---
title: 'Twelve Reasons I Hate Neil LaBute'
date: '2002-08-23T06:26:00-04:00'
permalink: /twelve-reasons-i-hate-neil-labute/
tags:
    - 'random thoughts'
---

1\. For his conviction that he had the right temperament to succeed in his adaptation of *Possession,* a brilliant novel now stinking up a Multiplex near you: “I loved the parallel stories … really all the things that were in the book interested me. I was in academia. I’ve been an anglophile for a long time. I have always written about relationships and here were two relationships that were very different. So all the elements spoke to me, it just seemed like a natural fit.” (From the [IndieWire interview](http://www.indiewire.com/film/interviews/int_LaBute_Neil_020814.html).)

2\. *In the Company of Men*.

3\. *Your Friends and Neighbors*. (Need I elaborate?)

4\. For saying the following about *Your Friends and Neighbors*: “I think of the movie as a comedy in many ways. I think there are quite a few laughs in the movie. As you’re sitting there watching it, you may think about something beyond that, and feel that it’s got some teeth to it, but I do think it has some bite. But it’s still a comedy.” (From the [Onion A/V Club](http://www.theavclub.com/avclub3404/bonusfeature13404.html) interview.)

5\. For making it impossible for me ever to like Ben Stiller again.

6\. For joking, with regard to *In the Company of Men*, that “I was trying to make a feel-good summer hit (laughs).” (From the [first Salon interview](http://www.salon.com/aug97/entertainment/labute970801.html).)

7\. For single-handedly creating the career of [Aaron Eckhart](http://us.imdb.com/Name?Eckhart,+Aaron).

8\. For my sneaking sense that he would enjoy the fact that I hate these movies so much.

9\. For being a real bonehead about the reaction to his movies: “At \[*In the Company of Men*‘s\] Sundance debut, an audience already on edge over the uncomfortable ending threw its first question at the writer/director: Why is the movie’s victim a deaf woman? ‘And I just, kinda offhanded, said, “Because I always thought deaf people were funny,”‘ recalls LaBute, who, of course, instantly acquired a rep for insensitivity. ‘For a long time, that label stuck — the film’s still called misogynist.'” (From the [Dallas Observer](http://www.dallasobserver.com/extra/labute-1.html).)

10\. For having an insufficient number of [rotten tomatoes](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/p/NeilLaBute-1125185/) hurled at him.

11\. For this assessment of the horrors of 9/11: “I wrote about a sort of flash point I had, where I was standing in line, four days later, in Union Station in Chicago, lugging my bags around trying to get on this train and half-hoping there was a first-class line that I could get in to, and sort of realizing, you know, that we’re back to basics, everybody was just sort of fighting for space. And I had this moment of thinking, ugh, I really don’t like this, it’s really inconvenient what happened. It’s really sad, of course. But it’s rather inconvenient today. ” (From the [second Salon interview](http://dir.salon.com/ent/movies/int/2001/11/26/labute/index.html).)

12\. For the thought, the very *thought*, that he might be involved in the film version of [Angels in America](http://www.hollywood.com/movies/detail/movie/377228).