ART IN THE FLESH: An interview with The Shape of Things writer/director Neil LaBute. By Warren Curry 5/7/03

Writer/director (of both plays and films) Neil LaBute's work is explicitly designed to garner a strong reaction from his audience. He uses film and theater as a confrontational vehicle, which has predictably spawned a group of supporters and also a contingent of naysayers. LaBute is one of the few filmmakers able to elicit sharply conflicting emotions from his viewers in the span of a few lines of dialogue.

LaBute stormed onto the film world with his exceedingly difficult debut, 1997's In The Company of Men. Three feature films (Your Friends & Neighbors, Nurse Betty, Possession) later, LaBute now offers The Shape of Things, based on his stage play. Starring Paul Rudd (Clueless), Rachel Weisz (Confidence), Gretchen Mol (Rounders) and Frederick Weller (The Business of Strangers), who also comprised the original cast of the play, The Shape of Things follows Adam (Rudd), an unkempt, mundane student at a non-descript California college, who is literally changed into a fit, charming man by his new art-student girlfriend, Evelyn (Weisz). But if love really is blind, just what is Evelyn's motivation for wanting Adam to undergo such a drastic physical metamorphosis? Having asked that question let me now issue the requisite warning: This interview contains spoilers -- proceed at your own risk.

CinemaSpeak had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with LaBute at The Shape of Things' recent Los Angeles press day. Focus Features will release the film in New York and Los Angeles on May 9, 2003.

(Read the review of The Shape of Things)


You've stated that the idea for The Shape of Things formulated as a result of the reaction to your first film, In the Company of Men. Would this film exist if it weren't for In The Company of Men?

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

Well, let's say the idea for it.

The idea quite easily could have, because it felt like there were a number of strands that created the whole. 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.

What did you find to be the biggest challenge of adapting this play to the screen?

Knowing that there weren't a great number of changes from stage to screen. We were afforded the chance to do the film very much as we staged it as a play. That said, one of the bigger challenges was in the final third of the movie when Evelyn reveals what she's been up to. That was sort of a nice theatrical trick on stage in that she suddenly turned to the audience who were there to watch this play -- they became her art school audience, and the actors went and sat out in the theater. That was a very one-on-one theatrical experience that you really couldn't emulate on screen because unless she did direct address the entire time, you had to be looking at Evelyn talking to somebody else. The audience now is watching an audience watch her rather than actually just watching her. When I realized that was going to the be the case -- that I didn't want her talking to the camera the entire time, I thought, "How am I going to replace that very fun theatrical trick?" Well, I couldn't, ultimately. I used it once -- there's a moment where she looks into the camera and flips off the audience in essence, but that's the only time I broke that fourth wall. I knew that I had to bring that scene down to a manageable length because there was a certain amount of material that just played the audience. Every night in London and New York, Evelyn asked the question, "Does anybody have any questions?" People could really ask a question, and every so often somebody did. Whether it was, "Hey, you want to do that to me?" or "Can I ask you out?" Sometimes, "Why are you such a bitch?" The audience had the opportunity to talk back. There was none of that possible (in the movie), so what worked as kind of a performance piece suddenly became less that on screen. I had to find ways to narrow that information down to their basic, most important things.

One constant element of the films you've written is that you deal with characters who are abusive and manipulative. Are these traits specific to your characters or are you commenting on something bigger?

I certainly don't think that they're isolated to the people I write about. 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. 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. I've created something that could easily happen. Everybody has the ability to be manipulative, to be hateful and deceitful. I think they have the capacity for very good, as well. 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. Yes, I think everybody's capable of it. No, I don't think we're all hopeless. I just think that those people -- like villains -- make the more fun characters to write.

What's interesting about Adam's character is that even though he's made all of these positive exterior changes, he still remains the same clumsy, inept guy.

That was very important. There were times throughout the movie that you would see, even though Adam had lost 20 pounds and he looks conventionally what we'd think of as better, he still has the same goofy way about him. If anything, he's more susceptible to making bad choices. The more choices afforded him -- with Jenny and lying to his friends -- he makes those choices. It hasn't made him a better person inside; it's just made him more attractive to us on the outside.

If Adam would've become more braggadocios and brash and confident as he changed physically, there would've been more of a traditional comeuppance for him in the end. But that's not what you were trying to accomplish.

Well, if someone like Phil (Frederick Weller) had that happen to him, you might feel that he got what was coming to him. I still wanted it to be a painful thing, because I want you to like Adam. Yeah, he makes some bad choices along the way, but I still want you to like him, because that makes it more painful for the audience when you find out what's happening to him. At the same time it's happening to him, it's happening to you. You've been lied to the whole movie as well. It's not as if she's let you in on it. Somebody may guess it, but for the most part she's lying to everybody including the audience. It makes it painful to watch that happen to somebody. I think there's a moment in the film where you realize it just before he does. I haven't tried to let on very early, but there's a point where the pictures are still covered but she's saying I've done a human sculpture. By that point just about everybody in the audience is going, "Oh shit." And there are some people who are going, "I told you. I whispered that into your ear a while ago." Paul has a great moment in the movie where he hears "human sculpture," and he's sitting there and it still doesn't ring true to him. He's looking around like, "Who's this guy who I haven't met this whole semester that she's been working on?" And it's like, "You poor fucker." You realize that you've been lied to and then you understand that you have to watch him realize it. Then she shows his face and you know who it is for sure. I like that -- I want there to be that real pain in there. Not a, "Well, good -- the bad guy got it." I want Paul to be a guy that people like. It's a hard balance because you think, "Well, he does look better and he did get to sleep with that cute girl." Jenny's (Gretchen Mol) now free and he's young -- it's not like he's been in a relationship for 30 years and found out it's all a lie. You sort of think, "God, I don't how to feel about this." I don't want there to be a clear winner. I don't want Evelyn to be bad -- I don't think she is bad. I think she's done a pretty questionable thing.

In the end, do you feel Adam is a victim?

I think he's sort of victimized without being a complete victim. I don't feel as if everything that's happened to him, he's been completely at the mercy of Evelyn. I think there are points along the way where he's given an opportunity and he fails. Jenny goes so far to kiss him -- he didn't have to kiss back. He didn't have to lie to his friends, he didn't have to say I'll give my friends up. He didn't have to lie when asked about what happened to his nose. (There are) a lot of lies and treachery that Adam begins to foster on his friends. I can't see him as a complete victim. It's also hard because when you look at him, the changes have been pretty positive in terms of what we think of as handsome and fit and all those things. It wasn't like she was saying, "Hey, look, I want to see just how far I can make this guy fall apart, so I'm going to get him to stop running and wear more slovenly clothes." Because in a traditional sense since he looks better in the end, we tend to think he's a better person. But as Evelyn points out, that means nothing.

It's apparent that this film is commenting on the fact that our culture puts way too much value on superficial things.

I think we put a huge value on it. It's probably not for me to say that it's too much, but I think it's dangerously a lot.

And how do you think that relates to the film industry right now?

Well, we're a very box office driven industry. 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 (in the past). I talked to William Friedkin once -- we sat and had lunch -- and he was bemoaning the nature of, "How did it do on the weekend?" I was saying to him that it's funny that my mother, just 5 or 6 years ago, never knew how much a movie made, let alone on Monday morning watched it over coffee and then placed a value judgment on that. This is a for instance, and I say this not having seen the movie, but a conversation that could transpire this week is, "You know what I want to see? I want to see Anger Management. I hear that's really good." I say, "Well, where did you hear that?" "Well, it was number one." That, therefore, means to her that it's a good movie. Of course, you're hearing this from someone whose movies have never made a lot of money, so there you go and you can get somebody else to give you another side to this. I quite firmly believe that whether any of my films had made $100,000 million or $1 billion or $100,000, I still don't think that I'd want to equate the quality of a movie with the money it made. So that is a place that we have really changed -- the way that we know the business of moviemaking. I think in a lot of ways it's lost a lot of its charms because there are so many programs on how things are made, how much they made and the secrets behind this. Any time you reveal a secret -- it's sometimes great to know how it's done, but you go, "I wish I didn't know that." Inevitably it's just some obvious, crappy thing, but when you don't know, it's magic. I'd rather have the magic. I can swing back to Friedkin on that, and he was probably pontificating a little because the 70s are so revered, but him saying, " I didn't know what The Exorcist made or how much it made this weekend. It would open in one theater and then just slowly build. It wasn't that you had to perform on that one weekend. I didn't know what Coppola's movie made, I just know that he made a good movie. That's how we used to go watch movies and say, 'Wow, that's a great movie.' Not, 'That's a great movie, but I wonder how much money it will make.'" Our emphasis is just a lot more firmly on the business side of movies, both from the filmmakers and from the audience.

In reference to Evelyn's character, do you feel that often artists to make a statement will cross the line into what can be considered exploitation? And do you think there's ever a justification for artists putting issues ahead of people?

Well, that's a good question, because I have definite feelings about Evelyn, and I do understand her. I understand her drives. I don't know if I could ever agree with the methods that she used, but I understand her feelings. Especially as a student -- I can actually, yes, still think back to when I was a student and can remember thinking that theater was more important than, certainly all my other classes and maybe life in general. "I'm sort of alive when I'm in the theater and working and/or sitting and watching an audience watch what I've done. That's the best thing there is out there." That's a little bit of the ends justifying the means. I don't know that I could personally create at the cost of other people's feelings or lives or that sort of thing. But I don't feel comfortable putting myself in a place to judge an artist who does that. (Pointing to a painting in the room) I may think that across the wall there is shit, but it doesn't mean that I think that they should not make it, or that if you think that it's beautiful that you shouldn't have it in your home. I might silently judge you (laughs), but you won't ever find me saying, "You should really take those down; those are really ugly." Am I being truthful to you, or is it just the decorum of society that I just keep my opinion to myself? I don't know. I don't know if art is ever too much -- is there ever too far that we go. There are places, personally, where I can say, "Yeah, that looks like art to me. Hmmm…that looks like pornography." Or this is good to me and this is bad. But they are personal lines. I never feel strongly enough about them to say, "This is the way I think, and I also believe it's the way that you should think."

Personal lines and taken on a case-by-case basis?

Yes, every time I just try to clear the board and go with it.


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