Shia LaBeouf Commisions Skywriting Plane to Relay Retirement Message

Actor Shia LaBeouf seems to be starting his own trend, high in the friendly skies.

The 27-year-old Transformers star has commissioned skywriting planes twice in the past week to deliver messages from above. His latest endeavor involved hiring a fleet of planes to write "STOP CREATING" across a five-mile stretch of the L.A. sky. The message comes on the heels of LaBeouf's imminent retirement from the public eye after growing tired of the media storm surrounding his recent plagiarism scandal. The actor made a rather abrupt announcement via Twitter on Friday, tweeting "In light of the recent attacks against my artistic integrity, I am retiring from all public life."

Just in case his point wasn't clear, LaBeouf apparently felt the need to spell it out, literally, using 5 planes at a cost of about 25K.  Because the images only lasted about 7 minutes before fading away, they had to be regenerated 18 times.

Earlier this week, the actor hired several planes to deliver the message "I am sorry Daniel Clowes," a reference to the novelist whom LaBeouf plagiarized for his acclaimed short film Howard Cantour.com.  There has been a whirlwind of controversy surrounding the scandal, including allegations that the incident may not be his only offense. Now it appears as though LaBeouf's comic books have come under fire for their similarity to works by Benoit Duteurtre and Charles Bukowski, as well as another comic by Daniel Clowes.

Whether the notoriously dramatic actor/director really intends to retire remains to be seen. He has two upcoming films this year - Nymphomaniac (due for release in March) and Fury, (due for release in Nov.) both of which will require media promotion. Since it's unlikely the studios will consider skywriting an acceptable form of press, we'll see if LaBeouf makes the late-night talk show rounds.

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