Age, Biography and Wiki
Who is it? | Writer, Producer, Director |
Birth Day | March 19, 1963 |
Birth Place | Detroit, Michigan, United States |
Age | 60 YEARS OLD |
Birth Sign | Aries |
Alma mater | Brigham Young University University of Kansas |
Occupation | Playwright, film director, screenwriter, actor |
Net worth: $1 Million (2024)
Neil LaBute, a renowned writer, producer, and director based in the United States, is projected to have a net worth of $1 million by the year 2024. LaBute has made a significant impact on the entertainment industry with his thought-provoking and controversial works. Known for exploring complex themes such as relationships, power dynamics, and societal norms, LaBute has created a diverse body of work that has garnered critical acclaim and commercial success. With his talent and commitment to his craft, it is no surprise that LaBute has achieved considerable financial success throughout his career.
Famous Quotes:
It exposed me, probably in the earliest way, to “Hey, I could do that.” I’ve never been one to love the camera or even to be as drawn to it as I am to the human aspect of it, and I think it was a film that speaks in a very simple way of here’s a way that you can tell a story on film in human terms. It was the kind of film that made me go, “I could do this; I want to tell stories that are like this and told in this way.” And so it was altering for me in that way, in its simplicity or deceptive simplicity.
Biography/Timeline
LaBute's interest in the film industry came with a viewing of The Soft Skin (La Peau Douce 1964), said the Director to Robert K. Elder in a 2011 interview for The Film That Changed My Life.
LaBute's first produced play, Filthy Talk for Troubled Times (1989) — a series of biting exchanges between two "everyman" characters in a bar – was staged from June 3–5, 2010 by MCC Theater as a benefit for MCC's Playwrights' Coalition and their commitment to developing new work. LaBute also directed the reading. Originally when it premiered in New York City at the Westside Dance Project, the entire audience stood up and booed afterward. One audience member cried out, "Kill The Playwright!"
In 1993, he returned to Brigham Young University to premiere his play In the Company of Men, for which he received an award from the Association for Mormon Letters. He taught drama and film at IPFW in Fort Wayne, Indiana in the early 1990s where he adapted and filmed the play, shot over two weeks and costing $25,000, beginning his career as a film Director. The film won the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival, and major awards and nominations at the Deauville Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Awards, the Thessaloniki Film Festival, the Society of Texas Film Critics Awards and the New York Film Critics Circle.
In the Company of Men portrays two businessmen (one played by Eckhart) cruelly plotting to romance and emotionally destroy a deaf woman. His next film Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), with an ensemble cast including Eckhart and Ben Stiller, was a shocking portrayal of the sex lives of three yuppie couples in the big city.
His play Bash: Latter-Day Plays is a set of three short plays (Iphigenia in Orem, A Gaggle of Saints, and Medea Redux) depicting essentially good Latter-day Saints doing disturbing and violent things. It ran Off-Broadway at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre in 1999. Medea Redux is a one-person performance by Calista Flockhart. This play resulted in his being disfellowshipped from the LDS Church (i.e., losing some privileges of church membership without being excommunicated). He has since formally left the LDS Church.
LaBute's 2002 play The Mercy Seat was a theatrical response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Set on September 12, it concerns a man who worked at the World Trade Center but was away from the office during the infamous 2001 terrorist attack – with his mistress. Expecting that his family believes that he was killed in the towers' collapse, he contemplates using the tragedy to run away and start a new life with his lover. Starring Liev Schreiber and Sigourney Weaver, the play was a commercial and critical success. While hesitant to term The Mercy Seat "political theater", Labute said, "I refer to this play in the printed introduction as a kind of emotional terrorism that we wage on those we profess to love." He dedicated this edition to David Hare, in response to Hare's "straightforward, thoughtful, probing work".
LaBute directed Death at a Funeral, a remake of a 2007 British film of the same name. It was written by Dean Craig (who also wrote the original screenplay) and starred Chris Rock.
Critics have responded to his plays as having a misanthropic tone. Rob Weinert-Kendt in The Village Voice referred to LaBute as "American theater's reigning misanthrope". The New York Times said that critics labeled him a misanthrope, on the release of his film, Your Friends & Neighbors. Britain's Independent newspaper in May 2008 dubbed him "America's misanthrope par excellence". Citing the misanthropic tone of the plot in the films, In the Company of Men and The Shape of Things, critic Daniel Kimmel identified a pattern running through LaBute's work by quoting: "Neil LaBute is a misanthrope who assumes that only callous and evil people, who use and abuse others, can survive in this world." Critics labeled him a misogynist after the release of In the Company of Men.
The Unimaginable, a short play by LaBute, premiered as part of the Terror 2010 season at the Southwark Playhouse in London, UK from October 12 – 31, 2010.
He also took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six Books, for which he wrote a piece based upon a book of the King James Bible.
In 2012 Labute joined the Chicago-based storefront theatre company, Profiles Theatre as a Resident Artist.
In 2013, LaBute was named one of the winners of the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Arts and Letters Awards in Literature.
His play, The Way We Get By, opened Off-Broadway at the Second Stage Theatre on May 19, 2015, starring Amanda Seyfried and Thomas Sadoski, with direction by Leigh Silverman.
In August 2016, the Utah Shakespeare Festival produced a preview of LaBute's play, How to Fight Loneliness in Cedar City, Utah, and announced its intention to stage the play during its 2017 summer season.
In February 2018, MCC Theater terminated its relationship with him ending his place as their playwright-in-residence and their plans to produce his next play Reasons to Be Pretty Happy in the summer.