Neil LaBute is a playwright, screenwriter and director whose first films were praised by many and lambasted by some for perceived misogyny -- before those critics came to realize they were focusing on only a sliver of LaBute’s darkly comic vision. He is currently directing his one-act play, “Wrecks,” starring Ed Harris, at the Geffen Playhouse, and his next film, “Death at a Funeral,” with Zoe Saldana, Tracy Morgan, Martin Lawrence and Chris Rock, will be released April 16.
LaBute talked with Eric Estrin about the value of stupidity in independent filmmaking, the traffic accident that kick-started his career and the trek from “goofball driver” to Filmmakers Trophy winner at Sundance.
I’d always flirted with the idea of writing. I don’t know that I needed to express myself, but early on I found that I was good at the creative part of storytelling. Then, starting in high-school drama class and college, I learned the mechanics of it along the way.
A play of mine was at the Sundance Lab, and producers saw it and were interested in making a film out of it. So during that year when they owned the option to that play, I (a), started seeing how it was done, and (b), realized how long it can take somebody to put a film together.
Now, after having been at it for a while, I think, well, they only had it for a year. But at the time I felt, Jesus, they’ve had it for a year! So when they went to renew the option, I was like, no, you can’t have it. You could take forever!
That project never got made, but at that point I started looking at things I had written that I thought I could make as a movie -- that ended up being “In the Company of Men.”
Also at the time, I had all my feelers out and was listening and learning how people were making movies. I was looking at all the Sundance stories in particular, because I’d gone to Brigham Young University and had been to the festival and I’d worked as a driver up there; I’d gone to the workshop as a playwright, so I was familiar with that operation.
And I started hearing all these stories about these guys who had done these sorts of outlandish things to get money to make movies. You know, Robert Townsend with his credit cards, and Kevin Smith, who was working in the convenience store at night; and Robert Rodriguez doing some kind of chemical testing on himself, you know, medical experiments, and some other guy taking his money and putting it on red in Atlantic City -- crazy ways that they raised 25,000 bucks.
The reason I’m that here today is complete stupidity, which was that I believed wholeheartedly those stories.
It was true, you often can get a film made for a certain amount of money, but made means shot, or maybe edited even, like I did for my film.
Eric Estrin has covered Hollywood for People, TV Guide, Television Week and Los Angeles Magazine, where he was contributing editor and TV critic. He also has written episodes of many shows, including Cagney & Lacey, Miami Vice, Hercules and Outer Limits. He created the Script Project for LA Observed.
A play of mine was at the Sundance Lab, and producers saw it and were interested in making a film out of it. So during that year when they owned the option to that play, I (a), started seeing how it was done, and (b), realized how long it can take somebody to put a film together.
