LiLo's maybe co-star, porn actor James Deen

 

Casting on Bret Easton Ellis' new project "The Canyons" isn't quite complete, according to the movie's Facebook page, but tweets from Ellis suggest that he's locked down star power to headline the film. Porn star power, to be exact.

Ellis revealed Tuesday that he'd snapped up Lindsay Lohan to co-star opposite 26-year-old James Deen, a fan favorite porn star who at this point could change his name to "The Porn Star (You Wish Lived) Next Door," as it's his everyday-guy accessibility that fans love him for.

 

Written by Ellis and to be directed by "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull" scribe Paul Schrader,  "The Canyons" is an L.A.-based thriller focused on a group of five 20-somethings on a quest for "power, love, sex and success in 2012 Hollywood," according to the project's Kickstarter page. (The film reached its financing goal four days ago.)

Judging from Ellis' tweets, Lohan has been cast as Tara, the girlfriend and former model of Deen's character Christian, a wealthy "film producer [who] enjoys filming his own three-way sex sessions," describes IndieWire's Playlist.

(Ellis tweeted Tuesday that he was "beyond thrilled," and "could not have dreamed of a better cast." Lohan, he said, "nailed it." CNN's reached out to Lohan's reps for comment.)

 

According to the New York Observer, Ellis sees in the prolific Deen what his rapt fanbase, filled with fairly young women, also see in him: "There are these weird long flashes of tenderness that you don't really see in straight pornography," Ellis said. "He doesn't look like those mastodons with bleached hair and their waxed pecs flexing. It's a more democratized look."

At 5'8 and on the slender side, he's also pretty familiar - the Observer describes him as "that cute boy from your high school Spanish class," while Jezebel tagged him "as an empathetic Jewish boy with a naughty side."
But it's not just his look that fans are into - it's also his performance.

 

Even with the quote-unquote "kinkier" stuff, Deen's attentiveness to his partner is admired. GOOD magazine's profile of the porn star explains that Deen has "carved out a niche in the porn industry by looking like the one guy who doesn't belong there," adding that if  "you're interested in watching a young, heterosexual nonrepulsive man engage in sex, Deen is basically it."

ABC's "Nightline" described his appeal as being "a porn star who holds hands with his leading ladies, who gazes into their eyes and is quick to be romantic."

 

For his part, Deen told the news program, "When I have sex on camera, I pretty much just have sex the way I normally have sex" - a quality that Ellis is likely looking to have in "The Canyons."

It's been reported that the part Deen's said to be signed on to has nudity as a requirement, and will also display explicit sex scenes to further character and plot development.

Ellis said via Twitter Tuesday that production's set to begin July 9 in L.A.