CraveOnline: It strikes me that the dialogue surrounding The Canyons often has less to do with the movie than the people involved in the movie, be it you, Schrader, Lohan, Deen. It seems like the movie itself took on a life of its own regardless of what its story actually was.
Bret Easton Ellis: That is true, and that is partially… Look, it kind of started with Paul Schrader and I going on Kickstarter. That began the narrative. But the narrative is really about us wanting to make a movie, putting our own money into it, and the Kickstarter money, and we’ll give people who gave us money favors, or whatever. Prizes. And then the narrative got hijacked by the casting of Lindsay Lohan, [who] we all agreed should be cast, because she was the best actress out of the hundreds of auditions we saw. We talked about it a lot, how that casting of Lindsay is going to change the narrative-narrative of the movie, and even if it’s reception, and can we handle that? Are we going to be prepared for that?
We finally decided, “What is best for the movie?” Well, a really interesting Tara is the best thing for the movie, and that’s how she got cast. It really wasn’t stunt casting or anything. We didn’t go to her, she came to us and she read the script and she auditioned and she was right for the role. The same thing with James [Deen]. He was simply the best person for the role, but it does change the narrative and the reception, and I think a lot of the hatred for the movie is disproportionate to how tiny the movie is.
That’s kind of dismaying, to see the level of dislike for the film compared to what the film really is. There is a disconnect. I think a lot of it has to do with Lindsay, [to a lesser degree] that we cast the porno actor in the lead, and then I think a lot of people have it in for me and Schrader, to a degree. But we’re all big boys. We have a lot of armor. I’ve been criticized a lot in the past for things I’ve written, books I’ve written. We just liked the movie. I mean, the movie came out better than we thought, so that really was the mission: make the film.
Talking about how the film came out, you said that you originally saw The Canyons as more of a “pranky noirish thriller” but that Schrader took it in a different direction. Is that still true, and was that difference of opinion obvious early on?
When Paul assembled the footage for the first time in August of 2012, and he was kind of happy with it, I was not. I thought it could be a little tighter. But that was just the first cut. And I did say that in front of the New York Times reporter, and he did put that into the article. I have changed my mind immensely after all of the cuts that have been made, after the color correction, the score, everything coming together in the movie. I totally don’t think that anymore, but I did think that then, the first time I saw it.
Do you feel that now it represents more of what you originally had in mind, or do you see the movie in a different light now?
It totally represents, and I think it’s actually better than what we all thought was going to happen. When Paul got on the set, he became really… I don’t know… “invigorated” by the prospect of his freedom to make this movie. He called in a lot of favors. We always said that this couldn’t really look like your usual microbudget movie, and soon Schrader was getting Steadicams and laying down tracks for dolly shots and crane shots. It ended up a much more elegant-looking movie than I think any of us expected, and… So yeah, what was the question again?
I was asking if your opinion had changed or if the movie itself had changed.
No, we all totally signed off on the script. We were all totally happy with it. It was the script that Schrader shot and nothing really changed. A couple lines of dialogues were improvised by the actors but the rest stayed the same. The movie came out better than I could have imagined. But that’s me. Schrader… This is our world. That’s what we really respond to, a movie like The Canyons. Schrader always has. I’ve always responded to that world as well. It is not, however, a popular world view.
