Employees at Manhattans Angelika Film Center had been warned about what was going to happen, but they didnt know when it would start. And then, at noon on Tuesday afternoon, part-time actor and full-time agent of chaos Shia LaBeouf settled into an aisle seat in the theaters smallest auditorium and began to watch in reverse chronological order all of the 27 feature films in which hes appeared over the span of his career. The marathon event began with Dito Montiels brand new, yet-to-be-released Man Down; itll end 58 consecutive hours later when the credits roll on 1998s Breakfast with Einstein, around 10pm on Thursday night. What LaBeouf is attempting would be an act of extreme masochism for any performer, let alone someone whos starred in three different Transformers movies.
Once thought to be an innocuous goofball who parlayed a broad comic charm into a blockbuster-star career, the 29-year-old seemed to grow profoundly disoriented towards the end of 2014, as if he realized that fame was a minotaurs maze in which hed lost his way. But thishasnt beenyour average episode ofBehind the Music;LaBeoufscuriously counterintuitive attempts to escape from the public eye havebeen far more artful than any of the things he didto put himself in it. Everyone thought he was having a nervous breakdown. Now his meltdown increasingly seems more like a calculated plan to confront and perhaps destroy the modern concept of celebrity.
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Unsurprisingly, LaBeoufs latest stunt was revealed to bea new pieceof performance art called #ALLMYMOVIES, a new work from the actors arts collective(his collaborators Luke Turner and Nastja Sde Rkk could be seen scrambling through the foyer; they officially declined to comment for this piece). Complementedby an unblinking live-stream of the actors face and brought to life by an open invitationfor the publicto drop by for as long as they want, the installation mixes equal partsChristian Marclay, Marina Abramovic, andDavid Blaine an event fueledby the sameelectrical storm offame that it ultimately exists to embarrass anddismantle.
Rolling Stone arrived just after 1pm on Wednesday and found all the fanfare that youd expect at a movie screening on a rainy weekday afternoon. Two guards stood outside the door to the auditorium, and the piercing beeps from their security wands announced the arrival of each new attendee. Inside, twenty-odd twentysomethings were watching a melodramatic WWII drama (Fury) in reverent silence; someone sitting towards the front had a large camera pointing directly athis face.
As for the live-stream, it makes #ALLMYMOVIESseem like an exercise in vanity: Youre the viewer, and the star is playing the part of the perpertually viewed. Its a one-way street. But as soon as amiddle-aged man strolled down the aisle, bentover LaBeouf, and snappeda picture of the actor about three inches from his face with flash! it became clear that the online portion of the installation was ultimately just an advertisement for the experience.Sitting a few feet behind him and watching him stare up at his own gargantuan reflection, his method finally began to make sense of his madness.
The actor first broke from the prescribed A-list star template back in December of 2013, when he was caught plagiarizing a Dan Clowes graphic novel for the script of his short film HowardCantour.com. The theft was quickly eclipsed by LaBeoufs apology campaign: a manic series of tweets that were themselves plagiarized from pre-existing mea culpas. A few days later, he announced his retir[ement] from public life. By the time he walked the red carpet at the Berlin Film Festival, wearing a paper bag over his head on which hed scrawled I am not famous anymore, it wasnt clear if LaBeouf was biting the hand that fed him or trying to eat it whole. But he had successfully rebranded himself as a human disaster artist.
But the icing on the cake of his tailspin remains #IAMSORRY. Hatched in February of 2014, the five-day event invited individual members of the public to sit alone in a room with a silent LaBeouf and interact with him however they chose. Sometimes, it ended in tears once, it ended with LaBeoufs collaborators intervening to prevent their friend from being raped. I went from being a celebrity or object to a fellow human, he reflected afterwards. It happened in less than a second for some.
#ALLMYMOVIES relies more upon visceral immediacy than it does intellectual heft, and is predicated on an incredibly simple idea: You cant pay attention to a film when one of its stars is sitting right in front of you. No oneat the Angelikacould avert their eyes from LaBeoufs utterly unremarkable head; everything happening on the screen was a complete afterthought. And like a millennial Benjamin Button or Boyhood in reverse, the installation ledviewers back through time as LaBeouf reverts from our current conception of him to rising star and, eventually, just a curly-haired kid.All the while, the guy who was fighting Nazis, robots et al. on screen was sitting in our field of view, his static physical presence a constant contrast to the transformation projected behind him.
When the credits rolled on Man Down, there were a few giggles and no applause, and the man of the hour immediately bolted for the door its unclear if he had to pee, if he wanted to check in with his collaborators, or if he just didnt want to dealwith the guy breathing down his neck for the brunt of the afternoon. Of course, its not like he would have engaged him in conversation; continuing a practice he employed in #IAMSORRY, the actor refused to speak.LaBeouf wasnt rude he courteously moved for people to leave his row, and he even shared some popcorn with the girl in the next seat over. But for the next 50-plus hours, LaBeouf doesnt want us to know who he is. He just wants us to know what he isnt.
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