Shia LaBeouf posted his new short film HowardCantour.com online on Monday, having first debuted the work at the May 2012 Cannes Film Festival. The piece stars Jim Gaffigan as an online film critic named Howard Cantour, and it is almost a direct adaptation of Justin M. Damiano, a 2007 comic written and drawn by famed artist Daniel Clowes.
Nowhere in the promotion for or credits of the film does LaBeouf mention the Clowes comic; Eric Reynolds, longtime editor of Clowes? comics and associate publisher at Fantagraphics, called the film “shameless theft!”
Truly shameful. Just as sad is the LaBeouf apology via Twitter is also allegedly copied from an entry on Yahoo! Answers.
I think you can skip past the accused since he admitted afterwards that the story was the inspiration and that he should have given proper credit to Clowes.
Ahh, it feels great to tare others down for the very thing we’ve done all our life without remarking it. Steeled with this superiority I think I’ll start a screenplay.
ha (note coded disclaimer).