Director works in company of controversy

Published: Monday, August 24, 1998

Monday, August 24, 1998

INTERVIEW: LaBute gives fresh take on infidelity in 'Your Friends and Neighbors'

By Stephanie Sheh

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

After debuting his film "In the Company of Men," a story about two businessmen that play a deaf woman like a pawn in an abusive game, writer and director Neil LaBute had to deal with people calling him misogynistic and harassing his actors for their character's vices. LaBute left audiences and critics wondering what controversial work he'd produce next.

LaBute's latest, "Your Friends and Neighbors," which is currently in theaters, shows them that provocative work is something people can expect from him. "Neighbors" stars Aaron Eckhart, Amy Brenneman, Ben Stiller, Catherine Keener, Nastassja Kinski and Jason Patric (who also produced the film) as Barry, Mary, Jerry, Terri, Cheri and Cary. The members of this sextet lust after their best friend's spouses, throw sexist epithets and spiral downward into a world of sin.

All this, accompanied by LaBute's seemingly normal exterior (he lives with a wife and two kids in Fort Wayne, Ind.) is fodder for the question of "Where is this coming from?"

"I tend to think about what is it that I want to see," LaBute said simply, peering through his glasses. "What is it I haven't seen? What do I like? Is this surprising? You're dealing with material that's pretty tried and true - men, women, relationships, adultery. That's been dealt with so if you're going to go to that place, then you have to have something, a new way into it, or you should come into some scrutiny."

Still searching for that grain of sickness that would explain his fascinatingly cruel characters, one realizes that it's not so much about the shock value, but presenting some thing in a sincere yet stimulating way.

"That's what I admire about him as a writer is that he's so honest," Stiller said. "That's what I admire about any good writer or filmmaker. Just the ability to really express yourself and not worry about what people are going to think and what they are going to judge, based on your own personal life or like those questions of 'Where is this coming from?' That's what I think is so refreshing about his work."

But perhaps what allows LaBute to take such a pure perspective is the fact that he doesn't view his work as darkly and as pessimistically as others have. He sees "Neighbors" as a comedy.

"It's a comedy that has a strong set of truths," LaBute said. "I think it's very funny and the audiences so far have proven me right. For most of the film they find things to laugh about. Sometimes it sounds as if they're wondering why they're laughing, but they're laughing. I don't see enough comedies that are not relegated to being romantic comedies or slapstick comedies or just a comedy that still can whack you about a bit. I think in the best sense comedy can still have a little sting to it."

But it was LaBute who was feeling the sting when his film originally received a NC-17 rating. Surprisingly, for a film about sex, "Your Friends and Neighbors" didn't receive the harsher rating for the sex scenes.

"There really wasn't any nudity to (cut out). I like the fact that it has restraint," LaBute said. "I like the fact that you don't see really real nudity. We don't see any nudity really. In some ways I feel quite drawn to the fact that language was the thing that gave them give it a NC-17."

LaBute's actors for this film had seen "In the Company of Men," and his reputation for being provocative motivated several of them to work with him. A veteran of Tom DiCillo films, Keener was a juror at Sundance when she first saw the film.

"As a juror you're not allowed to talk to anybody about the movie and this is a movie that really warrants, in my opinion, some kind of discussion afterwards, just some perspective," Keener said. "Maybe somebody else's opinion, 'cause it's so personal and so subjective, the experience of watching the movie, I think that when you get your friend's opinion maybe you see something that you didn't necessarily see."

It was at Sundance that Eckhart, who worked previously with LaBute in "Men," first realized that LaBute's debut was going to cause such a stir.

"We were in the library with 400 people at Sundance seeing it for the first time," Eckhart recalls. "Myself, Matt, and Emily (who plays Eckhart's girlfriend at the end) were watching it and Matt and I turned to each other and he said, 'Whoa.' And we started to view the audience. And as soon as we got up there was a roar of talk."

LaBute was similarly startled by the buzz concerning his film. He likens the filmmaking process to working in a back room.

"You don't imagine, especially working on 'In the Company of Men,' a small group of people doing it, and you're not showing it to everybody so you have no idea what they'll react to it," LaBute says.

"And you know certain things will, like Jason's monologue, those kinds of things will probably make somebody sit up and have pause, but it's nothing that you really think about too much. You're still trying to tell a story."

FILM: "Your Friends and Neighbors" is now playing in theaters.