KittyGags
LIF Adult
Member since 7/09 5614 total posts
Name:
|
Vanity Fair Article--Sweet Home, Long Island
This article made me so mad where it says no one aspires to live in Merrick--ummmmm, its quite a nice town and yes, I aspired to live there!
Actors and singers have been misbehaving since before the dawn of radio. Still, within the past few years, Lindsay Lohan has achieved a special notoriety—because the lens recording her movements is so much wider and the focus tighter than anything the tipsy, recklessly driving stars of the past could have encountered. “Celebrity is the mask that eats into the face,” John Updike once wrote. For Lindsay, this rings especially true.
But who was she before she put on the mask of celebrity? Was she always destined for clubs, limos, headlines, jail cells, and rehab group-therapy sessions, regardless of whether or not she was “frenemies” with Paris Hilton? To learn the real truth about Lindsay, it may help to go to the source—to her hometown of Merrick, New York, where some of her family still resides and locals knew her as a spirited, charismatic, and seemingly normal kid.
Merrick is a classic Long Island commuter town of about 23,000 people nestled halfway between Manhattan and the Hamptons. No one aspires to live in Merrick. Located on the South Shore of Long Island, the 5.2-square-mile hamlet is made up of mostly single-family tract homes, a cluster of stucco-and-shingled ranches, seven temples and six churches, and an array of strip malls colonized by national chains. The family-owned variety of uninviting local boutiques and beauty parlors, plus a diner, pubs, and a popular pizzeria, still remain—thanks to the Keep A-Merrick-A Beautiful Committee. However, it’s Merrick’s Long Island Rail Road station that is seemingly the town’s epicenter; according to a 1984 New York Times article, there are 1,078 parking spaces that are rarely vacant on a workday.
It’s easy to see why Lindsay would want to escape Merrick. But the town is also where she may return at some point, once her current legal and medical issues are resolved. Why? Because they’re all still here, the entire Lohan clan: mother Dina (when she’s not partying with Lindsay in Los Angeles or hanging out in the Hamptons), grandmother Ann, and uncle Paul. (Father Michael has been traipsing around Southampton and is reportedly looking for property there.)
Merrick aspires to be the kind of place that does not easily absorb a lot of drama. It was named after the Meroke Indian tribe formerly indigenous to the area. The name literally means “peaceful,” and this still rings true, somewhat. Merokians tend to respect their neighbors; privacy, at least on the surface, is the rule. Dina’s Colonial-style home, where Lindsay grew up, is just down the road from the Merrick Avenue Middle School. It’s one of the few homes in the area with an extended driveway, and it’s adorned with sage bushes and a gate, which seems designed to keep prying eyes away.
“[Merrick] is a good neighborhood to raise a family in,” a postman says while delivering mail to Dina Lohan’s home. “This one in particular, maybe not so much. But the kids are all right, that much I know—they are on their own island.” Strangely, the residents of Merrick often seem to treat Lindsay more circumspectly than does her own family. When the Lohans’ neighbors are queried about her, most simply reply with “no comment” or “I have no part.”
Down the road from the Lohan home, at Jugs-N-Strokers, Merrick’s biker bar, denizens are reluctant to talk about any celebrity patrons. Though the ferociously taut blond bartender does claim that Dina has frequented the establishment for years—“She comes in every Tuesday and Thursday”—another bartender, a black-leather-clad and somewhat brutish woman who goes by the name “Pistol,” dismissively comments that she’s not interested in hearing any “rumors.”
This is a sentiment that is echoed throughout the rest of the town. Fortunately, whenever a reporter is confronted by too much reticence, there is always a Lohan family member to bail her out. “What you read in the papers about Lindsay, believe it all, 10 times more,” says Paul Sullivan, Lindsay’s maternal uncle, while sunning himself on a lounge chair and sipping a Bloody Mary at the Allegria Hotel. It’s a boutique Long Island beachfront hangout with a South Beach feel; all white cabanas, fake leafless trees, and a cluster of jellyfish light fixtures that the owner tells Sullivan he “splurged on.”
Aside from his notoriety as uncle of Merrick’s most famous native daughter, Sullivan is also known for being convicted on fraud charges involving funds earmarked for 9/11 disaster relief. “Call me when you get to the incredible oasis town of Merrick,” he had text-messaged before our meeting. “Home of the megastar Lindsay Lohan and her amazing uncle, Paul.”
For a man in his 50s, he is exceptionally fit and evenly tanned—with smooth skin to boot. He’s dressed down in an athletic cotton tank-top, running shorts, and Ralph Lauren sunglasses. “I am always dressed in a suit, but today I’m hittin’ the beach,” he explains in a cool voice that could have been charming under different circumstances.
Unlike some uncles, he is happy to discuss his niece with a stranger. “Why is Lindsay the way she is?” he muses. “Well, it’s not hard to figure out.” He pauses to think—maybe it’s a little hard to figure out—then continues: “Eventually she has got to stop blaming Mommy and Daddy. It was a slow erosion—you don’t become an alcoholic overnight. Little by little, like Chinese water torture. Dina can say Lindsay’s fine and nothing is wrong—but Lindsay admits to the drugs. She admits this! I told Lindsay, ‘I love you [and I] don’t care if you’re Hollywood or not—I want to save you.”
We are speaking while Lindsay is still in rehab in Los Angeles at the Ronald Reagan U.C.L.A. Medical Center. “Hopefully, this U.C.L.A. rehab will be better than the others,” Sullivan says. “Maybe … but I don’t think she is ready.” He takes a swig of his Bloody Mary, tossing the mixing straw. “Feeding the fame!” he snaps, pleased to have drawn a clever connection between celebrity and addiction.
But there is a stale quiet when he is asked to recall Lindsay’s life before all the klieg lights and headlines. Finally he speaks up. “Even now I remember. She was just a kid. Starting out, she lit up the room—and that is what I wish I could hold on to,” he says, now adjusting his posture and sitting in a formal and upright position. Perhaps writing the book about his niece that he says he’s been shopping to publishers will help him hold on to those memories more tightly.
“Lindsay was doing so much [professionally], even at three years old,” Uncle Paul continues. “She did several commercials: Sears, Burger King, Jell-O. Dina was great at going door-to-door to auditions.” He clasps his hands together and leans in closely. “And when Lindsay’s father [Michael Lohan] was away in jail”—as he was from 1990 to 1993, on contempt-of-court charges arising from an insider-trading case—“there was more peace for us.” One is sadly reminded that the 11-year-old Lindsay came to fame for her performance in the 1998 movie titled The Parent Trap.
The woman who helped get her that role is llene Starger, a veteran casting director based in New York. “Lindsay was like a diamond in the rough,” says Starger. “Incredibly unique, and very winsome.” Lindsay was represented by a respected children’s agency at the time; she came in to see Starger fairly early in the casting process for The Parent Trap and made a lasting impression: “She was charming and original, with an adorable, but real, look. She had red hair, which was somewhat untamed. She had freckles. She had expressive, laughing eyes, a great grin, and an authentic Long Island accent . . . She had maturity beyond her years, but she was a kid, in the best sense.”
Lindsay’s family was naturally thrilled when she was offered the role. “She was chosen out of 15,000 girls, and God, she was a natural! She could sing, act, and dance, and she had great film presence,” Paul Sullivan says, grinning. “It was a blessing to get The Parent Trap—but in retrospect, maybe it was not. It was tough on the family and tough on Lindsay during that time.” He mentions Michael’s arrest for violating his parole sanction against travel, after he visited Lindsay in Los Angeles during the shoot. (She had been hospitalized after a serious asthma attack.)
Lindsay returned to Merrick for seventh grade after shooting that film, but her burgeoning celebrity seems, inevitably, to have set her apart from her schoolmates. “I remember her being almost in a conflicting denial about her fame during The Parent Trap,” says Jennifer, a former schoolmate of Lohan’s at Sanford H. Calhoun High School. (Jennifer doesn’t want to give her last name.) “I think it was really hard for her to feel normal around us because she was already making a name for herself while the rest of us were just kids—figuring it all out. She never really got to **** up, or go through the normal stages of ******* up that we did … and when she did, it was almost like she could never look back. I don’t even think she went through an awkward stage. She was always this stage-ready kind of phenomenon and that really intimidated people, or at least it made me feel self-aware. Maybe it’s growing up with a mom as a manager.” Maybe it is. Speaking generally, Ilene Starger, the casting agent, says, “It is my personal belief that parents should not professionally manage their children or enter into a business relationship with them. I have seen quite a few ‘stage’ parents who push their child into acting at an impossibly young age, when the child really has no idea if it’s something he or she wants to pursue.”
In 2003, just a year before graduation from Calhoun, Lohan left Merrick more or less for good to star in what is to date her highest-grossing film, Mean Girls. Wendy, another former schoolmate who also doesn’t want to give her last name, says the last time she saw Lindsay was when they were teammates on the junior-varsity basketball team. “When we had games, everyone at the other schools would get excited that the girl from The Parent Trap was coming. Her mom was overprotective, but Lindsay was on the brink of stardom so it was hard for her to maintain friendships.”
Nicole, a childhood friend and neighbor of Lindsay’s, insists that “Lindsay was … no, ,is a real, down-to-earth person.” Distressed at the suggestion that her simple suburban childhood could have contributed to Lindsay’s troubles, Nicole says that the Lindsay she knows is “not anything but a gifted and humble girl from Merrick. It’s a really quiet town to grow up in—it’s not like L.A., where there’s this heavy partying and a whole lot to do. Everyone kind of knows everyone, and Lindsay was more embarrassed than conceited about her good fortune. I never felt shunned by her, personally.”
Ann Sullivan, Lindsay’s grandmother, lives near the Lohan homestead but has remained comfortably out of the spotlight, save for a brief appearance on Dina’s short-lived 2008 reality show, Living Lohan. The surrounding houses feel startlingly upscale in contrast to Mrs. Sullivan’s supremely gloomy home, but she’s not home much anymore these days. Her single-level home sits on an unkempt mud-brown lawn, surrounded by a chain-link fence and decorated with a weathered basketball hoop, which is said to have been installed for her granddaughter. But if you happen to stop by, an elderly woman might poke her head out of the house next door to tell you what’s what.
“Ann’s son [Lindsay’s uncle Christopher J. Sullivan] passed away recently, her granddaughter is in rehab, and she’s a widow. I don’t think she knows what to think of this whole spectacle,” stammers the sympathetic neighbor. She says she would advise Lindsay to seek redemption by trading Hollywood for Gotham—or, better yet, for Merrick. “I think she needs to come back to Merrick,” says the neighbor. “We are very forgiving here.”
|
