PR stunt or honest apology, Shia is finally getting the attention he wanted

Feb 13, 2014 10:57 GMT  ·  By

Shia LaBeouf has been getting a lot of media attention because of his “antics” in these past several months, but his performance art show at a small gallery in Los Angeles, #IAMSORRY, could actually be his honest way of saying he’s sorry for plagiarizing a famous novel in his first directorial effort.

Or, The Daily Beast writes, it could be just a PR stunt. Either way, it’s working wonders in terms of bringing Shia all the attention he seems to have wanted so badly.

Announced some time ago, the art show offers fans willing to wait in a queue and, obviously, living in LA, the chance to sit down at the same table with the actor and either yell nasty things at him or forgive him. Whichever their choice, Shia will not respond in any way.

What he does do, though, is cry his eyes out, the aforementioned publication writes. While the entire #IAMSORRY art show seems like a PR stunt (for instance, the gallery is located right across the street from the BuzzFeed offices), Shia’s reaction feels genuine.

Visitors first walk into a room in which there’s a large table with items connected to Shia’s career: a Transformer, a whip, a book, a bowl with notes with nasty tweets addressed to him, and so on and so forth. They choose just one and then move on to another, much smaller room.

A man in a tux and a bow-tie, wearing a paper bag with “I Am Not Famous Anymore” written on it and holes cut out for the eyes, is sitting at a table. He is Shia LaBeouf, and visitors can sit down across from him.

The Daily Beast reporter asked him several questions to which he did not answer. The only response he got from the actor was when he asked him for confirmation that he was really the famous Hollywood actor. After all, it could have been anyone hiding under that brown paper bag.

“And that’s when it happened: LaBeouf reached up and took the bag off his head. He looked miserable. I’m pretty sure he had been crying. We sat there silently for a few seconds, staring at each other,” the report notes.

“I don’t know how I feel about Shia LaBeouf. My guess is that he’s an actual plagiarist who’s trying to turn the whole scandal to his advantage by transforming it into ‘art.’ I think he’s been an actor his entire life, and he’s desperate for attention, and that desperation is a little unseemly. He might also be mentally unstable. But I’ll be honest: in the moment after I took that picture, I actually felt something real. Something strange and complex. Something like sympathy,” the report notes.

Coming to support the theory that this might be just a stunt are other reports online: many of those who visited the gallery went online right after and some said that Shia was “crying like his cat just died.”