Shia LaBeouf is Taking a Road Trip to Offend Reporters All Across America
What has one visible thumb and a grudge against Shia LaBeouf? This guy!
Former child star and current enigma Shia LaBeouf is engaging in a very odd stunt right now, as is his wont.
The star of Transformers, Indiana Jones 4, Wall Street 2, and probably a few movies that aren’t based on film properties from the 1980s, LaBeouf is no stranger to strange activities. His latest is #TakeMeAnywhere, a performance art project in which the actor and two collaborators hitchhike across the country by tweeting out their GPS coordinates to fans, who then pick the trio up and, well, take them anywhere. The project began in Colorado on May 23rd, and will conclude after thirty days. In the meantime, fans can track Shia’s progress on Vice’s map.
LaBeouf claims he’s doing this to “find meaning [and] make meaning,” though if you ask the reporters who have been trying to snag an interview with the road tripping movie star, they might say that he’s really just trying to upset them.
On Tuesday, Shia’s travels brought him to Ruby Juice in downtown Cheyenne, Wyoming. A Colorado television station learned he was there, but when they tried to get an interview, things did not go according to plan:
When he emerged from the smoothie shop, Shia appeared angry and purposefully ignored the cameras—as if he’s never in his life had to deal with the famous Cheyenne paparazzi!
FOX31 Denver reporter Kevin Torres was so offended by LaBeouf’s brusque behavior in Wyoming that he was driven to make a strained jackalope/jackass pun.
“So we drove all the way up here from Wyoming to give him some free publicity, and sure enough, that’s how he acted,” Torres said to the camera, unable to understand why LaBeouf wouldn’t want to plug his road trip on one of Denver’s leading news outlets.
LaBeouf made even more enemies in the journalism community on Thursday, when his road trip took him through Omaha.
Aaron Seaney, a reporter for Nebraska’s Scottsbluff Star-Herald, got in contact with a woman who was driving around in a van with Shia, and got her to agree to an interview. When Seaney asked if he could ask Shia some questions as well, she told him that Shia would only answer through her, which led to this awkward interaction:
So I called and again was able to speak with numerous people in the van. All of whom were generally excited to be on this once-in-a-lifetime trip. However, with every question I asked there was an air of arrogance in the background as LaBeouf spouted off single word answers or scoffed at the occasional question. Then, after talking to a few people in the van, I had one final question for LaBeouf for my story.
I asked him, “So, Shia, what inspired you to do this trip?”
I know. How offensive. How rude. How completely unacceptable. His response matched his annoyance, as he suddenly announced, “No more questions.”
At the time we spoke they were just past Cozad. Cozad is 230.8 miles from Omaha or roughly 3 hours and 15 minutes via I-80. Here he was in a car for that long, yet suddenly had no more time to answer that one question.
Seaney concludes his article about his brief encounter with LaBeouf with the hot take, “if you could #takemeanywhere it probably wouldn’t be on a trip with him.”
Damn, Shia, you don’t care who you hurt! Now yet another reporter has a beef with LaBeouf.
Shia, if your journey brings you to Ohio, please allow me the opportunity to take umbrage at your clear disdain for me. If everything goes right, we can both be unduly offended over an uneventful encounter!
Patrick Grieve was born in Southwestern Ohio and has lived there all of his life, with the exception of a few years spent getting a Creative Writing degree in Southeastern Ohio. He loves to take road trips, sometimes to places as distant as Northeastern or even Northwestern Ohio. Patrick also enjoys old movies, shopping at thrift stores, going to ballgames, writing about those things, and watching Law & Order reruns. He just watches the original series, though, none of the spin-offs. And also only the ones they made before Jerry Orbach died. Season five was really the peak, in his opinion. See more articles by Patrick.