From Neil LaBute, the writer/director who made a name for himself with scathing, cynical indie films about sexual politics (“In the Company of Men,” “Your Friends and Neighbors,” “The Shape of Things”) comes ... a genial, mainstream dysfunctional family comedy?
“Death at a Funeral,” a remake of a 2007 British movie, boasts a large ensemble that includes (producer) Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence as contentious brothers, in addition to Zoe Saldana, James Marsden, Luke Wilson, Tracy Morgan, Danny Glover and Loretta Devine.
On the heels of his ill-fated remake of the occult drama “The Wicker Man” and his neighbor-from-hell thriller “Lakeview Terrace,” LaBute, 47, spoke about the shift in his career during a recent telephone interview.
Q: Your last few films hardly seem like they were made by the same guy who wrote and directed your first few films.
A: I’ve been trying to pick projects from different genres, because that’s more interesting to me. I’d wanted to do a comedy like this for awhile. It’s always hard in this business to get people to see you as anything other than the first thing you did, and defying those expectations can be time-consuming. People like sure things. “This director only makes this kind of movie.” It’s been that way for a long time.
Q: Why remake “Death at a Funeral” so soon, or at all?
A: Chris (Rock) had this idea to remake it for an American audience. We’d worked together on “Nurse Betty,” and he felt I was a good fit for the material. It isn’t that the first movie wasn’t great, but some people are funny about seeing films from other countries, and it didn’t do that well in terms of finding a wide audience.
Q: Your last remake was pretty much a disaster. How was this experience different or better?
A: I approached “The Wicker Man” as an opportunity to improve upon a movie I always saw as slightly creepy, but not particularly well-made. We actually had a good time making it, but there’s always a certain amount of struggle between what you imagine as a director and what the studio allows you to create. It turned into more of a horror film.
“Death at a Funeral” was much easier, in the sense of liking what was already there. It wasn’t about changing the story to become something else. It was more about approaching it from a fan’s point of view, and then taking it in a new direction, with a new cast and some new ideas. Instead of a reserved English family in the first movie, ours is a more outgoing American family – something as simple as that.
Q: What was it like having so many talented actors all in one room, basically?
A: A pleasure. For a while, it felt like doing a TV show, because we were spending so much time on the same one or two sets of the house. There are so many elements of filmmaking that unnerve you on a daily basis, but it all falls away when you’re working with a cast this good. There was a terrific atmosphere on the set of everybody working together. Chris and Martin (Lawrence) are such a viable team, it’s hard to believe no one thought of it before.
Q: Do you approach directing someone else’s script any differently than one of your own?
A: In the end, directing is directing. It’s about falling in love with a story and wanting to tell it. With my own material, I can’t help but feel parental in a way. With somebody else’s, I become more like an editor, a person who can look at the script and say, “This is funny,” or “This isn’t funny,” without being emotionally tied to the writing. It’s freeing, having that distance to look at a script a little more clearly.
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