LaBute Puts His Own Spin on the World

The first question cut into the soft early-evening breeze--and right to the chase. “Do you think there are people who are really as evil as your characters?” a woman asked writer-director Neil LaBute.

She was among nearly 100 aspiring filmmakers, writers and fans who came for a “poolside chat” in the shaded courtyard of Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont on Monday, hoping for insights into the dark, original and morally twisted work of LaBute (“In the Company of Men,” “Your Friends and Neighbors.”)

No doubt, answered LaBute, a darling of independent films and clearly a role model for some in the audience who admired the un-Hollywood way he pushes and sometimes crosses the line of what’s acceptable in film. In 1997’s “The Company of Men,” two businessmen, one slick and ruthless, the other mousy and confused, woo a deaf secretary only in order to drop her later and hurt her feelings. In his current play, “The Distance From Here,” being staged in London, a character throws an infant in a gym bag into a zoo’s penguin pool.

But in the end, LaBute said, “I’m not making documentaries. I’m making entertainment. I’m more interested in complex, interesting people, no matter whether they’re good or bad.” Many of his characters would appear on the surface to have positive aspects, he said, but that is deceiving. “They’re driven, purposeful, go after whatever it is they want. Good or bad, they do it with drive and energy. Usually, someone is left in their wake.”

Along with filmmaker Lisa Cholodenko (“High Art” and “Laurel Canyon”) LaBute was being interviewed by critic Elvis Mitchell in a new feature of the Los Angeles Film Festival. The three sat on director’s stools with microphones, facing rows of chairs and photographer’s strobes which taken altogether pretty much obscured the courtyard’s small oval poolside as well as the potential chat. The audience had many questions for Cholodenko as well, but appeared to be more familiar with LaBute’s larger body of work.

As in his films and plays, LaBute doesn’t try to put an optimistic spin on the world. Americans, he said, are a “profoundly hungry bunch. Wanting to come in first. Wanting to be best. They have me-based ethic.” After 9/11, he said some people did unite, but many others were privately driven to concentrate on their personal protection.

LaBute, a genial teddy bear dressed in glasses and a sweatshirt, talked confidently of his artistic process, a meandering exploration that, contrary to scriptwriting lore, doesn’t necessarily have the first plot twist on page 20. Often, he said, “I’ll write 30 pages and go, ‘Boy, this is worse than I thought,’ and start over. But I like to work and don’t mind that.” LaBute, 39, was born in the Midwest, raised in the Pacific Northwest and attended Brigham Young University as a theater major. After accepting a scholarship to London’s Royal Court Theater, he taught English in Indiana, where he started writing. He said his first experience with filmmaking (“In the Company of Men”) was atypical. “I didn’t run the gamut of trying to get agents to get people to look at the script. I said I’ll make it myself. I had seen a lot of models through the Sundance system ...

“If I’d known how much it cost to actually get a film on the screen, I probably wouldn’t have started. Luckily, I shot it and got a rough cut before I realized what it would take to show the thing in a theater.”

LaBute admitted he has a “strange relationship” with the audience. “I like to provoke them. To think, be angry, be happy. Whatever. I don’t like too much complacency.”

To that end, he said he’s always searching for things an audience won’t expect--ending a scene, for instance, just before or else long after most people feel it should end. In films, he said, he likes to force the audience to look at things they’d rather not see. “I love long takes in a very uncomfortable scene where an audience will tend to want to look away, but you give them nothing else to do. They can leave the auditorium, but they have to confront the piece as you devised it.”

He said he particularly likes to cast attractive actors in less than admirable roles. “That’s a strange juxtaposition for an audience,” he said, “watching people who they would, in life, be attracted to, be a friend with, or want to date or stand next to at graduation. And then to have them turn on them every so often and say, ‘There’s no need to trust me just because I’m good-looking.’ And yet, usually in life, and often in the movies, we do anyway, just because they have those qualities we wish we had ourselves.”

LaBute, who also directed “Nurse Betty” and “Possession” starring Gwyneth Paltrow, which opens later this summer, said he enjoys adapting someone else’s novel or working with someone else’s screenplay. He doesn’t mind that he isn’t directing his current play, “The Distance From Here.” “I found it freeing to see what somebody else would do with it,” he said. “I just like the work,” he said. “I have had so many jobs that are horrible. This is good, clean work.”