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'Indiana Jones 4' Q&A: Shia LaBeouf

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was it like meeting Harrison Ford?
SHIA LABEOUF: He's the John Wayne of my generation, for sure. He's the quintessential movie star. And the fact that he doesn't really care is beautiful.

Your Crystal Skull character, Mutt, is pretty handy with blades and swords.
Steven and George wanted the character to have a switchblade. The thing became like a third arm. The floors are now disgusting in my house because there's all these knife gouges in the floor from me throwing the knife. I was on the Transformers press tour while I was getting my knives ready. So I'd take this knife with me to Italy and to Germany, and I'm trying to stash this switchblade in different places in my luggage so I don't get in trouble.

I've read and heard that you watched a lot of old movies — The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause — to get ready to play Mutt.
I also remember Steven telling me to watch Red River, watch Montgomery Clift, and his cadence and his mannerisms and the way he dealt with John Wayne. That was my homework. George, of course, made American Graffiti and knows all about the demimonde of the ''greaser.'' George has the most disgusting comb. It's full of the most nasty crud. He's probably had this comb for 40 years. There's a certain bend in the comb 'cause he keeps the comb in his back pocket, like every greaser did. The pants were so high in the '50s, that you'd have a bend in your comb from sitting on it. And George would say, I wanna make sure that Mutt's comb is bent. Otherwise it's not accurate. It looks like a brand-new comb and not Mutt's comb. And make sure there's a bunch of white specks in it. Make sure you've got scalp in that comb.

And you had to have a greaser hairstyle, too.
That hair took a lot of time. I'm a cigarette smoker, and it's not easy to smoke around a flammable head all the time. That thing could light up, and it's over. Game over.

What did you use to slick it down?
We used all kinds of stuff. We evolved from Murray's on. Then we started making our own stuff. I don't have hair that's conducive to this kind of hairstyle. I have a very nappy, curly head. I come from French Cajun Jewish people. Our hair is not supposed to be that way. I don't know anybody in my family that has that type of hair. So it took some work. I think we worked on the hair as much as we did on the sword fighting.

Did all that hair gunk smell good?
It smelled fantastic. Every time I walked by someone there was a real waft of jasmine, and Murray's, and about 70 other products.

There's a scene in Crystal Skull set in a typical '50s diner, with lots of college students around, which George must have loved.
I think Steven's favorite era is the '30s, but Harrison and George's favorite era is the '50s, for sure. So being around them all the time, you were immersed in it. The movies, the culture, the scene.

NEXT PAGE: ''It was like a fraternity, a boys club. Dirty jokes and a lotta man s---. Jokes you couldn't really repeat out loud, that you'd never want to tell around your wife.''

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