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| I made this my background on facebook ironically, and people took me seriously. Um...urly? |
Good news friends, I watched
The Canyons (2013) so you don't have to. That's right I sat in a dark room, chains-moking, crying, and shaking for two hours, it was like the climax of an episode of
Intervention. I was at a party the other night, and people kept mentioning it to me, and at first it had seemed like something I had never heard of because I subconsciously blocked it out. But then things kept coming back to me, like an amnesia patient on a bad soap opera; Lohan, Schrader, porn aficionado James Deen, kickstarter, and then the Eureka moment came, and I almost had a hemorrhage.
Lindsay Lohan from fame-whore child-star gone horribly wrong, drunk driving, and general infamy fame, Paul Schrader from rogue student film generation and
Taxi Driver (1975) fame, and James Deen from hardcore anal porn fame collaborated on a shitshow funded almost fully by kickstarter because not even the most eccentric film executive in this godforsaken town would put money down on this project. It popped up that night on my iTunes menu to rent for 6.99$ and I took that as a sign. I put my hand over the 'rent' button and prepared myself for the worst. It was right before I left work, so I took a minute in the bathroom to have a 30 second cry, and then drove home, shaky already.
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| A still from the film. No, seriously. Now it haunts my nightmares. |
It was a warm Los Angeles Friday, and my roommate was away for the evening. I was all alone, vulnerable and scared. I cuddled our dog, and my favorite pillow and pressed 'play' and by the time it was over and my roommate had returned, my face was covered in mascara that had run down to my chin from the nervous crying, my hair was disheveled and I was rocking back and forth like a crackhead who just had their baby taken away from them by the government, grasping the pillow like I was in the freezing waters of the Atlantic with the Titanic sinking behind me, and it was my life raft/frozen dead person float.
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| Lindsay's signature look which I like to call 'melted Barbie' |
As a Warholian, even I was completely and utterly disgusted by the casting, which is in fact, very Warholian, and probably intentional on Schrader's end. Warhol, as some of you know, frequently cast porn stars, junkies, vagrants, and hustlers; all labels that we can throw on both Lohan and Deen, but he cast them to eat bananas sensually, get a blow job from the neck up, or sleep for 6 and a half hours, and considering both Lohan's and Deen's range as actors, that probably would have made for a better film, but Schrader just had to write in a damn narrative didn't he? And these motherfuckers that he cast actually had to pretend they could act!
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| Yes everyone stop talking to check your phones. It makes for good time filler! |
We haven't seen LiLo turn in a good performance since...well ever. And as for Deen, he's basically good at one thing, and it's below the waste. It was almost comical to watch them try to deliver lines and cry and be sadistic, weird, and fabulous if it wasn't so fucking sad. I don't even want to tell you the story because there basically isn't one. Wiki it, it's like a sentence. For someone who was as innovative and fearless to write something like
Taxi Driver over 30 years ago, this is the utmost in public humiliation. They should all be taken to the town square and put on a medieval rack and flogged for our amusement because this film was like experiencing the Theater of Cruelty, but not in an ironic titillating way, this was downright cruel, and it's a scar on the back of Los Angeleans, like they don't have enough as it is, because people will watch this thinking that's what we're actually like...and that's only HALF true! Usually I would recommend to watch something bad just for shits and giggles, but I wouldn't even watch it with a drinking game involved. It will just seriously depress the shit out of you. No reputable festival even allowed it to be screened because they didn't want they're name sullied. Way to make a comeback Lohan, and as for James Deen, stick to what you do best; no words, just thrusts.
