Shia LaBeouf and David Mamet Just Might Save Each Other

On May 9, David Mamet‘s first directorial film effort in nearly 20 years, Henry Johnson, will be available for streaming on HenryJohnsonMovie.com. The film is a straightforward adaptation of Mamet’s own play, mounted at a black box theater in Venice in 2023 — garnering plenty of acclaim for both the writer and star Shia LeBeouf.

The timing could not be better for LaBeouf, 38, a highly gifted, scandal-prone actor who currently finds his nose pressed against the Hollywood glass amid fallout from a number of controversies. Not the least of them is a pending lawsuit from former girlfriend FKA Twigs accusing him of sexual assault and emotional distress. LaBeouf has conceded to harmful behavior but denies the specific allegations and the matter is set to proceed to trial in September of this year.

In Henry Johnson, he plays Gene, a fast-talking and hyper-intelligent prisoner under whose spell the title character — a white-collar dupe played by Evan Jonigkeit, husband of Mamet’s actress daughter Zosia — helplessly falls.

LaBeouf — who since 2022 has raised a daughter with actress girlfriend Mia Goth, currently filming Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey — is again drawing raves for his performance in the film version, with The Hollywood Reporter noting in its review that the “hint of madness and lurking danger that adrenalize so many of the actor’s best performances” makes him a perfect fit for the role.

Mamet, 77, is certainly no stranger to controversy himself. The celebrated writer-director, whose Glengarry Glen Ross is currently in its fourth incarnation on Broadway (this one starring Bob Odenkirk, Kieran Culkin and Bill Burr), has made few friends and more than a few enemies in Hollywood as he has repeatedly professed allegiance to Donald Trump and all that he stands for.

Two Hollywood outcasts joining forces for — to the surprise of many — some of the best work of their careers? To learn how it all came together, THR sat for lunch with both men at the Smoke House Restaurant in Burbank (Shia ordered clam chowder and a shrimp cocktail, David the chopped sirloin) for a conversation as mesmerizing as anything Gene could subject Henry Johnson to inside a cramped jail cell.

Shia, we’ve been in the same room only once before. Remember your 2014 art installation on Beverly Boulevard? Anyone could walk into a room and sit across a table from you. Alone. There was a paper bag over your head, with holes cut out for the eyes. I was one of the first ones there.

DAVID MAMET What did you do when you got in the room?

I couldn’t believe it was happening. It all felt very surreal. And I wasn’t sure it was Shia, either.

MAMET Because of the bag.

Right. So I just had some awkward conversation with him and tried to engage him, but he wasn’t talking. And then that was it. I was escorted out.

LABEOUF Dave, I’ve read American Buffalo-era interviews where you were not a big fan of performance art.

MAMET That was even prior to that. In the ’60s, I was working and living in New York, and all this stuff was happening down on the Bowery, on St. Mark’s Place. I didn’t get it.

LABEOUF Yeah, no, I understand. I went through my own process and wound up in a similar spot.

I heard that art piece went off the rails because people were harassing and molesting you.

LABEOUF But we planned for all that. People are going to take things to an extreme. You give people enough rope, that’s how it goes. It went haywire twice, but somebody would step in. Somebody was trying to whip my legs, and there was nudity and things like that. I just don’t know the intrinsic value of such a thing.

That was one in a series of performance art pieces you had done.

LABEOUF Man, I’ve been searching for a long time. I’m really like a pure actor. When I was young, I didn’t think that I required much help to do what I do. I was completely narcissistic and fearful and had a lack of trust. I’ve been under the tutelage of a lot of dudes who tried to mentor me, but I just didn’t trust them, or didn’t like what they made or whatever. It could be as simple as somebody’s hairstyle — it really gets down to petty stuff like that. If you’re going to give somebody the keys and let them drive your life, which is what it feels like when you’re in this kind of relationship, you want to trust them.

How was David’s hairstyle — or his directing style in general?

LABEOUF The ultimate, and I’m not just saying that because he’s right there. It’s precise and it’s also hands off enough to let you play jazz within the thing. So it’s not Oliver Stone where I’m going through each punctuation [making 2010’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps]. And please, this is not a slight on that man. I have deep love for him. But it’s a different thing.

You seem like birds of a feather in that you’re both pretty rebellious. It makes sense to me that you would eventually find each other. So how did you find each other?

LABEOUF I wrote him a fan letter. I’ve been chasing him for 10 years. Sometimes he’s making something and there’s a spot for me. And then we’re in conversation and the thing goes another way. Like this JFK thing [Assassination, about how Chicago mobster Sam Giancana arranged the assassination of John F. Kennedy], is the most recent example. I was prepping to play Lee Harvey Oswald. Viggo Mortensen signed on. We were ready to go.

Then I get a heartfelt call from Dave, and I never heard him sound like that. It was like heartbreak. Somebody took his kid from him. I don’t know really what happened, but I know that they pushed him out. It’s like, man, how do I make this dude I love feel better?

What happened to the JFK project, David?

MAMET They decided that instead of making the movie, they wanted to sue each other. So they started suing each other. Everybody was in it. Courtney Love was in it. John Travolta. Al Pacino.

LABEOUF It was a sick cast. It would’ve been crazy.

MAMET Louis C.K. was going to play Jack Ruby.

Shia, you mentioned writing a fan letter to David. What did you say in the fan letter?

LABEOUF See, I had met Pacino. Pacino and I were going to do a play on Broadway called Orphans. And I’m scared. I’m just Transformers boy, who was raised by Spielberg through the Disney thing. I got all my fears: “You ain’t earned it.” And you hang out with Gary Oldman [on the set of 2012’s Lawless and 2016’s Man Down]. And you’re hanging out with John Hurt [on the set of 2008’s New York, I Love You and Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]. And Hurt is telling you all about Oscar Wilde. And you’re like, ‘I don’t fuck with Oscar Wilde.’ You feel like you’re not a part of it. I’ve had that feeling for a long time. It’s this deep sense that I’m not enough, or whatever.

And Dave’s books helped me with that. Like True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor. I knew that book because John Hurt had told me that the Stanislavsky thing was bullshit. We were doing Indiana Jones. Ray Winstone was there. I’m scared. I’m just lucky to be around these people — still a CW kid. And they put me onto that book. It made me feel like acting is actually an accessible thing. I don’t have to have some magical power. Basically, if I work hard, I can have it. That’s what the book said to me. People say I’m a method actor. I’m not at all. I’m a grinder. That book is my only acting teacher.

So while I was prepping with Pacino, he’d say he became what he is on American Buffalo. So I had written Dave a letter at some point and put a stupid script in with it. This is back when I was trying to be a screenwriter — and all the hoopla that went on with the plagiarism and all this stuff. I’m looking for heroes. I didn’t get a response back. But then I hear from him a year later, for this TV show about Chicago he was developing.

MAMET Oh yeah.

Shia, if I recall, you dropped out of Orphans. Something about not getting along with co-star Alec Baldwin?

LABEOUF By the time Baldwin got there, it was almost unfair. So he’s dealing with both my fractured little weak ego, right? All this hard prep that I’d done for two years, and my desperate need to show him all my prep, or that he would accept me somehow. I was so insecure. Well, that got contentious in the room. Then he got competitive. That’s just what our relationship turned into.

I’d be off book, he’d be on book, and he didn’t want me to look at him be off book. That makes it hard to play these scenes out or block this thing even. And no fault against him, he had two weeks to come in because Pacino [dropped out]. I had built the whole thing based on my relationship with Pacino. And that’s gone. So I was kind of heartbroken. When he came in, I’m living in the park and I’m on steroids and I’m not in a good way.

You were living in a park?

LABEOUF Yeah. I was sleeping in Central Park. They keep horses there at this little fire basin. And there’s a whole lot of room around there where you can just chill. You got to move every three or four hours and the guy comes around, but you can spend most of your time there.

And then you’d show up for rehearsal, having slept in Central Park?

LABEOUF For most of the prep.

Wow.

LABEOUF Right. And then Alec started teaching at NYU — a class on acting while I was doing these rehearsals with him. And I was like, “How? You’re still not off book!” So then I started taking his class. It got insane. But me and him are good because he’s gone through a lot. I’ve gone through a lot. We’ve both been able to send each other love and make it right before all the madness happened on both sides. We made it right. He’s a good guy. He’s just like me. Fear will make you move different. I found it came from having absolutely no spiritual life.

MAMET That’ll do it.

LABEOUF It made me a piece of shit. Not a nice guy.

And last we talked, you’d found Catholicism and you’d lived in the monastery. How’s that going?

LABEOUF It changes the way you work, for sure. Me and Alec would never have these problems now. But I was in an island. Then I hear Timothée Chalamet get up and he says something like, “I want to be great.” I so know the feeling. On him, it’s cute. On me, it wasn’t cute. You know what I’m saying?

Let’s get into Henry Johnson. David, I read one glowing review that guessed it was an older script that you had resurrected. When did you write Henry Johnson?

MAMET I wrote it at the end of COVID. My friend Marja-Lewis Ryan, who has directed a couple of plays of mine, said, “What are you doing?” “I’m sitting at home. I’m licking my wounds. I’ll never fucking work again. Nobody wants to do my plays, blah, blah, blah.” She said, “Well, let’s do something. Don’t you have anything?” So I sent her this play. And she said, “OK, we’re going to do it. We’ll put it together. We’ll do it over at the Electric Lodge in Venice.”

LABEOUF And I called Dave around then, because I’m still heartbroken over losing Lee Harvey Oswald. I said, “Where are you going?” Because everybody was falling off the project. And then Evan called me and talked me into it, because I didn’t think I could do it.

MAMET My son-in-law, Evan Jonigkeit.

Was it always a given that Evan would play Henry Johnson?

MAMET I wrote it for him.

Your wife Rebecca Pidgeon starred on stage in Oleanna, and in several of your films. Why do you like working with immediate family?

MAMET I knew Jim Gandolfini. We were going to do a project together called The Lake. It was a Chicago cop story. We were sitting having lunch. It was like a week before he died. He said, “The thing about a movie is by the time you figure out how to make the movie, it’s over. You’re done shooting it. But when you got a TV show, you got the second family and you’re figuring it out.” So I’ve always worked with the same people — because why not?

Shia, what’s it like to speak David Mamet’s dialogue?

LABEOUF It’s a fucking relief. It’s being able to say, “I can’t fuck this up.” I haven’t gone to school, college, nothing like that. I’ve just read scripts since I’m eight years old. He’s the best. I’m not some intellectual. I’m just a guy who likes acting. I’m a performance whore. And there’s no one better for the actor. You don’t have to work so much. The reason you get all these actors inserting the “ums” and the “ahs” is because the writing sucks.

MAMET You got to say the words. And sometimes it’s hard to say the words.

LABEOUF They try to box him in by calling it “Mamet-esque speak” or whatever. But there is another thing in film — this New York-esque mumblecore bullshit. And it’s everywhere. And so then you read a Mamet play and there’s none of it. You have to unlearn a lot of things.

MAMET I do one take. The more takes you do, the more it takes. You have to look at the footage until you don’t know what the fuck you’re looking at. Most directors don’t talk. They say, “Let’s do it again.” The question is why? So if you don’t know why, the actor is just thinking, “Fuck, I better do something different. He didn’t like that other thing.”

LABEOUF When I worked with Adam Driver, we’re on the Megalopolis set. Coppola is filming and Adam will do a take and then he’ll go back and watch playback on the monitor. That’s his way. But what that is is a lack of trust. I used to be that guy, too.

Your performance in Megalopolis was really out there. What was Coppola’s direction for that character?

LABEOUF Coppola thinks he’s Dave. He really believes he’s this theater director guy. He’s not. But he believes he is. He thinks he’s the actor’s guy — but he’s not. That’s not to say he’s not incredible, it’s just not what his incredible is. It’s not helpful to the actor to get overt notes.

He gave you a lot of direction?

LABEOUF He was very specific, but his specificity wasn’t on the page. So I can’t share your dream. With Coppola, a lot needs to be talked about. Maybe it’s just the movie that I worked on him with, but it felt like we had to mine his mind to figure out what the fuck we were even talking about. It wasn’t normal language. It was this archaic rhythm that he was chasing. So it became a lot of questions on my end, which required answers, which frustrated our relationship. I became a nuisance.

And when you finally saw the finished product, was it what you thought you were making?

LABEOUF It’s further than what I thought he was chasing. It is way wackier than I thought. It’s wacky as fuck. I never thought we were going for wacky. I thought my character was wacky and I served that for the film. But I didn’t think the whole movie was wacky. There were scenes where I remember watching Driver and thinking like, “Whoa, that’s wild. Now we’re playing the same person?” Aubrey Plaza was playing it almost like she was winking at the crowd, like she was in on this joke. That wasn’t my bag.

I remember early on being very scared about what Coppola had given me because it didn’t make sense to me and I didn’t feel comfortable. And I had done one rehearsal and he gave me a look — and I never asked him another question about the character. But he was getting questions from Driver that would exhaust him. Driver needed answers, too. So by the time he was available to me, the energy was different. And I had to be respectful about all that. You want to be respectful, but you want to be good.

David, you’ve never been a big fan of critics.

MAMET Well, no. I met a couple critics in my life who were very, very helpful to me. But basically other than that, I stopped reading them decades ago.

So when you mounted Henry Johnson in Venice, did you invite critics?

LABEOUF Dave said no. There was a whole internal thing for a week and a half with me and Evan. It was strictly no critics, which for me, my ego wasn’t going to have that. I had worked too hard. I just wasn’t going to have it.

MAMET Because we were selling every ticket that we could.

Was there maybe a bit of fear there, that they wouldn’t like the piece?

MAMET No, I just fucking hate them. The old saying is, “What’s the only requirement to be a drama critic? It’s insufficient talent to write about sports.”

LABEOUF I ninja’d behind Dave’s back and invited the writer from the LA Times. I said, “Hey, I know Dave doesn’t want you there, but wear a wig and come anyway. I’ll put a ticket at the front.” So he came and he saw it and he liked it.

MAMET I just didn’t want to pay him the compliment of buying him a ticket.

Let me ask a bit about the content of the play. David, you said you wrote it during the pandemic. What was on your mind?

MAMET A lot of theaters become political and social. So the plays are social commentary, political commentary. Deaf people are people, too. Black people are people, too. Gay people are people, too. But real art is quite the contrary. It’s saying, “I’m going to write about something that puzzles the hell out of me.” The question from the beginning is this guy Henry Johnson, who’s a little bit of a codependent and the fool, he always thinks he’s doing the right thing. But what he’s doing is two things: He’s always injuring someone and he’s always being taken advantage of. So I wanted to follow that to its end result.

People are saying it’s a very timely film. Why?

MAMET They like it. That’s all timely means, right? They say, “Hey, geez — I’m alive now. This film’s alive now. I guess it must be timely.”

So there’s nothing in the air about people having the wool pulled over their eyes and being easily duped or conned?

MAMET Well, it’s always in the air, right? Somebody said the Bible isn’t about what happened. The Bible is about what always happens. That’s why we’re still reading the Bible.

I’ve seen Shia’s character compared to these toxic-masculine guru guys online.

MAMET I don’t understand what toxic masculinity means. I mean, I know the words, but I don’t know what it means. I think it means I don’t like men. It means it’s a good idea not to like men.

Shia, what’s your take on your character? Is Gene a master manipulator or something less sinister?

LABEOUF I don’t want to be in prison. I don’t have to work hard to understand that. Who would want to be in prison for 30 fucking years? If there was a way out, I would try to chase that. I don’t need to do big research to think that way. And I didn’t really want to play him like tough guy, because all my baggage came in with me already. I knew as soon as the play would start, there was all this myth already about how I’m a dog-killing, monstrous piece of shit. And so how can I paint with that? Well, I don’t have to play into it or use it very much or do much grimacing at all. I just have to get these lines down, learn this rhythm. How does a story like this even come to your desk? You shouldn’t be talking to us, right? We’re not supposed to be here. This is for The Hollywood Reporter, isn’t it?

Yeah.

LABEOUF Well, at least from what I’ve experienced lately, is you guys aren’t allowed to come write about me, right?

Why not?

LABEOUF Because we’re on some kind of lists. For instance, I was going to do Jimmy Kimmel, right? To promote this project. And so Jimmy Kimmel’s show is owned by ABC. And ABC said, “No, you can’t interview Shia.” So Jimmy had to call me and say, “Hey, you can’t come on the show.” So I imagine The Hollywood Reporter is quite corporate that way as well. If you have a story you’re interested in, you have to go get permission, don’t you?

We’re a news outlet. We get more leeway.

LABEOUF Well, I imagine any kind of corporate media would have a problem with you interviewing me. For sure. It’s crazy. Is it that just you’ve been over there for a long time?

I don’t know, really. I wanted to interview you, so I’m interviewing you. Let me ask you this: You’ve said a few times today that you’re a narcissist. Do you really think that?

LABEOUF To get into this field, there’s a certain level of ego — a certain ego sickness that gets you into acting. And now I’m trying to figure out what the healthy version of that looks like.

MAMET Yeah, but what’s wrong with that?

LABEOUF It just is what it is.

MAMET I was talking to a doctor one day about surgery, a good doctor friend of mine. He says, “What’s the most important thing that motivates a surgeon?” I said, “Trying to save lives?” “No.” “Trying to perfect his skill?” He said, “No. The most important thing that motivates a surgeon is they like cutting people open.” So that’s what I feel. They like cutting people open and we like getting up in front of people and torturing ourselves.

Shia, are you still in touch with Mel Gibson?

LABEOUF Yeah. Very close. Big respect, big love. He’s always been very lovely to me. He held my hand when I was really shitting on myself. Dude really stepped up for me in big ways. Him, Sean Penn, James Brolin — these guys got me to sobriety. They got around me and kept me alive. Sean also showed up and motivated me to do this as a play. I was scared as fuck when this thing started. He was there week one. Sam Rockwell came. There was a bunch of guys that I looked up to that just started popping up. I had never, ever felt that kind of love — not like that.

Do you feel like this part could be a sort of gateway to rehabilitation for you?

LABEOUF I hope so. I hope my whole life is about that. I hope my whole life is squaring things, getting it right. It’s what I want to do with the rest of my life. And there’s a lot of things to get right. I’m blessed that I still have this craft and I’m still allowed to do it at a high level with the highest. It feels like a fucking miracle. It’s all part of the same thing — God’s everything or nothing. I believe that. Me and Dave have big God talks. I’ve been to temple with him. He’s been to church with me. Been deep dives for both of us.

MAMET You can’t trust your mind. The mind is the serpent in the garden. The mind is evil and it has to be controlled. How do you control it? We try to do good. We do evil. So I’m getting a cup of tea in the morning and there’s the Torah sitting over there. And I say, “You know, I really should read the Torah.”

It’s an unusual thing you’re doing with the film’s release. David, it’s funny you should mention Louis C.K. earlier. He was the first person I thought of when I heard you’re putting it online at HenryJohnsonMovie.com. Louis used to put his specials up there, five bucks a pop.

MAMET He’s a big, big reason this happened. I asked him, “What’s the secret?” He said there’s no secret. He said, “I’m going to call my guy for all my online stuff. He’ll talk you through it.” And so between that and Evan, who can figure out anything, we said, “OK. Duh.”

The industry died, right? It just aged out, just like radio drama aged out because of new technology. The film industry has aged out because of the internet. The industry so aged out that they’re making Snow White for $250 million and nobody came to see it. Because the decisions are being made by an industry that’s too rich to fail. Just like the Biden administration, they got to keep doing this stuff. Although it’s absurd and it’s making us bankrupt.

I was having the best time in my life and I was doing the best theater happening in the English-speaking world in 1975 in a garage in Chicago. So now we’re trying to do the same thing. You might make money and you might not, but you’re living your life. You aren’t asking permission of 8,500 cocksuckers named Jason in the Valley over here.

David, you got a lot of heat for supporting Trump before he got re-elected. How are you feeling about how his second term is going?

MAMET Well, I love him. He’s great. I’m getting on for 80. And I got so sick of my country dying. And so Trump — but it’s not Trump. It’s 53 percent of the American population who said, “You know what? We’re the middle class. We’re tired of dying. We would like our country back.” So is this guy going to make a bunch of mistakes? Of course he is. Grant was a magnificent general who won the Civil War for the North. He gets into office and all the people who got underneath him were crooks. So it was the most crooked administration until Joe Biden.

I’m glad the country’s back. And so what we’re doing is we’re fighting each other, our fellow Americans, about what is the meaning of the Constitution. You’re supposed to fight about the meaning of the Constitution. You’re supposed to say, “What’s the law? Who gets to do what to whom?” Rather than fighting about are gay people better than trans people, are white people better than Black people. Fighting about political differences is what actually unites us. Because when everybody thinks the same way, you have a dictatorship, which is what we came pretty fucking close to.

Shia, I’ll leave the final thought to you. You’ve done some award-worthy work here, though we all know the challenges of that happening. But let’s say it did. What would a a nomination mean to you?

LABEOUF I wouldn’t need that. I’m just like a little kid on a magic carpet ride. Dave is my hero. So that’s how you can end it. It’s like wish-fulfillment and I don’t deserve it. And it’s super cool. Yeah. Wow.