“I don’t give a fuck what you say to me,” a shirtless Shia LaBeouf screams more than an hour into the documentary Slauson Rec, pounding his fist on a
“I don’t give a fuck what you say to me,” a shirtless Shia LaBeouf screams more than an hour into the documentary Slauson Rec, pounding his fist on a foldout table. It’s the height of the pandemic, and he’s in a parking lot that’s been turned into a rehearsal space. The actor is yelling at Zeke, a 20-something member of LaBeouf’s experimental theater collective. LaBeouf shouts so demanding that his body is shaking before getting right up in Zeke’s face: “You’ve got it better than I ever had it. What the fuck is the attitude problem?” LaBeouf’s voice breaks. “I’m giving you everything I have, so stop fucking with me.” He walks away, then circles back again—and this time, he shoves Zeke toward a wall, tightly wrapping his arms around Zeke before threateningly whispering in his ear. At last, onlookers restrain LaBeouf, who gets in his truck, hits the gas, and drives off.
“All that was fucked up,” Zeke reflects later over FaceTime. “People let him get away with it.” He reveals scratches and bruises all over his body. “What kind of mentor does that?”
In September 2018, LaBeouf announced on Twitter (now known as X) that he was developing a free recent theater school at the Slauson Recreation Center in Los Angeles. “You don’t have to be an actor; you don’t have to ever have thought about being an actor. You do, however, have to have a story that you’re willing to share,” LaBeouf said in the video. “All I ask of you is that you show up for one hour and stay for one hour. If you don’t like it, leave; if you do like it, I’ll be there next Saturday. I’ll be there every Saturday at 9:00 a.m., building shit with whoever shows up. I’m trying to change the world.”
Hundreds of people showed up to those first classes, among them Leo Lewis O’Neil, a wide-eyed transplant from Austin, Texas. Upon meeting O’Neil, LaBeouf saw him with a camera and encouraged him to film everything that took place at Slauson. O’Neil had looked up to LaBeouf before he even landed in LA; as such, he took the assignment seriously. “He was putting his belief in me and giving me an opportunity,” O’Neil says now. “I had never done something like that before.” The school proceeded to meet every Saturday, whittling down after those introductory weeks to a core group of 80 or so members.
“I wasn’t the only one that was desperate for a community. Everybody who stuck through that program, I think, had an intense sense of being desperate for something like a family,” O’Neil says. “It was like the Island of Misfit Toys.”
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