Director's Chair: Neil LaBute

05 December 2008

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Neil LaBute is an American film director, playwright and screenwriter who began his career working in the theatre before moving into movies.

Studying theatre at the Brigham Young University the plays that he produced whilst there brought into question what was acceptable content for a conservative religious university as he pushed the boundaries.

Throughout the nineties he taught drama and film in Indiana where he adapted his 1993 play In the Company of Men into a feature film starring Aaron Eckhart kicking off his directing career.

The 1997 movie followed a pair of thirtysomething white-collar businessmen, embittered by their shallow lives and bad experiences with women, target and romance a beautiful deaf secretary (Stacy Edwards) solely for the purpose of dumping her and thus gaining revenge on her sex.

While one of the junior execs, Chad (Aaron Eckhart), is relentlessly cold-blooded and cruel, his partner, Howard (Matt Malloy), proves to be a spineless tagalong.

Labelled the most controversial movie of the year upon it's released In the Company of Men won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay as well as the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival.

His next film in 1998 brought together an ensemble cast of Ben Stiller, Amy Brenneman, Aaron Eckhart, Catherine Keener, Nastassja Kinski and Jason Patric for Your Friends and Neighbours, which looked at the sex lives of three couples.

One of his most famous movies came in 2000 as he directed Renee Zellweger in Nurse Betty. When small town waitress Betty Sizemore accidentally witnesses the grisly murder of her underhanded car-dealing husband (Aaron Eckhart), she copes with the trauma by retreating into a dream-like state.

Not only is Betty completely in denial about her husband's death, but she now believes she is the one-time love of her favourite soap opera character, Dr. David Ravell (Greg Kinnear).

Leaving her Kansas home in one of her husband's used cars to "reunite" with the doctor, Betty unwittingly carries drugs that the killers (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock) are after. As Betty arrives in Los Angeles to seek out the fictional Dr. Ravell, the hit men aren't far behind.

The film won a string of awards including the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as a Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for Zellweger.

But in recent years he has struggled at the box office as his 2002 and 2003 offerings Possession and The Shape of Things made little impact.

But in 2006 LaBute remade the 1973 British horror classic The Wicker Man with Nicholas Cage in the lead role, it was to be the director's first stab at the horror movie genre.

The film, which followed the investigations of an American police officer, Edward Malus, into the disappearance of his daughter on the isolated island of Summersisle, whose inhabitants are members of a pagan religion, was universally panned by the critics grossing just over $32 million at the global box office and failing to make back it's $35 million budget.

Since this box office failure LaBute stayed away from the big screen concentrating on his theatre productions. but this week sees him return with Lakeview Terrace starring Samuel Jackson.

In Lakeview Terrace, a young couple (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) has just moved into their California dream home when they become the target of their next-door neighbour, who disapproves of their interracial relationship.

A stern, single father, this tightly wound LAPD officer (Samuel L. Jackson) has appointed himself the watchdog of the neighbourhood. His nightly foot patrols and overly watchful eyes bring comfort to some, but he becomes increasingly harassing to the newlyweds.

The film topped the US box office. He is currently working on an adaptation of The Danish Girl.

Lakeview Terrace is out now.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

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