Shia LaBeouf is physically violent towards students in new doc about his experimental acting school

nme.com:

Slauson Rec, named after the Slauson Recreation Center in Los Angeles where LaBeouf held his school from 2018 until 2020. Director Leo Lewis O’Neil told Vanity Fair that the film was made from 800 hours of footage, claiming the Transformers star gave him a camera when he joined the class told him to film everything that happened.The Vanity Fair piece said: “O’Neil captured multiple instances of LaBeouf initiating physical altercations, several of which made the final cut of his movie””.

The piece’s opening paragraph contains a description of one instance:“(LaBeouf) 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, Shia LaBeouf announced that he was developing a free theater school at the Slauson Recreation Center in Los Angeles.

He soon became Slauson’s charismatic, intense, at times volatile leader—all of which was captured on camera by director Leo Lewis O’Neil.“I… pic.twitter.com/e3Y0SoBD7D— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) April 1, 2025 O’Neil tells the outlet that moments of violence on the part of LaBeouf have made it into the final cut of the film, and that he sent the footage to the actor for his approval.He claims in the interview that LaBeouf gave his blessing, saying: “He’s basically just being like, ‘You do what you need to do,’” O’Neil said.