Shia LaBeouf Doesn’t Like The Movies He Made With Steven Spielberg

That answers my question about if Shia LaBeouf got kidnapped during his hitchhiking performance art piece through the country. Shia is fine and he’s back doing what Shia does: trying really hard to convince us that he’s one of the most actor-y actors who ever actored.

During an interview with Variety about his latest movie, American Honey, Shia talked about how his relationship with booze is over and he also talked about Steven Spielberg. I’ve got a feeling that relationship too will be officially over about 0.3 seconds after Steven Spielberg reads how Shia dragged him in this Variety interview.

To me, working with Steven Spielberg would be a dream come true. He’s the man who gave us the everlasting gift of a dragged-up Dustin Hoffman in Hook. Not to mention he looks and sounds like that high school history teacher who let everyone call him by his first name. But according to Shia, working with Spielberg was the kind of dream he really wanted to wake up from and never have again. Shia worked with Spielberg via several DreamWorks films, like Disturbia, Eagle Eye, and three Transformers films. Spielberg also directed Shia in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Shia thought working with Spielberg would make him a legendary movie star, like a Harrison Ford or an E.T., but that wasn’t the case.

“I grew up with this idea, if you got to Spielberg, that’s where it is. I’m not talking about fame, and I’m not talking about money. You get there, and you realize you’re not meeting the Spielberg you dream of. You’re meeting a different Spielberg, who is in a different stage in his career. He’s less a director than he is a fucking company….I don’t like the movies that I made with Spielberg. The only movie that I liked that we made together was Transformers.”

Shia clearly doesn’t want a part in Indiana Jones 5, because he kept going in.

He says that even though Crystal Skull made $800 million, Spielberg considered it a failure. In turn, Shia felt like a failure, because he prepared for Crystal Skull for a year and a half. Spielberg told Shia not to read the crappy reviews, but he did anyway. Not reading the reviews is basically telling him to “not take part in society.” Between Crystal Skull, Transformers, and that Wall Street sequel, Shia read a lot of crappy reviews. And the way he tried to deal with all that crappiness was with booze.

“Part of it was posturing. I never knew how to drink. I never liked to drink, but I knew you had to drink. It was a weird post-modern fascination with the fuck-ups. When I met Robert Downey Jr., I was like, ‘Man, you got all this fucking texture. How do I do this? How do I build texture?”

He says he hasn’t had a drink in almost a year, and he’s been to AA meetings. “You don’t touch it. Alcohol or any of that shit will send you haywire. I can’t fuck with none of it. I’ve got to keep my head low.”

Shia tells Variety that he was approached for Scott Eastwood’s role in Suicide Squad, but Warner Bros. passed on him because they thought he was “crazy.” It’s probably a good thing a sober Shia didn’t do Suicide Squad, because you know Jared Leto would have fucked with his head by sending him female condoms filled with vodka.

There is one person associated with those Transformers years that Shia would love to work with again and that’s Michael Bay. Yes Michael Bay. Excuse me, “Mike Bay.”

“Mike is an artist. People don’t realize how dope that dude is. He’s got to get a little ballsier with his moves — he’s trying to toe the line and be James Cameron, but James Camerons are dying. I don’t know what he’s chasing, but that version of director is dead. If Mike is to sustain, he’s got to get fucking weird.”

I don’t know if Shia should hold his breath waiting to work with a “fucking weird” Michael Bay. “Fucking weird” for Michael Bay would be if he filmed a movie without a single explosion or a half-naked model with less than 1% body fat, and we all know that’s never going to happen.

Here’s Shia in Variety looking like someone who makes money by stealing batteries out of electric scooters.

Pics: Jiri Turek/Variety