Director "mystified" that hiring Lindsay Lohan results in Lindsay Lohan-like behavior
After hiring an actress whose reputation for being difficult and irresponsible would create publicity long before his film was even completed, director Paul Schrader has expressed surprise and dismay that that actress has acted difficultly and irresponsibly when it comes to creating publicity after the film was released. In a post to Facebook, where all disagreements are handled professionally, Schrader says he is “mystified and disappointed” by the behavior of his The Canyons star Lindsay Lohan, who has lately proved troublesome in a way that no longer benefits his film.
Hints that Lohan could prove to be less than asset to the production first arose when the words “Lindsay Lohan hired to star in The Canyons” were published. But it was only after the lengthily detailed accounts of her behavior on set came to light that Schrader seemed to realize that she could be a problem, in exactly the headline-grabbing way he and writer Bret Easton Ellis anticipated. In his statement he says that Lohan's behavior, which they were counting on, prompted him to threaten to “fire her for unreliability,” because that's how the story is supposed to go. Those problems of which he was already largely aware flared up again at last month’s Venice Film Festival where, possibly on the advice of her new benefactor Oprah, Lohan failed to appear to promote The Canyons. It was an absence that Schrader, at the time, seemed perfectly happy with, declaring, “Today I am free. In the past 16 months, I have been hostage to Lindsay Lohan” in such a way that got a Paul Schrader movie coverage in Us Weekly.