Director Paul Schrader and writer Bret Easton Ellis have teamed up to bring the world the most notorious movie of the year, The Canyons, starring perpetually troubled actress Lindsay Lohan, porn star James Deen, and a knockout turn by Portland's king of perverse, Gus Van Sant. The story follows a group of disenchanted 20-somethings struggling to live through the post-Empire era of Los Angeles, California. Check out the two latest photos from the movie, followed by the filmmaker's comments.

Paul Schrader had this to say regarding the much talked about drama, which is in theaters this August.

"To be honest, it's something we created. We stirred the pot, simply with the casting of Lindsay Lohan and James Deen. And Lindsay brings with her, her drama and then Bret Easton Ellis, he has a very promiscuous Twitter finger, and he can always be relied on to upset somebody with some tweet. We kind of stirred our town pot.

I felt that another storyline was developing, which was people confusing a troubled production with a troubled film, people do this all the time. Whereas in fact, there's very little in common [with the two]. Some of the smoothest shoots in the world make terrible movies, and vice versa.

I got very lucky. I look back on it, and it was a film where a number of things should have gone wrong, and they didn't. James was terrific, Lindsay was terrific, we made a film with a $90,000 outlay of money from our pockets. It looks great, IFC paid a lot for it, and it's in profit already. We got lucky. It's like you go into the casino and put all your money on red, and win."