A lady of the canyons
To say the least, it’s rare that a movie with a budget of $250,000 becomes the subject of a 7,600 words article in The New York Times Magazine. It makes a little more sense, when you know that The Canyons was directed by Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and directed American Gigolo and Affliction. More sense when you know the movie, a psychological sex thriller about LA bottom feeders, was written by Bret Easton Ellis, the gay novelist who gave us Less Than Zero and the infamous American Psycho and whose obnoxious Twitter feed sends many people into fits of rage. And they cast the troubled and troubling Lindsay Lohan and the porn superstar James Deen as their leads. Among the unsurprising revelations was that Lohan was incredibly difficult to work with; among the surprising was Schrader directed a sex scene in the nude to convince her to do the scene without clothes. When the movie was finally released in a handful of theaters and on demand, critics arrived with freshly sharpened knives. Many of the reviews have been savage, even cruel, while a few reviewers, like Variety’s Scott Foundas, gave both Lohan and the film raves. I don’t think it deserves either derision or too much applause. It’s beautifully shot, Lohan is good, but Deen isn’t, and Ellis’s screenplay is limp, lacking insight or taste. Continue…