Latest news with #SlausonRec
Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Slauson Rec: why did Shia LaBeouf let the cameras film his meltdown?
The actor and Transformers star Shia LaBeouf is no stranger to controversy. Over the past decade the 38-year-old has become known as much for his arrests for disorderly conduct and public intoxication as his intense screen performances. In December 2020 he was sued by the singer-songwriter FKA Twigs, an ex-girlfriend, for sexual battery, assault and the infliction of emotional distress (he has denied the allegations; the much delayed trial is set for September). None of this, however, can quite prepare you for the Shia LaBeouf featured in the behind-the-scenes documentary and buzzy Cannes Film Festival entry Slauson Rec. In the movie, shot over three years and culled from hundreds of hours of footage, LaBeouf is captured in the process of assembling an avant-garde
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Shia LaBeouf's Theater Company From Hell: Cannes Doc Reveals Actor's Misconduct With Students and Hopes for Redemption
Leo Lewis O'Neil's documentary 'Slauson Rec' was one of the late additions to the Cannes Film Festival lineup, but it's certainly now one of the festival's buzziest titles following its premiere in the Cannes Classics section. The film, which received a two-minute ovation on Sunday, had been teased for weeks as a rollercoaster ride through an experimental theater company run by a famous (or infamous, according to some) actor. In a smaller theater inside the festival's Grand Palais on Sunday, however, the full two-hour-and-25-minute documentary was no trip to the theme park. More from Variety Cannes Film Festival President Iris Knobloch Awarded Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Culture Minister Wes Anderson Delights Cannes as 'Phoenician Scheme' Lands 6.5-Minute Standing Ovation, Leading Lady Mia Threapleton Overcome With Tears 'The Phoenician Scheme' Review: Wes Anderson Weighs In on the Art of the Deal and Assorted Other Funny Business What begins as a 2018 attempt to build a creative 'family' of players and stimulate the community of South Central Los Angeles played more like a descent into ego-driven insanity, complete with physical violence and harrowing screaming matches. LaBeouf turned up to the screening, in what was his first time seeing the film. He spoke with festival director Thierry Frémaux at the start, simply saying, 'I'm so grateful [O'Neil] still lets me around him and bring him ideas.' In the opening moments of the movie, LaBeouf sits for a present-day interview. 'I've done a lot of coming to terms with the failure that was my life, and the plastic foundation I had,' LaBeouf says. 'I left a lot of people in the wake of my personality defects.' The vibe inside the premiere seemed to mirror what the on-screen theater group lived through: cautious optimism and joy when LaBeouf is engaged about creating art, suffocating tension when he flies off the handle berating actors and crew members with sanctimonious lectures and laugh-out-loud disbelief when the star tries to justify his behavior in the aftermath. It's an endless loop of rage and regret, which caused nearly 30 audience members to trickle out of the auditorium during the screening. The emotional terror LaBeouf wreaks borders on the inhumane. A company member named Sarah, a fan of the actor's since he starred in the Disney Channel original 'Even Stevens,' lands a lead role in a drive-in play from LaBeouf's company during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. As her mother sits dying in the hospital from some undisclosed infection, she chooses to remain in rehearsals for the chance to work with her mentor. After her mother passes and the play is two weeks from opening, LaBeouf fires her, saying the show simply works better without her in the part. In a similar scenario, a young company member named Zeke books a role on the Netflix original 'On My Block' parallel to the company's work. LaBeouf seemingly turns on him, nicknaming him James Dean and ratcheting up the criticism of his performance. It ends with Zeke quitting 45 days into rehearsals, and LaBeouf instigating a fist fight with him that leaves the aspiring performer with scrapes and bruises. An incident that is included in documentary shows another encounter with LaBeouf and Zeke. Footage shows LaBeouf slamming a table with his fist and yelling at Zeke: 'I don't give a fuck what you say to me… You've got it better than I ever had it. What the fuck is the attitude problem? I'm giving you everything I have, so stop fucking with me.' The actor then shoves Zeke against a wall. Director O'Neil revealed to Vanity Fair prior to Cannes that his involvement in the documentary started when he showed up to attend LaBeouf's acting class with a camera in hand. The director said LaBeouf asked him if he would film everything that took place at Slauson. O'Neil did just that over the next few years until the acting school was disbanded in November 2020 amid the COVID pandemic. LaBeouf was sued by singer FKA Twigs for sexual battery, assault and emotional distress a month after the school was disbanded. Given the footage in his documentary, O'Neil told Vanity Fair that he sent LaBeouf a trailer for the project seeking his sign-off on it. LaBeouf allegedly gave his full blessing for the movie to be made without any editorializing on his behalf; thus, scenes of alleged physical violence remain in the final cut. LaBeouf gave the following statement to Vanity Fair: 'I gave Leo this camera and encouraged him to share his vision and his personal experience without edit. I am aware of the doc and fully support the release of the film. While my teaching methods may be unconventional for some, I am proud of the incredible accomplishments that these kids achieved. Together we turned a drama class into an acting company. I wish only good things for Leo and everyone who was part of The Slauson Rec Company.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Slauson Rec' Review: A Documentary About Shia LaBeouf's Acting Class — and His Anger Issues — Is More Appalling Than Fascinating
'Slauson Rec,' a documentary starring Shia LaBeouf and his mental trauma, is not a good movie. But it's a timely artifact of one of the things movies are now up against — a pathological and vampiristic celebrity culture that sucks all the air out of the room. In 2018, LaBeouf posted a video on Twitter announcing the formation of a free weekly theater workshop that would meet every Saturday at the Slauson Recreation Center in South Central Los Angeles. Hundreds of people showed up for it, lured by the magnet of LaBeouf's name. One of them was Leo Lewis O'Neil, a young man who wasn't interested in being an actor but who volunteered to record the workshop on camera. Over the next three years, he shot hundreds of hours of footage of LaBeouf and his followers doing their experimental theater thing, writing and rehearsing several 'plays' they presented in a nightclub and, ultimately, in a dusty parking lot. The movie O'Neil has put together out of this footage, which premiered last night at Cannes, is by any real-world standard a slovenly and undisciplined piece of work. 'Slauson Rec' is two-and-a-half hours long, and it's little more than an endless dispiriting diary-like ramble. Yet it also functions as a vérité exploitation film, since the only thing in it that's actually interesting is watching Shia LaBeouf parade himself as a kind of acting guru and mentor, only to descend into an increasingly furious and abusive and unhinged place that leaves us with the profound question, 'What in the fuck's name is going on here?' More from Variety Wes Anderson Mocks Trump's Movie Tariffs at Cannes: 'Can You Hold Up the Movie in Customs? It Doesn't Ship That Way' Wes Anderson Powers Satyajit Ray's 'Aranyer Din Ratri' Rescue for Cannes Classics BrLab Unveils New Dates, Co-Pro Forum and Regional Spread Ahead of 15th Anniversary Edition (EXCLUSIVE) Let's be clear: Shia LaBeouf is not just someone in deep need of anger-management therapy. He's an extraordinarily gifted actor (I was reminded of this just a couple of weeks ago, when I reviewed his forceful performance in the David Mamet film 'Henry Johnson'), and he's also the definition of a charismatic person. In 'Slauson Rec,' whether he's being supportive or hellacious, you can't take your eyes off him. He's got a stare of burning intensity and a hyper-articulate blunt showmanship that grows out of that quality. (He also has a penchant for sporting facial hair that looks like it came out of a costume shop.) In the documentary, he is always on, always making everything about him, with the underlying conviction that he's the most arresting person in the room. Early on, we give him the benefit of the doubt, since he seems to be employing his charisma in a generous way (volunteering his time to inspire a bunch of people in South Central). His volatile acting-coach showmanship feels like it's part of a tradition, stretching all the way back to Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler and incorporating the exhibitionistic ethos of the let-it-all-hang-out, acting-as-self-actualization thing that defined the experimental theater movements of the late '60s and '70s. The Slauson Rec theater experiment, as LaBeouf explains it, is an attempt to gather people together and give them a club, a community, an artistic laboratory, a family. And in the eagerness of the participants to go along with whatever LaBeouf says, we feel the desperate hunger they have to belong. LaBeouf isn't just showing them how to act. He's giving them hope. From the start, though, you may wonder what, exactly, he's out to accomplish creatively. He talks a good game, like a theatrical cult leader, but he has the participants doing 'devised theater,' which after a while seems to come down to a kind of ritual group body-tapping and choreographed aerobics. It looks like they're doing an elaborate series of warm-up exercises, which is fine in the early weeks, when they're just getting to know each other. But once they've been at this for months, it starts to become clear that LaBeouf doesn't really have a plan. He's just throwing stuff against the wall, using his heady psychodramatic acting-coach jargon and tough-love 'I'm doing this for you!' personality to turn anything and everything into an 'encounter session.' And given that these are not professional actors, or even (in most cases) people who aspire to be, LaBeouf's words to them, full of deadly serious jabber about empathy and ego, are pumped up with an intensity that feels overdone and inappropriate. And that's before he starts blowing his fuse. Once the pandemic hits, the Slauson Recreation Center tosses the group out (at this point, they've melted down to about 50 people), and they wind up rehearsing with masks under the hot L.A. sun in an anonymous dusty parking lot surrounded by a chain-link fence, with two tables under a red tent. The place becomes their sunlit prison (and ours). They've already put on one 'play,' which looks, from what we see of it, like a glorified hip-hop open-mic night. Now they're writing and rehearsing a follow-up, some sort of multimedia action-theater piece entitled '5711 Avalon,' though the film never gives us a halfway coherent idea of what it is. Yet the more sketchy and aimless the Slauson Rec troupe becomes, the more LaBeouf seizes onto the notion that the members are not living up to what they're supposed to be doing. They're disappointing him (but only because he cares so much). He targets one member, a 22-year-old kid named Zeke, who seems like the sweetest guy, and LaBeouf starts to torment him like a drill sergeant who has picked out his patsy. 'Don't play that fuckin' James Dean shit with me, dude,' he says. He also says things like, 'I love you if you make my life better. If you make my life worse, I don't love you. That's how I'm built' and 'This is really the last of the refinements! You really need to pay attention to this shit' and 'I said giggle! What fuckin' version of what the fuck I said is what the fuck you did?' LaBeouf declares in the movie that he's an alcoholic, and he talks, at one point, about how he's always beating himself up in his own brain. But that's not exactly reassuring. He's got his shirt off a lot, baring the wall of chest tattoos he got to make the movie 'The Tax Collector,' and we start to notice that he's shouting all the time, as if the fate of the world were hanging on how effectively he can get this ragtag bunch of people to act. Yet we can't even tell the difference between if they're doing it well or doing it badly. And that's part of what's so destabilizing about LaBeouf's rants, his tantrums, his meltdowns. It's not just that he's being abusive toward these people (at several points physically). It's that the whole damn spectacle of it starts to feel pointless. The 'point,' of course, is that we're getting to watch a well-known star in a state of breakdown. And the tabloid perversity of 'Slauson Rec' is that even when he's acting out, being a total dick to these hapless people who have put their trust in him, the movie is busy turning his self-destruction into theater. Just when we think his abuse of poor Zeke can't get any worse, LaBeouf turns his attention to Sarah, a troupe member whose mother is sick. He starts to berate her, and after her mother has died he informs her that he wants her to stop playing the role in their play she's been playing, because he has decided that she's 'not right for the part.' In this meaningless shambolic parking-lot-theater mess? That he would say that is worse than harsh — to our eyes, it's sadistic. And it just makes us think: Why are we even watching this? I would wager that the commercial prospects for 'Slauson Rec' will fall somewhere between dim and zero. The filmmaking, which just drags on (with helpful titles like 'Day 56,' followed by 'Day 57'), saps the energy right out of you. Yet the movie has the clueless arrogance to present itself as a redemption narrative — not for the members of the Slauson Rec troupe, but for Shia LaBeouf. After he is hit with a legal accusation of domestic abuse, he simply abandons the troupe. He doesn't show up one day, and that's it, it's over. But the film ends on an interview with LaBeouf, conducted more recently, where he sits in a chair in the tasteful home he shares with Mia Goth and their child, and he goes back over the Slauson Rec experiment and admits that he'd gone off the deep end. He admits that his behavior was untenable, and that he had a 'God complex.' He now feels bad about all of it. LaBeouf delivers this confession with an eloquent conviction that's a little uncanny. But listening to it, you realize that one thing hasn't changed, and that it may be the most unnerving thing about him: He's still acting. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
That Doc on Shia LaBeouf's Acting School Is Even Crazier Than You've Heard
In 2018, Shia LaBeouf was feeling heartbroken, adrift, in a state of what he called 'spiritual sickness.' So the actor did what a lot of us were doing back then when we found ourselves in serious need of help: He went on Twitter. In the video that LaBeouf posted on the platform (now known as X), he declared that he had an idea. There was a space in South Central Los Angeles called the Slauson Rec Center. He was going to be there on Saturday morning, and the next Saturday, and the Saturday after that. Whoever wanted to join him was welcome to show up. It would kinda sorta be structured as a 'class,' though don't expect acting lessons. LaBeouf was really looking for collaborators for some to-be-determined project. Previous industry experience was not required. Participants just needed to have 'a story that needs telling.' And they had to be devoted to the truth. Being 100 percent truthful is a big deal to LaBeouf. Remember that. One of the people who answered the call was a 21-year-old from Texas named Leo Lewis O'Neil. A relatively recent transplant to the City of Angels, he'd been having a rough time since he arrived. The thought of not only meeting a movie star but getting in on the ground floor of some bold new creative endeavor that LaBeouf was willing into motion felt too good to pass up. Plus the center was five minutes from where he lived. The first Saturday was more of a happening than a class, to be honest. But there was an unpredictable, live-wire energy to the exercises and exchanges that was undeniable. More from Rolling Stone Pedro Pascal Speaks Out at 'Eddington' Premiere: 'Fear Is the Way That They Win' Kristen Stewart's 'The Chronology of Water' Is One Hell of a Directorial Debut 'Eddington' Is the Perfect Conspiracy Thriller for a Broken, Brainwashed Nation A budding filmmaker, O'Neil had brought along a camera out of habit. LaBeouf had been happy to let him film everything. The next Saturday, he asked LaBeouf if he could be the official archivist of what would soon be known as the Slauson Rec Theater Company. The actor said yes. Years later, long after the chairs had all been thrown, and the jet-engine-level screaming had died down, and the tears had dried, and what had been a beacon of hope for a handful of artists-in-training was dashed on the rocks of one man's inability to hold his inner demons at bay, O'Neil asked LaBeouf another question. Could he turn the footage he'd been sitting on into a documentary regarding what went wrong? It'd have to be 100 percent truthful, LaBeouf replied. But the actor once again said yes. Thank god he did. Otherwise, we would not have what is one of the most damning, unfiltered, take-no-prisoners portraits of a celebrity losing his shit ever recorded for posterity. Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday night, Slauson Rec captures the good, the bad, and the ugly of the company's two-years-and-change existence. But to suggest that the end result is a three-way tie would be a lie; the 'ugly' wins by a mile here. Documenting how LaBeouf's growing impatience with the group eventually led to biblical rage spirals, physical assaults, and some truly Grade-A asshole behavior, it paints a truly terrifying picture of its subject. Even if O'Neil signals this is a work of love for his old mentor, LaBeouf still comes off like a monster. Those who care to bask in the Shia-denfreude of seeing more evidence of his nastiness presented to the public will be in heaven. The rest of us are simply forced to watch between our fingers as the celebrity-driven car wrecks keep getting exponentially worse. All that sound and fury and the Category 5 temper tantrums come later, naturally. Slauson Rec treats those glorious early days, filled with endless promise and all-access star adjacency, in a way that mirrors the students' own swooning. LaBeouf has given these dreamers not just a safe place to fail, but a 'laboratory' where they can indulge their imagination alongside someone with the juice to make moves. He offers encouragement, excitement, and the sense that they're all an equal part of his mission to make 'as many creative churches as possible.' O'Neil also singles out a few of Shia's apostles, notably Zeke, a Hispanic twentysomething with the modest goal of becoming 'one of the greatest actors of all time,' and an earnest, horse-loving young woman named Sarah. They might seem like random choices to put the spotlight on. Spoiler: They are not. Yet the overall focus is on the utopian community orbiting around the intense figurehead. Not even handwringing over the way their presence affects the South Central community around them — are they being inclusive enough? Socially responsible enough? — and losing their original space slows them down. When they begin workshopping 10 minutes of a larger piece LaBeouf calls 'The New Human' to show the public, the vibe is one part 'Let's put on a show' enthusiasm and one part Kool-Aid-sipping cult. The positive reception they get to what feels like a modern-dance reinterpretation of The Human Centipede is enough make them think that their fearless leader's goal of changing the world is just around the corner. Cut to: March 2020. The pandemic saps some of the company's momentum, and Zoom meetings tend to devolve into power plays among competing politburos, with LaBeouf exercising veto power. Everyone's frustrated. No one wants to give up. The solution to their stasis is a drama set in a Covid testing set that will combine theater, improvisation, and cinema. Called 5711 Avalon, it will be performed in a parking lot and is destined to become, in LaBeouf's words, 'a Cirque du Soleil-sized epic.' By this point, O'Neil has already shown us what happens when the group's guru gets pissed, courtesy of a scene in which he raises his voice over what he feels is unsatisfactory focus and storms off. Once they start rehearsing in the outdoor space, LaBeouf's short fuse has become even shorter. One day, the players' rendition of this slowly evolving work is the second coming of Death of a Salesman. The next day, it's total 'dog shit.' Cryptic, contradictory notes are given, and when they're not followed to the letter, things get volatile. You can sense the storm on the horizon moving closer, closer, closer.… And when it arrives, its gale-force winds designed to destroy everything in its path, good luck. Slauson Rec doesn't sugarcoat or soft-pedal the scenes in which LaBeouf unleashes torrents of high-volume verbal abuse, or shirtlessly skulks around a set in which no actor or folding chair is safe, or seriously hulks out over an actor he feels is giving him 'attitude.' It simply presents them as you stare on, slack-jawed in disbelief. There is no other way to describe LaBeouf attacking the smaller, younger Zeke or backing another actor up against a wall, his forearm on the guy's throat, than 'assaults.' The threat of violence hangs over every single scene as the rehearsals start to tick into the 70-days-in-a-row mark, punctured only by moments of actual violence. Sarah, the most devoted of Shia's disciples, refuses to see her sick mom at the hospital because she's afraid missing a rehearsal will get her fired. LaBeouf waits until she goes to her mom's funeral. Then, having run her scenes with another actor he deems worthy in her absence, he fires her. These are the cringeworthy, can't-look-away moments, and there are many, that people will talk about when they talk about Slauson Rec. And trust us when we say they are genuinely hard to stomach. You feel embarrassment for LaBeouf, who is clearly (and self-admittedly) turning his inner monologue of self-loathing into outer tirades of abuse on those who simply want to please him. He's the first to tell you he's his own worst enemy — but listen, my frogs, why did you let a scorpion like me climb onto your backs? You feel empathy for those stuck in this cycle along with him. You feel your own rage as you clock that his celebrity is, in the eyes of many helping to facilitate this ongoing experiment, allowing him a free pass to be ghastly. (Sarah actually calls this out. It doesn't help her.) The idea that genius forgives all, and that favoring 'honesty' above all means never having to admit you're just an asshole at heart, is rigorously tested here. None of this shit is excusable. It's a portrait of an artist as an authoritarian megalomaniac. When O'Neil caps off this two-and-a-half-hour labor of love with a coda, which takes place two years after the final performance of 5711 Avalon and the dissolution of the group, he does manage to capture two extraordinary moments of honesty. He's arrived at LaBeouf's house, and is recording a sort of postmortem interview. The star says that he's signing off on this because it's 'the ultimate virtue signal.' Look how cool I look for being cool with this, he says, letting his self-knowingness wrestle it out with his self-hatred and self-regard. That's the first bit. The second comes when LaBeouf admits that he owes everybody apologies, some more than others. He's not sure he can make amends, but he wants to try. And you can suddenly hear crying happening behind the camera. O'Neil lets the shot go on for an uncomfortably long time, his sobs audible and LaBeouf silently choking up onscreen. You realize that Slauson Rec is about a lot of things, from the perils of good intentions to the way fame doesn't exterminate your flaws so much as exacerbate them. But in the end, it's really an extraordinary act of grasping for closure. And it was hard not to think that, standing in the audience as a crowd of people at the world's most prestigious film festival gave him a standing ovation, O'Neil might have felt more than a little sense of closure at that point too. LaBeouf was there as well, sporting a mustache that was a cross between 1970s cop and 1870s gunfighter. But he kept ceding the spotlight to the filmmaker, knowing that this was O'Neil's night. This doc will ultimately be the legacy of the whole Slauson Rec experiment. The star had set out to change the world. Instead, he stood back and watched as another person's life changed right in front of his eyes. 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Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Shia LaBeouf, 38, Is Nearly Unrecognizable at Cannes
Shia LaBeouf attended the photocall for Slauson Rec at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 18. The actor sported a white t-shirt with a black jacket and a pair of slacks as he posed for photos. His hair was slicked back and more salt-and-pepper than it has been and he sported a full mustache and a light beard. He also wore sunglasses as he posed for photos at the event. Prior to flying across the pond for this year's Cannes Film Festival, LaBeouf spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about Slauson Rec, a documentary about the Slauson Recreation Center in Los Angeles, which he founded in 2018. 'When this thing comes out, it isn't any worse than what's been said about me previously. Maybe it reifies people's ideas about me. I think, at heart, I'm a good guy. Am I f----- up? Yes. Is my process ugly and disgusting? Yes. Have I done horrible s--- in the past that I'm going to have to make amends for the rest of my life? Yes. Does this movie change any of that? No. Does it also allow my people to get a foot into this f------ industry? Yes. So gas pedal down, green light go," he told the outlet. The doc's Cannes debut was announced just one week prior to the festival's start. These days, LaBeouf doesn't often make public appearances. The 38-year-old has made headlines for all sorts of negative things, including public outbursts and arrests, and, in 2014, the actor said that he was "retiring" from life in the public eye. "In light of the recent attacks against my artistic integrity, I am retiring from all public life," he wrote on X, according to CBS News. "My love goes out to those who have supported me." The post has since been removed from the platform. Last year, LaBeouf turned heads in Cannes when he walked the red carpet for the premiere of the film Megalopolis with bleached blonde hair.
