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Shia LaBeouf Has No Original Thoughts: He Also Ripped Off Charles Bukowski, Tiger Woods & Kanye
Shia LaBeouf responded to accusations that he plagiarized an artist's work in his short film (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
It turns out Shia LaBeouf may have been plagiarizing off of more people than just comic book artist Daniel Clowes. Critics have found the actor lifting text from other folks like Charles Bukowski, Robert McNamara, and Kanye West.
Comic writer Josh Farkas found that LaBeouf's self-published comic book, Let's Fucking Party, bears a striking resemblance to Charles Bukowski's poem, "Assault."
LaBeouf writes:
"Poets don’t anger anyone. Poets don’t gamble. Here, they don’t assassinate poets. Here, they don’t notice them."
In Bukowski's poem:
Lorca was shot down in the road but here in America the poets never anger anybody. the poets don’t gamble. their poetry has the smell of clinics. their poetry has the smell of clinics. where people die rather then live. here they don’t assassinate the poets they don’t even notice the poets.
In addition, Farkas and BuzzFeed found more instances of LaBeouf using nearly the same wording in his comic Stale N Mate from French writer's Benoît Duteurtre's The Little Girl and the Cigarette.
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LaBeouf wrote: Unaware of the debate going on in the wings. These individuals patiently awaited the beginning of the spectacle.
Duteurtre wrote:
Unaware of the debate that was going on in the wings, these individuals patiently awaited the beginning of the spectacle.”
I have let my family down, and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart.
— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 18, 2013
This one resembled an apology Tiger Woods wrote about regarding his infidelity on his website. Wood's first sentence starts off with, "I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart."
I was wrong, terribly wrong. I owe it to future generations to explain why.
— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 18, 2013
This apology was similar to a mea culpa from Robert McNamara about the management of the Vietnam War. TIME put McNamara's apology in their "Top 10 Apologies" list:
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"We were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why." — McNamara, writing in his 1995 memoir, In Retrospect, on the management of the Vietnam War
And finally...
It starts with this...I'm sorry @danielclowes
— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 18, 2013
Which kind-of, mostly sounds like Kanye West apologizing to Taylor Swift on Twitter when he crashed her shining moment during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. He wrote, "It starts with this...I'm sorry Taylor." TIME also put that in their list of top 10 apologies. Maybe LaBeouf spent a lot of time reading that particular article.
The actor first came under fire when he posted his HowardCantour.com short film online on Monday and BuzzFeed as well as other bloggers found that the film had heavily lifted story lines and dialogue from Clowes' 2007 comic, Justin M. Damiano. According to BuzzFeed, Clowes is looking into pursuing legal action.
Related Stories:
Shia LaBeouf Responds To Plagiarism Accusations With A Plagiarized Apology
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