Yesterday morning Salon‘s Matt Zoller Seitz posted a q & a with Matthew Wilder, director of the possibly forthcoming Inferno , a Linda Lovelace biopic that Lindsay Lohan has agreed to star in. My humble opinion is that his comments suggest the mind and values of a delusional, self-promoting, truth-denying weasel.

Not once does Wilder allow that Lohan might have even a mild substance-abuse problem, or that she might have caused her troubles by being reckless and ignoring court orders. With Iagos like Wilder giving support and comfort to Lohan, you can see why she might have trouble understanding or accepting the ways of the actual world.

Here’s the interview link but if you’re pressed for time here’s a translation of what Wilder says:

“I’m not only directing Lindsay’s next movie but I’m also her staunchest supporter, so don’t expect a fair-minded appraisal of her situation. I’m standing by my star, and I’m shilling. On top of which this poor pure-hearted girl, who is ready and willing to simulate extraordinary sexual humiliation in my film, did absolutely nothing to deserve 90 days in the pokey. Well, nothing I want to talk about. It’s just a ‘get Lindsay’ mentality out there, chiefly among the predatory press. If she were a guy she wouldn’t be hammered as much. But however you slice it she is who she is and she’s agreed to be in my film and thereby push along my career, and that’s all. So I don’t care about anything except portraying Lindsay as a victim, and…you know, sending out the message to others in the creative community that whatever I might really think, I sure as hell won’t share it with the likes of Matt Zoller Seitz.”

One of Wilder’s statements to Seitz was that “it’s important for people to understand…is that all the bile spewed [about Lohan] in the press here, and indeed the sentence itself, [is] based on a cooked-up narrative, one that bears no more or less relationship to reality than that of a reality TV show.”

Seitz replies by saying “it sounds like you’re saying it wasn’t Lindsay Lohan that was sentenced, but her image.”

And Wilder answers: “There is a weird ‘meta’ thing with our movie that is morphing into the real world. Lindsay, like Linda Lovelace, is a screen onto which people project their fantasies, anxieties and rages. And as with Linda, that can mean that person gets cookies and cake, or it can mean that person is subject to public shame and abuse.

“I think people idealize…and when someone doesn’t fit their fantasy, they are enraged. And the system, the entertainment press, is enraged too. And so a narrative is formed and that person is demonized.

“There are all these people out here whom the folks at home think are saints and walk on water. And you know as well as I that that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s quite arbitrary who gets a halo and who gets horns. And in this case, I think the press wanted a tale of repentance, of humility, and they didn’t get it.

“The entertainment press wants the repentant story: I bought a house, here’s my boyfriend, here’s my dog, here’s my yoga class, see, I’m nice, now. And when they didn’t get that, they went into Annihilation Mode.

“I encounter people all the time — people in real life, fancy people with money — who say, “Oh, are you the guy doing that movie with Lindsay Lohan? God, I can’t stand her. I wish she’d drop dead.” What? Who ginned that up? Where do people feel that ease in saying that? And why, precisely, are people barking for her extinction instead of putting Tony Hayward or Lloyd Blankfein in their imaginary electric chair?”

Seitz reports Wilder’s assertion that Inferno is “fully financed” and “will start shooting when Lohan’s jail term is done and she’s ready to work again.”