Is This Lindsay Lohan Comeback for Real?

Does Lindsay Lohan have any chance of an actual comeback? I keep reading that she's coming back, but so far all I've seen about her is magazine covers and that Chapter 27 movie premiering.
—Dean, New York City

Magazine covers aren't just magazine covers in this business. They're designed to send messages to producers, casting directors and jaded audience members.

Take that recent New York magazine cover shoot, where LiLo mimicked those ancient shots of a naked Marilyn Monroe. The guy who orchestrated that shoot was the same dude who photographed Marilyn decades ago. Sitting still for a guy who's nearly 80 years old while he shambles around trying to re-create the bygone kickiness of the early 1960s, all without once dissolving into a puddle of crazy—that takes talent.

That was the message: I sat still for two weeks wearing nothing but a genie scarf while that codger played with the lights. I am ready to behave, for the love of Pete.

Besides that new Chapter 27 movie that opened in limited release last weekend, other evidence that Lindsay Lohan is on the way back up:

• She's cutting her third album.

• E! News recently reported that she's booked a new acting gig, playing a member of the infamous Manson family in an upcoming movie.

• Just-in E! photos reveal that she's currently capable enough to dress herself and do her own food shopping.

• Jack Black trusts her enough to work with her. She's working on his new ren-fair-geek spoof, Ye Olde Times, due out next year.

What more do you want from her, you leeches? Even box-office analysts and crisis PR experts say that Lindsay is doing just fine right now, keeping negative press to a minimum and brushing her hair.

She could be on the right track toward becoming big business again, or at least more respected. And unlike her peers Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson and Britney, everyone agrees that LiLo can act.

Sure, Exhibitor Relations box-office analyst Jeff Bock concedes LiLo's rehab-studded past makes her a liability for producers, but he adds, "the potential gains are more than the losses in terms of her talent and in terms of what she can bring to the table."

Celebrity-crisis PR expert Cherie Kerr agrees.

"We'll have to wait another six months to a year to finally see she if she can recover from her past," Kerr says. "But she's managed to keep herself out of the press more lately, and that's good for her. That's exactly what she needs."

That and maybe a little credit for that genie scarf shoot.

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