The still-simmering Alec Baldwin/Shia LaBeouf feud is starting to mesmerize me—mostly because it's not really a feud. It's like a nerdy kid is trying to pick a fight with the captain of the football team, and Mr. QB Handsome has to keep telling him to back down before he gets hurt. Today, for no reason at all, LaBeouf released some new emails. Once again, they're more puzzling than enlightening, and they seem to make him look bad. The highlight:
Baldwin: “We start Monday. But I’m so fucking tired.”
LaBeouf: “I’m a hustler. I don’t get tired. I’m 26, chief.”
Baldwin: “Listen, boy. I’m not your fuckin’ chief. You got that? Ha. Hahahahaha. Let’s go.”
What does this tell us about the creative process of famous actors? Nothing. But it’s a nice reminder that most actors are children at heart, incapable of letting someone else have the last word. Shia LaBeouf is clearly not cut out from Broadway, and it was good of him to quit the show as soon as he realized that. Remember—he didn’t force these producers to cast him. They picked him for the sake of name recognition, and nothing more. If he’s being excoriated for cutting and running, I think it’s because the critical establishment feels like it’s been cheated out of a pan.
And Alec Baldwin? Well, I’m happy to see that in private email conversations, he’s just as crazy as I like to imagine. If LaBeouf thinks he can turn New York against Baldwin with screenshots of fairly innocuous emails, he’s proved something I’ve long said about film actors. A job that requires you to work for no more than 45 seconds at a time does not do much for your capacity for critical thought.
I've got more on the "feud" as a whole over at Bullett. Check it out, fella.