The actor who hated working with Steven Spielberg: “Less of a director than he is a fucking company”
Even the most legendary figures in Hollywood history are capable of making enemies, and while most folks in the industry wouldn’t dream of saying anything untoward about Steven Spielberg, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t pissed a few people off.
From the outside looking in, the legendary director seems like an inoffensive guy. He doesn’t court controversy, he doesn’t speak ill of his peers, contemporaries, or their work, and the harshest things he’s ever had to say about cinema have either been directed toward his own movies or streaming services.
And yet, despite spending half a century compiling a legendary filmography that’s made him the only $10 billion megaphone-wielder in history, the only person to helm the highest-grossing release of all time on three separate occasions, and a three-time Academy Award winner, the cut of his jib hasn’t been for everyone.
Jacques Rivette called him an asshole, which was harsh, but that was nothing compared to what Alejandro Jodorowsky had to say, with the offbeat auteur suggesting that Spielberg was the bastard child born from a one-night stand between Walt Disney and Minnie Mouse. That, and he said he wanted to murder him.
Those two auteurs exist at the opposite end of the filmic spectrum from the Jaws and Jurassic Park maestro, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary for them to decry Tinseltown’s ultimate populist. However, when his hand-picked onscreen protégé turned against him, it came completely out of the blue.
At least, it did at the time, before Shia LaBeouf developed a habit for spouting negativity and attracting bad publicity. For a while, he was pegged as the next big thing, with Spielberg recruiting the up-and-coming star to play major roles in DreamWorks productions like Disturbia, Eagle Eye, and Michael Bay’s Transformers trilogy, along with his own Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
The actor quickly fell out of love with the mainstream, though, and he didn’t hesitate in letting rip. “I grew up with this idea, if you got to Spielberg, that’s where it is,” he told Variety. “I’m not talking about fame, and I’m not talking about money.” He is, of course, talking about a sense of achievement; when you become the go-to guy for a director like that, it basically means you’ve made it.
“You get there, and you realise you’re not meeting the Spielberg you dream of,” LaBeouf explained. “You’re meeting a different Spielberg, who is in a different stage in his career. He’s less a director than he is a fucking company.” He was welcomed into the inner circle of a businessman, not a filmmaker, but in all honesty, what was he expecting?
LaBeouf signed on for two genre thrillers, three films about giant alien robots, and a legacy sequel about an aging adventurer, so he should have known what he was getting into. Still, he was furious that Spielberg didn’t match the expectations he’d built up in his head, but as he’s developed a habit of doing after his repeated misdeeds, he eventually apologised, saying he “deeply regrets” throwing the director under a bus.
