Monday, August 24, 1998
Director works in company of controversy
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.