Shia LaBeouf could have just apologized to Daniel Clowes and called it a day. As we’ve already seen, having a reputation for being a pretentious sh*thead thief plagiarist and hot-headed bar fighter doesn’t mean a lick, because he’s still being offered roles alongside Bill Murray and Bruce Willis. He can show up to the Berlin Film Festival and act like a total a-hole in front of his castmates at a press conference, but they all love it, because people are still buzzing about Nymphomaniac. He can Tweet “I AM NOT FAMOUS” until his keyboard disintegrates, and it won’t matter because hundreds of people will RT each one, and a schmuck like me will still sit here writing about him.
LaBeouf could have just apologized and moved on, but instead he has kept taking the fact that he plagiarized Clowes’s Justin M. Damiano with his short film HowardCantour.com one step further. And today, he took the longest and boldest step yet by opening his own “art exhibit” called #IAMSORRY, in which he is allowing regular Joes to walk in off the streets of Los Angeles and stare at him as he supposedly cries underneath his paper bag.
According to TIME, anyone that shows up to 7354 Beverly Boulevard between the hours of 11 AM and 6 PM from today through Sunday can “meet” LaBeouf, as long as they’re cool with the fact that he’s wearing a paper bag on his head and really not talking to anyone. He’s just sitting there, watching people say random things to him, as they hold random objects. For some reason, the attendees are allowed to select one item from a table of props, including a whip (to symbolize Indiana Jones), an Optimus Prime toy, a bottle of Brut cologne and a bowl of Hershey’s Kisses, among others. It’s art, I guess.
Plenty of people have been showing up, like these oh-so-quirky people, who are either LaBeouf fans or possibly mocking his plagiarism by copying him. I don’t know. This whole thing is so f*cking annoying.
The choice of venue is ironic and probably intentional, as the exhibit is right across the street from BuzzFeed’s Los Angeles office, and the popular website first broke the news of LaBeouf’s plagiarism of Clowes. That he didn’t choose to call his effort “74 Cat GIFs That Show How Sorry Shia Is” might be the biggest offense that he has committed. Additionally, it’s BuzzFeed that points out that even this so-called exhibit, like every apology or quote that LaBeouf has produced leading up to this, is just a knock-off of Marina Abramovic’s “The Artist is Present” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art back in 2010.
“So how do we know that it’s actually LaBeouf and not some other dick?” That’s a great question, me. Andrew Romano from The Daily Beast actually stopped by the #IAMSORRY exhibit twice, and on the second trip, LaBeouf removed his paper bag, and Romano broke the “No Photography” rule and captured an image of the actor with his iPhone.
I guess the better question is “So what’s the point of all of this?” or maybe “When does this all end and what’s the punchline?” Because even as much as I love art, this is becoming about as pointless as one of those pinecone turkeys I made when I was four.
(Images via Getty)