Works by
Neil LaBute
(Director, Playwright)
[March 19, 1963 - ]

Fiction

• Seconds of Pleasure: Stories (2004)
  Neil LaBute is best known for his controversial films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, and his plays The Mercy Seat and The Shape of Things-which he also adapted for the screen. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Harper's Bazaar, among others. Now, in his debut collection of stories, he brings to the page his cutting humor and compelling take on the shadowy terrain of the human heart. Seductive and disturbing, the stories in Seconds of Pleasure are not for the faint of heart. Each potent and pithy tale finds men and women exploiting-or at the mercy of-the hidden fault lines that separate them: a woman leaves her family at their vacation home after discovering her husband in a compromising situation in "Time Share"; a middle-aged man obsesses over a scab on the calf of a pretty young girl in "Boo-Boo"; and a vain Hollywood actor gets his comeuppance in "Soft Target." Infused with LaBute's trademark wit and black humor, Seconds of Pleasure unleashes his imagination in stories that offer unflinching insight into our very human shortcomings and impure urges with shocking candor.

Movies

• Death at a Funeral (2010)

• Lakeview Terrace (2008)
  In this dramatic thriller, a young interracial couple move into their dream home and are increasingly harassed by their next-door neighbor, a tightly wound black LAPD officer. When the couple decides to fight back the feud turns deadly.
  DVD  VHS

• The Wicker Man (2006)
  A sheriff investigating the disappearance of a young girl from a small island discovers there's a larger mystery to solve among the island's secretive, neo-pagan community.
  DVD  VHS

• The Shape of Things (2003)
  Quiet, unassuming Adam (Rudd) is changing in a major way, thanks to his new girlfriend, art student Evelyn (Weisz). Adam's friends (Mol and Weller) are a little freaked by the transformation.
  DVD  VHS

• Possession (2002)
  A pair of literary sleuths unearth the amorous secret of two Victorian poets only to find themselves falling under a passionate spell.
  DVD  VHS

• Nurse Betty (2000)
  Comedy about a widow's post-traumatic obsession with a soap star.
  DVD  VHS

• Tumble (2000)
  Short

• Your Friends & Neighbors (1998)
  Unhappy couples fall apart and hop into other beds with other people.
  DVD  VHS

• In the Company of Men (1997)
  DVD  VHS

Plays

• Swallowing Bicycles (2009)
  Swallowing Bicycles is the latest work from Neil LaBute, American theater’s great agent provocateur. A dissection of the American dream, a world so tenuous that one choice can bring an idyllic existence crashing to the ground, Swallowing Bicycles takes a funny and shattering look at the things we cling to in life—family, security, love—and examines how far we’ll go to hang on to what we’ve got.
  
  Swallowing Bicycles will have its world premiere in May 2006 Off Broadway at New York’s MCC Theater in a production that reteams LaBute with acclaimed director Jo Bonney (Fat Pig).

• The New Testament (2009)

• Helter Skelter/Land of the Dead (2008)

• reasons to be pretty (2008)
  In Reasons to Be Pretty, Greg’s tight-knit social circle is thrown into turmoil when his offhand remarks about a female coworker’s pretty face and his own girlfriend Steph’s lack thereof get back to Steph. But that’s just the beginning. Greg’s best buddy, Kent, and Kent’s wife, Carly, also enter into the picture, and the emotional equation becomes exponentially more complicated. As their relationships crumble, the four friends are forced to confront a sea of deceit, infidelity, and betrayed trust in their journey to answer that oh-so-American question: How much is pretty worth?
  
  Neil LaBute’s bristling new comic drama puts the final ferocious cap on a trilogy of plays that began with The Shape of Things and Fat Pig. America’s obsession with physical beauty is confronted headlong in this brutal and exhilarating work.

• In A Dark Dark House (2007)
  Two brothers meet on the grounds of a private psychiatric facility. Drew, has been court-confined for observation and has called his older brother, Terry, to corroborate his claim of childhood sexual abuse by a young man from many summers ago. Drew's request releases barely-hidden animosities between the two: Is he using these repressed memories to save himself while smearing the name of his brother's friend? Through pain and acknowledged betrayal, the brothers come to grips with and begin to understand the legacy of abuse, both inside and outside their family home.  In a Dark, Dark House is the latest work from Neil LaBute, American theater’s great agent provocateur.

• Wrecks (2007)
  Can someone honestly love a person whom they have deceived for thirty years? This is the central question behind Wrecks, Neil LaBute’s latest foray into the dark side of human nature. Meet Edward Carr: loving father, successful businessman, grieving widower. In this concise powerhouse of a play, LaBute limns the boundaries of love, exploring the limits of what society will accept versus what the heart will desire. This collection also features rarely staged short plays, including “Liars’ Club,” “Coax,” and the never-before-seen “Falling in Like.”

• Some Girl(s) (2006)

• This Is How It Goes (2005)
  Belinda and Cody Phipps appear a typical Midwestern couple: teenage sweethearts, children, luxurious home. Typical except that Cody is black--"rich, black, and different," in the words of Belinda, who finds herself attracted to a former (white) classmate. As the battle for her affections is waged, Belinda and Cody frankly doubt the foundation of their initial attraction, opening the door wide to a swath of bigotry and betrayal. Staged on continually shifting moral ground that challenges our received notions about gender, ethnicity, and even love itself, This Is How It Goes unblinkingly explores the myriad ways in which the wild card of race is played by both black and white in America.

• Autobahn (2004)
  Be it the medium for clandestine couplings, arguments, shelter, or ultimately transportation, the automobile is perhaps the most authentically American of spaces. In Autobahn, Neil LaBute's provocative new collection of one-act plays set within the confines of the front seat, the playwright employs his signature plaintive insight to great effect, investigating the inchoate apprehension that surrounds the steering wheel. Each of these seven brief vignettes explore the ethos of perception and relationship--from a make-out session gone awry to a kidnapping thinly disguised as a road trip, a reconnaissance mission involving the rescue of a Nintendo 64 to a daughter's long ride home after her release from rehab. The result is an unsettling montage that gradually reveals the scabrous force of words left unsaid while illuminating the delicate interplay between intention and morality, capturing the essence of middle America and the myriad paths which cross its surface.

• Fat Pig (2004)
  Cow. Slob. Pig. How many insults can you hear before you have to stand up and defend the woman you love? Tom faces just that question when he falls for Helen, a bright, funny, sexy young woman who happens to be plus sized-and then some. Forced to explain his new relationship to his shallow (although shockingly funny) friends, finally he comes to terms with his own preconceptions of the importance of conventional good looks. Neil LaBute's sharply drawn play not only critiques our slavish adherence to Hollywood ideals of beauty but boldy questions our own ability to change what we dislike about ourselves.

• The Distance from Here (2003)
  No American playwright has written more compellingly about the subtle ways in which people inflict pain on each other than Neil LaBute. His films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors both gained critical renown for their biting satire and caustic wit. Now, with The Distance from Here, he has written his most riveting play yet, an intense look at the dark side of American suburbia.
  
  With little to occupy their time other than finding a decent place to hang out--the zoo, the mall, the school parking lot--Darrell and Tim are two American teenagers who lack any direction or purpose in their lives. When Darrell's suspicion about the faithlessness of his girlfriend is confirmed and Tim comes to her defense, there is nothing to brake their momentum as all three speed toward disaster.

• The Mercy Seat (2003)
  Set on September 12, 2001, The Mercy Seat continues Neil LaBute’s unflinching fascination with the often-brutal realities of the war between the sexes. In a time of national tragedy, the world changes overnight. A man and a woman explore the choices now available to them in an existence different from the one they had lived just the day before. Can one be opportunistic in a time of universal selflessness?

• The Shape of Things (2003)
  In a modern version of Adam's seduction by Eve, The Shape of Things pits gentle, awkward, overweight Adam against experienced, analytical, amoral Evelyn, a graduate student in art. After a chance meeting at a museum, Evelyn and Adam embark on an intense relationship that causes shy and principled Adam to go to extraordinary lengths, including cosmetic surgery, and a betrayal of his best friend, to improve his appearance and character. In the process, Evelyn's subtle and insistent coaching results in a reconstruction of Adam's fundamental moral character. Only in a final and shocking exhibition does Evelyn reveal the nature of her interest in Adam, of her detached artist's perspective and sense of authority--to her, Adam is no more than "flesh.... one of the most perfect materials on earth. Natural, beautiful, and malleable." Labute's latest work is an intense and disturbing study not only of the uses of power within human relationships, but also of the ethics involved in the relationship of art and life. To what extent is an artist licensed to shape and change her medium or to alter the work of another artist? What is acceptable artistic material? At what point does creation become manipulation, and at what point does creation destroy? Or, is the new Adam, handsome and confident if heart broken, an admirable result of the most challenging artistic endeavor? The Shape of Things challenges society's most deeply entrenched ideas about art, manipulation, and love.

• Bash (1999)
  A trio of brilliantly scathing plays by the renowned writer-director of In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors.
  
  With the success of his first two films, In The Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, writer-director Neil LaBute has been hailed as a first-rate dramatic talent with a caustic wit reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick. bash--a collection of three stunning one-act plays that mark LaBute's return to the New York stage after ten years--forms a trio of unforgettable personal accounts: in Medea Redux, a woman tells of her complex and ultimately tragic relationship with her grade school English teacher; in Iphigenia in Orem, a Utah businessman confides in a stranger in a Las Vegas hotel room, confessing a most chilling crime; and in A Gaggle of Saints, a young Mormon couple separately recounts the violent events of an anniversary weekend in New York City. All three are unblinking portraits of the complexities of evil in everyday life, exhibiting LaBute's signature raw lyrical intensity.

• Your Friends & Neighbors (1998)
  Your Friends & Neighbors is a searing display of the war between the sexes, delivered with the kind of wit used by the great Restoration playwrights to expose the hypocrisies in male/female relationships.
  
  Neil Labute's debut feature, in the company of men, was described by Variety as "a dark, probing, truly disturbing exploration of yuppie angst and male anxieties". In Your Friends & Neighbors, male anxiety is again on show, but in a much wider context, revealing the rabid desire of people-regardless of sex- to serve their own interests at any cost.

• In the Company of Men (1997)

• Filthy Talk For Troubled Times (Date?)

See also:

• Biography: Neil LaBute (2007)
  An article from: Contemporary Authors Online by Gale Reference Team (Digital)

• Neil LaBute: A Casebook (2006) by Gerald C. Wood
  Neil LaBute: A Casebook is the first book to examine one of the most successful and controversial contemporary American playwrights and filmmakers. John Lahr has written of him, "There is no playwright on the planet these days who is writing better than Neil LaBute." While he is most famous, and in some cases infamous, for his early films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, Labute is equally accomplished as a playwright. His work extends from the critique of false religiosity in Bash to examinations of opportunism, irresponsible art, failed parenting, and racism in later plays like Mercy Seat, The Shape of Things, The Distance From Here, Fat Pig, Autobahn, and the very recent This Is How It Goes and Some Girls. In films he has also directed adaptation of his play The Shape of Things, as well as the more commercial Nurse Betty and Possession. His collection of short stories, reminiscent of the ethical concerns in his plays, is titled Seconds of Pleasure.
  
  Like David Mamet, an acknowledged influence on him, and Conor McPhereson, with whom she shares some stylistic and thematic concerns, LaBute tends to polarize audiences. The angry voices, violent situations, and irresponsible behavior in his works, especially those focusing on male characters, have alienated some viewers. But the writer's religious affiliation (he is a Mormon) and refusal to condone the actions of his characters suggest he is neither exploitive nor pornographic. As Ben Brantley identifies, LaBute's plays and films make a consistent attack on "the moral flabbiness, selfishness and all-around nastiness of the male species, whether at work, at home or at play" which indicates a "probing moralism as fierce as that of Nathaniel Hawthorne."
  This casebook explores the primary issues of the writer's style, themes, and dramatic achievements. Contributors describe, for example, the influences (both classical and contemporary) on his work, his distinctive vision in theater and film, the role of religious belief in his work, and his satire. In addition to the critical introduction by Russell and the original essays by leading dramatic and literary scholars, the volume will also include a bibliography and a chronology of the playwright's life and works.

• Nurse Betty: The Shooting Script (2000) by James Flamberg and John C. Richards
  Winner of the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival 2000--a romantic, dangerously funny road picture starring Morgan Freeman, Renee Zellweger, Chris Rock, and Greg Kinnear, from the award-winning director--coming from USA Films in October 2000. Working with the screenplay by John C. Richards and James Flamberg which is based on Richards' short story, Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors) directs the first film that he hadn't written himself and found that that it all added up to "a year of bold experimentation for me." A darkly comic story about one woman's incredible determination to make her dreams come true against numerous odds, fantasy collides with reality as the main character, Betty Sizemore (Renee Zellweger) inspires herself and everyone she meets to find at least a piece of their real selves. Her road journey goes from mid-America to points West, from Kansas to the Grand Canyon to Los Angeles. The Newmarket Shooting Script book includes the complete shooting script (including scenes that were cut during editing), an introduction and notes by the director written exclusively for this edition, stills, and full credits.

• Independent's Day (1998)
  The ultimate insider's look at the crazy mayhem known as Sundance.
  DVD  VHS