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In The Canyons of a Fallen Empire by T/James Reagan

In Bret Easton Ellis' 2005 mock-memoir / Stephen King homage, Lunar Park, the “character” Bret Easton Ellis notes, “...it was almost as if the novel itself didn't matter anymore – publishing a shiny booklike object was simply an excuse for parties and glamour and good-looking authors reading finely honed minimalism to students who would listen rapt with slack-jawed admiration, thinking, I could do that, I could be them.”

Now, yeah, they can do that. They can be that author.

Sure, there's no expense account for the parties anymore, but publishing a booklike object is exceedingly simple and, now, the novel truly doesn't matter at all. You can get anything printed, just upload it to Createspace and wait for someone dumb enough to buy it. Now you're an "author." Now you're a "writer."

That's what I did, after being rejected.

Vice said no to this piece. So did The Daily Beast, and The Atlantic and a bunch of other sites I don't read.

I wrote this piece knowing that it would end up on the internet, no matter what. The options for placing a short, snarky, semi-abrasive essay are nearly endless at this point. Some site, somewhere on the internet, would probably be like, "Okay, fine. Stop e-mailing us. We'll run your piece." That website could be Casey Anthony's Celebrity Baby Blog. It doesn't matter.

After the most humiliating moment of my life, when Thought Catalog passed on my essay, I had two choices- Kill myself because Thought Catalog turned me down and that's like getting turned down by the girl in town who hands out PETA fliers in front of Starbucks... or I could just put the essay up on my tjamesreagan.com. So here it is, probably just as many people will read it here as they would have elsewhere.

For film, that type of fairness is new. It’s different.

One of the new steps towards film catching up to the novel is the Kickstarter film.”

Bret Easton Ellis' The Canyons is one of the first films of the Kickstarter era to land in theaters.

To watch The Canyons, I used the “Premium On Demand” or the “Still in Theaters” option that iTunes offers. It seems like ALL Ryan Gosling movies come out with this option now. I remember intoxicatedly ranting through the runtime of whatever that last Gosling movie was, but I’m not sure if the movie’s quality was at fault or if my drinking problem was the issue. My first sober experience with Premium On-Demand, when I rented Bret Easton Ellis’ The Canyons, turned out great. They really shouldn’t call it ‘premium’ on-demand because my other option was leaving Jersey, getting on NJTransit, then cabbing it to some place referred to as “The IFC Center.” I’m not totally sure that “The IFC Center” is a real thing. I imagine getting there and it’s the IFC corporate office, where I have to sit next to Marc Maron on a sofa, as some intern brings over their MacBook Air so we can watch the movie on an 11” screen and there’s no popcorn so the only concessions are break room coffee and every time Marc takes a sip of the coffee he exclaims, “Pow,” and follows it up with, “I just shit my pants,” then, when the credits roll, he gives me an Audible.com coupon code as an apology for interrupting the film.

The above scenario is the entire reason why VOD is the answer.

If I can buy The Canyons in the comfort of my own run down apartment, I don't have to deal with:

1. My Newark train stop, which seems to be filled with guys who "...just need $2 to get on my train. I made a mistake. I partied with the wrong crowd last night and now I just need $2 to get home."

2. The creepy guy in the theater seat next to me where I'm constantly wondering, "Pow, did this guy just shit his pants? Is that a 42oz coffee? Does the concessions place even sell coffee? How the hell did he sneak that in?"

3. The $14 for the round trip NJTransit ticket, the $15 cab ride, the $11 movie ticket- all of that is a large chunk of my $100 revenue for some bullshit nothing piece that gets sold on the internet about whatever movie I'm seeing.

Premium On-Demand is the post-Empire answer for film.

Ah. There it is. That term.

Here's where the total shitstorm avalanche happens and this essay turns into a hodgepodge of regurgitated half-thoughts

...What is post-Empire? The Empire? Over? Will it ever strike back?

... Kickstarter- other people's money? They pay for film? Zach Braff's nosejob has been Kickstarted? Sweet perks.

... Lilo- Rehab? Crazy on set? Really late? Wasting shitty regular people Kickstarter money while she parties with equally shitty Lady Gaga?

... James Deen- Porno? Sex in a ladies vagina? His wiener in TWO ladys' vaginas? Not his wife. Don't understand. Doing sex? On not his wife?

...Twitter- Bret said naughty characters. Only 140. Still offended. So offended. Such offense. Women directors? Jezebel angry. Glee tweet? Jezebel still angry. Innocuous tweet about (seemingly nothing)? Jezebel still somehow angry. Not even sure where they fit into the equation on that one.

The Empire reviews of The Canyons seem obsessed with everything but the film. It's a typical reaction by people too insulated or too confused to confront what they're being presented.

Bret Easton Ellis defined post-Empire in his DailyBeast essay on Charlie Sheen. When the essay came out, I had just finished my ninth novel. Actually, manuscript. Novels are things you can buy for money. Manuscripts are things that are rejected by every agent you send them to. The rejections proclaim your work to be "the unsympathetic manifesto of a complete sociopath." Manuscripts stay hidden on your hard drive like those James Deen movies you downloaded after you found that good Firefox extension that lets you save all your favorite .flv's from xvideo and xhamster. I could never sell my manuscripts because I couldn't define my writing style. I tried referring to it as Trash Fiction, but the agreement only seemed to be on the "trash" part.

After Bret defined post-Empire, something clicked. It was a genre that perfectly fit I was doing and, after lots of drafts, on Lindsay Lohan's birthday this year, I released my debut novel, "Famous For Nothing." It's a post-Empire novel about socialites. Lindsay might have been a muse for the novel (depending if a lawyer is reading this or not). I wrote Famous For Nothing when I was 24. From ages 23 to 24, my life consisted of reading celebrity blogs, apologizing on behalf of Britney Spears and watching The Hills with my friend Amanda- a Suicidegirl with a heart of gold. When The Hills was on, the post-Empire speed hadn't become a demand yet. The season finale of The Hills season 2 was legitimately "Spencer and Heidi move into an apartment." In a post-Empire world, the apartment would also need to be designed in tandem with a HGTV special where, before a commercial break, it's hinted a Mexican day worker *might* have sexually assaulted Heidi, then, later in the show, it's alleged that the mural of the Hollywood Hills in the guest bedroom may actually be a picture of the Appalachian trail.

This post-Empire speed issue even affected Bret's 2010 novel Imperial Bedrooms that arrived at the end of Empire. When I read the (very good) novel, I remember getting the feeling that some portions were incredibly dated, and I was reading the novel the day it came out. At one point, Clay checks Rain Turner's Myspace page. Even three years ago, I was like, "The only time someone's Myspace page is checked is when the news wants to find out more information about the guy who left pipe bomb in the Mall of America." It's one thing to define a time period, it's another to deliver instantly dated references that leave the reader asking, "Is this actually a period piece? Is The Myspace Era even technically a period? If so, please don't send me back there." These instantly dated references made me go back and change my own style. The world is moving too fast so to be timely, you have to be vague.

Here's an example. In the first draft of Famous For Nothing (a 450 page manuscript originally called social!heavy) the following appears:

"LA is amazing. It's always hot, and there are a ton of famous people here!" London celebrates.

Tobe squints for a moment, then asks, "The same thing could be said about Hell though, couldn't it?"

"I don't know. I've never been."

"I guess we'll find out someday," Tobe says.

"Right, and when we end up there, we'll need to get in contact with each other," London suggests, snatching Tobe's Blackberry, quickly typing in her number, then calling her own phone.

"I don't think they have Blackberrys down there," Tobe says.

"Yuck, that really does sound like Hell," London says, then hands Tobe back his phone.

Blackberrys…

If a world without Blackerrys is hell… welcome to hell. Blackberry just posted a billion dollar loss.

I had to go through the entire manuscript and post-Empire-proof it. I mean, I’m not putting in vague words like, “She reached for her digital communication device” so generations from now won’t be taken out of the story. I merely made changes so that by the time the book could be purchased, everything happening didn’t feel like Clay listening to The Fray autoplay on a Myspace page, as he jealously reviews Rain Turner’s “Top 8.”

I’ve defined my work by the label post-Empire. I’ve damn near plagiarized from Bret Easton Ellis more times than I can count. I’ve masturbated to some of James Deen’s greatest hits (his greatest being the Nicole Ray video). I’ve written 11 essays on Lindsay Lohan and I’m still not even close to being sick of her. I’ve seen The Canyons. Unlike all these old people writing throw away articles on The Canyons, this is a human being who has actually sat down and watched the movie, multiple times. And, yes, I liked it.

I ran an HDMI cable from my ailing laptop to my TV and I started watching The Canyons after iTunes had it 50% downloaded. The start time of this movie, about 9pm on 8/2, was selected merely by the time the pizza arrived.

The film starts and the actors are immediately confronting you for what a scumbag piece of shit you are.

Each actor faces the camera. The actors look you in the eyes.

You enjoyed watching me fuck, didn't you?

You enjoyed watching me fall apart, didn't you?

Now you can watch those things happen again. For $7.48.

I'm not being played, I'm playing a character, and I'm playing you.

You sit there and you watch for that very reason.

In the opening scene, there are four people at a table. Nolan Funk- some dude who stomps around in "the puddle of HIV" Glee, James Deen- some dude who gets tested monthly for HIV, Lindsay Lohan- a girl who's villainized more than HIV and... some other actress who seemed to be "too old" for the part that she's playing and is probably offended by this paragraph.

The first thing I was curious about was, can James Deen act? The answer? Yes. He can. James Deen is James Dean if James Dean knew how it would end for him and he wanted to expend every last bit of life he'd been given before that Porsche pulled up.

The second thing I was curious about, can this old dude, Paul Schrader, direct this film? I've never seen American Gigolo. I've only see Taxi Driver once and I found it unsettling. I wasn't unsettled by the movie I was more unsettled by the fact I was turned on by a young Jodie Foster and the implications of that were too heavy to address. Paul Schrader wasn't on my radar, I think, primarily, because he hasn't been on anyone's radar for a while. Does The Canyons look like a film by a man who is (insert old person age here)? No. It could just as easily have been the arrival of a new talent as a resurgence of an old one. I heard an interview where Paul said he's probably not going to Kickstart another movie. I think that's a misstep. I think he's in his element here. I think he took the clusterfuck he was given and he got a movie on VOD that works. That is a feat of direction right there. Schrader's shining moment is a scene out on the poured concrete and steel cabled balcony of the impressive mansion they shot in. Lindsay and James' cat and mouse game of mistrust is captured perfectly by Schrader, even when it wobbles into The Hills territory. The one (nod?) to The Hills seems to have put in the film when Lindsay is having lunch at a street-side restaurant and, suddenly, a UPS truck comes barreling through the intersection and, for a second, it looks like the truck is going to plow right into Lilo's table. I'm thinking it HAD to be a nod to Joel McHale and The Soup for their never-ending CGI'd gory death scenes that they would manipulate out of The Hills footage. I still long for the days where Heidi and Spencer are eating out on a lovely pier, then a cruise missile is CGI'd into the frame and an explosion is superimposed over them.

The third factor that came along as baggage for The Canyons is the scary proposition that if this fails horribly, will Lindsay ever work again? “Is Lindsay back?” is what one text from a friend read when I told him I was watching the film. My answer? Yes. She is. Lindsay is in top form, but she’s so delicate in the film. There are two points in the movie where she asserts herself (during a meeting with one of James’ exes and during a foursome where she takes control and makes a guy blow James) but the rest of the movie she’s so… fragile. She does a great job with the character, but the problem people are going to have is… is this a character or is this Lindsay?

This was intended to be Lindsay’s film, yet, surprisingly, it becomes James Deen’s film.

Yup, the great “Lindsay Lohan Comeback Vehicle” was stolen by guy who everyone talked down on, not because of his conduct behind the scenes, but because of his conduct on screen in all of his other work.

Before The Canyons I honestly didn’t “get” James Deen's crossover hype. He seemed to have a fanatical following on, of all places, Tumblr. Tumblr girls are many things; Understanding is not one of them. I’ve seen Tumblr girls tear apart other girls just for “insinuating a rape joke.” I’ve seen James Deen in a kink .com video where he, and his friends, viciously gang up on a woman because she gave James a D+ on a paper. Tumblr seems okay with this. Why are they okay with it? I’m guessing because *Section extracted because I don’t want to face the wrath of Tumblr*

When does James Deen announce himself in The Canyons? The opening table scene.

When does James Deen transcend The Canyons? In his therapist office. At over an hour and twenty minutes into an hour and forty minute movie, James sits in his therapists office, as his neon lined Nikes nervously jackhammer up and down. This scene follows Nolan Funk’s best scene in the film and, based on pacing, this Christian scene should be low key, muted, sterile. It could have been, but James turned it into something else. After recapping “control issues” that resulted during one of two flashes of Lindsay Lohan’s Tara asserting herself, James Deen’s Christian complains of feeling like, “an actor,” then James peers out from under his eyebrows with a Kubrickian smile and Bret’s ~daddy issues~ monologue becomes important and pumping and necessary. Christian complains of having no control, his therapist reminds him he has no control, then, in a scene where another director would have had him kick in the door, Christian arrives at his yoga instructor’s home, where he takes total control, and remains in control, until the yoga instructor is stabbed to death.

Christian returns to his mansion and Lindsay’s Tara is ready to leave. This is when Lindsay takes control of the film from James. This is the scene where she breaks down. This is the scene where she looks helpless against the machine she’s trapped in, this is the scene that provides Lindsay her redemption. Christian no longer has control. Christian forces Tara to provide him an alibi.

This is a sharp contrast from the ending of Bret’s Imperial Bedrooms where Blair willing provides Clay an alibi for the murder of Julian, and Clay merely walks away from her, unwilling to accept the help of someone else because he is the one who writes the endings, not Blair. She can’t create a fiction, that is Clay’s “specialty.” In The Canyons, Tara provides the alibi, maybe because she’s afraid. Maybe because she’s just so damn tired. Maybe because she doesn’t give a shit. In Lindsay’s last scene we find her back at the table, having drinks with another couple. Lindsay repeating her mistakes? Maybe.

“The Canyons’” ending arrives without warning and its final moments we zoom in on Nolan Funk, in a corner, alone, and, again, he looks at you right in the eyes and the swelling music cuts off abruptly. It’s over. The film is complete. This is when the real drama began.

The largescale rejection of my piece…

The Atlanic’s- “Thanks, but we’ll pass”...

Vice’s- *silence* then publishing the least engaging piece Bret has ever written (link).,,

Wonderland Magazine’s disinterest because I don’t mention any of my lesbian high fashion fanfic...

…is to be expected when you review the rest of the articles written about The Canyons.

Nearly every reviewer wrote a piece that seemingly mirrored Bret’s zzz-worthy review that he was forced to write for Vice due to a Kickstarter obligation. None of these reviewers seemed to be remotely interested in The Canyons. None of the reviewers seemed familiar with the professional work of any of the parties involved in the work. None of the reviewers had particularly interesting insights regarding the film.

They had a single job, create web traffic. Maybe they did that. Who knows. Who cares. Is that what we’re working for now? Web traffic. Does the overweight perpetually single English major college girl who puts together the “25 Ways You Know You’re a 90’s Kid” feel any satisfaction when massive amounts of drones ascend upon the piece to be like, “Yeah, unicorn folders. I owned a folder. Look at us. Bonded together. By folders.”

I suppose it’s transporting, but it’s rolling in nostalgia in some sad celebration that, “My boring life has granted me so many years to own folders, think about folders, reminisce about folders.” If this piece was about dolphin folders, it absolutely would be 1,000 times more popular. But with who? The same people who rushed out to see Despicable Me 2? Appealing to that demo brings trucks of money and a fanbase of the complainy and suburban.

The post-Empire advertising campaign consisted of:

James promoting the film via his blog- (link) - which is frequently engaging, funny, hot, post-Empire in it's openess and refreshing in it's sincerity. The blog even lets users vote if something is "Lame." Democracy in action. It makes the "Deen For President" t-shirts in his webstore all the more tempting to buy. Expertly navigating the Farrah Abrams and Lindsay Lohan hype, James is the best part of the film and also its best advocate. A loose and fun appearance on Carolla's podcast, then wrapping things up in Venice, James should be supremely proud of both his craft and his fulfillment of his obligations to this movie. One can only hope that he doesn't view the entire "Mainstream" experience as a dolphin folder circle jerk, and he continues to explore all options (normally his specialty.) I'm not even sure why we're still using the term "Mainstream" when less people have seen Despicable Me 2 than have Despicable James at work. If this is a popularity contest judged by web traffic, James wins. Again.

Paul promoted the film with a facebook page. Small contests "Take a picture of you watching The Caynons" seemed nice, safe, cute- none of the things the film was, so it all felt so boring. What he should've done was leaked the original cut of the "grindr date" scene. He should have provided a directors commentary on the NYT piece, going through each part of the piece, explaining exactly what really happened. What he should have done is leak the Bait script so that we could have insight into the project that started this partnership. That might be for this movie, it might be for the next movie they line up. Given how much I enjoyed The Canyons, show me where to throw my $20 for a DVD of Bait by fall 2014.

Bret promoted by, uh, twitter. I saw him on Huffpo live (seemed like he wanted Braxton to continue to talking forever) (Braxton seemed to want this too.) There was the Reddit AMA- “So DID Patrick do all those things?” that probably could have been answered if anyone on Reddit had googled Bret’s excellent Paris Review interview. Bret treated the project on the scale that it deserved. He could have done more. He didn’t. Deal with it.

Lindsay promoted by going on Oprah. Oprah said, "Lindsay, don't go to Venice". Everyone on all those awful E! shows said, "Lindsay don't go to Venice." The judge probably said, "Lindsay, don't go to Venice." Whoever that old creepy looking laywer is who replaced Shawn Chapman probably said, "Do you think this suit will look weird on camera? Are the pinstripes disorienting?" So, when Lindsay didn't show up in Venice, of course, Bret and Paul acted like it was a total shock. "Lindsay flaked." Maybe, I suppose, in a way. Why didn't she show up to an international festival with giant parties and awful journalists? THAT is how she's going to get her life back on track. By doing precisely what got her to the point that doing a Kickstarter movie for back end points seemed like a viable career choice. Lindsay didn't have to promote the movie by doing anything beyond existing.

Paul's triumphant, "Today I deleted the TMZ app from my phone and iPad. Free at last," update on the Facebook page is exactly what EVERYONE does with Lindsay. For a guy who seemed willing to assist James Deen in reaching a new level in his career, Paul seems proud to look at his female lead as just another transaction. Another Dinero moneyclip. Something from set that can be discarded after there is the promise of something more valuable. Lindsay is the way she is because she's Lindsay, but it's not easy to change when everything around you is too. A constant wave of people moving in and out of your life, feeding, then leaving. Feeding, then leaving.

The final, incredibly Empire conclusion to this whole year long journey was Paul Schraders boo-fucking-hoo cry me a river.mp3 middle school girl Facebook status. He complained that Lindsay wasn't comfortable working with James. Okay, cool, didn't see that on screen. She wouldn't give an interview to FilmComment? Holy shit, don't alienate the SEVEN subscribers of FilmComment. How else will find comments on film besides FilmComment or literally 30% of the sites on the internet. Most laughably, Paul complained about Lindsay not going to Venice for the Venice Film Festival. Apparently, he's so distanced from reality that he doesn't realize the Venice Film Festival exclusively exists so that people like James Franco who don't have the physical dexterity to suck their own dick still have the ability to practice excessive self love for the benefit of no one but themselves. You know how many of my friends talked about the Venice Film Festival? Zero. Remember which movie won the Venice Film Festival over The Canyons? I'll wait. Remember all those past winners of the Venice Film Festival like... yeah. As a project that started as such a fuck you to the standard way of doing things, it ended essentially proving that even the people involved with projects pushing the boundaries are so out of touch with how the world works at the edge of 2014.

James gets it.

Bret gets it.

Lindsay doesn't have to get it because she has been relevant every year for the past decade with no signs of slowing down or declining.

Now, we've seen the film. Now, the movie has had its premiere. Now, post-Empire has a solid, respectable entry in the new-film movement. If nothing else, The Canyons will appear on a Buzzfeed list "You know you're a 2010's kid if... you contributed to The Caynons' kickstarter so you could see Lindsay Lohan fuck James Deen.

As 2014 looms, The Caynons stands as an example of the new way things will done. Don't worry, if you can't let go of the past, at least you can go cry about it on Facebook. We'll be focused on the next one, not the last one. Your Empire is over, dude.

The Canyons is available now on VOD on itunes.

T/James Reagan is the author of the post-Empire novel "Famous For Nothing" available now.

#bret easton ellis #the canyons #lindsay lohan #post-empire #famous for nothing #t.james reagan #long reads #writing #Paul Schrader #kickstarter #nolan gerard funk #post empire