Ever since he grew out his facial hair, Shia LaBeouf has been doing…something. We’re not sure exactly what but it involves distancing himself from the product-of-the-Hollywood-movie-star-assembly-line version of himself and embracing Shia LaBeouf, Artiste. With that said, Shia has a new sex film, a bloody music video he directed and a self-interview with The Worst magazine out.
This week, Future Unlimited debuted a new music video directed by LaBeouf for the song, “Haunted Love.” The video contains violence, abuse, limb-severing and even baby burning. Enjoy!
What’s that all about? Well, Shia asked himself that question in a self-interview for The Worst.
Is this an imagined video on abusive relationships? Is this a sympathetic take on abusive relationships? WE CAN GUARANTEE THAT THE ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP WILL LEAD THE MAJORITY OF THE COVERAGE (BESIDES THE BURNING BABY), SO WOULD BE GOOD TO HAVE A POV ON THIS
Why was the baby burning? What is the metaphor behind this?
The answer is unclear, because he never fully addresses the baby part. How Shia of him!
Regardless, May is going to be an interesting month for LaBeouf when you pair the music video with his return to theaters in Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac. The film tells the story of a girl names Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who recounts her story of sex addiction. This will be the second time our precious Shia gets naked (the first in a Sigur Ros music video) and supposedly he engages in graphic sex scenes.
Additionally, it’s Von Trier who we have to thank for the new music video. LaBeouf explains how the director influenced the origins…
He loves collaborative creation and encourages involvement, so I started throwing him ideas of a scene, not for a video. Just a hypothetical scene, for our movie. This led of course to other topics, domestic abuse in history and so on…. We never found anything for the film But in my conversations with Lars he would always throw me other ways of looking at it. He was also very forthcoming with lost films, references and videos of his own. He made a film length version of “Medea” when he was around my age. And so he was very encouraging towards my wanting to explore topics like this myself behind the camera. So between the magic of timing and having a Genius as a bounce board I wrote a script and contacted the band.
Throw in the comic books he wrote and produced and Labeouf’s work over the past two years is verging on James Franco territory. It’s not that any of these choices are bad, just that they are collectively random. Besides, his music video, while terrifying, was beautifully shot. Something he successfully executed better than Franco, who made his video directorial debut by filming Lindsay Lohan getting photographed by Terry Richardson for REM. And the world spins madly on.