Neil LaBute Quotes
30 quotations by Neil LaBute
You start as an audience member and create a world you're interested in, and then you move into the telling of those stories, bringing what has interested you as an audience member. |
With In the Company of Men, the misogynist label stuck early and firmly. In the end, it probably did hurt the film a bit, because getting women into the theaters was difficult. |
Unrequited love is always a great thing. |
There is a lot of absurdity sometimes, not just in Mormonism but often in other religions that want to pretend that no bad happens in their church, rather than taking care of what bad does happen. |
Relationships in general make people a bit nervous. It's about trust. Do I trust you enough to go there? |
People think my work is therapeutic. I don't see it that way. It's not like I'm saving money from a weekly therapy visit by writing down my life. |
My best male friend is my best friend until he crosses me. We're all protective of the self. |
Just in the past few years - since I've been making movies, which isn't a very long time - you now have a culture that is fascinated and informed about the box office in a way that sometimes filmmakers weren't even. |
It's just often more interesting to write about one or more people who are being awful to other people because it makes for exciting, dramatic fare. |
In a relationship you have to open yourself up. |
If we put the camera on ourselves, our friends and neighbors, we'll come up with some scary stuff. |
I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction. |
I will say that the idea of a woman being deceptive came from that original discussion with critics and reporters about if woman could do that kind of thing. Evelyn, herself, grew out of the discussions about how capable women are of deceit and lying and manipulation. |
I was very careful to cast guys who were very good-looking and very fit and who had a certain sense of privilege about them, because with that sense of privilege comes contempt. |
I wanted to tell a story that interested me as much in the telling as in the watching. |
I wanted to make these people real, not like they were in a painting. Like these are people who don't know they're in a period movie. Those concerns are incredibly immediate. |
I think the more the actor lets you know what he thinks of the character, the less the audience cares - like a comedian who laughs at his own jokes. |
I think people are capable of everything I've written. Would they ever do it? I don't know and really don't care, because that's not my business. |
I think Christine and Chad are on the opposite extremes of the spectrum. Christine is a model victim, and Chad is a model perpetrator, and Howard is closer to the middle. |
I still am somewhat guarded with my feelings. A lot of writers find it much easier to express themselves on paper. That hasn't changed. |
I see bits and pieces of me in all the characters in my films. |
I make movies I want to see. |
I have a healthy view of what one can do with art. |
I don't see my career as this steady building to a point, it's just a path that wanders for me to do whatever I'm interested in doing. |
I didn't choose BYU, I like to think it chose me. |
Everyone has a story. |
Everyone has a little bit of Howard and Chad in them. I think there's Christine in all men as well. |
Everybody has the ability to be manipulative, to be hateful and deceitful. |
But for me, it feels like a natural extension of what I've been doing: exploring relationships. Here you have two relationships and we can explore how difficult it is for people to be together. |
And I've got some screenplays and plays ready to dip into when I need to. |