Pretty cool gambit – by chipping in to fund part of the film on kickstarter, you get to make some input on the casting decisions. I’ve always wanted to cast a Paul Schrader film.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1094772583/the-canyons
that is very interesting ARI. For an old dude Schrader is game at trying new things…. which include his leading lady being Lohan????
http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/bret-easton-ellis-says-lindsay-lohan-will-star-opposite-pornstar-james-deen-in-paul-schraders-the-canyons-wants-to-adapt-fifty-shades-of-grey-for-david-cronenberg-20120612?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
Bump.
so apparently know she is on sick leave. Good luck Mr. Schrader.
here is what happens when you cast lindsay lohan in your movie
the film is finished but it was rejected by sundance and is set to be auctioned this month. could be the last chance for everyone involved (except probably james deen) and it looks like a massive trainwreck
the movie will be a cult hit and all will be forgiven
dp
you heard it here first folks ^
I started a thread on it sometime back when the trailer first came out.
the guilty pleasure types on here including me thought it looked great.
undeniable fun
better than what usually passes for fun around here (Django for instance)
I read the article and still want to see the film, but disagree with the notion of remaking Gloria for Lohan’s sake. Do you want Cassavetes to crawl out of his grave and strangle you?
“here is what happens when you cast lindsay lohan in your movie”
!
What a fascinating article. Makes me even more excited to see the film – as train-wreck-y as it might be. Then again, I was stupid enough to help fund it but I have an unhealthy fascination with Easton Ellis – a writer I can’t possibly defend but I read everything he writes – and am waiting for Schrader’s comeback film.
What an insightful and gripping article. It really details the difficulty of making a film on a shoestring budget with uncooperative stars. He doesn’t come off perfectly (just raffle off the damn tablets, Paul), but I felt sympathetic towards Schader after reading the article. Sure, he knew to expect some difficulty from Lohan, but her behavior is absurdly unprofessional and counterproductive by any standard. Schader just wanted to get the film made, because this is likely his final chance in the movie business. It’s probably a terrible film and Bret Easton Ellis is a washed-up superdouche who wrote a few great novels many moons ago, but for Schader’s sake, I hope The Canyons turns a profit.
Sounds like a completely cynical exercise in filmmaking. If real life worked like a Ellis novel, this project would have worked out perfectly. Oh well.
I was close to making a film before I got sick and I was talking to porn stars.
I think some are great actors and they deserve a chance at mainstream if that is what they want plus they come with a built in audience
Could never figure Schrader’s interest as this seems a completely cynical exercise in every other regard. That said, if real life worked like a Ellis novel, this would have worked perfectly. Oh well.
I’d say it sounds like more the opposite of cynicism. Schrader’s idealistic faith that he could work with Lohan and his desire to get a film made no matter what for a small fraction of the budget that he’s used to working with (and it’s not like he’s dealing with big budgets – but this one has something like 1/50th of the budget of The Walker even!). And Lohan isn’t stunt casting. She has talent and probably older male directors have this perverse idea that they can “save” her (her career at least). And even the choice of Deen was more some kind of weird Ellis-ism. Anyway, it’s hard to imagine that The Canyons could be possibly worse than The Informers.
Besides, if real life worked like an Ellis novel, they’d all be, like, dead (except for James Deen).
I was close to making a film before I got sick and I was talking to porn stars.
I think some are great actors and they deserve a chance at mainstream if that is what they want plus they come with a built in audience
I get weirded out watching pornstars in mainstream ventures. as George Costanza would say, worlds colliding. I like my fantasy world to remain separate from my cinephile self.
there was a constant battle between the intellectual me and the depraved me while watching Soderbergh’s GFE. random scene making me think dirty thoughts. just uncomfortable. thanks to my libido.
dp
heh
edit- can some cliffs the article? was it basically Lindsay being a pain in the ass on set?
Right, I mean in every regard other than Schrader’s involvement. The strange things for Schrader is that he seems to have ended up casting himself in a real-life version of one of his protags—-he’s probably more Jake Van Dorn at this point than Travis Bickle.
“they’d all be, like, dead (except for James Deen).”
That’s working perfectly in Ellis’s world.
anyone read Lunar Park
I think its his masterpiece
Rejected by Sundance?!?!?! Jesus, that doesn’t bode well at all!
Schrader and Ellis are both hit and miss. This looks more miss imo, but i won’t judge it until i finally see it.
I’m surprised his career as a director has lasted this long really. Most of his movies are flops(at the box office).
“Rejected by Sundance?!?!?! Jesus, that doesn’t bode well at all!”
Honestly, I would rather watch a film rejected by Sundance than one that won an award at Sundance. Compare, for example, David Gordon Green’s George Washington – rejected from Sundance – with every film that won an award at the 2000 competition. But, yeah, considering Schrader’s last success (critical or otherwise) was probably Affliction, it’s been a while for him and you can smell the desperation with this one. I quite liked The Walker though and I know you liked Auto Focus. I should catch up on Adam Resurrected. It’s actually a great novel but I fear unadaptable.
“anyone read Lunar Park”
Lunar Park has a truly inspired opening chapter – probably his best moment as a writer – but then dragged as it shifts from metafiction to Stephen King homage. I’d call Glamorama his masterpiece but I’m likely one of the last people still waiting for the Roger Avary adaptation.
“The strange things for Schrader is that he seems to have ended up casting himself in a real-life version of one of his protags”
Yeah, there’s some real tragicomic pathos in a 66 year old who feels compelled to strip naked to coax his leading lady out of a locked room. It might be one of those cases where the making of the film is infinitely more exciting than the resulting product (in a Devil’s Candy kind of way).
@ DENNIS BRIAN
It is great and I love all of his books, to be honest, and I do know he’s not the end-all-be-all of writing but he was a voice for how I felt in my adolescence.
Being that it was one of my favorite authors coming together with one of my favorite filmmakers, I could hardly believe it was happening at first. I think it might turn out as something other than the overall expectations have assumed (some hack at The Guardian was judging the film by its spoof trailers to be the “most pointless film of 2013”) but I don’t know. I liked when I read Ellis’ response, where he felt some dissatisfaction with Schrader taking his script and making it into “a Paul Schrader film.” Reminds me of when Morgan Creek was dissatisfied with him making their Exorcist prequel into his own film…affirms to me again and again why he’s a favorite of mine, because he can’t bend himself to the conformist mold of Hollywood today enough to hinder his own creative outlook, or to cater entirely subservient to another writer. Consider it Pyrrhic of him, but I think his films of the last decade (including The Walker and Adam Resurrected, where he got some memorable performances out of Woody Harrelson and Jeff Goldblum respectively) are far better than much of what passes for exellence these days (cut it any way you want but, for instance, The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers are NOT classics and I think my generation deserves better as an overall audience) regardless of gross or overall acclaim. I have a lot of admiration for both Schrader and Ellis for attempting this, and it is not Schrader’s first outing with disasterous surroundings (recall the scuffles on Blue Collar, George C. Scott insisting he never make another film after Hardcore, his affair with Nastassja Kinski during Cat People…to name a few), and while I can understand people having a hard time with Ellis as he is (he’s an acquired taste, in prose and person evidently but it isn’t suprising) I think his writing has due merit to be fairly depicted if not ultimately justified onscreen.
I had hoped they’d cast mostly unknowns for the roles and hearing Lohan was cast made me cringe a little but, having known Schrader’s abilities in the past, I felt it could work and I still do, despite what a nightmare came about on set. At least he didn’t – though obviously the temptation was there! – resort directly to the Clouzot way of handling actors. From the article it seems everyone is trying to deliver some degree of fair play (in their own ways) and from what it reads it would seem Lohan is at least aware of how her being involved (and uninvolved) impacts the overall outcome of the picture and (as well as it could be suggested) was trying somewhat to help make it work. And who knows, maybe it might come off well and they might do another project together…so has gone a lot of tumultuous working relationships in film.
I’d like to see both Schrader and Ellis do more after this, either together or on their own.
That article made me cringe and woozy. It was one big parade of desperation from a group of people in everybody’s rear view mirror, except maybe Deen, who I have no idea if he’s still in demand in his industry. Lohan does not have the same ability to come back from troubles.
Parts of the Walker were really interesting. Affliction was the last work that resonated with me.
I’ve tuned out Ellis and his redundant Bennington decadent privilege train. It’s the same story and it’s never going to go any deeper than horrible people acting horribly.
This would have made a better documentary about delusion.
“The Walker” is indeed teriffic.
“The Canyons” looks to be a classic bad “good idea.”
Ari: Autofocus was well received by critics; it just didn’t make any money.
heard mixed reports about Glamorama. it is long, and i find Ellis’ longer works harder to get through because they are so repetitive.
Less Than Zero and Rules Of Attraction are my two favs. If American Psycho was 100-150 pages shorter it would have been my favourite
Charles Ziegler-Hartmann
I don’t have anything against James Deen – don’t know enough about him to have anything against him – but indeed what a dumb game it is…