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Finally some Buzzfeed content that is actually worth sharing! In case you haven’t heard Shia LaBeouf is in hell right now, and it appears he’s ended up there because of an insatiable desire to plagiarize people smarter than him. I’m actually suspicious it’s all part of a performance piece or something because it’s way too funny to be real.
Ok so, earlier this year Shia LaBeouf dropped out of Daniel Sullivan’s production of “Orphans” and used his Twitter to share a screenshot of his apology email to his co-star Alec Baldwin. The email contained what appears to be a heartfelt message. The Internet went nuts, when Gawker revealed that his apology was completely copied from an Esquire article in their “How to Be a Man” Issue, from 2009.
Flash forward to Monday of this week. Shia LaBeouf posted his film “HowardCantour.com” online and the Internet exploded with controversy. It appeared the film was a complete rip-off of famed cartoonist Daniel Clowes’ comic “Justin M. Damiano”.
The film, starring Jim Gaffigan as a film critic, contains characters and huge sections of narration lifted directly off the pages of Clowes’ story. You can watch the film and see panels from Clowes’ comic here.
Late last night, Shia LaBeouf took to Twitter to apologize to Clowes, but not without adding a defence for his actions:
“Copying isn’t particularly creative work. Being inspired by someone else’s idea to produce something new and different IS creative work.” — Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 17, 2013 (source)
And now for my favourite part! It turns out that even this statement was lifted from someone else. It appears that in order to write this Shia LaBeouf needed the help of an entry on Yahoo! Answers, by a user named Lili, from 4 years ago:
“Merely copying isn’t particularly creative work, though it’s useful as training and practice. Being inspired by someone else’s idea to produce something new and different IS creative work, and it may even revolutionalize the “stolen” concept.” (source)
Daniel Clowes is now pursuing legal action (as he should). I still can’t believe this is real, it’s too amazing.
