We dont do much New York City theatre coverage on SuicideGirls but an exception must be made for the daring brilliance of Neil LaBute. Wrecks, written and directed by LaBute, is currently up at the world famous Public Theater in Manhattan. Wrecks is a one man show which stars Ed Harris and had a run at the Everyman Palace Theatre in Cork. It recently opened in the United States, where Harris again has taken the stage.
Wrecks is a very powerful and disturbing work, which is par for the course for LaBute. Harris plays Ed Carr a man at the funeral for his wife talking directly to the audience. Carr is a wonderful character who at times stalks the stage like a panther smoking cigarettes. When memories of his wife flow through his mind he exhibits contemplation, but never regret. Harris does an amazing job of making a man that would be considered insane in any other context feel as human as the rest of us.
Check out the official site for Wrecks
Daniel Robert Epstein: I remember that your play This Is How It Goes was inspired by a letter you received [LaBute got a letter from someone stating that the part in Nurse Betty where Rene Zellweger kisses Morgan Freeman was unacceptable because she is white and he is black].
Neil LaBute: Yeah that was one of the catalysts. I think the play This Is How It Goes was rumbling around in my head but the racial angle came from having this letter and wanting to do something about that and finding a fit with that play and the element of racism.
DRE: Was Wrecks inspired by anything from real life like that?
Neil: Not real life, no. The reason Im hesitating is if I consider that letter real life. That is because it is not really connected to anything, its connected to a movie [Nurse Betty] which isnt real life. Wrecks came from my desire to work again in some context with a Greek tragedy. In two of the three plays that make up Bash, I used Greek tragedies as a jumping off point. So I was curious about doing it again and I liked the monologue form and Id always been interested in doing an Oedipus. So I started writing that without any real connection other than thinking, Oh one day this might make a nice evening. I guess nice is a subjective word. That was about as far as I got. I really just started writing on my own as I often still do and thats what came of it.
DRE: Why was Wrecks first shown in Ireland?
Neil: I had the opportunity to do a piece of work in Cork. Someone that I knew in Dublin had taken over a theater in Cork and we made a loose agreement that itd be nice to work together sometime. Once Cork was chosen as the capital of culture last year he said, Well, well be doing theater throughout the year as part of this festival. Would you have anything you want to do? Thats when I hooked onto the idea of taking Wrecks there because that was something I felt I could legitimately rehearse and have it be far from where I was going to be.
DRE: I walked into Wrecks not having any idea what the show was about.
Neil: Thats great. As it is for all audiences, after reviews come out it tends to not be the case. People always want to say they figured it out or spill the beans or something. But it does legitimately make it hard to talk about sometimes but one cant always speak in non-specific terms. But you have to leave it up to the taste and the abilities of the critics.
DRE: I interviewed Chuck Palahniuk a few years ago and hes used a number of twist endings in his novels. I asked him What makes you keep going for the twist ending? He said, Well everything is a twist ending nowadays. You find out that Columbus didnt really discover America. Thomas Jefferson slept with slaves. I thought that was an interesting point. Why you like the twists so much?
Neil: Maybe Im related to O. Henry. Ive always enjoyed them as an audience member. A lot of times you write what you enjoy or what you wish you saw more of. That statement by Chuck is interesting because its probably true that in the arts and in life itself were surprised by what we see or what happens to us or how things end up. Even outside of that I think life itself is a twist ending. We never know where things are going to end up. Some may seem to set the building blocks but I think that most people are surprised by where they end up working and how things come to be. Even for myself as a younger person you think This is something I want to do but how you got there was certainly a surprise. But I like the idea of keeping ahead of the audience or reversing on them and going in a different direction. I think its part of my desire to make the audience work and keep up and enjoy the ride. Its one of the tools of telling a tale but its also something you can get in a bit of a rut with. Now if I dont have one people will say thats the surprise.
DRE: Yeah, exactly [laughs].
Neil: The twist is gone, he didnt have the twist. You go, Ok, this is the cant win portion of our show. So to me it has to be something that ultimately can support itself no matter how the thing ends up. Particularly in this case, its nice for the audience to come fresh to something but something also has to hold up if someone does hear about it or if they just guess. It has to work after leaving the theater. The performance and the text have to give you some pleasure beyond that and again the Greeks were dealing with stories that were mythical even at the time they were they were telling these stories. So I think very few people came to a production of Medea and went Holy shit! She killed the kids! They knew this was going to happen and it was in the telling of it that really brought about the difference in the stories. So for me if someone comes in and goes, Wrecks, I wonder if this is Oedipus story. It should slowly bring a pleasure to them rather than it being something you have to figure out.
DRE: Did you allow Ed Harris to change anything?
Neil: Well in theater, the writer is still given a great deal of respect. I dont think to a fault but some people can misuse that. Some people are Its perfect, dont touch it. For me its always the jumping off point but that should not suggest that Im not careful about what I write. I spend plenty of time worrying about it and trying to get it just right for my taste. But its amazing what somebody else brings to it. Also an actor whos devouring the part and becoming that person very quickly scoots past you and starts knowing more about it than you do. In the case of Wrecks, the character of Ed Carr is the entire piece. I also trust Ed [Harris] not just as an actor specifically in this but as an actor in general and as a director. So I was open to whatever, even down to the last couple days when we were still tinkering. Since the character breaks the fourth wall, it also depends on how an audience is reacting to him and that will make him play things a certain way. Thats a little different interpretation as opposed to changing text. We certainly added stuff between Ireland and here. I leaned on him a great deal in terms of shaping that and I think he did the same thing for me because for the most part the director is the person who is watching the nuance of what hes doing and saying, You know, the modulation of this is better tonight than it was before. I think you shot too early to this emotion. So its a very collaborative thing at its best and Im quick to want to do that and I think he was someone whos very straightforward and good about collaborating.
DRE: There is a lot of real cigarette smoking in the play and at the performance people were uncomfortable, coughing and moving in their seats. Did you want to do that or did this character just smoke?
Neil: It came out of the natural quality of this guy being a smoker and you cant help but play that a little bit, even with some of the dialogue thats written in there. He asks questions of the audience saying, I wont smoke if you dont want me to. But youre banking on that invisible fence that audiences have laid down around them that most of them arent going to pipe up and say anything.
DRE: Right, I almost did but I wasnt sure if Im supposed to or not.
Neil: Well thats the thing and thats why most people wont. Occasionally somebody will but Ed has the ammunition there. The dialogue works if somebody happens to say something. Ed is like I dont know if anyone in their right mind is going to say something to a widower. He can just go right on and play with it and often hell zero in on the person that said something and say, I can wait. I have willpower. Hell feed off that audience in a way. So for me it was more of a character thing. It was representative in another way of a man who has heard the truth but he takes another path. Hes heard all the you shouldnt smoke, its bad for you. But he continues. He has obviously taken a path in life in morality that was different than most people. It was metaphoric but also again rooted in a 21st century way in the oedipal idea. I wanted some sense of a plague that he had brought into the home and the idea is suggested that his wife may have gotten cancer from his smoking. So the idea that they both are suffering from this thing that hes brought in, being smoking in this case, and that he continues to do it gave me some sense at least of that plague that ravages or hangs over him.
DRE: This character seems like one of your happier characters. Just as a bad example, if a serial killer is never caught, I think that serial killer would be pretty happy. He has those things that he always wanted to do and he may still be crazy but hes happy.
Neil: I think that youre right. I dont liken this guy into a serial killer but I understand your analogy. The great question of the play is Is it true or not? Did he really love her or not? Can you in fact love somebody that you lied to essentially? and in a sense, betrayed all of your life. Thats an interesting question to raise but I believe that he believes that he loves her. It sounds like love, the way he describes it through most of the play. I think hes coming from a very different place than a lot of the characters that Ive written. Hes not someone whos driven to best someone at work or to make themselves feel better by hurting somebody else. He is not driven by negativity. It is all positive but the only hitch is that nobody else will agree that this is a great way to spend your life. He makes that argument again at the end, I dont feel that Ive hurt anyone. Yet hes telling us that theres a possibility he never told the woman he was with. So obviously he was smart enough to know that most societies would say, Hey, this just is not going to fly. But Ed is very compelling and he makes a fair case for it.
DRE: Did you direct this play just because you had the time or did you specifically say I want to direct this one?
Neil: I said, Hey, its Ed Harris. I thought it would be cool to hang out with him. But also it was something that I felt I could legitimately be doing even if I was doing something else. During that period I was working on Wicker Man and yet because of the nature of a one person show you just cant rehearse that long because you just tire the actor out. So the rehearsal period was relatively short and those days within the rehearsal period were relatively short. Usually when I dont direct its a case of just not being able to be in that city or Im not free at that time, that sort of thing. So Ive tried to split it up pretty much between availability and desire.
DRE: Youve had some amazing directors direct your other plays. But even so, do they do things that you wouldnt do if you were directing it on stage?
Neil: Of course. Everybodys going to interpret something different. Someone would take this play and do it differently. No doubt. I cant imagine they would come up with the same production. They would have a different designer or even with the same designer and the same set they would have blocked it differently. I think, for better or worse, I always have some production in my head. It is a production that I carry around and can see and can imagine. So its always interesting to me to see what somebody else comes up with. As you say, Ive had very good people and Ive had very good luck with those people. I tend to rewrite more with other directors because again you have another set of eyes who are examining the material and they have their own needs for the thing. So you end up having another person that youre serving. For the most part, the times Ive directed Ive probably rewritten less but again I think that comes down to having more intelligent sets of eyes around who are keeping you honest.
DRE: As a director that started off in independent films and still does a lot of theatre, what did you think when Warner Bros decided to not screen The Wicker Man for critics?
Neil: I thought it was dangerous and more and more people are doing that with their films. At this point people think theres something wrong with the movie if you dont screen it. I bought into the notion because I hate it when people find out the ending in advance. I felt that it was ok to keep that from people for as long as possible but ultimately I think it was a mistake to not screen it for the critics because they turn on things in a certain way or are highly suspicious of it and believe there must be a problem.
DRE: You got beat up a little bit this summer with the movie.
Neil: Thats generous of you to say a little bit. I got a good old fashioned ass whipping.
DRE: Your films always polarize people but it seemed that Wicker Man didnt polarize people.
Neil: Not this time, this was the great unifier. Everybody got on the same boat this time. Save me a seat on the good ferry smash LaBute in the face.
DRE: Obviously the film was an experiment for you. That was obvious to everyone, especially your fans. Do you feel the experiment was successful even though the movie wasnt?
Neil: Yeah, I do. I went to Venice and screened it and international critics were, not kinder, they just found more in it. They seemed to find the humor and not think it was unintentional. That was one of the great catches, when people thought I must not realize that some of this stuff is funny. Thats part of it being sold as a straight horror movie. In straight horror movies you tend to find less irony and humor so that was weird for me. But screening it over in Venice I was like, You know, Im absolutely fine with it because I like what we did. Nic [Cage] called me from Thailand where he was filming and said, You know, we did something very different and people either dont like it or they take time to catch up with it or whatever. Im glad we didnt do it any differently. That was nice to hear. We took a risk and thats always a good thing and you learn a lot but you wish that the art form wasnt so damn expensive. That you could just pick up a sketch pad and say, Well, fuck Im going to try and look at a lady from 30 different points of view here and well call it cubism. Oh well that didnt work. Fuck, Ill throw that piece of paper out.
DRE: People were quick to bring out the misogynistic brush with Wicker Man.
Neil: They were happy to do that again, which I fully expected. I was sort of playing into that. I thought, I should go right to the heart of the matter, go right to the most classic struggle of men and women in a context like this. I knew that that would be there. But again theres a certain provoking, a twinkle in my eye that I dont think people always caught.
DRE: That its interesting because it seems like filmmakers always say that they would like to be free of the critics. But it seems like Scorsese might put more violence into a film just to tweak people. Is that biting your own tail to take what people are saying and put it into your film?
Neil: I think that was how I found a way into the story. I didnt want to tell the same story again. Its amazing how suddenly people are so protective and in love with the original Wicker Man. I screened it several times before I made this one and people are smoking if they think it is a great movie. Its absolutely fun and a singular experience and all of that but it wasnt a horror movie either. This was an odd duck and I set out to make an odd duck and I think I did, perhaps too odd, but that was part of the game.
DRE: The script for Wicker Man didnt seem to show that you were just jumping into making a studio picture. It seemed like everyone must have understood that as well.
Neil: Well for a long while it certainly felt like it. But then after a while people tend to get cold feet. They spend too much money and then in the first weekend they want it to be Saw and then the next weekend they want it to be The Sixth Sense. In the end youre making neither one of those. Youre making your own thing so people have to be true to what they made and it was a long haul on that picture. But it doesnt scare me off of making movies. Movies take at least a year of your life so make sure youre doing exactly what you want to be doing and it reinforced how much I love doing theater as well. So all good things came out of it, though you always hope an audience will connect with me and it was less so this time but that doesnt stop me from thinking I can still make that connection.
DRE: Some of the films youve done like Nurse Betty and definitely Wicker Man feel more experimental for you than your plays. Do you feel that way about them?
Neil: I dont know if thats the case. Yeah, if you stacked the films next to the theater youd probably get a greater sense of the breadth of my interests as a director but as a writer Ive got a very particular canon that I feel I am trying to build. Contemporary writing has been where Ive wanted to focus although Ive done an adaptation of Woyzeck and Dracula but for the most part its not been, Now Im going to do a period thing. Its just been very much these contemporary stories that I have to tell.
DRE: Do you know what youre doing next?
Neil: Well my plan was to do Wrecks and then I was going to do [the play] Fat Pig in London, which were still trying to cast. But I hadnt done a movie for a couple years previous to Wicker Man and doing that I realized I forgot that it takes such a long time to do a movie. Ive got a couple little projects that are their own weird beasts as well. I dont think what happened with Wicker Man will make it any easier to make those films, but I dont want to say, Oh fuck, I better go make a good solid studio picture now to get back in the graces of whomever. You only can make so many and you have to be able to look at them all at the end of the day and say, I did that for a reason, not for a house.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Wrecks is a very powerful and disturbing work, which is par for the course for LaBute. Harris plays Ed Carr a man at the funeral for his wife talking directly to the audience. Carr is a wonderful character who at times stalks the stage like a panther smoking cigarettes. When memories of his wife flow through his mind he exhibits contemplation, but never regret. Harris does an amazing job of making a man that would be considered insane in any other context feel as human as the rest of us.
Check out the official site for Wrecks
Daniel Robert Epstein: I remember that your play This Is How It Goes was inspired by a letter you received [LaBute got a letter from someone stating that the part in Nurse Betty where Rene Zellweger kisses Morgan Freeman was unacceptable because she is white and he is black].
Neil LaBute: Yeah that was one of the catalysts. I think the play This Is How It Goes was rumbling around in my head but the racial angle came from having this letter and wanting to do something about that and finding a fit with that play and the element of racism.
DRE: Was Wrecks inspired by anything from real life like that?
Neil: Not real life, no. The reason Im hesitating is if I consider that letter real life. That is because it is not really connected to anything, its connected to a movie [Nurse Betty] which isnt real life. Wrecks came from my desire to work again in some context with a Greek tragedy. In two of the three plays that make up Bash, I used Greek tragedies as a jumping off point. So I was curious about doing it again and I liked the monologue form and Id always been interested in doing an Oedipus. So I started writing that without any real connection other than thinking, Oh one day this might make a nice evening. I guess nice is a subjective word. That was about as far as I got. I really just started writing on my own as I often still do and thats what came of it.
DRE: Why was Wrecks first shown in Ireland?
Neil: I had the opportunity to do a piece of work in Cork. Someone that I knew in Dublin had taken over a theater in Cork and we made a loose agreement that itd be nice to work together sometime. Once Cork was chosen as the capital of culture last year he said, Well, well be doing theater throughout the year as part of this festival. Would you have anything you want to do? Thats when I hooked onto the idea of taking Wrecks there because that was something I felt I could legitimately rehearse and have it be far from where I was going to be.
DRE: I walked into Wrecks not having any idea what the show was about.
Neil: Thats great. As it is for all audiences, after reviews come out it tends to not be the case. People always want to say they figured it out or spill the beans or something. But it does legitimately make it hard to talk about sometimes but one cant always speak in non-specific terms. But you have to leave it up to the taste and the abilities of the critics.
DRE: I interviewed Chuck Palahniuk a few years ago and hes used a number of twist endings in his novels. I asked him What makes you keep going for the twist ending? He said, Well everything is a twist ending nowadays. You find out that Columbus didnt really discover America. Thomas Jefferson slept with slaves. I thought that was an interesting point. Why you like the twists so much?
Neil: Maybe Im related to O. Henry. Ive always enjoyed them as an audience member. A lot of times you write what you enjoy or what you wish you saw more of. That statement by Chuck is interesting because its probably true that in the arts and in life itself were surprised by what we see or what happens to us or how things end up. Even outside of that I think life itself is a twist ending. We never know where things are going to end up. Some may seem to set the building blocks but I think that most people are surprised by where they end up working and how things come to be. Even for myself as a younger person you think This is something I want to do but how you got there was certainly a surprise. But I like the idea of keeping ahead of the audience or reversing on them and going in a different direction. I think its part of my desire to make the audience work and keep up and enjoy the ride. Its one of the tools of telling a tale but its also something you can get in a bit of a rut with. Now if I dont have one people will say thats the surprise.
DRE: Yeah, exactly [laughs].
Neil: The twist is gone, he didnt have the twist. You go, Ok, this is the cant win portion of our show. So to me it has to be something that ultimately can support itself no matter how the thing ends up. Particularly in this case, its nice for the audience to come fresh to something but something also has to hold up if someone does hear about it or if they just guess. It has to work after leaving the theater. The performance and the text have to give you some pleasure beyond that and again the Greeks were dealing with stories that were mythical even at the time they were they were telling these stories. So I think very few people came to a production of Medea and went Holy shit! She killed the kids! They knew this was going to happen and it was in the telling of it that really brought about the difference in the stories. So for me if someone comes in and goes, Wrecks, I wonder if this is Oedipus story. It should slowly bring a pleasure to them rather than it being something you have to figure out.
DRE: Did you allow Ed Harris to change anything?
Neil: Well in theater, the writer is still given a great deal of respect. I dont think to a fault but some people can misuse that. Some people are Its perfect, dont touch it. For me its always the jumping off point but that should not suggest that Im not careful about what I write. I spend plenty of time worrying about it and trying to get it just right for my taste. But its amazing what somebody else brings to it. Also an actor whos devouring the part and becoming that person very quickly scoots past you and starts knowing more about it than you do. In the case of Wrecks, the character of Ed Carr is the entire piece. I also trust Ed [Harris] not just as an actor specifically in this but as an actor in general and as a director. So I was open to whatever, even down to the last couple days when we were still tinkering. Since the character breaks the fourth wall, it also depends on how an audience is reacting to him and that will make him play things a certain way. Thats a little different interpretation as opposed to changing text. We certainly added stuff between Ireland and here. I leaned on him a great deal in terms of shaping that and I think he did the same thing for me because for the most part the director is the person who is watching the nuance of what hes doing and saying, You know, the modulation of this is better tonight than it was before. I think you shot too early to this emotion. So its a very collaborative thing at its best and Im quick to want to do that and I think he was someone whos very straightforward and good about collaborating.
DRE: There is a lot of real cigarette smoking in the play and at the performance people were uncomfortable, coughing and moving in their seats. Did you want to do that or did this character just smoke?
Neil: It came out of the natural quality of this guy being a smoker and you cant help but play that a little bit, even with some of the dialogue thats written in there. He asks questions of the audience saying, I wont smoke if you dont want me to. But youre banking on that invisible fence that audiences have laid down around them that most of them arent going to pipe up and say anything.
DRE: Right, I almost did but I wasnt sure if Im supposed to or not.
Neil: Well thats the thing and thats why most people wont. Occasionally somebody will but Ed has the ammunition there. The dialogue works if somebody happens to say something. Ed is like I dont know if anyone in their right mind is going to say something to a widower. He can just go right on and play with it and often hell zero in on the person that said something and say, I can wait. I have willpower. Hell feed off that audience in a way. So for me it was more of a character thing. It was representative in another way of a man who has heard the truth but he takes another path. Hes heard all the you shouldnt smoke, its bad for you. But he continues. He has obviously taken a path in life in morality that was different than most people. It was metaphoric but also again rooted in a 21st century way in the oedipal idea. I wanted some sense of a plague that he had brought into the home and the idea is suggested that his wife may have gotten cancer from his smoking. So the idea that they both are suffering from this thing that hes brought in, being smoking in this case, and that he continues to do it gave me some sense at least of that plague that ravages or hangs over him.
DRE: This character seems like one of your happier characters. Just as a bad example, if a serial killer is never caught, I think that serial killer would be pretty happy. He has those things that he always wanted to do and he may still be crazy but hes happy.
Neil: I think that youre right. I dont liken this guy into a serial killer but I understand your analogy. The great question of the play is Is it true or not? Did he really love her or not? Can you in fact love somebody that you lied to essentially? and in a sense, betrayed all of your life. Thats an interesting question to raise but I believe that he believes that he loves her. It sounds like love, the way he describes it through most of the play. I think hes coming from a very different place than a lot of the characters that Ive written. Hes not someone whos driven to best someone at work or to make themselves feel better by hurting somebody else. He is not driven by negativity. It is all positive but the only hitch is that nobody else will agree that this is a great way to spend your life. He makes that argument again at the end, I dont feel that Ive hurt anyone. Yet hes telling us that theres a possibility he never told the woman he was with. So obviously he was smart enough to know that most societies would say, Hey, this just is not going to fly. But Ed is very compelling and he makes a fair case for it.
DRE: Did you direct this play just because you had the time or did you specifically say I want to direct this one?
Neil: I said, Hey, its Ed Harris. I thought it would be cool to hang out with him. But also it was something that I felt I could legitimately be doing even if I was doing something else. During that period I was working on Wicker Man and yet because of the nature of a one person show you just cant rehearse that long because you just tire the actor out. So the rehearsal period was relatively short and those days within the rehearsal period were relatively short. Usually when I dont direct its a case of just not being able to be in that city or Im not free at that time, that sort of thing. So Ive tried to split it up pretty much between availability and desire.
DRE: Youve had some amazing directors direct your other plays. But even so, do they do things that you wouldnt do if you were directing it on stage?
Neil: Of course. Everybodys going to interpret something different. Someone would take this play and do it differently. No doubt. I cant imagine they would come up with the same production. They would have a different designer or even with the same designer and the same set they would have blocked it differently. I think, for better or worse, I always have some production in my head. It is a production that I carry around and can see and can imagine. So its always interesting to me to see what somebody else comes up with. As you say, Ive had very good people and Ive had very good luck with those people. I tend to rewrite more with other directors because again you have another set of eyes who are examining the material and they have their own needs for the thing. So you end up having another person that youre serving. For the most part, the times Ive directed Ive probably rewritten less but again I think that comes down to having more intelligent sets of eyes around who are keeping you honest.
DRE: As a director that started off in independent films and still does a lot of theatre, what did you think when Warner Bros decided to not screen The Wicker Man for critics?
Neil: I thought it was dangerous and more and more people are doing that with their films. At this point people think theres something wrong with the movie if you dont screen it. I bought into the notion because I hate it when people find out the ending in advance. I felt that it was ok to keep that from people for as long as possible but ultimately I think it was a mistake to not screen it for the critics because they turn on things in a certain way or are highly suspicious of it and believe there must be a problem.
DRE: You got beat up a little bit this summer with the movie.
Neil: Thats generous of you to say a little bit. I got a good old fashioned ass whipping.
DRE: Your films always polarize people but it seemed that Wicker Man didnt polarize people.
Neil: Not this time, this was the great unifier. Everybody got on the same boat this time. Save me a seat on the good ferry smash LaBute in the face.
DRE: Obviously the film was an experiment for you. That was obvious to everyone, especially your fans. Do you feel the experiment was successful even though the movie wasnt?
Neil: Yeah, I do. I went to Venice and screened it and international critics were, not kinder, they just found more in it. They seemed to find the humor and not think it was unintentional. That was one of the great catches, when people thought I must not realize that some of this stuff is funny. Thats part of it being sold as a straight horror movie. In straight horror movies you tend to find less irony and humor so that was weird for me. But screening it over in Venice I was like, You know, Im absolutely fine with it because I like what we did. Nic [Cage] called me from Thailand where he was filming and said, You know, we did something very different and people either dont like it or they take time to catch up with it or whatever. Im glad we didnt do it any differently. That was nice to hear. We took a risk and thats always a good thing and you learn a lot but you wish that the art form wasnt so damn expensive. That you could just pick up a sketch pad and say, Well, fuck Im going to try and look at a lady from 30 different points of view here and well call it cubism. Oh well that didnt work. Fuck, Ill throw that piece of paper out.
DRE: People were quick to bring out the misogynistic brush with Wicker Man.
Neil: They were happy to do that again, which I fully expected. I was sort of playing into that. I thought, I should go right to the heart of the matter, go right to the most classic struggle of men and women in a context like this. I knew that that would be there. But again theres a certain provoking, a twinkle in my eye that I dont think people always caught.
DRE: That its interesting because it seems like filmmakers always say that they would like to be free of the critics. But it seems like Scorsese might put more violence into a film just to tweak people. Is that biting your own tail to take what people are saying and put it into your film?
Neil: I think that was how I found a way into the story. I didnt want to tell the same story again. Its amazing how suddenly people are so protective and in love with the original Wicker Man. I screened it several times before I made this one and people are smoking if they think it is a great movie. Its absolutely fun and a singular experience and all of that but it wasnt a horror movie either. This was an odd duck and I set out to make an odd duck and I think I did, perhaps too odd, but that was part of the game.
DRE: The script for Wicker Man didnt seem to show that you were just jumping into making a studio picture. It seemed like everyone must have understood that as well.
Neil: Well for a long while it certainly felt like it. But then after a while people tend to get cold feet. They spend too much money and then in the first weekend they want it to be Saw and then the next weekend they want it to be The Sixth Sense. In the end youre making neither one of those. Youre making your own thing so people have to be true to what they made and it was a long haul on that picture. But it doesnt scare me off of making movies. Movies take at least a year of your life so make sure youre doing exactly what you want to be doing and it reinforced how much I love doing theater as well. So all good things came out of it, though you always hope an audience will connect with me and it was less so this time but that doesnt stop me from thinking I can still make that connection.
DRE: Some of the films youve done like Nurse Betty and definitely Wicker Man feel more experimental for you than your plays. Do you feel that way about them?
Neil: I dont know if thats the case. Yeah, if you stacked the films next to the theater youd probably get a greater sense of the breadth of my interests as a director but as a writer Ive got a very particular canon that I feel I am trying to build. Contemporary writing has been where Ive wanted to focus although Ive done an adaptation of Woyzeck and Dracula but for the most part its not been, Now Im going to do a period thing. Its just been very much these contemporary stories that I have to tell.
DRE: Do you know what youre doing next?
Neil: Well my plan was to do Wrecks and then I was going to do [the play] Fat Pig in London, which were still trying to cast. But I hadnt done a movie for a couple years previous to Wicker Man and doing that I realized I forgot that it takes such a long time to do a movie. Ive got a couple little projects that are their own weird beasts as well. I dont think what happened with Wicker Man will make it any easier to make those films, but I dont want to say, Oh fuck, I better go make a good solid studio picture now to get back in the graces of whomever. You only can make so many and you have to be able to look at them all at the end of the day and say, I did that for a reason, not for a house.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
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theconservative said:
nice interview, but it's O. Henry. not O'Henry
i got candy on my mind