Shia LeBeouf learns first rule of writing: Don't lift other people's work

Yesterday the Internet got its first look at HowardCantour.com, a short film that marked the directorial deBeout of Shia LaBeouf, which had previously made the rounds, to some acclaim, at Cannes last year. HowardCantour.com stars Jim Gaffigan as an online film critic, whose interactions at a press junket for a director he used to admire form the backdrop for a bleakly funny rumination on the nature of criticism. It was hailed as a surprisingly sharp, empathetic look at a profession that has not always been kind to LaBeouf—and all in all, an impressive first effort. Naturally, it turned out that LaBeouf stole it.

Shortly after HowardCantour.com was first posted to Short Of The Week (which has since taken it down), BuzzFeed noted the striking similarities between it and Justin M. Damiano, a 2007 comic by Daniel Clowes—a cartoonist of whom LaBeouf is a documented “huge fan.”

Those similarities were so egregious, you could reasonably call Justin a storyboard for Howard: Both comic and film open with the exact same, very specific monologue. The very next scene, in both comic and film, find the critic interacting with a naïve young freelancer—played in LaBeouf’s movie by Portia Doubleday—with lines that are, again, identical. And it just goes on from there, with LaBeouf’s film continuing to lift its dialogue and even visuals verbatim from Clowes’ comic. In fact, just about the only original line in Howard is in the credits, which deems the work “A Film By Shia LaBeouf.” In retrospect, that line is also the funniest.

Not long after these similarities were brought to light, Clowes’ publisher at Fantagraphics, Eric Reynolds, branded the film a “shameless theft.”