boring student film. If you’re gonna blame anyone for that, blame director Paul Schrader.
Did you see it? Thoughts?
Actually, I think he’s right. Whether the movie was good or bad will never outweigh the fact that it’s a Lindsay Lohan movie.
I just wonder what he was hoping to accomplish with such a statement. It sure won’t ingratiate him to the next leading lady he works with, and it doesn’t sound very professional. Is it actionable? Maybe she could even sue him over it- he’s essentially warned everyone else not to work with her or expect a public shellacking in spite of the quality of the actual project they turn out. After all the horror stories we heard about her behavior on that project, maybe he just wanted to lash out or something, but I have a feeling he will have trouble for his comments. Holding for tweeted apology…