This Paul Schrader and Bret Easton Ellis micro-budget project seemed to inspire confidence when its Kickstarter appeared online back in 2012. The promise of two rigorous formal stylists working together to realise their predictably dark vision of cinema’s end days seemed almost too good to be true. Apparently it was, with the film now sitting pretty at 24 per cent on the Tomatometer.
The Canyons refers, of course, to the geographical features that sweep throughout the LA landscape. Out in the Hollywood Hills, in a surprisingly credible, raw turn, Lindsay Lohan plays at being a filmmaker whilst living off the wealth of her sadistic, cruel movie-producer boyfriend, played by real life porn star James Deen. Amongst his unsavoury predilections are filming his many trysts on his camera phone, to use for leverage and pleasure. Schrader and Easton Ellis paint a picture of a world in whicheven those who make cinema see it only as a passing distraction, relegated to being alongside Vine clips and YouTube videos. The casting of Lohan is a perfect storm – a star whose image has fallen off the cinema screen into grainy paparazzi shots and low- budget features just like these.
The occasionally slap-dash production qualities never stop Schrader from crafting arresting images – dilapidated cinemas and a cosmic orgy particularly stick in the mind. Despite Lohan being the cast’s standout, a highly readable New York Times article, entitled, ‘This Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie’, painted the star as running a nightmare set, which unfairly tarred the film with its trainwreck reputation. Yet The Canyons is intellectual pulp at its best, and the product of a new age of cinema, when the art form itself is fighting for survival.
