How Shia Labeouf's Career inspired me to follow my own dreams

Making his first known public appearance at only ten years old when he started making his appearance in Californian Comedy clubs. Hailing from Los Angeles where the most famous stand up comedians come from being only ten years old is an amazing achievement. Shia had a signature comedy style that contrasted enough from his appearance that it caught the attention of the audience. Shia used comedy as an escape from his home life, which was anything but comedic. His comedy did not make much money but it got him and his dad in their hotel apartment. His dad being a rodeo clown and to some extent Shia’s manager and employee. Taking his dark, and abusive home life into his comedy helped him handle it. He was said to be “A fifty year old mouth on a ten year old body.” After hearing about managers he decided to get his own, by looking up a manager on the yellow pages and pretending to be an older representative who was willing to allow his client to be represented by them. Being a ten year old boy, the manager was not fooled but admired the ballsy move and helped manage him anyway. He soon started getting larger roles with that manager eventually landing on the disney show ‘Even Stevens’ which was a pretty great start to an acting role being only thirteen to sixteen when they were filming the show. Staying within disney he got his first real break with the movie ‘Holes.’ His role as Stanley Yelnats showcased his acting chops on the big screen with big names alongside him. Then leaving the disney machine and getting some supporting roles alongside Will Smith in ‘iRobot’ and Keanu Reeves in ‘Constantine.’ Neither of these being well known movies let alone a well known role. In 2007 things changed for him. He landed the leading role in a massive Micheal bay movie, Transformers. As well as two lesser known movies with the animated movie ‘Surf’s Up’ and Disturbia, which are not as well known, made a decent amount of money. The next year he came out as what is made to be the heir to the Indiana Jones throne. While clear now it was looking like Shia would be the lead star in the next Indiana Jones movie. He was looking to be the next big thing. However, similar to many other child stars, his ego got in the way. He bashed his own movie in interviews and his negative comments rubbed Steven Speilburg and Harrison Ford the wrong way. Calling him an idiot and a stupid kid. With those degrading comments his spot as the next big thing to the weird child star, eventually being written out of the transformer series with his last appearance in Transformers Dark of the moon and being written out by 2014’s Transformers Age of Extinction. The year before in late 2013 he made a short film that was a clear plagiarization,after an apology that was also clear plagiarization. While no one knew it at the time this was the first of many weird and wild art projects, fully realizing his ‘insane child star’ figure that he already had tagged to him

This was the first of many different performance art projects. Partnering with two artists he started to commence in project after project. The one following his Berlin Festival appearance was his #Iamsorry project. Where Shia sat at a table and allowed people one by one to do whatever they wanted with him, and he would not do anything. There was a table filled with printed out slips of hateful tweets directed towards him and lots of random items. Hammers, flowers, whiskey, a book, a ukulele, were all objects on the table. Some people talked, some just stared, one woman raped him. The idea behind this was to show that once you are in person with someone the mean things you say on the internet are impossible to do in person. Accept apparently the woman who raped him. From there the next project was #Followmyheart which was pretty simple, a livestream of Shia’s heartbeat. Bringing this celebrity closer to the populus. After that six day project the next one was a few months later his #Introductions project. Which is probably his most famous project. Working with students at Central St. Martins Shia filmed 30 minutes of improv acting that was solely based on some loose dialogue written by the students. In front of a green screen the plan was to make prime meme material, which was done, this is where the “just do it” video of shia in front of a green screen came from. The Just do it sequence is only one minute and five seconds long, there's twenty eight minutes and fifty five seconds more footage just like it. A few more months he watched all his movies in release order back to back to back. His face and reactions livestreamed, creating many more memes with a slew of facial expressions to use. Now coming to May 2016 #takemeanywhere started, where Shia and his art companions tweet out their coordinates and people could take them anywhere. He said that often fans would livestream or use their drive with shia for views on youtube or some other social media platform. Eventually after being with them for several hours they decided that the charm was gone and would turn off their camera. With his last famous project being #Hewillnotdivideus wall. When Trump was elected and made president he wrote He Will Not Divide Us on a wall with a camera on it livestreaming the crowd. This is supposed to lead the people together against Trump's agenda of dividing the country,or at least that was the idea. Ths project took lots of hate and was moved and taken down several times, which proves Shia’s point about how he is going to divide us. During these projects he continued to make some movies, during these movies and projects he continued to drink and had issues with PTSD from his childhood. Shia was put into Rehab in 2017 for public drunkenness.

Rehab this time around was different for the still young thirty year old actor, this time around Shia used writing as a coping tool. When he came out of rehab this time it seems like he found a new direction for his acting and his life in general. After this rehab stint he started starring in more independent movies. His career was already filled with quote on quote indie movies but none of them ever became well known to the public. However after this rehab he decided to make movies that he wanted to make and not movies that he thought others would like to see him in. With that decision he came out and made Honey Boy and Peanut Butter Falcon within a few months of each other. The first being Peanut Butter Falcon, a weird name that needed some explaining to anyone who mentioned it. I knew about the movie, but whenever I told people about it there was always a needed explanation of what it was and why it was called what it was. Operating on a measly 6 million dollar budget, Shia stars alongside Zack Gottsagen in a Tom Sawyer style adventure movie. The two float down on a boat to get to a WWE wrestling school. This movie is done with Shia’s new style of what he wants to make and focus on character, without character the plot of this movie just does not work at all. Shia and Zack while not nominated for oscars, and some would consider snubbed. They did present at the oscars making Zack the first person with downs syndrome to present at the oscars. Then came Honey boy, the movie that Shia wrote in rehab, it's about a boy named Otis in two different timelines, one is when the boy is in a massive blockbuster action movie, and one is when he is in a small children's T.V. show. It's a clear allegory for his own life. In the older version it's about him dealing with his childhood and PTSD while the younger timeline is him going through those things, when he was living in the hotel, paying for him and his dad to live there. In Honey Boy Shia plays Otis’s dad, a fictionalized version of his own dad yelling, hitting and abusing a small boy playing a fictionalized version of himself. Both movies were functioning on a very small budget but made a decent amount of money, honey boy only making all its money back in a limited run before it hit Amazon video where it stays today. Even with the small budget and relatively unknown directors and actors outside of himself both movies have managed to become mainstream and well known. He was able to turn out two great movies that he loved to make, and he did it mostly on his own. Not listening to what any director or producer has to say about him.

With his life story laid out like that it can be easy to see what the inspirational aspect of his life and his movies are. In my mind there is no better story that displays focusing on one self and becoming truly happy with his work, which is not something that most people can say. Many people are working to make ends meet in not great situations like Shia was in the hotel with his dad. From there he was able to make his way up to doing what he truly loved. It did take several arrests, public humiliations, upsetting his idol and about fifteen years. Looking at his life theres a time you can look and say that what he was doing was stupid, either supsetting speilburg, the art projects, or any of his movies. Each person can look at their own life and think that they are at the Honey Boy phase of their own life, or working towards that phase. I don’t think Shia knew his final goal was to make low budget films he wrote while being in rehab or to have his idol denounce hims as a stupid punk kid. I personally can look at what he’s done and know that one thing stayed the same, his own drive. When most people would quit living in a hotel with your abusive dad, or getting arrested several times, or anything that happened to Shia. He kept going and got to where he wanted to be after so much pain, work and trials. So with anything you need to do to get to where you feel you need to go or to be happy, In Shia’s words: “Just do it. Make your dreams come true.”