The Loh-Down

On Friday, Michael Lohan, the oft-convicted father of Lindsay, did a radio interview in which, among other things, he blamed the failings of his daughter's acting career on the circus-like involvement she'd had with a DJ, Samantha Ronson. 

(Why he was doing an interview in the first place with a scandal-mongering Internet website, is another question all together, but we'll let that pass)

"Lindsay was in a pretty okay place at the time until she got involved with Samantha," he said, later suggesting that "People use Lindsay like that."

(It's worth noting that at another point in the interview, he also said -- "Samantha got Lindsay at a very vulnerable time in her life when her mom and dad were going through a divorce. Lindsay started partying and drinking. She didn't know where to go. And Samantha got her when she was down."  Color me bewildered, but that doesn't sound like "a pretty okay place," but, hey, that's just me.  To me, that sounds like a young girl whose family life is spiraling towards disaster without any supervision or support to turn to.)

I mention all this because I actually crossed paths with the Family Lohan on a film project over a decade ago.  Let's just politely say that the experience was not positive.

("Not positive" will be defined herein as "hellishly life-changing.)

I never spoke with Lindsay or her mother., though a friend who was an intermediary said that in all his dealings with the then-young girl were always wonderful and positive, and he thought Lindsay was a joy.  I did speak once with Michael Lohan.  My dealings with him were less than wonderful and a joy.  Eventually, things broke off .  This, it must be noted, was all many years before the Lohan Circus with Samantha Ronson. 

After the project broke off, some years passed, and Michael Lohan and his wife separated.   Later, mother and daughter came back to me with interest again in the project.  I turned that down and went elsewhere with the script.  One of the several reasons I said at the time was that I didn't want to even risk having Michael Lohan involved in any way, even though he wasn't part of the new contact in the slightest.  And this, too, it's important to make clear, was all years before the Lohan Circus, as well.

That seemed a good decision at the time, and since.  I later discovered that some things that had been done in the interviewing years, which I was completely unaware of at the time and would never have allowed, were...well, not positive.  (See above.)

It's clear that the Lohan Circus period in her life was problematic for her career, and it certainly appears that the DJ was a bad influence.  But it had been even more clear to me, even from my diffused distance, that many years before, the first seeds that led to all that had not only been deeply planted, but had already sprouted a number of little trees.  This was a very young girl, quite sweet and talented, who was thrust into the public eye when just a child, and was being used and pulled in a lot of dysfunctional directions.

And now, Michael Lohan, a divorced, convicted felon, is blaming all his child's career problems on someone else who was just one of many culminations of a life long-since spinning out of control. 

A life tends not to just, all of a sudden, go into a tailspin and whirl out of control.  Usually, it's been heading downhill into the twisting, roller-coaster path long before it hits a big hair-pin curve.