Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, Less Than Zero) has been hyping his partially crowd-funded L.A. noir vanity project The Canyons for quite some time, but this is the first actual footage we’ve seen to date.
Directed by Paul Schrader (who is better known as a writer than a director – he wrote the screenplays of Scorcese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull), the movie stars Lindsay Lohan and cutie pie porn star James Deen, and is about “the the dangers of sexual obsession and ambition, both personally and professionally, among a group of young people in their 20?s and how one chance meeting connected to the past unravels all of their lives, resulting in deceit, paranoia, cruel mind games and ultimately violence.” Standard Easton Ellis subject matter.
It looks like a B-grade piss take, but it’s hard to be sure whether the schlocky grind house vibe is or is not intentional. I mean, freaking Gus Van Sant plays a psychiatrist in the movie – his first credited acting role since… ever (unless you count the time he played himself in Entourage), which is intriguing in itself, although probably just a nepotistic product of his friendship and previous collaborations with Easton Ellis.
