Neil LaBute: Turning to Love
Q: If Aaron Eckhart is apparently your ideal one-man "stock company" in movie after movie you make, who might be your ideal one-woman "stock company"?
A: Oh, that's hard. Lists are so arbitrary. Certainly, though, working this last time with Jennifer Ehle, I'm pretty knocked out by what she does. But I can honestly say I've never worked with anyone I wouldn't want to work with again.
Q: Your high regard for actors really shows.
A: Acting for movies is a crazy job, absolutely schizophrenic. You get them crying for a scene, then say things like, "We have to break for lunch. Can you go eat some English food," which could get anyone crying, "then come back and cry after lunch?"
Q: You live with your wife and children in Chicago. Is there any pressure to move to Los Angeles or New York?
A: I make good wares. I'm not a good peddler of my wares. I don't pal around at parties. I didn't knock on doors and make friends who will maybe get me access to making a movie. I'm not particularly good at that and have no particular interest in it.
Q: Because of your plays and movies, do people meeting you for the first time expect you to be acerbic, tortured, glib, enraged, misanthropic?
A: [Laughs] If I ever met George Lucas, I wouldn't expect him to have antennae or be able to fly.
Q: You write daily?
A: I'm not one to push it. The times I've tried to force myself to write daily, I've wound up throwing it away. As you know, it's far more the sense of craft than of sprinkling the dust and the genie appears. The more you write, the better you get. It doesn't come out of the pen as scripture. It's a lot of plain toil. But I like that toil.
Q: Why have you gone back to the theater?
A: It's a place where I really love to be just to watch and to practice the craft of it. As exciting as movies are, there's a lot more stress to it. People think you can shoot forever until you get that exact performance when in fact you're constantly being asked to move on or you're losing the sun or you're losing the location. Onstage, you can plunk down people in just about any space and, if the words and acting are good, people are very forgiving.
Q: What's next?
A: After I do a film version of the play The Shape of Things, I'd like to do some remakes, like Leave Her to Heaven.
Q: That's one of my favorites, a '40s melodrama featuring Gene Tierney as one of the most destructive and self-destructive characters of all time.
A: I love the movie too, yet I feel it's not one that's so hallowed that it couldn't be well-done again. Of course, there's nothing quite like the face of Gene Tierney and she tore that role up.
Q: You don't seem to concern yourself much with making the right moves in Hollywood.
A: I don't think in terms of career trajectory or what's the "right" thing to do. I just sit down with a blank page and if I'm lucky enough for something to come out of it, I don't question it too much.
Q: How do you next plan to expand people's perceptions of you?
A: I'm a big fan of real horror movies. I've done emotional horror movies. But to really scare people is really interesting. What they were trying to do with The Others, creating a real sense of dread, was fascinating. I was unnerved, which is a great feeling to sustain. I'm also a big fan of Westerns and would love to do one anywhere near as good as what Marlon Brando did with One-Eyed Jacks. I'm also flat-out funnier than some would give me credit for. I want to do a real comedy, the quintessential one being, for me, The Apartment--great characters, very funny, dark and as good a screenplay as was ever written.
Q: So, what's it all about for you?
A: Waking up every day and facing the blank page, the blank screen and just writing. You see I'm carrying around cards I've been scribbling on. The beauty of writing is that, in the end, no one can stop you from doing it. You can go to prison, to sea, you can work at Wal-Mart--which are all roughly the same thing--and still find 10 minutes to write.
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Stephen Rebello interviewed Michelle Pfeiffer for the April issue of Movieline.
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