Videogum » Neil LaBute

Dane Cook Working On His EGOT

Gabe — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:45:45 +0000

Dane Cook will be starring in a Broadway production of a Neil LaBute play. I knew theater was dead, but I didn’t know that it was also an asshole. Huh!

The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time: The Wicker Man

Gabe — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:06:47 +0000

You can’t just write about how bad Neil LaBute’s remake of The Wicker Man starring Nicolas Cage is. It’s not that simple. The movie is so patently terrible, from the “acting” to the “suspense” to the “political themes” that talking about it as ‘bad’ is like referring to the Holocaust as ‘a bummer.’ I’m not actually comparing this stupid movie to the Holocaust, but I’m saying that it definitely has some Holocaustian elements in it. I’m not saying Nicolas Cage is Hitler, but I’m saying that he’s definitely caused suffering to millions of people.

The Wicker Man is based on a British 70s film of the same name. I haven’t seen the original, so I’m going to mostly leave it out of this analysis but acknowledge that it has a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, and is widely regarded as “good.” Fair enough. I’m tempted to sink the original to the bottom of Whoops Ocean anyway, because obviously it resulted in the remake, but the parents can’t be blamed for the sins of the child. Or at least that is what parents of shitty children are always telling everybody.

Neil LaBute Is Tackling Race The Only Way He Knows How: Terribly

Gabe — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:40:33 +0000

I posted the trailer for Lakeview Terrace a few weeks ago and made a joke about how it was a combination of Training Day and Wilson from Home Improvement, and the half-joke about how it was the most racist. But because I am bad at my job (which is why Friday is my last day, it’s been fun), I didn’t actually do any research on the film, so I didn’t realize what a cursory glance at the IMDB page would have told me: that Neil “Fuck Her, Let’s Get A Sandwich” LaBute had directed it.

Neil LaBute is an intentionally controversial film maker, and while I can’t say that I’ve ever enjoyed anything that he’s done (with the exception of the so-unintentionally-hilarious-that-you-start-to-think-it-must-actually-be-intentional remake of Wicker Man) I always sort of respected the fact that his misogynistic harangues (yes, his movies are harangues, and yes I graduated from college) on modern gender relations were, while horrible and obnoxious, created in the search for something. Even if he was a bully and his intentions were often questionable, it was still clear that he was trying to figure out a truth, or get to the bottom of an issue. And I think that’s respectable. I think that’s a really good reason to make movies, even if you make bad movies.