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Neil LaBute
Neil N. LaBute (born March 19, 1963) is an American playwright, film director, and screenwriter. He is best known for a play which he wrote and later adapted for film, In the Company of Men (1997) winning awards from the Sundance Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the New York Film Critics Circle. He wrote and directed the films Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), Possession (2002) (based on the A. S. Byatt novel), The Shape of Things (2003) (based on his play of the same name), The Wicker Man (2006), Some Velvet Morning (2013), and Dirty Weekend (2015).
He directed the films Nurse Betty (2000), Lakeview Terrace (2008), and the American adaptation of Death at a Funeral (2010). LaBute created the TV series Billy & Billie, writing and directing all of the episodes. He is also the creator of the TV series Van Helsing. He executive produced, co-directed, and co-wrote Netflix's The I-Land and he also directed several episodes for shows including Hell on Wheels and Billions.
LaBute was born in Detroit, the son of Marian, a hospital receptionist, and Richard LaBute, a long-haul truck driver. He is of French Canadian, English, and Irish ancestry, and grew up in Spokane, Washington. He studied theater at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah where he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). At BYU, he also met actor Aaron Eckhart, who later played leading roles in several of his films. LaBute produced a number of plays which pushed the envelope of what was acceptable at the conservative religious university, some of which were shut down after their premieres. However, he also was honored as being one of the "most promising undergraduate playwrights" at the BYU theater department's annual awards. Labute did graduate work at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, New York University in Manhattan, and he participated in a writing workshop at London's Royal Court Theatre.
LaBute burst onto the theater scene in 1989 with his controversial debut Filthy Talk for Troubled Times. His interest in the film industry came with a viewing of The Soft Skin (La Peau Douce 1964), said the director to Robert K. Elder in a 2011 interview for The Film That Changed My Life.
It exposed me, probably in the earliest way, to "Hey, I could do that." I've never been one to love the camera or even to be as drawn to it as I am to the human aspect of it, and I think it was a film that speaks in a very simple way of here's a way that you can tell a story on film in human terms. It was the kind of film that made me go, 'I could do this; I want to tell stories that are like this and told in this way'.... so it was altering for me in that way, in its simplicity or deceptive simplicity.
In 1993, he returned to BYU to premiere his play In the Company of Men, for which he received an award from the Association for Mormon Letters. He taught drama and film at Indiana University-Purdue Fort Wayne in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the early 1990s where he adapted and filmed the play, shot over two weeks and costing $25,000, beginning his career as a film director. The film won the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival, and major awards and nominations at the Deauville Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Awards, the Thessaloniki Film Festival, the Society of Texas Film Critics Awards, and the New York Film Critics Circle.
In the Company of Men portrays two businessmen (one played by Eckhart) cruelly plotting to romance and emotionally destroy a deaf woman. His next film Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), with an ensemble cast including Eckhart and Ben Stiller, received an R-rating due to its portrayal of the sex lives of three yuppie couples in the big city.
His play Bash: Latter-Day Plays is a set of three short plays (Iphigenia in Orem, A Gaggle of Saints, and Medea Redux) depicting essentially good Latter-day Saints doing disturbing and violent things. It ran Off-Broadway at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre in 1999. Medea Redux is a one-person performance by Calista Flockhart. The play resulted in his being disfellowshipped from the LDS Church (i.e., losing some privileges of church membership without being excommunicated). He has since formally left the LDS Church.
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Neil LaBute
Neil N. LaBute (born March 19, 1963) is an American playwright, film director, and screenwriter. He is best known for a play which he wrote and later adapted for film, In the Company of Men (1997) winning awards from the Sundance Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the New York Film Critics Circle. He wrote and directed the films Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), Possession (2002) (based on the A. S. Byatt novel), The Shape of Things (2003) (based on his play of the same name), The Wicker Man (2006), Some Velvet Morning (2013), and Dirty Weekend (2015).
He directed the films Nurse Betty (2000), Lakeview Terrace (2008), and the American adaptation of Death at a Funeral (2010). LaBute created the TV series Billy & Billie, writing and directing all of the episodes. He is also the creator of the TV series Van Helsing. He executive produced, co-directed, and co-wrote Netflix's The I-Land and he also directed several episodes for shows including Hell on Wheels and Billions.
LaBute was born in Detroit, the son of Marian, a hospital receptionist, and Richard LaBute, a long-haul truck driver. He is of French Canadian, English, and Irish ancestry, and grew up in Spokane, Washington. He studied theater at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah where he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). At BYU, he also met actor Aaron Eckhart, who later played leading roles in several of his films. LaBute produced a number of plays which pushed the envelope of what was acceptable at the conservative religious university, some of which were shut down after their premieres. However, he also was honored as being one of the "most promising undergraduate playwrights" at the BYU theater department's annual awards. Labute did graduate work at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, New York University in Manhattan, and he participated in a writing workshop at London's Royal Court Theatre.
LaBute burst onto the theater scene in 1989 with his controversial debut Filthy Talk for Troubled Times. His interest in the film industry came with a viewing of The Soft Skin (La Peau Douce 1964), said the director to Robert K. Elder in a 2011 interview for The Film That Changed My Life.
It exposed me, probably in the earliest way, to "Hey, I could do that." I've never been one to love the camera or even to be as drawn to it as I am to the human aspect of it, and I think it was a film that speaks in a very simple way of here's a way that you can tell a story on film in human terms. It was the kind of film that made me go, 'I could do this; I want to tell stories that are like this and told in this way'.... so it was altering for me in that way, in its simplicity or deceptive simplicity.
In 1993, he returned to BYU to premiere his play In the Company of Men, for which he received an award from the Association for Mormon Letters. He taught drama and film at Indiana University-Purdue Fort Wayne in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the early 1990s where he adapted and filmed the play, shot over two weeks and costing $25,000, beginning his career as a film director. The film won the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival, and major awards and nominations at the Deauville Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Awards, the Thessaloniki Film Festival, the Society of Texas Film Critics Awards, and the New York Film Critics Circle.
In the Company of Men portrays two businessmen (one played by Eckhart) cruelly plotting to romance and emotionally destroy a deaf woman. His next film Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), with an ensemble cast including Eckhart and Ben Stiller, received an R-rating due to its portrayal of the sex lives of three yuppie couples in the big city.
His play Bash: Latter-Day Plays is a set of three short plays (Iphigenia in Orem, A Gaggle of Saints, and Medea Redux) depicting essentially good Latter-day Saints doing disturbing and violent things. It ran Off-Broadway at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre in 1999. Medea Redux is a one-person performance by Calista Flockhart. The play resulted in his being disfellowshipped from the LDS Church (i.e., losing some privileges of church membership without being excommunicated). He has since formally left the LDS Church.