After an enigmatic, teary-eyed piece of performance art last year and an incident at Broadway’s Cabaret that wasn’t so artsy, Shia Labeouf made an appearance today at the Tribeca Film Festival to show that he has turned a page in his career. The actor, whose filmography collectively has amassed $3.9B at the worldwide box office, appeared onstage at the Sva Theater as the executive producer/financier of a work-in-progress documentary Love True from director Alma Har’el. Har’el, a Tel Aviv, Israeli native, is no stranger to Tff. Her film Bombay Beach won best doc feature at the 2011 fest, a title which follows the poor California community of Salton Sea.

And while Labeouf explained that he just wrote a check and stayed out of the director’s way given his admiration for her work, his candid comments today at the half-filled screening stole the show as he railed against Hollywood,...