April 14, 2003

Contact: Charla Jenkins, University Theatre, (785) 864-2684.

Lawrence to get sneak peek at KU alum Neil LaBute's new film April 25

A digital photo of Neil LaBute is available. Contact kunews@ku.edu or click here.

LAWRENCE -- Area film buffs will get a sneak preview of "The Shape of Things," the newest film from writer/director Neil LaBute, during a special screening at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 25, at Liberty Hall in downtown Lawrence.

LaBute, who received his master's degree in theatre from the University of Kansas in 1989, will be on hand to introduce the film and answer questions after the movie. The screening, part of the University Theatre's "Alums Come Home IV" celebration, will be followed by "Open Mic Night," featuring former and current theatre students performing in a variety show format.

"The Shape of Things" received its world premiere as the centerpiece of the 2003 Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The film opens nationally May 9. As in his previous films, LaBute explores and explodes modern relationships in "The Shape of Things." A contemporary story of love, sex and art set in a college town, the film follows the intensifying relationship between Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) and Adam (Paul Rudd). As Evelyn strengthens her hold on Adam, his emotional and physical evolution discomforts his friends Jenny (Gretchen Mol) and Philip (Frederick Weller), with unexpected consequences for all.

In late 2000, LaBute was in England working on the film "Possession" when "The Shape of Things" began to crystallize.

"I had been working on 'Possession' for so long that I needed to stop thinking about those characters," says LaBute. "During a holiday break, I plunged into writing because the only way I could see to leave behind the 'Possession' characters was to find another set of characters. I thought, 'There's this piece I've been meaning to do set on a campus.'"

The initial seeds for the film were sown by the reaction to LaBute's first feature film, 1997's "In the Company of Men." After that movie's premiere at Sundance, people asked the writer/director whether he thought a woman was capable of doing what the men in his movie did.

"I answered that certainly I thought women were capable of being as deceitful or doing such underhanded things to someone," says LaBute. "But I imagined that it would always be a more solitary effort, rather than the communal boys' club feeling that 'In the Company of Men' had."

Recalling those discussions a few years later in England, LaBute was inspired to "take a natural romantic story and then subvert it." The result was the play "The Shape of Things."

For the role of Adam, LaBute thought of actor Paul Rudd, with whom he'd worked before and had known at KU in the late 1980s.

"Paul has a very American appeal and a boyish, good-natured quality -- you just want to like him. I first saw Paul playing Macbeth in a student's adaptation at KU where there were three Macbeths--and he was the good Macbeth, that's all I remember," LaBute says. "I often write characters who are hard to like in the end. Paul's character makes such questionable choices in very gray areas. So it's better to have someone who an audience wants to like so much -- yet who keeps doing things that put you off a bit. But I think that, because of their looks and charm, both as actor and character, you forgive them a bit. You are willing to watch them fail and succeed, and you hope for the best for them."

Rudd counters, saying, "Neil is such a good writer, but a tricky writer -- his lines are hard to memorize. He has such an ear for the way people speak that he writes out every 'um,' 'you know,' and 'like,' which, when memorized and then spoken, sound almost made up on the spot. It's really specific and very rhythmic -- much like Neil himself."

The troupe of actors in the initial stage production bonded, starring together in the London and New York City performances. It was near the end of the London run that the prospect of a movie version began to come about, LaBute said.

In adapting the play to film, LaBute changed the location of the story from a more conservative Midwestern setting to a distinctively Californian one. The movie was filmed in 19 shooting days and basically in sequence.

"That could never have been done if the actors didn't know their parts so intimately," LaBute says. "We had the same kind of vibrancy and goodwill at the end of shooting in March 2002 that we had when we all first met in April 2001."

LaBute's previous films include "Your Friends & Neighbors," "Nurse Betty" and "Possession." His "In the Company of Men" received the New York Critics' Circle Award for Best First Feature and the Filmmakers' Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival. His plays include "The Mercy Seat," which starred Sigourney Weaver and Liev Schreiber last winter in New York; "The Distance from Here," which ran at the Almeida Theatre in London in spring 2002 and will run this year in New York; "The Shape of Things"; and "Bash: Latter-day Plays," which LaBute also directed for New York and London in 1999.

General admission tickets for the screening of "The Shape of Things" and "Open Mic Night" are on sale through the University Theatre ticket office and at the door. Reservations can be made by calling (785) 864-3982. All seats are $10. A cash bar will be available at Liberty Hall.