10) Plagiarism Accusations
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the chain of events that started it all. The embryo, if you will.
At the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, Shia premiered his directorial debut, Howard Cantour.com. Surprisingly enough, the short film received a large volume of critical acclaim, with reviewers praising the 11-minute presentation and heavily encouraging the actor to continue trying things out behind the camera. That’s great, right?
Well, at the end of 2013 – when the film finally surfaced online – people started to realize that it showed an odd resemblance to Justin M. Damiano, a comic by author Daniel Clowes. And we’re not talking about a little inspiration here. No no. Instead, it turned out to be a precise, blatant replica. Like, the dialogue was the exact same. Word for word.
So yeah, the short turned out to be an obvious film adaptation of the comic. The only problem, though, is that the two artists had not made any type of deal with one another.
Luckily, being the gentleman that he is, Shia quickly went on social media to make things right. Which leads us to the next part of this list…