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Neil LaBute is a theatre and film writer/director from Detroit, Michigan. He is the author of the plays Reasons to Be Pretty, In a Dark, Dark House, Wrecks, Some Girl(s), This Is How It Goes, Fat Pig, The Distance from Here, The Mercy Seat, and The Shape of Things as well the short play cycles Autobahn and Bash: Latter-day Plays and the short plays Falling in Like, Coax, Liar's Club, Stand-Up, Land of the Dead, Love at Twenty, and Union Square. He wrote and directed the films The Wicker Man (based upon the screenplay by Anthony Shaffer), The Shape of Things (adapted from his play), Your Friends and Neighbors, and In the Company of Men. He co-wrote (with David Henry Hwang and Laura Jones) and directed the film Possession adapted from the novel by A. S. Byatt and directed the films Lakeview Terrace and Nurse Betty. He is also the author of a collection of short stories—Seconds of Pleasure. He is a graduate of the New York University Film School and Brigham Young University.

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Neil LaBute's plays, with their controversial characters and hot-ticket productions, have given him a reputation as being the American theatre's bad boy—a provocateur whose plays always leave you reeling either from their shock value or your emotional investment in the dramatic situations, or even if you're just sickened. Ever since the premiere of his film debut, In the Company of Men, viewers and readers have approached a LaBute piece with trepidation or devious curiosity. Beneath all this, however, is a writer who simply will probably be remembered more than any other contemporary playwright of his generation because he is prolific, deft with language, interested in human beings, and is close to becoming a superb craftsman.

Even with his reputation, he is still not easily lumped in with other American playwrights who are currently respected. You don't often see LaBute's name in with David Lindsay-Abaire, Suzan-Lori Parks, Anthony Rapp, Craig Wright, Jon Robin Baitz, or Stephen Adly Guirigis or other recent winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award, the Obie, or any other respected accolade. LaBute hasn't won any of them anyway.

Also, unlike those playwrights mentioned above, his popularity in the theatre world is most easily recognizable in the West End in London, where he did graduate work at the Royal Academy, rather than in New York, though the city did offer him his professional debut as a playwright.

His first offering to the professional theatre world was an evening of one-acts entitled Bash: Latter-day Plays. The original New York production in 1999 was the most talked-about event of the Off-Broadway theatre season. It was a model attraction—the hottest new writer in town, the hottest director (Joe Mantello), two hot young actors (Paul Rudd, of Clueless fame, and Ron Eldard, of Men Behaving Badly), and the theatrical debut of the then biggest television star in the English-speaking world Calista Flockhart, fresh off her work in Ally McBeal.

The trilogy is composed of the pieces Iphigenia in Orem, A Gaggle of Saints, and Medea Redux. Aside from having mild allusions to Greek mythology, the only other element that threaded the pieces was they all were about normally milquetoast Latter-day Saints involved in rather disturbing violent episodes. The first piece is a confessional monologue in which a Utah businessman recounts the time he didn't kill, but didn't exactly prevent the death of his infant son. The second piece is a pair of interweaving dual monologues in which a young Latter-day Saint couple tells a story of gleeful gay-bashing in New York City. The final piece, another confessional, has a woman recounting her tale of sexual abuse.

What would become LaBute's trademark ear for Middle American speech was praised, though most New Yorkers were confused by the references to and usage of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Up until that point, a New York theatre person's knowledge of Mormons would've been limited to their mild importance in Tony Kushner's Angels in America. Later on, in the 2000 West End production, LaBute ditched the evening's sub-title and reduced the Mormon references even though Latter-day Saints have a significant population in the United Kingdom.

LaBute had attended Brigham Young University (largely on what their Dramatic Art program had to offer), and had converted to the Church while there. His earliest playwriting efforts, including a stage version of In the Company of Men, were even honored with the Association for Mormon Letters Award for Drama. Unfortunately, Bash: Latter-day Plays put LaBute up to close scrutiny by Church leaders.They felt he had�portrayed Latter-day Saints in a negative light. He was disfellowed (one degree less of excommunication) and LaBute has since formally left the Church. Bash: Latter-day Plays was recorded and shown on HBO, but is sadly not available on DVD.

LaBute's first full-length play to be produced professionally was The Shape of Things. This play also set the trend of his plays debuting in London and, later, being staged in New York as well as being LaBute's directing debut, in which he cast four strong, young talents—the future Academy Award-winning actress Rachel Weisz, the aforementioned Rudd, New York theatre favorite Frederick Weller, and future The Notorious Bettie Page star Gretchen Mol. The West End premiere was scandalous to Londoners because of its loud Smashing Pumpkins song score (which reportedly made Nobel Prize-winner Harold Pinter leave before the play even started) and its absence of a curtain call.

The play concerns the role of art in society and also our pre-occupation with the surfaces of people. But, more simply and more importantly, it is about a young man who falls head over heels for a woman who seems to be forcibly changing everything about his life and how their relationship ends up affecting another couple as well. The play is, in some ways, LaBute's answer to criticisms that In the Company of Men was misogynist. That film, which concerns two businessmen plotting the ruination of a young deaf girl, gets flipped to a young graduate student using a phony love interest for the needs of a human sculpture, regardless of his emotional attachment to her.

The 2000 Almeida Theatre production moved Off-Broadway the following year for a limited run, which was sold out. For this production, which I was fortunate enough to have seen before it closed, LaBute did some unnecessary tinkering with the end of the play which altered the emotional impact, but the production's superb acting and staging were enough to leave it an exhilarating experience. LaBute also added a curtain call and I am certain we applauded for Mrs. Weisz for at least five minutes. The original production gave LaBute perhaps his greatest review from Donald Lyons of the New York Post. After this production, the same cast went into the shooting of LaBute's film version.

The Mercy Seat was one of the first theatrical responses to the events of September 11, 2001. LaBute's play is a two-character meditation on not only the devastation of that event, but the internal devastation of a couple on the brink of collapse. The couple involves an illicit office affair that involves a man who is now contemplating leaving his wife and children behind to pursue a life with his mistress with the added bonus of the possibility his family might think he's dead.

Sigourney Weaver (who also starred in Anne Nelson's The Guys shortly after the catastrophe) decided to headline the production, which also featured New York golden boy actor Liev Schreiber. LaBute directed the play, which was performed in 2002 with the Manhattan Class Company, with whom LaBute would share a long-standing relationship.

Although some consider The Mercy Seat to be LaBute's best play because of its streamlined dramatic conceit and breakneck pacing, I personally believe it to be one of his weakest efforts, marred primarily by very loose characterization (which I'm sure was filled out by Weaver and Schreiber in the production) and unfocused dialogue. The words still have the LaBute snap, crackle, and pop, but they are rarely pointing to the dramatic motion. Nevertheless, the play showed up on many "Best Of" lists that year and remains one of the better 9/11-themed plays.

His next play, which unfortunately has a greater reputation in the U. K. than it does in the U. S. (based on a sloppy Off-Broadway production), is without a doubt his greatest theatrical achievement and the real proof that he will be remembered and read. The Distance from Here premiered in London under the direction of David Leveaux. The multi-character drama is one of the few American plays that deal with the current generation of adolescent youth and still remains high in artistic value. By writing this, I mean it doesn't seem so terribly ripped out of the headlines. It has a certain amount of timelessness, though it is powerful as a work of the current imagination and feeling.

The plotting is intricate and tight-knit, unlike many of his other work, which rely more on character and theme rather than structure. The imagery is terrifying and the resolution bleak and maddening. With this play, LaBute showed the first signs of mastery in the art of dramatic writing. The play concerns three close friends who are middle American youth—going nowhere, doing nothing—but becoming involved in dangerous familial and romantic relationships, resulting in a finale of staggering metaphoric theatricality, involving the upcoming next generation and our animalistic feeding and preying upon them.

The 2003 London production opened to extraordinarily enthusiastic reviews, but the New York production, which opened with MCC in 2004 included an entirely different production team and cast. The director was Michael Grief, a director who flip-flops in artistic quality. In a span of a few years, he successfully mounted the Broadway production of Jonathan Larson's Rent and also directed a production of Anton Chekov's Three Sisters which was laughed out of the Williamstown Theatre Festival. His direction was loopy and the cast largely unknown, though it did feature Academy Award-winner actress Anna Paquin. Perhaps one day, The Distance from Here will be noted as representative of American dramatic writing in the twenty-first century.

LaBute returned to the art of the short play with a cycle of pieces under the collective title Autobahn. The seven plays in the evening-length entertainment are Funny, Bench Seat, All Apologies, Merge, Long Division, Road Trip, and Autobahn. What ties all of these plays together are the automobile. Inspired by a Bochum, Germany theatre production adapting two of his short stories, LaBute decided to use the simple set conceit of a steering wheel and chairs to flex his script writing muscles.

The plays are what we might now consider Vintage LaBute. Some of them are raucously funny. In Long Division, two friends sit in a car as one friend encourages the other to follow through with a plan to steal back his game system from an ex-girlfriend. Some are full of the caustic wit and mistrust between the genders that have been hallmarks of his career (Bench Seat, Merge, and Autobahn). The rest are largely solo pieces with silent passengers whose pregnant non-speech is as threatening as what is said.

The original production centered on the work collected in Autobahn and was a star-studded staged reading of only five of the pieces as a benefit for the MCC. LaBute directed it sparsely and simply and it played to a standing-room only crowd on March 8, 2004. The supremely talented actress Amanda Peet and LaBute-veteran Rudd appeared in Bench Seat, The Closer's Kyra Sedwick and a completely silent Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Autobahn, theatre Colossus Brian Dennehy and Kieran Culkin (in a part re-written to be male) in Road Trip, newcomers Christopher Meloni and Peter Dinklage in Long Division, and Hollywood royalty Kevin Bacon and Susan Sarandon performed Merge. The production was a great success and solidified in one evening LaBute's power to attract the work of great talent from every spectrum. 

The next play to be seen of LaBute's would constitute a dramatic shift in the writer's work. While most of his work would prove to shock and awe (usually with a nineteenth century-style "switcharoo" at the end), the play of his that elicited true and honest human emotion was a quirkily titled piece—Fat Pig. On a surface level, it is LaBute's take on Hollywood ideals of beauty. The main character falls for a beautiful, intelligent, and obese young woman and doesn't think much of that final element until his friends' remarks (including that of his ex-girlfriend) begin to prey on his mind and make him self-conscious of his own attraction.

It is at this point in the show, because of the beautifully characterized individuals in the piece, that LaBute's words turned from being morally damning and/or crude snips of fancy dialogue into raw, emotional pleading. The final scene, in which the main character (an essentially decent human being) tearfully concludes his relationship with the glowing young woman whose personality has also touched the audience's heart, is simply shattering.

Although quite long and at times (similar to The Mercy Seat) unfocused in its dramatic conversation, Fat Pig remains a significant work. The Off-Broadway production opened in 2004 (again with MCC) under the direction of frequent LaBute director Jo Bonney and featuring another all-star cast including eighties Brat Packer Andrew McCarthy, Entourage's leading man Jeremy Piven, and Felicity-laden Keri Russell.

During a particularly fertile time, LaBute completed This Is How It Goes, a play about the failure of an interracial relationship and the personal and political pains of the disjointed union. With a new LaBute play going into production or publication at what seemed like a mile a minute, LaBute's offering was looked at as simply another "take." LaBute's "take" on beauty, LaBute's "take" on race. The structure of the piece is perhaps the most loose of any of his works, including the plot-less confessionals. But, This Is How It Goes would be assisted greatly by another hot-ticket production based on the premiere production's personnel.

The seminal theatre director George C. Wolfe chose to direct the play during the end of his run as the Artistic Director for the Joseph Papp Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival. Wolfe, of course, had made a name for himself with projects as varied as the racially charged The Colored Museum to lavish and misguided musicals such as The Wild Party. His cast was considered one of the finest casts in New York theatre at that time. Ben Stiller played the narrator of the piece, with Peet and Jeffrey Wright, who had brought down houses in Parks' Topdog/Underdog. The play opened to mixed reviews; however, this did not stop audiences from attendance.

It is precisely the "unambiguity" of the characters and the play that I believe hampers the piece from having true merit in LaBute's canon. It simply seems like a subject he had no real interest in. The USA Today compared the play to Rebecca Gilman's Spinning into Butter. But, I'm not sure how that could be a compliment.

LaBute's Some Girl(s) became famous before it set foot in America due to scandalous photos of David Schwimmer's nude scene in his West End debut leaking from the Gielgud Theatre. But, the play ranks very highly with many of LaBute's other works regardless of Mr. Schwimmer's schlong. The play is called by LaBute a "romance" in the style of Eric Rohmer films. It concerns an engaged man who decides to hop a plane across the country to visit four ex-girlfriends to discover the journey he made from there to here.

The conceit is brilliant and features some of the most stunning scene writing of LaBute's career. The sharply written characters are reminiscent of his work in Fat Pig and it clearly demonstrates the "new side" of LaBute which features characters ruled by regret. The most effective scene is one where the "Guy" meets up with a Latin-tinged Chicago girl with whom he shared a few good years. The scene is so full of the could've-should'ves that you could cut them with a knife, but they serve the playwright's purpose as a remarkable example of longing and other sentimentalist points of romance that are uncovered in the play.

As mentioned earlier, the play premiered in London under the direction of David Grindley and featuring the lovable lanky lunk-head from Friends. The production was highly respected and created great buzz as to whether it would transfer to New York. Like many of his work, rather than transferring, the play opened with the MCC under different personnel, including Bonney as the director and another television favorite—Eric McCormack, of Will and Grace—as the "Guy." This production also featured some stunningly beautiful and incredibly gifted (and television-inclined) actresses in the supporting roles, including Scrubs' Judy Reyes, The Nanny's Fran Drescher, and E. R.'s Maura Tierney.

The members of the London cast and crew convinced LaBute to cut the eleventh hour "switcharoo" from his original draft. This revelation was that the Guy is not only doing his finding-himself-through-ex-girlfriends-routine, but is secretly recording the conversations for a Gonzo-journalism piece he will publish. As LaBute mentions in his Afterward to the published edition of the play, the London production was a "more streamlined and somewhat simpler tale of a man who travels back into his life to honestly try to find something of worth in the wreckage of his past relationships." It is hard to imagine that LaBute did not find this to be an astonishingly mature and vital stepping stone in his phase of more mature writing, because he and the New York crew added the "parallel story of journalistic opportunism" back into the play, which proceeds in making one feel like you want to tear up the play you just have loved reading. LaBute added this back in light of news stories concerning James Frey and "J. T. LeRoy," but I would gladly encourage every theatre company to break copyright law and excise the offending lines and stage directions out of what is otherwise, one of LaBute's best plays.

As is mentioned above, all of LaBute's plays are available in print and should be read. Unfortunately, he has written so many of them in the last few years that Faber and Faber (his primary publisher) has taken very little time to publish them correctly or without blemish. The Shape of Things, thankfully, does not include LaBute's cuts of the terrific final, silent moments. (Good for us that LaBute likes to tamper with his plays after first productions, but does not often mark it in his texts). The Distance from Here is published in its London version regardless of whether or not any changes were made in New York. Fat Pig was so rushed out it was not afforded the opportunity to give its original production credits in the text and it seems odd that LaBute would publish the play before even working on a production. Some Girl(s) was published twice, the American version including a "deleted scene." The most upsetting aspect of the printing of LaBute's work is he may be a great writer, but he is at his best when he doesn't write about his writing. His forewords, prefaces, and afterwards reveal his more hokey self. In person, LaBute is not a bad boy at all, but a rather monotonous and seemingly boring individual who seems rather not all that impressed with much. In his introduction to Autobahn, LaBute comes off as somewhat pretentious (something he isn't) by calling his fans "dear readers." After these uneventful essays, by the time you get to the opening words of his Some Girl(s) intro—"I don't have a lot to say about this play"—you wish he just didn't say anything.

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LaBute was, of course, first known for his probing and provocative films. In the Company of Men is an important film—a benchmark in independent American cinema—and LaBute has no problem at all having it judged as his best work. LaBute, an unknown who had shot the film with less than $25,000 as a budget, surprisingly won the Filmmakers Trophy for the film at the Sundance Film Festival. Aside from bringing LaBute to the film industry, it also brought one of its best actors—Aaron Eckhart—with whom LaBute went to school at BYU.

LaBute's sophomore effort—Your Friends and Neighbors—was considered by many a breakthrough in the careers of the above-mentioned Stiller and Jason Patric, but failed to garner the same appreciation as his debut work. There are several reasons for this, critically. The film tries to do many things—perhaps too many—and doesn't do many of them well. It is astoundingly quiet, full of odd silences and interruptions (not those classy moments, like in Pinter—just incorrect). It also features uneven performances from individuals like Catherine Keener and even Eckhart, who comes off strangely reserved. Still, the film has its supporters; it is especially sad that since it, there has been no original work written directly for the screen by its maker.

LaBute branched out for his next film, largely on his reputation as a film director. In fact, he did not write the script of his first Hollywood studio movie, the black comedy Nurse Betty. The film proved that LaBute could handle more traditional-style movie-making, but in his own unconventional way. The film is respected by many, though I've always felt it lacks any real wit or involvement with its audience. It is significant for being a major step for Renee Zellwegger and Chris Rock in furthering their acting careers and it also features a rare, comedic role from Morgan Freeman.

Most of LaBute's film projects following Nurse Betty would be adaptations—and, usually, highly controversial ones. A. S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel Possession was written in the early 1990's and became one of the few contemporary novels to become an instant classic. A very long and intense read, full of dense mock-Victorian poetry, it seems now like an odd choice for film adaptation, but it did linger in the minds of filmmakers, staying in development Hell for many years. The first package that was to be offered was Out of Africa director Sydney Pollack directing a screenplay by the Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang, author of M. Butterfly. The screenplay was an excellent adaptation and remained as the general framework from which the film would eventually be made, but that original team dissipated. (And for the best as the late Pollack might've made another sentimental film lacking any real sentiment.)

Years later, LaBute signed onto the project as simply a fan of the book. Going from Hwang's draft, LaBute co-wrote a second draft with Australian screenwriter Laura Jones (Angela's Ashes), then, another by himself. The scenes set in Victorian England remained primarily the work of Hwang, while the structural kinks were worked out with Jones. LaBute's primary focus as a writer was the contemporary story. Many Byatt fans are extremely protective of the novel and LaBute's decision to turn the male protagonist character of Roland to American nationality is the source of much contention among Byatt purists, although Byatt was the one who encouraged LaBute to make it his own.

The resulting film is a splendid work, maybe LaBute's best film. It was critically acclaimed by many and has a devout following. Eckhart took the Americanized part of Roland while Brit-witted American actress Gwyneth Paltrow rounded out the contemporary pair. Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle played the Victorian authors at the source of the mystery of the novel and their scenes are among the most beautifully acted and staged in the film.

LaBute quickly returned to his initial impulse—the theatre—as the inspiration for his next film project. Producers at Revolution Studios liked what LaBute and his The Shape of Things cast had done in London and New York and invited them to make the play into a film. LaBute translated the story to California (from the Midwest), but otherwise changed very little of the dialogue and hardly any of the structure. The film does not come off as a filmed stage play per se, but it is stilted enough to make you wish you had watched a recorded version of the original show. Although Roger Ebert gave the film a glowing review, otherwise the film fell on deaf ears. It is important in that it recorded the amazing performances of Weisz, Weller, Mol, and Rudd—though the ending lacks the wallop it had in the theatre.

LaBute, then, re-made the influential British horror film The Wicker Man, which awarded LaBute the worst reviews of his life but is certainly far from an artistic disappointment. The original film was written by Anthony Shaffer (the not-as-good brother of playwright Peter Shaffer) and concerned a devoutly Christian policeman on a secluded Scottish island investigating the disappearance of a young girl. The island on which he lands happens to be a devoutly Pagan community with constant consensual sex everywhere and much British folk music. This community—with their Pagan ways—leads the policeman to his doom in one of the most consistently frightening conclusions of any thriller.

The film starred Christopher Lee as the leader of the Pagan community and was virtually un-seen in its original theatrical release. Shortly thereafter, though, the Robin Hardy-directed film became a cult classic. People began re-viewing the film and calling it not only a seminal horror film, but a seminal film of Great Britain. The unveiling of the original Director's Cut has also added to the film's inflated reputation.

Hollywood actor Nicholas Cage had been introduced to the film through legendary punk rocker Johnny Ramone and Cage wanted to star in and produce a re-make of the film. LaBute became the writer/director for hire. This also came from a mutual love of the original, but LaBute apparently had no idea as to how beloved the original film is. His changes include taking the creepy Scottish Isles Pagan Community to a creepy Pacific Northwest Isles Matriarchal Community. Another controversial element was lessening the religious tension. Producers apparently figured it would not make sense for an American to be such a devout Christian as to have stayed a virgin until his mid-thirties. So, LaBute changed the idea of the man who bears temptation of sexual sin on an island with free-wheeling sex to a man who bears an allergic reaction to bees on an island whose main export is honey and who lets bees run the place. The most controversial change was changing the Pagan society into a matriarchy, casting Ellen Burstyn in the Lee role as the head of the Summerisle religious group. This results in a society in which the men are not only subservient, but reduced to slavery.

The film opened like many horror films—without affording critics the opportunity to give bad reviews on the opening day. But, as soon as the critics paid their money to see the film, they had a field day. The film was even nominated five times at the Razzie Awards, including Worst Screenplay for Neil LaBute. One doesn't blame the audience for not participating in the event because the dozens of re-makes of classic horror films are simply too numerous.

In what will no doubt be the most controversial thing written in this Profile, I'm going to defend the film, which I admired. In fact, after reviewing both films, I prefer LaBute's version. The original film, first of all, is dated, ugly, and annoying. The world of the Pagan society is hampered by dozens of leisure-suit style dress shirts and clothing and hair-dos that are so 1970's that it reminds you of the puke-green carpet in the Jungle Room at Graceland. Some of the out-of-place sets in the movie remind you of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and, despite good performances from the lead actors, it features a bizarre and ridiculous sequence involving Britt Eckland (badly dubbed) lip-synching a Scottish folk song while doing a stupid, naked dance.

But, these are primarily surface complaints—not as important as the things I admire in LaBute's version. First of all, if you look very closely at the world LaBute creates, even though there are no ties to tribes of Scottish Pagans, he does set up a world oddly reminiscent of stand-off-ish American religions—Shakers, Quakers, etc. In fact, the group looks oddly Mormon in dress and regiment. The reason for the bees in LaBute's version is probably very closely tied to the significant Mormon "Deseret" symbol of the beehive. I believe the film is a jab from LaBute back to the Mormon Church. Also, many believed the matriarchy idea to be a "feminist slant" laid over the film. But, in fact, the society is drawn in such a way as to elicit the notion of the fascistic N. O. W. Presidents who have spoken that men should be fried in boiling vats of butter and fed to wolves. The film seems to be more critical of women in power than anything else.

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Neil LaBute remains an authentic dramatic artist who certainly deserves to be counted among the important dramatists and filmmakers of his time. What will make LaBute last is not the shocking provocateur that many have come to characterize him as, but his attention to the art of writing about and being interested in human beings as well as his frank writing on gender and gender roles. Whereas many artists' response to 9/11 included plays entitled George W. Bush Is an Idiot, LaBute offered The Mercy Seat. While that play is far from a masterpiece, it does concentrate on the human being as at the center of any drama and it is that calling that all of the great dramatists have always responded to and always will.

Note: The above profile was composed in 2006. Since, LaBute has offered the plays In a Dark, Dark House (rather pitiful) and Reasons to Be Pretty (somewhat good), a volume of shorter plays—Wrecks and Other Plays (a mixed bag)—and the film Lakeview Terrace (a box office hit regardless of its flaws).