Shia LaBeouf reveals in the upcoming documentary “Megadoc” that he had a huge falling out with former co-star and mentor Jon Voight and did not speak to him for years until the making of “Megalopolis,” where they were forced to put their differences aside and rekindle their friendship (via Entertainment Weekly). LaBeouf identified “very different politics” as the source of their fight.
“The first version [of the script] I read was about five years ago. [Coppola] did a table read. And in the time from that read to this film, I had basically fucked my whole life up,” LaBeouf says in the movie. “I was in the midst of doing my ninth step in this program I’m in, and I had to go make amends to Voight because Voight’s politics and mine are very different. I love him very much.”
LaBeouf and Voight first worked together in 2003’s “Holes” and teamed up again in 2007’s “Transformers.”
“He was like my mentor from a young age,” LaBeouf says of his co-star. “He was like the first real actor I ever met, and he’s the first one who put me on to [Dustin] Hoffman’s repertoire… He would sit in a room with me and watch all these movies back to back, and [that] made me fall in love with the process and the craft, because before that, I was just a poor kid making money.”
But Voight has become an outspoken Trump supporter over the years and was recently named one of Trump’s special envoys to Hollywood alongside Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson. While LaBeouf doesn’t mention Voight’s Trump affiliation, he does cite politics as a reason for a falling out between them.
“We had a big fight on the phone where I told him I was going to come to his house and we were going to fist fight, and I hung up the phone,” LaBeouf says. “Didn’t talk to him for years.”
Variety reported out of Venice that “Megadoc” also includes “Megalopolis” director Francis Ford Coppola getting honest about the difficulties of working with LaBeouf, whose own career has largely been sidelined in Hollywood following his erratic behavior and a sexual misconduct lawsuit filed against him by FKA Twigs. The lawsuit was settled in July.
Per Variety: “The film documents how tensions mounted between LaBeouf and Coppola, to the point where the latter abandoned set before a scene after LaBeouf asked one question two many about some inconsistency in the story. While speaking in the movie, LaBeouf is still shocked that Coppola called him the ‘biggest pain in his fucking ass,’ but shares that the director sent him a long email to apologize the next day, admitting that he had lost his temper but thanked him for ‘doing a good job,’ even if they will always have ‘two different viewpoints’ on pretty much everything.”
“Megadoc” opens in theaters Sept. 19.