Shia LaBeouf may have plagiarized apology

Earlier this week, Shia LaBeouf was caught plagiarizing in his short film, HowardCantour.com, from Daniel Clowes’ comic, Justin M. Damiano. But it seems his tweets may not have been sincere, as reports say his apology was also plagiarized. Included in his public apology, the 27-year-old actor tweeted, “Copying isn’t particularly creative work. Being inspired be someone else’s idea to produce something new and different IS creative work.” Several publications found that this sentence was word-by-word copied, including the capitalized “IS” from an easily-traced Yahoo Answers post from four years ago. The post was made by a user in response to the question, “Why did Picasso say that ‘good artists copy but great artists steal?'”

Clowes’ editor, Eric Reynolds, also didn’t seem to think the star’s apology cut it, writing to Buzzfeed in an email, “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… He implied authorship in the film credits itself, and has gone even further in interview. He clearly doesn’t get it, and that’s disturbing… Fame clearly breeds a false sense of security.” After Reynolds’ letter went public, Shia took to Twitter once again for a more genuine attempt of apology, tweeting, “I have let my family down, and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart.” His second tweet stated, “I was wrong, terribly wrong. I owe it to future generations to explain why.”

Although his tweets seemed heartfelt, the first tweet is an exact copy of Tiger Woods’ 2009 public apology for cheating, and the second is from General Robert McNamara’s book about the Vietnam conflict, In Retrospect. It seems the only original statement from the star is his latest tweet, “It starts with this… I’m sorry @danielclowes.” ~Jennifer Yoo