La Bute’s Boys Will be Boys

LaBute accepts both responses as valid. The theater-trained director explains that, on stage, he favors a type of performance which places the audience in an active, interpretive role. He elaborates, "The beautiful thing about the theater is that connection with an audience. A performance really relies on who's watching it. And in a way, leaving expectations unfulfilled and open to discussion is a place where an audience can then be interactive."

LaBute carries this theory over to his film, where he casts a dispassionate eye on his characters, almost as if they were under a microscope; the audience observes and comes to its own conclusions. He concludes that "'Feminist' is as good a reading as any as far as I'm concerned." For those who label it "mysogynistic," he says "God bless 'em," he insists that he had a larger picture in mind and hopes that nasty word won't "be the thing that will fit most easily into the one-line description in the newspaper."

Audiences who have been conditioned by Hollywood's belief that bad guys should be judged, punished, and repentant, might be scared off by LaBute's refusal to judge or punish his characters. His cast, however, supports a vision they see as insightful and necessary.

For example, one distributor called LaBute cruel and voyeuristic for leaving the camera running for such a long time in a scene where the victimized girl, Christine (Stacy Edwards) cries. LaBute felt is was important to really feel her pain, to emphasize "that there had been a cost, or there wouldn't be much of an emotional payoff." Indeed, Eckhart admits to getting "weepy" every time he sees the scene. And he loves the violent screech of music that follows: "Then Neil just says, "fuck you," and he puts this music on, it's just devastating. This is Neil's vision. And he's not apologizing for it."

The filmmaking process was a story of dedication to a project that cast and crew viewed as something special. The seed money came in the form of a settlement when two of LaBute's friends, Toby Gaff and Mark Hart, were injured in a car accident. When additional funds were needed, actor Matt Malloy borrowed money from his brother, earning himself an Executive Producer title. The minuscule budget was so tight that the cast lived on bologna sandwiches prepared by a producer's mother and shooting was scheduled around the vacation plans of LaBute's neighbors, whose house lodged all three stars.

Eckhart laughed about the continuity crew's allotment of two Polaroids per day. They had to write down shot descriptions. At this point Eckhart and Malloy themselves went out and bought bags of Polaroid film and told them to go crazy with it. The shooting ratio was about four to one, but in a film full of long takes, Malloy estimates that for about a quarter of the film's scenes, they only got one complete take. They shot for eleven days and never for more than twelve hours, and with determination got all the necessary footage.

Both Eckhart and Malloy were excited by the piece from the first time they read the script. They felt a real challenge in playing representatives of corporate America in such a vicious depiction. Eckhart says he admires LaBute for showing men "in a way that I believe they actually behave in a lot of instances where power and control and money are involved, and competition. I love Neil's unrepentant view of that."

Malloy had a hard time acting so cruel. He tried to understand how a guy like Howard might fall for Chad's depraved scheme: "If you're going to war, you don't talk about 'oh, there'll be women and children bloody on the side of the road.' You say 'We will establish ourselves as a fucking force!' and everyone says, 'YEAH!' And three years later you look at the pictures and say, 'Jesus, what did we do?' I think what Chad was offering Howard was to be in this club that Howard had never been a part of. I guess in preparing for it, I thought about times in my life, when there had been these magnetic guys, in college or in show business, and what you'll do to be along with them... You're kind of scared along the way, but you've gotten into this thing, and there's an envy that goes with it, that's like 'do I have the stuff?'"

Neil LaBute shows us one of the ruthless games that boys will play and he never apologizes for it. His vision is cruel and never offers us relief or assurance that everything will be alright. In this world, things are not alright. Audiences will have to digest this and see how it feels.

[Andrea Meyer is a New York freelancer who contributes to The Independent Film Monitor and iW.]