Alec Baldwin isn’t really interested in his almost Broadway co-star Shia LaBeouf’s thoughts and ruminations on theater.
LaBeouf abruptly left the Broadway play Orphans last month over “creative differences,” declaring that “The theater belongs not to the great but to the brash,” and continuing, “Acting is not for gentlemen, or bureaucratic-academi?cs. What they do is antiart.”
The former Transformers star leaked a handful of emails between himself, co-stars Alec Baldwin and Tom Sturridge, and the play’s director, Daniel Sullivan, reports MSN . LaBeouf’s narrative is pretty dramatic (and possibly plagiarized from an issue of Esquire ).
And while Shia LaBeouf continues to “grow up,” and boy is it painful for us to watch sometimes, one guy who doesn’t have any patience for such nonsense is paparazzi-puncher Alec Baldwin. Asked by Vulture to comment on LaBeouf’s departure and his comments, Baldwin said:
“I can tell you that, in all honesty, I don’t think he’s in a good position to be giving interpretations of what the theater is and what the theater isn’t. I mean, he was never in the theater. He came into a rehearsal room for six or seven days and, uh — you know, sometimes film actors — I mean, there are people who are film actors who have a great legacy in the theater. Some of the greatest movie stars had really serious theater careers and still do.
“And many film actors, though, who are purely film actors, they’re kind of like celebrity chefs, you know what I mean? You hand them the ingredients, and they whip it up, and they cook it, and they put it on a plate, and they want a round of applause. In the theater, we don’t just cook the food and serve it. You go out in the garden and you plant the seeds and you grow it.
“You know, it’s a really very, very long, slow, deliberate — it’s the opposite of film acting. It’s a much more intensive and kind of thoughtful process. And there are people who that’s just not their thing . So for those people who I think it’s not their thing, I’m not really interested in their opinion of it. But thanks.”
Oh snap! I like how Alec Baldwin leads with wisdom and understanding but ends with “shut up, kid.”
By the way, here’s what the poster for Orphans , starring Alec Baldwin, Shia LaBeouf, and Tom Sturridge, looks like. So mainstream film is out, theater is out, what’s left for Shia LaBeouf?