The New York Times Magazine profiles hot playwright and really strange guy Neil LaBute, creator 0f squirm-inducing works, including In the Company of Men.But even the NYTimes couldn't unlock much about the playwright's Brigham Young University years and eventual split from the Mormon church.
When the interview turned to his divorce and children [a poster found this significant], LaBute walked out. He later emailed the writer offering “a doozy of a childhood story that nobody knows about” if the NYTimes avoided the subjects of his family, religion and misogyny.. . . He converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, although he wouldn’t tell me why, except to say that his conversion was about “faith.” But he added, “Americans have so many misconceptions about the church.” All those wives! People “barely survive one wife,” LaBute said. “How could I survive six?”
It may seem an odd fit, the creator of so many misanthropic characters and a religion of “fellowship,” but the relationship survived for a few years. LaBute even won an award from the Association for Mormon Letters for his play “In the Company of Men,” which is about two businessmen who seduce a deaf woman as a cruel joke, then dump her. But when LaBute wrote a devastating series of three one-act monologues, “Bash: Latter-Day Plays,” in which Mormon characters are portrayed as murderers, the church “disfellowshiped” him, essentially putting him into a state of limbo from which he never quite returned. Today, he told me, he is no longer a Mormon.
4 Comments:
That's pretty pathetic! A person interviewing you asks about your divorce, and you walk out. But you are such an attention grabbing whore that you call back offering to give them some made up childhood trauma baloney. Pathetic man. If you don't wan't to discuss your dovirce, say so.
Sure, he can talk tough about his faith and falling out, but divorce pushes him over the edge and he counters with childhood memories?
Yikes.
wait a min, anon (ps your words hold more power if you claim them... just an fyi)
read the article, as i have.. it wasn't just asking about a divorce, it was digging into his children's lives, etc.
what in the bejeebers does any of that have to do with the work? if you are going to interview, you cover the work, the process, the ideas of creation... not if you have a dog or not.
it was shoddy journalism... if i want gossip, i'll read the star. for hard reporting, i expect the times to be there for me... not give me bullsh*t.
First of all Quin, my name is Dave. What the hell does my name have to do with anything?
My point is that in this type of an interview, and yes, I was a journalism major at one point, a discussion of points in a persons life is used to try and generate a feeling of authenticity or genesis for where they are writing from. Read any interview in a literary mag or music mag. It's all the same thing.
If he writes about pain, where does the pain come from? If he creates characters that resember those from his hometown, what were the inpsirations like?
That's not gossip. It's called being a journalist.
By the way, my name is really Michelle. And guess what? My point is valid and powerful no matter what my name is.
i'd roll my eyes, but, they tend to pick up dust that way, making them uncomfortable tto wear again...
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