The Hollywood community has united for 9/11, Haiti, cancer, now the MPTF. It’s time they did so for Lindsay Lohan, too.
Self-destructiveness is as much a part of the entertainment industry as breast implants. If you’ve been in the business long enough, you’ve been stuck working with some troubled creative talent: those with addictions, emotional immaturity, mental illness. Sociopaths and psychopaths. People who hold up production, blow the budget, vanish, intentionally create discord and chaos. They make our jobs 10 times tougher. As much as we might feel sorry for them, we mainly wish that they aren’t attached to any other project of ours ever again.
But in Hollywood, these wishes rarely come true. The industry famously overlooks self-destructiveness and the havoc it wreaks if someone can create entertainment magic. Instead, the business is often willing to do whatever it takes to keep a self-destructive talent afloat. That is, until everyone’s got their money’s worth out of him.
John Belushi biographies claim his professional inner circle fed his raging drug habit so he could fulfill "SNL" and film commitments. Enablers helped destroy Judy Garland, Michael Jackson, Chris Farley, Marilyn Monroe (Lohan’s own icon of choice). That video of stoned, face-painted, incoherent Anna Nicole Smith is still haunting every time you see it.
But in my 25-year career, I don’t recall any talent who’s spiraled out of control so hard, so fast, so often and so long without anyone throwing her a lifeline as Lohan.
On Thursday, May 20, a furious L.A. judge issued a bench warrant for Lohan’s arrest after she failed to appear for a probation progress report hearing. This is related to the actress’s 2007 DUI conviction, not to be confused with the ongoing L.A. civil suit brought by three people claiming to have been held hostage by Lohan when she hijacked a car for a wild, drunken ride.
According to the judge, Lohan defiantly did not complete the minimum alcohol-education courses required to comply with the terms of her probation. Bail was set at $100,000 and U.S. Customs was considering exercising its right to take her into custody when she finally returned from Cannes, where she disappeared earlier this week after a few days’ bar-hopping in New York. Lohan has claimed her purpose at the film festival is to raise funding for a project, although wire service photos have only shown her heading in and out of parties, dead-eyed, in her now-ubiquitous thigh-high hooker stockings. And still falling on the ground.
While Lohan apparently saw the inside of many Cannes yachts, she won’t be seeing an arresting officer when – or if – she returns. Her LA reps secured the bail bond and the warrant was recalled. But she’s due back in court on Monday morning and if the judge determines the terms of the probation were violated, Lohan could serve up to 180 days in jail.
Lindsay Lohan will be 24 years old on July 2.
And she’s now a punchline. Much of it is her own fault.
