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

22-01-2007 11:50

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.