What If Shia LaBeouf Were a Woman?

Would a woman named Shia LaBeouf get away with the things a guy called Shia says and does?

Famous women may often get a free pass for cheating (would Jodie Foster publicly defend Adam Hann-Byrd, who played her son in Little Man Tate, for hooking up with someone who wasn't his girlfriend, the way she recently stood up for Kristen Stewart, her Panic Room daughter who just broke Robert Pattinson's heart?), but that might be where their lucky breaks end.

Famous men not only get paid better (generally speaking), but they have far more freedom to get wasted in public, trash hotel rooms, fist fight, kiss, and tell. Take Shia LaBeouf, who is quickly becoming as well known for his big mouth and off-screen antics as his acting. His most recent shockers: That he regularly showed up drunk on the set of his upcoming film Lawless (out August 31), and that his sex scenes in Lars von Trier's next film, The Nymphomaniac (starring Charlotte Gainsbourg -- so amazing in von Trier's last film, Melancholia -- as the title character), will be the real deal.

Of his Lawless-ness, he said...

"My drinking on this movie was as undestructive as I could possibly make it, if that makes sense.

"I did it for the movie. I didn't drink off set for no reason. I did it because, when I showed up on set the next day, my fucking eyes looked like this and my face... had that drunk bloat that I needed, that I couldn't have if that wasn't going on. Moonshine is different than liquor. Moonshine is closer to heroin."

Imagine if the roles and genders had been reversed, and his Lawless costar Mia Wasikowska -- who, according to a boastful LeBeouf, tried to quit the film to get the hell out of his drunken orbit -- had been the one getting hammered? Or if, say, Jennifer Lawrence were to give an interview talking about how she showed up on the set of The Hunger Games drunk, and had sex with Bradley Cooper while they were filming Silver Linings Playbook. What would become of her career? She'd make the cover of Us Weekly (cover line: "Jennifer's Meltdown!") and be an unemployed actress faster than you can say, "Lindsay Lohan!"

When LaBeouf does it, we laugh with him, at him and move on. Boys will be boys! It's the same old song with that too-familiar refrain: Men are party animals when they get a little out of control, studs when they have too much sex. So what that LaBeouf has been arrested multiple times for drunken unruliness and other assorted bad behavior and has admitted to being the other man in at least two Hollywood love triangles? Bad boys are sexy. Doesn't every woman -- and gay guy -- want one?

But who wants to be called a "bad girl" off-screen? Women are labeled drunken sluts or some pejorative equivalent when they get out of hand and act like guys. I must admit, I'm not above my own gender-specific reactions. While I read the reports of LaBeouf's antics and looked at the accompanying photos, I kept thinking how much hotter he looks with a layer of scruff. Jennifer Lawrence could never pull that off.

That said, when Lindsay Lohan started going out and going a little off the rails (before she started regularly endangering the lives of others by trying to drive while she was at it), I actually started to like her more. I already appreciated her acting talent onscreen (yes, talent -- she rocked in Freaky Friday, Mean Girls and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen), but she'd become more interesting off-screen, too.

The same thing has suddenly happened to Amanda Bynes who went from being kind of pathetic when she announced her retirement from acting in 2010 to being finally interesting after her involvement in a string of recent auto misadventures: a DUI, a hit and run, getting ticketed for gabbing on her cell phone while driving, tweeting U.S. President Barack Obama and asking him to fire the arresting police officer in the DUI incident. Drinking and driving is never cool, especially when you have enough money to never have to drive, but Jennifer Lawrence's slightly dull image could use a minor scandal -- if not a role in which she gets to play an all-out bitch on heels -- right about now. (I still love her as an actress.)

If you're rich, young and beautiful, you should be going out, having fun and making mistakes. Lohan, and now Bynes, though, like many a Hollywood starlet before them (Tara Reid and Britney Spears come immediately to mind), took the Hollywood rebel routine a little bit too far. A woman out of control always risks being photographed looking like a hot mess (which is exactly how Kisa, the woman whom Bynes hit in her most recent L.A. driving mishap earlier this month, described her).

The fairer sex never wears that look well. One man's scruff is a woman's fashion nightmare. If you're going to be bad, at least try to look hot -- hold the "mess" -- while you're at it.

Why I Can't Get 'Melancholia' Out of My Head

The mark of a truly great movie is that it stays with you long after the final credits roll. And no 2011 film that I've seen so far has had such a tight grip on me for so long after the fact as Melancholia, which I hold in even higher regard now than I did while I was watching it.

At this rate, it just might end up being my favorite movie of the year, and not just because Wagner, my favorite composer, figures so prominently on the soundtrack. In an interesting twist, The Tree of Life, which would be my pick for 2011's most overrated movie, despite a fantastic performance from Brad Pitt, featured the beginning of the world, while Melancholia climaxed with the end of it. I've always imagined that the Immolation Scene from Wagner's Gotterdammerung would be playing at the end of time.

If I ruled the world, which, hopefully, will not end in 2012, the Best Actress Oscar would be Kirsten Dunst's to lose. She should be this year's Natalie Portman, another former child actor who blossomed into a formidable adult performer, but for some reason, Hollywood seems to have a grudge against her. In the past, I haven't been particularly fond of Dunst's work, but she owns the character of Justine in Melancholia.

I've never been quite as far down in the depths as Justine goes, but I've been close enough to recognize the scenery. If I ever were to tie the knot, I probably wouldn't have sex with a stranger on the front lawn during the wedding reception, but I can so see myself doing something to sabatoge my happily ever after.

As Justine's sister Claire, for whom the film's second section, my favorite, is named, Charlotte Gainsbourg is nearly as impressive. She has a role similar to the one that Sarah Paulson played to Elizabeth Olsen's title character in Martha Marcy May Marlene: rock-solid big sibling, caretaker, and judgmental, disapproving witness to the unraveling of a family member.

I first fell in love with Gainsbourg in 1993, when I saw The Cement Garden at New York City's Angelika Film Center on my first date with my second boyfriend. Though Melancholia is, for the most part, The Kirsten Dunst Show, Gainsbourg and her voice of reason ground it. She is to these proceedings what Rachel Griffiths was to Hilary and Jackie, or Mare Winningham to Georgia. Griffiths' and Winningham's efforts were rewarded with well-deserved Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominations, and so should Gainsbourg's. (Incidentally, I'd put Bridesmaids' Rose Byrne on that shortlist, too. She was so much more essential to that film than Melissa McCarthy, but no one has said a word about her.)

It is through Claire's eyes that we experience the end of the world in Melancholia, and Gainsbourg does such a fantastic job taking us there. I've occasionally wondered how I might react if I were diagnosed with a terminal illness and only had months to live, but I've never considered what I would do if a planet called Melancholia were on a crash-collision course with Earth.

Would I reach out to the people I love who already know that I love them? Would I reach out to those who might not be so sure? Would I indulge in a last supper where calories and nutrition wouldn't count? Would I swallow a bottle of pills, as Justine's cowardly husband (Kiefer Sutherland, in a role that I would have imagined going to someone like Billy Crudup) does? Would I call the one that got away and invite him over for one last go? At it's best, sex can feel like the end of the world, which would be such a fantastic note to go out on.

One thing I know for sure is that I wouldn't build a fortress made of sticks and sit under it holding the hands of my freakishly serene, depressed sister and alarmingly calm son. No, that wouldn't do at all. But I'm glad that's what Claire chose to do. The image of the trio holding hands as Melancholia approaches is haunting and unforgettable. If that's what the end of the world will look like, I couldn't imagine a more beautiful, brutal finale.