There was a time long ago, way back in 2004, when it appeared Lindsay Lohan might become her generation’s Ann-Margart tinged with a bit of Lucille Ball, but somewhere between Mean Girls and flashing her cooter to the public without charging so much as a quarter, she became the laughing stock of Hollywood (i.e. when Britney Spears isn’t scurrying off to the valley to play Alien³). Worse, she’s become unreliable and unbankable, as evidenced by the public dressing down issued by James G. Robinson during the production of Georgia Rule and the flat-out failure of last year’s "grown-up" star vehicle, Just My Luck.
Apparently, Lohan is the wrong kind of slut. If she were completely talentless like Paris Hilton, this would all be so much easier; then, her work day would only consist of turning up at <insert already passé or shuttered club name here> and, after bumping copious rails of marching powder, fucking the daylights out of four guys at a time before moving on to their girlfriends and, time permitting, Andy Dick. But Lohan seems determined to keep her showbiz charade going; hell, up until today, she was in talks to star alongside Cillian Murphy, Keira Knightley and Matthew Rhys in John Maybury’s Dylan Thomas kinda/sorta biopic, The Best Time of Our Lives.
That stab at prestige has been parried. Five months after getting attached to the project, the producers have failed to "come to a deal" with Ms. Lohan, and moved on to Ms. Shitsburgh, Sienna Miller, whose best work to date would be smoking a cigarette and dancing at the same time in Matthew Vaughn’s Layer Cake. Miller, who’s at least been paid to pose in different stages of undress, will play the (perhaps) unfaithful wife of the Welsh poet/storyteller, while Knightley will take on the role of Thomas’s childhood pal. The loss of Lohan will probably make the film a more difficult sell in the U.S., but it’s not like Knightley isn’t a co-ingredient of most popular film franchise going.
The Best Time of Our Lives (which I’ve routinely typed as The Best Years of Our Lives) is currently without a U.S. distributor. It begins shooting in May. Lohan, meanwhile, will be incredibly available in a variety of ways. That Mastiff you’ve got there… is he fixed?