State of the Art

Meet Your Friends and Neighbors

by Gary Susman

LOS ANGELES -- By all accounts, Neil LaBute is a pleasant, happy fellow. The 35-year-old writer/director, who debuted last year with the notoriously bitter In the Company of Men and follows it up this weekend with Your Friends and Neighbors, is a devout Mormon who lives in Indiana with his wife and kids. For all his films' graphic sex talk and remorselessly brutal sexual power games, LaBute "turned out to be the greatest, sweetest bear of a man, a kindhearted person," says Your Friends ensemble member Catherine Keener. "He's this nice, big, funny guy," agrees co-star Amy Brenneman. "He's not dark and smoking in a corner with sunglasses."

So where does his dark material come from? "I don't know because I don't see it as dark and pessimistic," LaBute insists. Of Your Friends (whose cast is rounded out by Ben Stiller, Jason Patric, Nastassja Kinski, and Aaron Eckhart) he says, "I think of it as a comedy, with a little sting to it. I see it as skeptical. I don't see it as cynical and dark so much as it is relatively realistic about how hard it is to maintain a good relationship and how often we are predisposed to dispose of relationships than see them through."

Is he surprised, then, that he's become such a magnet for controversy? "Yeah, because you work in such a vacuum. You have no idea how people are going to react to it. It's engaging with an audience that's important to me, and if it takes being provocative to get the audience to go beyond simply sitting and watching to find something of themselves, that's worth it."

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Also: Peter Keough's review of Your Friends and Neighbors

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Not that LaBute is out to shock. "It's not that calculated. I think, 'What haven't I seen? Is this surprising?' You're dealing with material that's pretty tried and true -- men and women, relationships, adultery. So you really have to have a new way into it that will give you license to go there for an hour and a half."

Eckhart, who has worked with LaBute since their Brigham Young University days, and who starred in Company, says, "I don't claim to have any insight into Neil except just our friendship. I don't ask where the material comes from. I don't care. That's probably why we're still working together. What I do is watch him. I try to know his characters through looking at him. I have a good idea of his rhythms and cadences. It's like [David] Mamet with William Macy. His writing, like Mamet's, is very specific."

What is Eckhart's appeal for LaBute? "I'm there," says Eckhart. "I'm the guy that was with him when we were in BYU together. I did several plays with him. When I was in New York and he was in Indiana, both struggling, both trying to get jobs, we'd write notes saying, `Listen, you make it, I make it. We're in this together.' And when Neil had the money for Company, he called me. I would drop any film to do Neil's film. He's got important things to say, and I want to say them."

Although the title suggests these characters are universal, Keener acknowledges, "Somebody said to me, 'I don't know any of these characters, and I don't want to.' There's got to be movies like this, though, to balance escapist movies that don't lead you anywhere."

Escapes from escapism?

"Exactly."

Your Friends and Neighbors opens this Friday, August 28, at the Nickelodeon and the Kendall Square.