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— by Jennifer Vineyard
It's 2 a.m., and Lindsay Lohan is holed up in the bathroom.
It's not a real bathroom — it's a video set, and it's right next to a living-room set and a little-girl's-bedroom set, all of them inside storefront windows in New York's Chelsea district. There are extras walking by outside like window-shoppers, watching Lindsay in the fake bathroom as she emotionally lip-synchs her new song, "Confessions of a Broken Heart." However, the action has stopped because there's a problem — actually, a couple of problems.
The singer pops her head out of the doorway and beckons various helpers — her assistant director, her publicist, anyone. "They can't hear the song out there," she says, gesturing to the street. "How can they be the audience if they're not hearing it, too?" Then, "They can't see if I fall, but it's important that they do."
Finally, and most importantly: "My breast popped out! They may have just gotten a shot!"
Lohan's people scurry off on their various missions: to get playback sound outside, to check monitors and sightlines, and to get the paparazzi to delete any wardrobe-malfunction shots — now!
When Lindsay speaks, people listen — not just because she's the star, but because this time, she's also the boss.
"I told her, 'No one can direct this video better than you,' " says Tommy Mottola, head of Casablanca Records, Lohan's label. " 'No one knows this song better than you, no one knows this situation better than you.' It's a lot to take on, but I told her she's ready, and we'll give her all the support she needs."
Directing this video is a lot to take on, not just technically, but emotionally as well: The song and the clip are about the much-publicized Lohan family drama of the last year, which has landed her parents in a heated divorce and custody battle (her father is currently in prison following an unrelated incident). The lyrics to the song, which Lohan wrote with Kara DioGuardi, read in part, "Daughter to father/ I don't know you, but I still want to ... Tell me the truth/ Did you ever love me?"
The video depicts her father, Michael Lohan (portrayed in the video by actor Drake Andrew), coming home to find Lohan's mother, Dina (played by British actress Victoria Hay), reading a magazine while the TV blares the news of his most recent arrest for drunk driving. Enraged, he knocks Dina to the floor, drags her across the room by her hair and throws her against the wall.
This vicious fight draws the attention of the onlookers outside, who stop and stare through the storefront windows. Cops arrive too, but they seem more interested in dispersing the crowd than in helping. The scene's message is this: Lindsay's world is falling apart, and all anyone will do is watch. "[The video is set] in a storefront, on display, because my life is on display," she says. "This is all real, by the way — it happened."
During the fight, Lindsay is in the bathroom — "I'm hiding and writing [the song's lyrics] in the bathroom," she explains — and her 11-year-old sister, Aliana (who, like Lindsay, appears in the video as herself), is in her bedroom. Both of them listen to the shouting match in the living room, reacting — Lindsay by throwing things around the bathroom, Ali by crying and calling for help.
Now there's another problem: Lindsay wants to break the mirror in the bathroom, and an assistant director is trying to talk her out of it.
"This is real glass, Lindsay. We weren't prepared for you to break these things." Ultimately, they decide to merely crack the mirror.
"Do you want this slow motion?" Jeb Bryan, one of the video's assistant directors, asks. "Regular frame will make it more violent."
"I don't want it to be too pretty," she says.
Even the bathroom setting is taken from Lohan's life. "I actually did cry at the end [of the song's recording]," she recalls. "It was very emotional. Kara kept saying, 'Do it once more,' and I was like, 'I can't do it!' and then I broke down and ran into the bathroom and closed the door. A lot of the stuff in the video has happened in my real life.
"As glamorous as this life looks," she says, "it's not always.
"I had a lot of personal things going on and my life was out of order. I needed to take control of what was going on. I feel like the past year has been a whirlwind and I've just grown up so much."
In the video, Lindsay is all dolled up, wearing clothes more appropriate for an awards show than an eruption of domestic violence. It's to signify that she's "all dressed up [with] nowhere to go," she says. "We have great clothes. I wanted to do something that was kind of extravagant up top so when we go back and edit, I can catch the light and sparkle."
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Photo: Getty Images/ MTV News
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