It’s time to shoot the four-way sex scene, and Lindsay Lohan refuses to come out of her room. Director Paul Schrader is behind closed doors screaming at her.
“You signed the contract,” he bellows. “You knew going in that there would be nude scenes! So get your ass out there and do it!”
You know it’s probably not the best omen for your movie when one of the most competent, diligent and polite people on the set is the porn star.
To adult-film idol James Deen, however, shooting “The Canyons” was “a lot easier” than making an adult film. Lohan, he says, “was freaking out because she wasn’t getting the attention she wanted. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
Despite Schrader’s bellowing, Lohan’s tantrum burns through three hours of pricey production time, a movie source tell The Post. Then she has an idea. The crew should strip down to their underwear to make her feel more comfortable. This is what Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan get on set, so why not her?
The crew just laughs and threatens to leave.
“I thought to myself,” says key grip Cole Chetney, “Well, I’m sure Julia Roberts is much more pleasant than you are.”
Finally, at his wit’s end, Schrader, 67, who wrote “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” takes off all his clothes, walks nude to the monitor and says, “OK, action!” Lohan disrobes and the scene is captured in one take.
It was just another day on the set of “The Canyons,” easily the most gossiped-about film of the year. It hits theaters and video on demand Friday.
Lohan was far from the only controversial member of the cast. Deen, 27, is a ridiculously prolific and popular porn actor who is making his mainstream debut. He got involved at the invitation of Bret Easton Ellis, the author of “American Psycho” who wrote the screenplay for “The Canyons.”
The noir-ish thriller revolves around a violent and controlling LA movie producer (Deen) who suspects his girlfriend (Lohan) is having an affair with the leading man (Nolan Gerard Funk).
Deen makes his mainstream movie debut in “The Canyons,” but says he’ll never leave porn. (jamesdeen.com )
Deen liked Ellis’ books and jumped at the chance to work with him. He was not looking for a shot at Hollywood. “People talk to me like this is my big crossover to the mainstream. Absolutely not,” he says. “I have no desire to leave porn.”
Instead, he was excited by Ellis and Schrader’s plan to make a movie on the cheap, with low financial risk and complete independence.
“You make that mass-produced, Hollywood blockbuster crap, you end up with Michael Bay’s ‘Transformers 11.’ He’s garbage, but his movies make lots of money,” says Deen, who was interested in “making a good movie and not bowing to the capitalist theory of Hollywood.”
Deen’s porn career began in 2004 and he has since become one of the industry’s rare male stars, in part for his nonthreatening good looks, which have earned him a passionate following among young women. A 2012 segment on ABC’s “Nightline” dubbed him “Porn’s Boy Next Door.” Over the years, he’s been offered a few mainstream projects, including horror movies and a reality show, but he wants no part of it.
“All the scum and stereotypically horrible stories you hear about entertainment — they’re all true,” he says. “Everyone is scummy, egotistical, weak and pathetic. There are scummy studio-producer people you speak to for 30 minutes, and you want to gouge your eyes out because you feel you’ve been soiled by their horribleness.”
“The Canyons” was not immune to drama. Deen enjoyed making the film but says Schrader played Hollywood “games.”
“Like with me getting the role. He’d say, ‘Well we don’t know. We might have someone else in mind.’ ” Deen says. “Or he said he’d make me a star. I don’t give a s – – t about being a star. Fame is useless and fleeting. All being famous does is get people following you into the subway.”
Deen has only wanted to do one thing since he was in kindergarten and found a pornographic magazine: Be in adult film.
Born Bryan Sevilla, he grew up in Pasadena, Calif., and had a “happy childhood.” His parents worked for NASA. As a teen, he heard porn star Jenna Jameson offering advice on a radio show, saying that anyone who wanted to be in the industry would have to have the ability to perform in front of a roomful of people.
Deen began having sex in public at parties. He entered the industry at 18, has won numerous awards and now reportedly earns $20,000 a month.
Despite his success in adult film, Deen realized he’d have trouble earning respect on a regular film. He says that some people saw him “as a joke,” but he worked hard to win over everyone on “The Canyons.”
“James Deen was my biggest surprise,” Chetney says. “Not really knowing him and hearing he was a porn actor, then finding out he’s a regular guy, smart and not a diva in the least.”
Sources say Deen was always prepared and professional on set. Unlike Lohan.
“At one point, she demanded that I light her ‘like a real cinematographer,’ ” says director of photography John DeFazio. “She wasn’t joking. She screamed this at me on the set.”
Lohan was often late — at least 30 minutes and up to several hours. As soon as she was done with a scene, she’d “go off into her room and smoke by herself,” one source says.
That was if Schrader could get her to film at all. The director and his troubled star squabbled constantly, over everything from her character’s motivation to contract minutiae. Most of Lohan’s scenes were shot in one take, because that’s all she’d do.
“It was very easy to set her off. She could just be done with it and leave,” says someone close to the film. “She would get into an argument with Paul or she’d feel James Deen wasn’t taking it seriously enough, and she’d just be done with that scene.”
“She and Paul had power struggles because they both have egos and were like, ‘It’s my movie! It’s my movie!’ ” Deen says, adding that he now has a policy not to talk about Lohan. “It’s everyone’s movie. It was a group effort.”
“I thought [Schrader] lost control of the set whenever Lindsay would throw a tantrum,” Chetney adds.
One day, Lohan appeared for a scene wearing very heavy, Cleopatra-like makeup. Schrader asked if maybe a subtler look would be more appropriate, but Lohan’s makeup artist intervened, snapping, “That’s the look these days.”
“What? Now the makeup artist is directing this scene?” the on-set source asks. “It’s ridiculous.”
Though maybe the makeup was for good reason. Another insider tattles that Schrader was concerned about how best to shoot Lohan’s once-fresh face, which appears to have been affected by plastic surgery and partying. “This is not the Lindsay Lohan of ‘Mean Girls,’ ” he says.
All of the on-set troubles may not matter one bit when it comes to making “The Canyons” profitable. The film was shot for about $250,000 — much of it raised on Kickstarter.
(One hilarious side effect is that IMDb now lists 16 co- or associate producers for the movie. One person earned a producer credit for agreeing to mail out the Kickstarter rewards; another got it for lending the production his Malibu house.)
The filmmakers cut deals with locations to keep costs down. Deen drives his own car in the film. Catering was hardly spectacular, consisting of “cold Subway sandwiches” and an “expired tub of Cheetos” (though Lohan and Schrader ate different food).
Although “The Canyons” is getting a limited theatrical release, it could likely earn decent money on pay-per-view. Last year’s “Bachelorette” took in just $447,000 in theaters, but raked in $7.4 million on VOD.
“Who’s not going to pay $10 to watch this movie?” Deen asks. “Even just to see Lindsay Lohan’s boobs and to see if the porn guy can act?
“Totally worth it.”
reed.tucker@nypost.com