Neil LaBute Quotations

My best male friend is my best friend until he crosses me. We're all protective of the self.

We live in a disposable society. It's easier to throw things out than to fix them. We even give it a name - we call it recycling.

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.

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.

First I would probably place men at the bottom of the food chain. On a grander scale, I would say they're reacting to change. Feminism has got to be part of that.

I'm more than open to hope, but I think men and women have a difficult time dealing with each other and often take the low road.

I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction.

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 have a healthy view of what one can do with art.

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 wanted to tell a story that interested me as much in the telling as in the watching.

If we put the camera on ourselves, our friends and neighbors, we'll come up with some scary stuff.

Without In The Company of Men, I could still be teaching, so who knows if this would've existed.

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.

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 didn't choose BYU, I like to think it chose me.

I see bits and pieces of me in all the characters in my films.

I was always looking for the most dramatic emphasis.

People have perhaps gotten to the point where for the most part movies are a just bit of escape.

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.

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.

My business is can I create a world that's possible and could happen? I think that's the only thing that I have to do, and I think that I have done that each time.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Unrequited love is always a great thing.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

And I've got some screenplays and plays ready to dip into when I need to.

Relationships in general make people a bit nervous. It's about trust. Do I trust you enough to go there?

I felt, if I'm going to take on some of the most overdone material, which is men and women and affairs and betrayal of friends, I had better have a new take on it. I think my films come from a desperation not to be boring.

Everyone has a little bit of Howard and Chad in them. I think there's Christine in all men as well.

And with Aaron, I'd have to find a reason not to work with him.

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.

We humans are a fairly barbarous bunch.

Everyone has a story.

Everybody has the ability to be manipulative, to be hateful and deceitful.

I make movies I want to see.

Movies are - all I've found is that they're just tougher and tougher to make.

Sitting in an automobile was where I first remember understanding how drama works ... Hidden in the back seat of a sedan, I quickly realized how deep the chasm or intense the claustrophobia could be inside your average family car.

The future is now. It's time to grow up and be strong. Tomorrow may well be too late.

It's funny how that comes up, because sometimes I'll write something and I'll think, I don't know if that's a film or a play, and then other things I feel very strongly about them just being plays - they feel very theatrical to me.

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.

In a relationship you have to open yourself up.