Actor Shia LaBeouf landed himself in hot water a few weeks ago after the Internet noticed his short film "HowardCantour.com” was a complete rip-off of Daniel Clowes’ obscure 2007 comic “Justin M. Damiano"— both about a disgruntled movie critic.
LaBeouf immediately apologized for his actions via Twitter, saying "I f----- up," but the 27-year-old made a much grander gesture Wednesday by hiring a skywriter to fly "I am sorry Daniel Clowes" above Los Angeles on New Year's Day.
Many people took to Twitter to share pictures of the apology in the sky:
LaBeouf even tweeted a cryptic one of his own:
CLOUD: - vapor floating in the atmosphere - remote servers used to SHARE DATA - to make LESS CLEAR or TRANSPARENT pic.twitter.com/jw9JlEi791
— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) January 1, 2014The skywriting gesture came after a spurt of even more apologetic tweets from LaBeouf, who it appears is more distraught by the incident than even Clowes:
Clowes, meanwhile, is reported to be looking into legal options against LaBeouf, according to his editor and Fantagraphics publisher Eric Reynolds.
"His apology is a non-apology, absolving himself of the fact that he actively misled, at best, and lied, at worst, about the genesis of the film," Reynolds told BuzzFeed last month. "No one 'assumes' authorship for no reason. He implied authorship in the film credits itself, and has gone even further in interviews. He clearly doesn't get it, and that's disturbing. I'm not sure if it's more disturbing that he plagiarized, or that he could rationalize it enough to think it was OK and that he might actually get away with it. Fame clearly breeds a false sense of security."