Manufacturing Infamy: Lindsay Lohan, Lou Taylor and the Puppeteering of Hollywood's 'It Girls'
The carrots and sticks behind Lindsay, Britney, Paris, and the Kardashians.
These days, the public is savvier than it was in the 2000s, able to see the cracks in the Hollywood façade. The media’s reassessment of their past (both high- and low- brow media outlets) often blames the public for having an appetite for garbage while absolving its co-conspirators: the peddlers of smut who run Hollywood.
Looking back at the mid-2000s to early 2010s helps see beyond today’s illusions. Sensational headlines and gratuitous details work to mask the various mafia factions of Hollywood players, like those who intertwined behind the scenes with the brand names of Lindsay, Britney, Paris, and the Kardashians. Yet, pulling back the curtain, we see the coordination of the media, as well as the puppet strings suspending sticks or carrots, beckoning our “ It Girls” to behave.
There is renewed interest in Lou Taylor, owner of Tri Star Sports and Entertainment, as her client Diddy heads toward his criminal trial. Adding to this intrigue is the involvement of both Lou and Diddy with Justin Bieber’s career. Yet, there is the seldom told story of Lou’s usurpation of the Lohans.
This is that story.
The Bimbo Summit
We now turn to the narrative arc of Lindsay Lohan and wonder what she may have done to deserve the potential wrath of con(servatorship). Plenty of old paparazzi videos are still online of our friends, Paris and Lindsay, trading barbs while out on the town. The millennials were enthralled by the heightened insight into Hollyweird, while the Boomers were dismayed, but everyone seemed to be tuned into the exploits of the glitterati.
The Bimbo Summit is one of the most iconic photos of the 2000s… our trio of celebutantes squished into the front seat of fancy SUV. It is a strange way to package your product line. Nonetheless Paris remembers it as an uneventful evening where Lindsay and a shit ton of paparazzi happened to converge.
Paris is lying. She is prone to do so, but we must remember that her rock bottom, fortuitously, happened at the beginning of her career. She often seems oddly sober compared to the other gals at the time.
PR: The Backstreet Driver of Hollywood
Elliot Mintz, Paris’s publicist, was in the backseat of the SUV during the Bimbo Summit—cleverly orchestrating the whole shabang!
…in the early aughts [Elliot Mintz] followed the heiress dutifully to Hyde every single night, ensuring she was photographed alongside Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Mintz was in the back seat when the three bickering party monsters shared an SUV ride together—famously dubbed the “BIMBO SUMMIT” by the New York Post.
“Get them in, get them out with the highest degree of respectability if they were flat-out drunk or high,” Mintz explains of his duties. “Maybe a little smile for the man across the street,” he adds, referring to Harvey Levin, whose TMZ offices were directly across from Hyde at the time.
“Then on to after-hours parties, which we did until 5 in the morning,” he continues. “I would make certain she got home, walk her into the house, made sure that the locks were locked, that the cat was there and that the paps were just outside of the garage, but not inside the garage. I drove her home from the Hollywood precinct when she had been arrested. They were exhausting times.”
—The Hollywood Reporter, October 26, 2024
With this in mind watch the video footage from that night:
Notice: once Paris has Britney tucked into the car, a paparazzo asks her if she hit Lindsay, just as Lindsay walks up with Mr. Mintz. Lindsay goes on about how Paris is a “good girl” and didn’t hit her, as Mr. Mintz tucks her into the paparazzi swarmed SUV.
Watch it again if you need to.
What timing!
What a set-up.
The thing is… Paris may have, indeed, hit Lindsay with a drink the night before. Mr. Mintz needed to spin things around and get Paris back on the A-side—he did start out in radio after-all.
Watch Lindsay’s response to Paris’s telling of that night and make up your own mind.
In early 2008, Lindsay Lohan starred in Chapter 27, a film about Mark David Chapman, who assassinated John Lennon in 1980. Mintz happens to be lifelong friends with Yoko Ono and John Lennon. There are certain stories Hollywood likes to tell again and again.
Let’s Circle Back Until We Spiral!
To understand networks, I look at the aftermath of big events and who seems to level-up up or get kicked down. Kevin Federline’s attorney, Mark Vincent Kaplan, dangled Britney’s children like a carrot so she’d be more compliant with the conservatorship. Days after the conservatorship began, Mr. Mintz became Kaplan’s “media consultant”.
You must control the narrative!
Britney asked fans in June 2007, via her website, to vote for the name of her new album—one option was “OMG is Like Lindsay Lohan Like Okay Like.” The assumption inn the fandom is that Britney was dissing her. I’m not so sure
What do you think?
Coincidently, Perez Hilton mentioned in his memoir, “Revealing My Life In Scandal”, that Britney’s manager Larry Rudolph, (who she fired twice before the conservatorship started in 2008) was working with Lindsay Lohan in an unofficial capacity.
Synergy
Everything in Hollywood is about synergistic cross-promotion, from who you get photographed with, to who you tell the media is your favorite artist or crush, to what locations you are willing to get photographed by paparazzi. Shucks, the bimbos even shared attorneys like Blair Berk and Shawn Chapman Holley, who also repped Kanye, the Kardashians and Justin Bieber.
All of this to say: synergy doesn’t mean a celebrity consents, nor is forewarned in how their “people” manifest any given cross-promotional scheme.
This is true unless…. perhaps you act out and you are no longer protected—then its open season. The mafia will go after everything you hold dear, stalk you, cut off your money while buying out your family… and, well you know, they say “shooting stars” for a reason.
The Maloofs
I have covered the Maloofs’ relationship with the Spears family in detail on previous Substack articles. The quick history: they owned the Palms Casino when Las Vegas was king in the early 2000s and celebrity tabloids were given free range. George Maloof was in business with Britney Spears’ father, as well as her manager, Larry Rudolph—they were investors in Sunset Tan, a tanning bed chain and a complementary reality show.
They are why most of the girls in my high school were orange.
California Scheming: Lou Taylor & Jamie Spears Head West
This is Part 6 in the Chronicle of Lou Taylor. Lou was Britney Spears’ business manager throughout the conservatorship. Here you can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 & Part 7.
The Maloofs and Paris
In 2001, Paris Hilton was George's date to the opening of the Palms Casino. It was in this time period Paris recorded her sex tape with her ex-boyfriend, Rick Solomon. Rick, a professional poker player and future husband of Pamela Anderson, is George Maloof's good friend. The release of the sex tape in 2004 coincided with the debut of Paris’s reality show, The Simple Life.
I have some theories around what really went down, but I will save that for another time.
Kim Kardashian’s career launched when she played Paris’s sidekick, while the Kardashian family launched in 2007 with their reality show. In the first episode we meet Kris Jenner, the momaging enfant terrible, who showcased a brashly ambitious, yet supportive, family dynamic. We first meet them as they handled the aftermath of Kim’s sex tape and simultaneously planning Kris and Kaitlin Jenner’s 16th wedding anniversary.
The marketing around KUWTK, and its earned media via the gossip rags, was juxtaposed with the lost orphans of Lindsay, Britney, and Paris. In the end, all of them had the same crew running things behind the scenes. The first season of KUWTK includes visits to the Palms Casino and Kim’s Playboy photo shoot.
Kris had an ace up her sleeve, which to this day has protected la familia.
Hyper-reality TV in the 2000s
Celebrity handlers usually have their stable of stars’ “product lines” mapped out years in advance. The explosion of reality tv in the 2000s, when you look at the production credits, was not a serendipitous development in pop culture. Pop culture has always evolved with technological development. For example, the French New Wave was born from the affordability of film equipment due to the investment in R&D during WWII. This unprecedented access to modern storytelling lead to an artistic movement no longer bound by cinematic convention.
Conversely, the 2000s sought to lure the unsuspecting public into a heightened sensory experience, muddying the waters between reality and fiction, showcased by a novel luridness to checkout at the grocery store.
So it follows—as Lindsay became a tabloid sensation in 2005, industry players set their sights set on her evolution into a reality star, like Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey on Newlyweds or Britney Spears and Kevin Federline on Chaotic. It is no coincidence that Larry Rudolph was behind Jessica, marketing her as the pure anti-Britney. Nor was it a coincidence that in 2006, needing to up her Q Score, Kim Kardashian was linked in the tabloids to Nick Lachey six months after his break-up with Jessica.
Extra tidbit: Larry was also behind the “punk” anti-Britney Avril Lavigne.
It’s the same machine.
The Lohans and the Maloofs
There are innumerable publications where you can read about Lindsay’s struggles, rehab and legal troubles: this Substack is not that.
The power players couldn’t get Lindsay to “get with the programming,” so much like Britney, they targeted Lindsay’s family.
The vultures began to descend on Lindsay’s sister, with the enthusiastic complicity of Dina Lohan. By 2008, the Maloofs were launching Lindsay’s 14 year-old-sister, Ali Lohan’s career. This included the reality show Living Lohan and releasing a single. The show was housed on E! along with KUWTK.
IT’S SYNERGY, BABY!!!!
Ali had the full support of the players or were they using her as bait to get Lindsay back on the hook? To be frank, the effort to make Ali a star was phoned in, but more than the Maloof’s did for Britney’s cousin during the same time period.
Even in 2008, you couldn’t just get photographed with Taylor Swift on the red carpet…at an event sponsored by Candies, who had Larry and Co.’s girlies as brand reps: Britney, Katy Perry, Ashlee Simpson, Fifth Harmony. Synergy, baby!
Taylor’s career started with the same crew.
On the synergy of Living Lohan’s launch:
Dina's promoting herself, her daughter and the upcoming album. E! gets a little cross-branded advertising by having Hugh Hefner and some of "The Girls Next Door" stop by. And you can't miss the obligatory look-how-awesome-the-Palms-is scenes (Phil and Gavin Maloof are executive producers).
—Las Vegas Review-Journal, June 30, 2008
While Lindsay’s name was nowhere to be found in [Living Lohan’s] official announcement, the network said her appearing in future episodes was possible. The eight-episode, half-hour series, which bowed on Memorial Day 2008, was shot inside the family’s North Merrick, Long Island, home as well in Las Vegas at the Palms Casino Resort, where little sister Ali stayed and used the hotel’s state-of-the-art studio to record an album for the Palms’ owners, brothers Phil and George, Jr. Maloof, whose little-known label is distributed by Interscope. Conveniently, the reality series was co-produced by Maloof Productions. In a mutual marketing agreement, the hotel promised to promote the E! series on a Jumbotron sign outside the hotel, with thirty-second promos airing on each room’s TV and advertised on posters throughout the casino, according to Daily Variety.
— Overexposed: The Price of Fame, 2008
Dina Lohan Is A Sex Trafficker?
As 2008 progressed to fall, we have Lindsay launching a brand development firm and Dina, maybe, signing off on questionable coverage of Ali’s career moves. When Ali requested the court permit her to work for the Maloofs as a minor, TMZ wasn’t worried about calling the 14 year-old a “working girl” (slang for prostitute).
Is it any wonder, TMZ’s Harvey Levin leveled up within the same network—gleefullycollaborating with celebrities’ teams to explicitly state their trashy storyline, too debased to be “official PR.”
It would only be a few days after Ali was a “working girl” headliner, she showed up on a red carpet in a Lolita-kitten version of the Playboy Bunny uniform. None of this is an accident. Part of the spectacle of consuming “reality” is stirring morality debates. The public is tuned in so they may debate whether Dina Lohan is, in fact, pimping out her daughter.
SYNERGY
ONCE YOU SEE IT
YOU CAN’T
UNSEE IT
I Don’t Think This Is The Media Literacy They Want To Teach In School, Which Is About Upholding Institutional Power.
You Are Watching It Play Out Today
Ye (Kanye West), who has been vilified for years, recently made headlines for saying Kim Kardashian is a sex trafficker. This may seem like an extreme statement on the surface, but Ye knows what’s really going on.
Wouldn’t most normie parents be desperately concerned if their child was working in Hollywood without their consent?
In Hollywood, the tween years are the soft launch for future bombshells. They entice and tease the public to watch these kids “grow-up,” anticipating the day they are “legal” and transform into “adult stars.” It is much easier to indoctrinate the young into the Hollywood cult—normalizing the repulsive through repitition.
One thing you should pick up on, to undo your MK-Ultra programming, is to stop exposing yourself to content and personalities that aim to overwhelm the senses. The base drives and emotions of human beings, when triggered, easily usurp our higher cognitive powers. All public displays of sex and violence are some degree of Ultra conditioning.
Thought experiment: notice that rumors can spread quickly—only to be swiftly denied. It’s a tried and true way to divert your eyeballs and blur your thoughts. As the truth is slow to catch-up to lies… it makes the “truth” endlessly debatable.
Thought operators must corner the market by cultivating desires palatable to all consumer sub-groups. Some may clutch their pearls at topless dancers, others are tantalized by the prospect of pearl jam.
If only this was hyperbole…
In the following example of a debunked rumor, it’s purpose to:
a.) gauge the public’s appetite for Lindsay to be a topless dancer
b.) a threat
c.) something else
Tag Team Back Again
A parallel story to the Lohans and Spears was Britney’s conservatorship lawyers going after Courtney Love and successfully taking over the life of Frances Bean—only months shy of her 18th birthday. I have written about the labyrinthian saga elsewhere, but I wonder why Frances Bean felt compelled to write “an unprompted public missive” against Ali Lohan, for exploiting her sister’s fame, at the same time as her own family’s being targeted by the same network.
Courtney made headlines soon thereafter for stating she didn’t want Frances to end up like Jamie Lynn Spears.
2010: Living La Vida Lou Taylor
By January 2010, Lou Taylor was involved with Lindsay Lohan’s business and making promises to pay Lindsay’s outstanding bills. Only a few months later, headlines hailed Lou as a biblically inspired disciplinarian to fallen stars, and now it was Lindsay’s turn.
Taylor is not only considered genius in the money department, she's a huge personality with a moral force that easily rivals her hubby, who's a minister.
Sources say one of the reasons Taylor came on board with Lindsay is because of her fire and brimstone approach to handling her clients. We're told Taylor is not shy about pushing her born again religious views ... something we're told scared the hell out of Britney ... but we're also told Brit got over it when Taylor engineered the financial end of Brit's very successful concert tour.—TMZ, May 12, 2019
Now that Lindsay was under Lou’s thumb, she was offered $1 million to give OK! magazine the exclusive for the first pictures of her post-jail. Jamie Lynn Spears was offered the same deal, brokered by Lou Taylor, for her teen pregnancy narrative arc.
Here Comes Larry Rudolph!
The man behind Britney Spears' big comeback is her longtime manager Larry Rudolph, and now he is taking on re-launching the career of the fresh-out-of-jail-and-rehab starlet — Lindsay Lohan.—OK! September 14, 2010
In anticipation for Lindsay leaving jail, for the fourth time, it is announced that Larry Rudolph has signed on to revive her career.
Larry Rudolph has officially signed on to save Lindsay Lohan‘s career. The former manager for Britney Spears plans to turn around Lohan the way he right-turned Spears, who once shaved her head between rehab stints — and this year will guest star on Fox’s hit “Glee.” Lohan is eager to get back to work and has made that clear to anyone who’ll listen.
“She’s telling everyone she is more than ready for work and people should hire her and hire her now,” said a close confidante. But Ruldolph isn’t ready to pitch her just yet. “She’s on lockdown,” a source said.
—Page Six, September 3, 2010
This Might Be Confusing: Michael Lohan Drags Lou Taylor
Here is a detailed timeline if you need the play by play.
Throughout 2011, Lindsay was trapped in a revolving door of jail and rehab, while facing the real possibility of being railroaded into a conservatorship by Britney’s masters. At the beginning of the year Lindsay had caught charges for a DUI and grand theft larceny for allegedly stealing a $2,500 necklace.
The thing is though… her dad, Michael Lohan, thinks it was a set-up.
Firing an unexpected blast at the twosome who have helped Britney Spears, Michael told us: “A lot of the controversy in Lindsay’s life wouldn’t be there if Lou Taylor and Larry Rudolph weren’t part of the equation.
"They are both one-hit wonders with Britney Spears, and they are not going to do the same to my daughter.”
Those fighting words come as RadarOnline.com exclusively reported Friday that the prosecutor in Lindsay’s case will not accept a plea bargain unless it includes jail time. Michael insists his daughter is innocent and can prove it.
“As Lindsay’s father, I truly believe that there is no reason for Lindsay to go to jail -- especially at a time when she has literally turned her life around and is on a great path,” Michael told us.
“Lindsay has evidence... I know directly from Lindsay that she did not steal the necklace.”
—Radar Online, February 11, 2011
We need to look closer at what money-making projects were in the pipeline for Lindsay at the time…
By September 24th, Lindsay was back in court for a probation violation due to a positive drug test. Michael Lohan lambasted Lou Taylor and Shawn Chapman Holley on the court-side steps because he believed they were leading Lindsay astray.
The context: Michael said, back in August, Lou and Shawn leaked to the press Lindsay would be checking into Morning Star rehab. He argues this was done so they could ensure Lindsay went to rehab at UCLA. Ultimately, he believe her getting out prior to completing the program exacerbated her legal and addiction issues.
Do You See L.A.?
UCLA was the inpatient facility where Lou Taylor and Co. were successfully able to engineer Britney’s conservatorship. It is also where Michael Jackson was declared dead (somehow TMZ was first to report his death). Kanye was even inspired by UCLA when, in 2016, he wrote a rap about his involuntary stay:
Welcome to UCLA
Tell me how you see L.A
Welcome to UCLA
Tell me how you see L.A
I'm going- I'm going cray
Baby mama going cray
Going cray, I'm going UCLA
Take your meds, 'Ye
Take your meds, 'Ye
Take your meds, 'Ye
Take your meds, 'Ye
Take your meds, 'Ye
In between leaving jail again and entering rehab, Lou Taylor and Co. ensured that Lindsay was photographed at the Dream Center Homeless Shelter in L.A.. This photo-op symbolically indicates Lindsay’s struggle to get on the right path and is a part of Lou’s marketing strategy: to visibly help save our starlets, when in fact, she is an agent of the machine.
I’m not quite sure how Lindsay avoided a conservatorship, but her dad appears to have been a critical factor.
"Since Dina and Lou are going to try to be co-conservators, I had a choice of fighting it or petitioning for the purpose of appointing two conservators who don't have an interest in Lindsay's money, but rather her as a person and human being," Michael Lohan said.
—CNN, September 30, 2010
2011: Lou Taylor Is No Longer Living Off Lohan
Lou was out as Lindsay’s business manager soon after a lawsuit dropped suing Lindsay and Tri Star for unpaid limo charges.
Lindsay Lohan and her managers have not paid a penny on a limo service's bills for $90,586, says Elite Transportation Limousine and Security Services, which claims the unpaid bills date back to February 2009.
Elite sued Lohan, Tri Star Sports and Entertainment Group, and Altman Greenfield and Selvaggi, in Superior Court.
—Courthouse News, October 10, 2011
Sources close to LiLo tell TMZ she decided to split with her business manager, Lou Taylor. We're told Lindsay felt Taylor (who also manages Britney Spears) didn't have the time to manage her and Lohan wanted someone who could put more effort into her.
According to our sources, Lindsay felt her finances (which were Taylor's responsibility) were beginning to slip through the cracks and word was getting back to her that her balances were not being handled in a timely manner ... in part because Taylor is based in Tennessee.
—TMZ, October 24, 2011
This would be followed by Tri Star being named as a co-defendant in a personal injury lawsuit brought by a paparazzo injured by Lindsay’s car… which she wasn’t driving…
Grigor Balyan filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in LA Superior Court against Lohan and her driver, Paola Demara, along with management company Tri Star Sports and Entertainment. He claims the defendants “so negligently, carelessly, and recklessly operated, maintained, repaired, owned, and controlled their automobile so as to cause an accident which resulted in personal injuries and property damage to Plaintiff.”
Lindsay’s Life Turns Around
Lindsay starts getting positive feedback from the judge by the end of 2010 and by late March 2012 she was off felony probation. Lindsay was then appearing as Kim Kardashian’s best friend at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, where you must be invited by members of the media.
Don’t we know Lindsay is a good actress and Kim is not?
TIMING!!!
By the end of Lindsay’s cycle of of being a patient-criminal, there would be no conservatorship. During #FreeBritney Michael Lohan confirmed Lou Taylor’s plot against Lindsay. But… it isn’t clear how she avoided a con and Michael hints there is much more to the story.
Perhaps Lindsay got off free because of her newfound bestiedom with the Kardashians???
Lohan Was Out and ‘Bout It With The Kardashians in 2013
…I Think Something Happened…
By 2014, Larry Rudolph banned Lindsay from attending Britney’s Las Vegas show and Lindsay moved out of (fled?) the USA.
That’s odd!
After 10 Years In Exile Lindsay Lohan Is Back In The USA
Lohan spent a decade living outside the USA and it was headline news when she announced her return stateside.
Note: I haven’t looked into the time period between when Lindsay shared the desire to return to the USA and when she actually returned.
“I want to really focus on me and everything that I can do in my life and come back to America and start filming again, which I’m doing something soon in this new year. And, you know, just taking back the life I’ve worked so hard for and sharing it with my family and you guys.”
—CNN, December 31, 2019
What’s The Scenario?
It is certainly fair to ask:
“Did Lindsay have to make some deal with devil to return to the USA?”
Are people finally willing to acknowledge that pretty-messy-white-girls were possibly an op produced by the Octopus (the shadow alliance between Hollywood, the mafia and intelligence), in order to distract people from the USA being bogged down by two wars in the Middle East?
At this rate there is no stopping this mysterious experimental project: MX-Defy.
MMM….K!
How might we know what we know???
