Hollywood Director Neil LaBute – 'I’d Love to Work with Beatty'

Neil LaBute is an award-winning filmmaker, screenwriter and an accomplished playwright. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University, the University of Kansas, and New York University. While enrolled in the Graduate Dramatic Writing Program at NYU, he was the recipient of a literary fellowship to study at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and also attended the Sundance Institute’s Playwrights Lab. He’s written many fantastic features including the high suspense remake of the 70s classic horror The Wicker Man.Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage stars in the movie as Malus, a policeman on a quest to find a missing girl on the mysterious island of Summersisle. Malus, is a haunted man, a policeman on leave from his job as he recovers from a traumatic road accident involving a young girl and her mother. When he receives a cry for help from an old friend who fears that her own daughter is in peril, Malus decides to do all he can to help her, and travels to the insular community on the beautiful private island of Summerisle. But from the moment he arrives, Malus’s quest is beset with difficulties, as the locals seem reluctant to help him, even denying all knowledge of the girl’s existence.Becoming ever more confused by the twisting half truths and the seemingly quaint paganistic rituals which gradually take on a more sinister slant, Malus gets drawn into a terrifying race against time to find her before the mysterious rituals embedded in the islanders’ ancient belief system become a horrific reality…

First caught up with Neil, one of Hollywood’s most prestigious filmmakers, to get a further insight into this contemporary and thrilling film. What made you think the Wicker Man was particularly ready for remaking?

Well it was actually a thought that had come to me not so long before it actually happened, but it wasn’t me who really thought – “Let’s remake this picture.” They came to me, Nicolas Cage and his partners and thought about getting the rights to it along with another producer. When they came to me I thought yes, indeed, I could see where this movie could go in a totally different direction, and while we do try and get to the same place in the end, we have certainly taken it into another direction.

While I do know now how close many people hold it to their movie loving breasts (Laughs) to me you felt like it is a movie that could take a rethinking. I was happy to get on board and go about the task of taking it into a new direction.

Its your first horror – did that ever at any point make you apprehensive about taking the controls?

Well it’s one of those things were once you jump in you jump in. I certainly thought it through; you think it through every time hopefully because movies take a lot of time. I do theatre as well, and theatre just doesn’t take the all-consuming year long commitment or more that a film can take. There are just so many aspects to creating a film. So I never go into it capriciously just thinking, “oh this will be a lark and it will take a little while.” I know that there’s a long road ahead so I don’t want to think more carefully than the next. I think or I believe that I look at all of them quite cautiously and say, “is this really something I really want to do and does it have something I want to say?” If you don’t, then very quickly you can tell the difference between a job that someone has taken just for money and one that someone is really impassioned about.

You mentioned Nicolas Cage then – how would you define your working relationship with him?

Oh he was terrific. It was the third time actually that I worked with an actor who is also a producer. I did that with Rachel Weisz on “The Shape of Things” and Jason Patric on “Your Friends and Neighbours” and I have to say that all of those times have been successful at least for my tastes in the execution. It was the first time Rachel had produced, Jason I think had done some work before, but Nic was probably the most accomplished producer of the bunch. He’s produced films that he’s not in, films that he’s been in and he has a company that’s quite viable as a film production house. So he’s doing work out in the community constantly.

It’s great to have an actor who’s not thinking in small terms – I don’t mean small in a prodorative way – but I mean that’s their job; they’re there to think about the character that they’re hired for. But someone working as a producer, he has to look at the whole picture – what kind of film are we making, how is everybody else, how is the job of making the film going, so there is a lot on his mind. I must say Nic was able to juggle all those jobs rather well.

And just as an actor, he’s an incredible screen actor and beyond the fact that he can create a lot of interesting characters, I think he understands the way the camera works. So, very quickly, he comes to the set prepared and he knows what he wants to give you and tries to understand what you want from him – the collaboration is kinda quick and easy. In the same way as working as Morgan Freeman or Gwyneth Paltrow– I found the same kind of work in them, that they come very prepared and they give it to you immediately – they put it up there and want to know what else you want. They’re ready to move on, because they’ve not just come to the place to stand around thinking about it, they’ve prepared themselves very well.

So you’d like to work with Nic again?

Oh sure – yeah. That was the nice thing about writing the scripts. I rarely write a script for someone. I certainly have friends who I’ve worked with more than one time, in both theatre and film but the nice thing is that I rarely ever write for anybody. And that was even the case here, knowing that he would play the part I felt that I could just write the character and that he had the ability to create that person. I didn’t have to try and make this work for him, so it’s nice to be around people who are such good actors.

When did you first see the original movie with its iconic Wicker Man figure?

I certainly knew it was a cult film, but in that way you feel that is often the case, because it’s a small group of people who really love it, and partially one of the reasons they love it is because they feel like it’s special and that not many people know about it. But then after this movie was released, it felt like everybody in the world was like “I love that movie and I love it more than I love yours.” That was an eye opening moment.

I first saw it - I was young and it took about six years to get to America, I guess from when it was first released in the UK. It had a troubled history in that it got cut by its distributor and the distributor was also the creator of it. It was a film that had some difficulties in getting released and I think that built on its infamous status. I worked in an art house when I was in school and they played foreign films and interesting American films and that had come to the theatre. I remember seeing the trailer and thinking “God that is a strange looking movie, what is this.” I saw the movie and thought doubly that. But it is one of those movies that you happily can’t say, “oh it’s like this movie,” It’s so much its own weird picture that I just sort of admired that about it. It’s a very singular creation and from that point on it was one of those that I tucked into my mind and said, “Oh I liked that, loved the ending.” It became that kind of movie for me. I wasn’t obsessed with it, I didn’t visit the locations or anything like some people do - but I certainly enjoyed the experience. Years later, it was a strange thing to be part of, in recreating that.

Were there any difficulties when filming the project at all – any strange illnesses, accidents when trying to build an effigy or severe weather problems?

It was filmed in Vancouver, Canada. We shot for 45 days and literally there were 44 days beautiful days and only one day that you could even probably consider a rainy day, which we worked around. It was incredibly lucky for us and made everyone happy because it was nice to work. But it’s also difficult when you’re creating an atmosphere or a story that’s meant to take place over a short period of time if the weather changes all the time. I shot “Possession” in England and I shot on one location. It was meant to be several days over the course of a story and I had like six different weather conditions whilst I was there in one day. It was raining, then it was blue sky, then it was cloudy – so often the weather would change. You can really run into some tough luck sometimes but I had remarkable weather and a good crew. I think it was a very happy shoot. We knew we were doing something strange but everybody was happy when we were out doing it.

I believe the legendary horror writer Edgar Allan Poe influenced the film. Tell us more about that…

It’s true. In fact I gave Nic a poster from an Edgar Allan Poe film when we started because I knew that he really enjoyed Poe and wanted to bring me that kinda of strange gothic influence to the movie. So along the way we kept finding ways in which we could sprinkle that essence over the picture and try to not make what would just be seen as a traditional horror movie. I think the first one is sometimes wrongly categorised as a horror movie but even some of the creators, including the writer would say it is an anti-horror movie. It’s the opposite in many ways of a traditional horror film and we certainly tried to create something a little different than that. But Nic certainly kept pushing for anything that was more baroque, savage and Poe like, so it was nice to be heading off in that direction rather than just picking up a chain saw.

Did you approach anybody from the original movie to feature in yours like Edward Woodward?

Yes there weren’t many roles for men in the picture but it was something that we thought would be interesting if that were a possibility.

Because of the scarcity of male roles Edward Woodward was about the only one who made sense. Even Christopher Lee as the seaplane pilot would seem kinda strange – he’s a distinct personality. So Woodward was the one that we thought we would approach, but ultimately health didn’t seem to be in our favour in timing. We ended up putting in a few tributes in terms of his name, the missing poster in the police station and things like that. But, no Britt Ekland or anything - we didn’t really think about. That can sometimes get a little precious – were you’re just sprinkling so much stuff throughout the movie that it can really call attention to itself.

We retained some things because everybody on the film liked the original – it wasn’t like “oh we have to redo this because it doesn’t work.” So much of the original story was strong, and there were just things that we were less interested in – the kinda clash of religious ideas, of Paganism and conservative Christianity. It became more viable and interesting to me to still have that layer but we didn’t make as much of it. What was certainly brought to the forefront was the notion of – “what would it be like if women ruled the world.” We were like –“lets see if things would be much different in a community were that seemed to be the case.” Just like the original did it speaks to any closed group that has a shared philosophy and has very little tolerance for outside differences of opinion. It’s going to be a nightmarish situation – it was really just a shift in concern and certainly towards some themes that I had written about in the past that I thought that I could work into this picture. So it was fun to put those into a fabric of a more genre thriller.

I can believe a lot but it was hard to sell the idea that Nic was a virgin (Laughs). At that place they know we’re beyond possible so I had to come up with something else (to have him allergic to bees.)

What research did you do before you started the project – did you read books about paganism for instance?

I did because you don’t want anything to stand out – you don’t want people to go “that’s not true” or this or that. So I tried to. Even in the small bit of history that Ellen Burstyn’s character gives about where they came from, how they travelled from Europe and into Salem and then continued West because of persecution – I wanted to give them the reality of their situation. Then you could at least look at it and go “Yes it’s a movie, it’s fantastical, it’s what movies are supposed to do” – they’re supposed to take you to a world that’s fiction, that doesn’t exist, but make it feel as if it could exist. I needed it to feel real enough so that someone could sit back and enjoy it and not feel “that is preposterous.” It only has to be possible, it doesn’t have to be probable, but it does have to walk the line of where you go “if I let myself go I can believe this.”

You cast Aaron Eckhart a lot. He features in your films frequently – what is it about him as an actor that you especially like?

I do work with him a lot and I work with Paul Rudd a lot in the theatre in particular. Both of them I met in college – so they happen to be friends. But I certainly wouldn’t cast them if I didn’t think they were good. It’s a very nomadic experience the work that we do. You gotta go from one place to another, you’re transient a lot of the time and always working with new people and a new country or a new stage. So it’s nice to have a common thread that runs through – that there’s a familiar face and a familiar work partner. Someone who understands your work understands how you like to work and on top of that happens to be very good. There’s no reason not to cast these guys and they’re also incredibly good at creating interesting and new characters, so I really do it mostly for pleasure. I just like having them in there.

Aaron has now become like a fixture – I feel like I can’t do a movie without having him in there. Even if he’s not really there, I sneak him in on a magazine cover or something so (Laughs). I think it’s a little obsession.

It’s been said in the past that you like to show people suffering a lot in your movies. What’s your view on that?

Yeah – it’s a big part of life. I’m not just into recording people who are actually suffering on the streets. (Laughs) But in the movies we go, either to escape, laugh or cry or what ever it is. But it’s about extremes. I mean we go to see documentaries as well, probably more and more now than ever before. But for the most part when we say lets go to the movies, we're talking “lets go to a fiction film and escape to some place that we don’t know”, be it, it’s shot in some country we haven’t been to or it’s about people and we go “wow what an incredible story that was.” It’s not just Star Wars that we say that about, it’s about Schindler's List. I just saw the Painted Veil the other day and I was like “Wow, that part of China that’s just an amazing”, geographically it’s beautiful, I’ve never seen anything like it. So I don’t think you point a camera and say “This is any two hours in their life.” This is an extraordinary two hours and you try and heighten the emotions in whichever direction you can.

You’ve worked with some amazing people. Is there anybody that you’d still really like to work with?

Oh of course. I really like actors, so everybody from Jack Nicholson to Meryl Streep. You know who I’d really love to work with – Warren Beatty. I think he’s great and he doesn’t do enough movies anymore. There’s lots of new people, I think, there’s a French actress called Emmanuelle Davis, who I think is fantastic. That’s the great thing about being a director – it’s a buyers market – there’s so many actors out there looking for good parts and so if you can write decent parts you have the chance of working with some amazing people.

What are your plans for the future?

The Danish Girl is a film that I’m trying to get made that’s based on a novel. There are a couple of different films that I’m circling around. I’ve been doing a lot of theatre – I just did a play with Ed Harris in New York and a play called “Fat Pig” which I’m really interested in doing in the fall which is a story about a guy who falls in love with a relatively obese woman but doesn’t want to tell his friends cos he’s worried about what they’ll think. It’s a show that I hope to get in the West End.

The Wicker Man is available to buy or rent in the UK from 22nd January.