The big movie casting news of the week is that one-time actress Lindsay Lohan will apparently be putting aside the court appearances and shoe-powder long enough to make a movie. And not just any movie, but a biopic about Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace, provisionally entitled Inferno.
Since it’s Lohan, one greets this news with suspicion. So far all we have to go on is the word of producer Wali Razaqi, a sometime actor whose biggest credit to date is the reality show The Michael Vick Project. Razaqi told the Los Angeles Times that the film, with Bill Pullman as Hugh Hefner, will explore “the difficult stuff [Lovelace] went through and overcame.”
“I would say it’s probably one of the most challenging roles any actor could play,” Razaqi said, “and not because of the sexual content, necessarily—but more because she was so battered and beat up emotionally, that I think it’s gonna take everything Lindsay has to really be able to pull it off.
“Not that Lindsay's life is similar in any way,” he added, “ but she’s been through a lot of ups and downs. A lot of times you’re loved and then you're hated, and I think she can relate to those emotions and feelings. One week she’s the ‘it’ girl, and the next, she’s the ‘what are you doing?’ girl.”
It’s been more than a week since Lohan was the “It” girl, of course, but is she up to the part? The Lovelace story, if handled correctly, could be a compelling one: Born Linda Boreman, and nicknamed “Miss Holy Holy” in high school for her reserved manner on dates, she eventually got involved with future husband Chuck Traynor, who by most accounts beat her, pimped her, and pumped her full of drugs on the way to turning her into a porn presence in self-explanatory titles like Dog Fucker.;">
It was 1972’s Deep Throat that made her reputation, with a couple of inevitable sequels (including the truly awful, R-rated Linda Lovelace for President, in ’75) and a descent into hard drugs. She eventually extricated herself from Traynor; married, had children by, and divorced another physically abusive husband; became an ardent anti-pornography crusader; and died in 2002 following a horrific car crash.
It’s quite a tale, with enough shady characters (and Lovelace’s own sometimes contradictory acquaintance with the truth) to put Boogie Nights to shame. But is Lohan the best choice to bring Linda Lovelace back to life? (Anna Faris was once attached to Inferno, but dropped out in ’08.) Before her own career went spiraling off into tabloid hell, Lohan made her bones with lightweight comedies like Freaky Friday and Mean Girls; when she tried going all serious, as with the sub-Lynchian (Jennifer, not David) I Know Who Killed Me, the results were almost legendarily terrible.
We still only have the word of a hustling producer (is there another kind?) to go on; so far no confirmation from Lohan’s camp has been forthcoming. But while the Lovelace story certainly has potential, I find myself coming back again and again to a thought that, under other circumstances, would seem paradoxical:
Surely Linda Lovelace deserves better.
