14 DAY TRIAL // Shia LaBeouf rebelled so much against his status as a movie star that, right now, he’s one of the most hated and mocked actors of the younger generation. Ironically, this has nothing to do with his acting performances, but with his pretentiousness as an artist.
So when the first video embedded below popped up online yesterday, seemingly out of nowhere, people were quick to assume that it was just another Shia rant, another instance in which he tried to prove he was the ultimate, consummate artiste no one wanted to give him credit for.
The 1-minute rant, which is best described as “unbelievably weird,” is already a hilarious meme called MotivaShian, on Reddit.
The explanation for “the rant”
Whenever something this weird and funny emerges online, people don’t stop to wonder what it’s all about or where it came from and how. They set out to explore its full potential by turning it into a meme, which, in this particular case, meant turning Shia into a TED speaker, to putting him on a stranger’s balcony or inserting him in some of the most famous movies ever made.
The results are so strange and so very entertaining (some samples are included below, to see for yourself), that it’s no longer surprising that no one really wanted to know where the Shia video came from. Or, say, why he was shooting it against a greenscreen, which is so convenient in post-production for extra editing.
As it turns out, the greenscreen was the dead giveaway: The Guardian reports that the 1-minute video is actually lifted from a longer video, which comprises 36 clips, part of an art video project called #Introductions.
This was done in partnership with students from the art school Central Saint Martins, in London, with each student sending Shia texts to read in front of a camera, against a greenscreen, in an LA studio.
The only request for the texts was that they last “up to 30 seconds or no more than 100 words.” As you can see in the second video below, Shia complied with his end of the bargain and recited the texts.
MotivaShian
As noted above, the newest Shia rant is now a meme and it’s bigger than any other meme inspired by other outrageous stuff he’s done in the past, and that includes showing up at a premiere with a bag on his head and “I am not famous anymore written on it,” and doing an entire exhibit in which people could sit across the table from him and abuse him verbally.
Whether he’s motivating Cooper in “Interstellar,” or Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars,” berating a young man for postponing to call the police on him as he promised, or making a surprise cameo in “2001,” Shia is everywhere right now.
He’s even there to witness Ned Stark’s brutal execution on season 1 of “Game of Thrones,” because with Shia, the fun never stops.
