Top 25 Neil LaBute Quotes

I was always looking for the most dramatic emphasis.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

I make movies I want to see.

In a relationship you have to open yourself up.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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