Fighting For Your Life With Shia LaBeouf

1.

Here is a morning thought for a Friday: the glory of the internet is that there’s always someone who hasn’t seen Rob Cantor’s Shia LaBeouf. And there’s always someone who has forgotten the song and needs to see it again.

Being the one to rectify either situation is a gift that keeps on giving. Go forth and be that person.

2.

And here’s a challenge for your Friday: what can Rob Cantor’s 3 minute clip offer you as a creative person (regardless of how that creativity manifests). Yesterday I logged a quote from a recent Garth Nix in-conversation I attended: we are all descendants of everything we’ve ever read. This applies to three-minute clips as well as great works of literature and non-fiction.

These days I run through a list from Todd Henry’s Accidental Creative designed to help capture creative sparks and insights.

ARE THERE ANY PATTERNS YOU’RE EXPERIENCING THAT ARE SIMILAR TO SOMETHING YOU’RE WORKING ON?

One project I’m kicking around at the moment is a year-long research-and-report series based around being more satisfied with my writing. Not necessarily being more successful with my writing in purely monetary terms, but hitting the end of 2020 and feeling like I’m pushing towards something instead of treading water. I found my way back to this clip as part of that, thinking about the works of art that really resonate with me and get me excited about creative possibilities. Cantor’s work is part of an emerging pattern: B-Grade ideas treated with po-faced seriousness, an appreciation for small absurdities in the genre, writing everything from a different perspective so you’re forced to re-examine the familiar.

At the same time, the project I’m noodling with the moment is a straight-up crime novel. No supernatural elements, no magic and no SF. Just a downright nasty thug doing bad things to bad people. Despite this, it’s not a book that’s grounded in realism—I wanted a very stylized feel to it. Realism heightened to the point of absurdity, then filtered through genre tropes. So I look at little patterns in Cantor’s song—the sheer pleasure of whispering Shia LaBeauf’s name and the way it lures you into the moment; the constant escalation from band, to orchestra, to dancers, to children’s choir, to acrobats, and the way the structure constantly mirrors and pushes the increasing absurdity of the story to the point where “but you can do jui-jitsu” feels like a natural progression.

You can’t do that in the same way when writing fiction, but the general idea of it seems like it could be replicated in some way.

WHAT DO YOU FIND SURPRISING ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE EXPERIENCING?

Two words: production values. Doing weird, gimmicky songs on the internet is nothing new and Cantor’s work had already gone viral two years before the clip appeared. That he doubled-down and produced this amazing, bizarre clip is just magical—one of the few things that has ever gone viral where I’m really blown away by the production and effort that went into it.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE EXPERINCING AND WHY?

• The fusing of “high art” forms like dance, choir, and an orchestra with an ostensibly low-art aesthetic of a goofy horror movie plot. Also, my god, the production values on a three-minute Youtube thing is incredible. There’s an intent here that’s often missing when people do this kind of thing, a real seriousness and gravitas that elevates the goofiness of the concept.
• The dedicated seriousness of everyone involved. They don’t treat it as a joke and therefore elevate this to the level of parody within the story, so you’re able make those decisions for yourself as a viewer. There’s an ideology of trusting the reader here that I appreciate.
• The Shia LaBeouf guest spot at the end. Always fun to see someone willing to go along with a joke, but it also really nails the dedication and willingness to go all-out on production values.

WHAT DO YOU DISLIKE ABOUT WHAT YOUR EXPERIENCING?

• The second “Shia LaBeauf” not really being whispered by the violinist. There is so much impact in the first one, and the kid’s repetition of “quiet, quiet,” that gets lost when the name is said in a low voice instead.
• The little details that get lost. I missed the blindfolded mohawked dancer in the final stages of the song because the clip had gone all maximalist and drowned us in detail. It’s only today, after about fifty repetitions of this clip, that I finally noticed something going on int he background.