“Tell Me Something. Do You Really Like Movies?": On Paul Schrader’s The Canyons and The James Deen Gaze
Controversial writer-director, Paul Schrader, literary Brat Pack wunder-hack, Bret Easton Ellis, the most famous and prolific pornstar of the time, James Deen, and childstar trainwreck, Lindsay Lohan, walk into a bar... What follows is a micro-budget production rife with upset, compromise, and on-set hysterics. The result of which is one of the most puzzling and misunderstood sexual thrillers of the last decade. Tumultuous production aside, The Canyons is a film worth defending. Seemingly the perfect release for 2013, the year of Blurred Lines, Kim Kardashian side boob, and Miley Cyrus’s Bangerz era. It felt like the world was finally seeing that the consequences of porn-saturation in pop culture were not a fad, that reality TV was not a pop phase, that technology was making things far more accessible far faster than anyone had anticipated. The Canyons wields stylistic and narrative weapons, ones that viciously sparred with newly ushered in cultural and sexual mutations. Yet, it was met with hostility from critics and audiences alike. Starring trailblazing pornstar James Deen as Christian, a trust-fund kid and producer with an unknown, but possibly dangerous, history. And Lindsay Lohan as Tara, an attractive prima donna determined to sit stationary in the lap of luxury funded by the ill-disposed Christian. Their sexually charged, pseudo-Hollywood lives are turned upside down when an actor is cast in Christian’s next project. Ryan, a young man, dating Christian’s assistant, with whom Tara has a secret past. Cheating ensues. Tara with Ryan, Christian with his former yoga instructor, Cynthia. As relationships quickly unravel, violence clouds their existence.
Christian is introduced to us, smirking over a smartphone as he listens to the walled-up, but quietly pleading thankfulness of the actor he has just done the favor of casting in his movie. He gets his girlfriend, Tara’s, attention and flashes a picture of a man on his phone, she nods with a "maybe." In short. he wants to know if she’ll let the man fuck her as he watches. Or vise versa.
Deen gazes at every object and human being the same way he does his phone. No differentiation, all equal in his ability to touch, handle, and manipulate them. A duck-lipped grimace pasted on his face that he can never quite escape. Lindsay’s every movement and line reading seems to be coming from a que. She looks off when speaking, her mouth slightly agape. In the throws of crying, or performing on set actively drunk, her performance seems eerily near to herself. A being not sourced from the mind of bitter Hollywood elites, but found deep within experiences and endurance in an all too harsh spotlight. The bitter Hollywood elite in question being Easton Ellis. Ellis’s screenplay is delightfully toxic, as vain and vapid as the characters themselves. The vapidity in Ellis’s writing may not be purposeful, he seems to want to say something deep about LA, its culture, and the violence it breeds. What he says just doesn’t hold any originality. But with Schrader’s strong hold on the lacking material, and it resting in the hands of these two perplexingly ideal actors, it achieves as near to perfection as it possibly could. A film that plays as a waking stress nightmare, walking through empty spaces, accompanied by empty people, who engage in empty abuse and violence. Women cry and men come through doorways, shirtless and glowing like Greek gods. Sweeping them up in their arms and kissing them passionately, all with ease. Devils wear all black and drag their thumb across their lips after they spit. But women and men, they claw at their own with a voraciousness that seems auto-cannibalistic. See and attack. With the men, it’s petty, it’s about appearances, status, and who has fucked who. With the women, they pounce on and feast on each other for primal survival. They could just as easily be devoured by the men in their lives. Some are.
Taking place over the course of a week, each day is accompanied by an image of a decaying, rotting theater. Paul Schrader’s view of early 2010’s film culture is bleak, in an almost quaint way. He misses the Hollywood he dominated, that of the 70s, the risks taken and the audiences seeking them out. And yet, he is also pushing against nostalgia. Deen cast as a signifier of a new era (although against Schrader’s wishes and to Ellis’s delight) of sexual gluttony and fandom integrated into this grand gamble. Lohan cast as a symbol of the social lust for personal drama, voyeuristic obsession with celebrity, particularly celebrity instability. Reflective of the instability of the new cinema Schrader seems to lampooning while simultaneously embracing in his older age, after a career of protest. The stark, flatly-shot aesthetic is akin to porn. This is a film starring a trailblazing pornstar after all! The sprawling interior of the couple’s lavish, modern LA home resembles the visuality of many of Deen’s own shoots. Multiple white couches, concrete floors, and windows flooded with light. At any moment the film feels like it could drop the sexual thriller tone and shift right into an ANALIZED.com video with ease. The distinguishing factor is the camera pulls further and further away as the film runs on, the very opposite of pornography. Instead of the characters’ intimacy growing more focused, the gap between them is ever-widening as we watch them become more and more tangled in their messy relationships and the vices they engage within them.
James Deen’s entire career is built on the back of his carnal aura, an imposing presence and almost snobbish ego. Constantly leering, he seems to always be eyeing what he could take, control, make his domain. He knows he can have what he desires and he holds your eye as he makes sure you know he can too. He walks the fine line of lustful desire and uncaring objectification. His eyes and expression admire and appraise in equal measure. The smooth menacing tone of his voice that slithers out of his mouth and slinks its way through your ear canal, then directly down your spine. He could want you forever or drop you in a second, but you’re never quite sure which. It’s an intimacy that is rarely seen in modern porn. He stares into a woman’s eyes, pays attention to her reactions, examines her desire and how to manipulate. In an age of facial abuse and sexually broken videos at the top of every porn site, Deen was a refreshing aspect, especially as a woman. He seemed to treat his costars as women (regardless of menacing undertones) instead of a hole to jerk off into. Growing up in the era of tumblr, I knew who James Deen was before I could recognize Humphry Bogart or Al Pacino by name. Entire blogs were dedicated to him and run by members of his teen fanbase, deemed “Deenagers.”
In 2015, Deen was accused of sexual assault and rape by former costars, as well as ex-girlfriends Stoya and Joanna Angel. His star quietly dwindled. Just enough to lay low and seek out a comeback. His manhandling and charmingly harsh words now seem like a warning sign. Bret Easton Ellis clearly saw something ill-omened in him, courting and writing the role of Christian specifically for Deen himself. Who else on earth could possibly play such a sleazy, conceited, sex addict born with a silver spoon in his mouth that he continues to suck on into adulthood? Or at least, who could to such a disgustingly accurate degree? The knowledge of his heinous acts give this film a retrospectively haunting air. Christian’s actions in the film seem much more weighted when considering Deen’s record. The Canyons has only grown more sinister as Deen continues to engage in high profile porn production to this day. The sheer number of allegations and apparent systematic coverup should be a career ending revelation. It’s not getting away with murder, but his continued success points to the disposable view of human beings that the film so clearly tells us infects LA culture, and further more, the Hollywood system.
Despite all of its straining, The Canyons is a work of its time and should be examined as such. A prescient, discarded film from a master. A sleazefest, gaudy and steaming. Whether that steam is wafting off of sweating, humping bodies or freshly laid shit is up to you.
