I Stayed Up All Night Waiting To Watch Shia LaBeouf Watch Shia LaBeouf. This Is What I Saw.

The news dropped innocently enough. A press release, a tweet, and then the livestream went … well, live. Shia LaBeouf‘s multimedia performance project, #ALLMYMOVIES—wherein the actor would sit in the Angelika Film Center and watch all of his movies in reverse chronological order, without stopping—would roll on unabated for 58 straight hours. I can’t say that I was surprised that people came in droves. The questions were “who” and “why.”

The reporters all got in and out before the weird shit went down, too. Reports started being filed before the close of business on Wednesday, when the crowds were still small and the novelty of the thing carried the day. That’s not what I wanted to explore. I was gonna hang out overnight, with the nutcases who wanted to wait in line for almost 12 hours just to catch a glimpse of The Bearded One eat a slice of pizza while a camera observed him staring up at The Even Stevens Movie. That’s dedication, man.

A member of the theater’s security team came around at one point to lay out the ground rules: no phones or other electronics once inside. No touching Shia. No asking questions about his movies. You could talk to him, but “he won’t respond. He’s in the Artist Zone.” His express purpose with this project? “Shia wants to watch himself age backward.” Cool, bro. I guess it’s kinda like when the Boyhood cast first saw that movie, only in reverse.

Well, the weirdos definitely came out to play. Or maybe it was more a thing of the circumstances breeding some weirdos. Packs of hipsters clogged the snaking line winding its way out along Mercer St., but most couldn’t make it more than a couple hours before they packed it in. Those who stayed waited for more than 12 hours to get into the theater. (Once inside, you could stay as long as you liked.) A guy brought cardboard and markers to make robot masks. Another just started yelling “PENIS” really loudly for no apparent reason. The poor sods at the front of the line cheered every time somebody got into the performance. As it always does when large groups of people gather to stand around for long periods, ecstasy and madness were never far apart. There was even a line-jumping breakdance crew who finally got tossed after one two many pop-n-locks.

But there was a purpose to all this standing: To watch Shia LaBeouf watch Shia LaBeouf. The project, developed for a year with his partners, essentially comprises three different pieces: The movie theater, the line outside the theater, and the livestream. Each contains its own rules, its own aesthetic parameters, its own degree of audience participation, as it were. Needless to say, if you came to the Angelika, you spent most of your time in the line. And it quickly took on a life of its own. People approaching their eighth and ninth hours began to treat the line as the art object of their desires, rather than what LaBeouf surely intended. No surprise there; you give fans an inch, they’ll take a mile, one GIF at a time.

“Is there such a thing as a Shia LaBeouf fan?” my friend Joe asked in veiled contempt. Maybe not in the traditional sense of the word–a closed persona whose works we consume and enjoy. Rather, LaBeouf stands for a loftier version of our obsession with Kim Kardashian. We love the idea of Shia LaBeouf, or rather, we enjoy his mere existence. That existence then does create a more amorphous body of work, the work of life, celebrity, and its manipulations. The plagiarized short film; the “I am not famous” bag; the Nymphomaniac press conference; the drunken arrest at Hedwig and the Angry Inch; the Abramovic-aping performance in Los Angeles where he may or may not have been raped; the redemption press tour last year. It all adds up to a concept, rather than a human being. LaBeouf probably doesn’t see it that way, but isn’t that how we’re ingesting him? And isn’t this reinforced by how most people will experience #ALLMYMOVIES—as a Warholian endurance test onto which we can project any emotional or intellectual state we wish?

Maybe this is exactly what LaBeouf wants. The man has clearly struggled with his identity over the last few years, starting with his public feud with Alec Baldwin during rehearsals for a play from which LaBeouf was unceremoniously fired. Perhaps even more significantly, he hasn’t been sure how to express it. The type of performance art in which he is engaging coasts in the wakes of Joaquin Phoenix and James Franco, two other famous dudes who Want To Be Taken Seriously™. And the way that LaBeouf does it is paint-by-numbers modern art—the stuff that’s in fashion these days, anyway. And yet we are enthralled, waiting in line for hours, hanging out on the theater all night, making all the GIF’s, Vines and memes we can think up. The project has no center, and will eat itself by the next news cycle.

But maybe that’s more satisfying to LaBeouf. The quick-witted child actor who wants to be known for something greater, and not just the CGI blockbusters on which his fortune was made? I’ve read that script before. #ALLMYMOVIES is LaBeouf’s reckoning with his past, and if we deign to read into his emotional state, it hasn’t all been pretty. For the rest of us at the Angelika, however, it serves as a community gathering, bound together not by God, but by celebrity—a proudly American god. The college students studiously waiting their turn to witness the performance say it best: If Shia can do it, so can we.

[Watch #ALLMYMOVIES on Newhive.com]

Evan Davis is a regular contributor to Howler Magazine, Deadspin, and formerly to Film Comment. He lives in New York City. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.