Lindsay in "The Canyons"

If you enjoy tales about raucous former child-stars, has-been directors, boy-next-door porn actors, and what's new in financing on the Indie scene, this in-depth article is for you. Stephen Rodrick recounts what he saw during the filming of The Canyons: 

Schrader thinks she’s perfect for the role. Not everyone agrees. Schrader wrote “Raging Bull” and “Taxi Driver” and has directed 17 films. Still, some fear Lohan will end him. There have been house arrests, car crashes and ingested white powders. His own daughter begs him not to use her. A casting-director friend stops their conversation whenever he mentions her name. And then there’s the film’s explicit subject matter. Full nudity and lots of sex. Definitely NC-17. His wife, the actress Mary Beth Hurt, didn’t even finish the script, dismissing it as pornography after 50 pages. She couldn’t understand why he wanted it so badly.

...Schrader goes over some ground rules; no trailers on set and one contractually obligated, four-way sex scene. Oh, another thing, Schrader adds: he will not try to sleep with her. This was probably a more relevant point in 1982, but no matter. Lohan stands up and says goodbye, telling everyone how excited she is to be working with them. She leaves the restaurant, followed by her mother and the mysterious man with the presents. 

...Schrader knows he should be terrified, but he’s as giddy as the son of dour Calvinists can be.

“I think this is going to work.”

If Schrader wasn’t worried about Lohan’s reputation, it might be because he is familiar with dysfunction. As a boy, his mother showed him what hell felt like by shoving a needle into his thumb. His father lobbied to prevent “The Last Temptation of Christ,” a film his son wrote, from playing in their hometown, Grand Rapids, Mich. After his father died, Schrader found that he owned VHS tapes of all of his films, but none of them had been opened. In his 20s, Schrader slept with a gun under his pillow because he could fall asleep only if he knew there was a way out. Now he never travels without thousands of dollars in the currency of half a dozen countries.

...He thought his future lay in pictures that would not only play indie theaters but also be available on video-on-demand the same day. Recent movies like “Bachelorette,” with Kirsten Dunst, and “Arbitrage,” a Richard Gere thriller, made a comfortable profit that way. Schrader hoped to follow that model, but on a skimpier budget. He wrote his two partners a manifesto of sorts last January:

“The script has to be multicharactered, relationship-based, full of sharp dialogue, set in contemporary locations and have a certain outré value. . . . Cinema for the posttheatrical era. . . . We could attract interesting actors and create a profile for the film via social media. It would be something that we own.” 

Like Schrader, Ellis was at a crossroads. After his early successes, “Less Than Zero” and “American Psycho,” Ellis’s books hadn’t sold as well, and tired of the novel as an art form, he moved to L.A., looking to break into movies. But nothing had gone into production recently, and he was itching to get something made. He went to work on the script while Pope strategized. 

Schrader could talk a good game, but it was Pope who would have to implement the plan. Pope suggested making “The Canyons” the most open film ever. There would be daily Facebook updates, and the cast would be made up entirely of actors selected from audition tapes sent to the movie’s Web site. Pope argued that this populist approach could be applied to financing as well. He explained Kickstarter to Schrader: all they had to do was come up with some good prizes, and kids of all ages would pledge money online to be associated with artist outlaws like Schrader and Ellis. Soon, the film was offering donors a Schrader script-critique for $5,001 and a week working out with Ellis and his trainer for $3,000. In a month, they raised more than $150,000. 

Ellis cranked out a first draft in six weeks. He had recently become fascinated with James Deen, a 26-year-old known as the Porn Star Next Door. Deen, whose real name is Bryan Matthew Sevilla, is the Jewish son of Pasadena rocket scientists­ — really. His 4,000 films have gained him a cult of female fans because he is well endowed and sensitive. But Ellis didn’t see Deen as harmless. He wrote the script with Deen in his head for the role of Christian, a classic Ellis sociopathic trust-funder, convinced there “was a devil behind the Jewish boy-next-door cute guy.”

NYT