Shia LaBeouf responds to Jim Carrey's Golden Globes diss
The tags on this post are not entirely accurate; Shia LaBeouf and Jim Carrey aren’t exactly in a celebrity feud. Why? Because in order to be in a celebrity feud, one must be a celebrity. And Shia wants you to know that he is no longer one of those:
Reeaally embracing that retirement “from all public life,” Shia.
Anyway, here’s the LaBeef: While presenting the award for Best Motion Picture — Comedy or Musical at the Golden Globes last night, Jim Carrey decided to have a little fun at the Transformers star’s expense. He began his patter by quoting an old chestnut that may have originated with actor Edmund Gwenn: “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” Then came the kicker: “I believe it was Shia LaBeouf who said that. So young, so wise.”
Carrey, of course, was making light of LaBeouf’s recent trouble understanding copyright law. Last month, the star came under fire when bloggers realized that his short film HowardCantour.com had been lifted nearly wholesale from artist Daniel Clowes’ comic Justin M. Damiano. Initially, LaBeouf apologized for “fail[ing] to credit” Clowes’s work, though not for failing to get the rights to bring Clowes’s comic to film. And soon after websites noticed that part of his apology had been copied and pasted from Yahoo Answers, LaBeouf began tweeting a series of further plagiarized apologies before informing the public that he was just mocking them, boldly saying that there’s no such thing as authorship or ownership, and finally, “in light of the recent attacks against [his] artistic integrity,” announcing that he had decided to retire.
Evidently, that retirement lasted all of three days. Not long after Carrey made his joke, Shia weighed in with this incomprehensible tweet:
Er… okay, then. (Update: LaBeouf was apparently paraphrasing something Carrey said about Andy Kaufman while promoting Man on the Moon in 1999. The Unmasked Copycat strikes again!) He followed up by tweeting a link to a music video starring Jane Carrey, Jim’s 20something daughter; you may remember her 2012 American Idol audition. Side note: Jane’s a good singer! Watch the video; it’s much more entertaining than this mess.
But this was only the beginning. A few hours later, LaBeouf replied to an E! Online article about Carrey’s jab with a more directly hostile tweet that’s since been deleted: “At least I don’t get arrested for indecency on major LA highways! Or abandon love child’s.”
Eesh. Thing is, Jim has hardly “abandoned” Jane; the two appear to have a fairly close relationship. And evidently, LaBeouf realized this about half an hour after his previous tweet, leading to his latest apology, which has also subsequently been deleted: “Jim Carrey states that he is deeply involved in his daughter’s life – I accept that,regret tweet on the matter. Apologies to both parents.” Here, though, is the real punchline for both those nasty tweets: LaBeouf cribbed each of them from News Corp czar Rupert Murdoch, who accused Hugh Grant of abandoning his “love child” via Twitter in 2012 and subsequently apologized.
A minute later, he loosed his final words on the subject (for now) — the aforementioned “I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE” tweet.
Carrey, meanwhile, hasn’t said anything publicly about the whole kerfuffle, perhaps because actual celebrities have better things to do.