Neil LaBute Is Tackling Race The Only Way He Knows How: Terribly
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.
But at this point, it seems pretty clear that he's not going to find it (obvs). Or that he even has an idea what he was looking for in the first place. Which means that his button pushing serves no real purpose. Which is what assholes do, push buttons for no reason. And his abandonment of gender relations for the fertile poisoned ground of race relations is like a spousal abuser trying his hand at full on hate crime. Gross, Neil LaBute.
I'm pretty watching that trailer makes you a racist. SORRY. Obama 08.
Posted by Gabe at 2:50 PM
Tags: Lakeview Terrace | Neil LaBute | Racism | Samuel L. Jackson
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Cape Fear meets The 'Burbs meets Crash.
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You better be joking about Friday being your last day.
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I don't quite get the point here. You're bashing past films that (with the exception of Wicker Man) LaBute wrote, but saying that at least those films had a point, unlike this one, which he DIDN'T write? Or is it his directing in this that's racist? Or just his being involved in the project at all? Seems like a sloppy argument any way you slice it.
Or it's just easier to call LaBute an asshole than the dude who wrote "Money Train."
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Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely bashing Wicker Man.
I think that with a filmmaker like LaBute it doesn't really matter whether or not he wrote the film. He's very specific in his choices. It's not the same as, say, Stephen Spielberg who will follow up Schindler's List with The Lost World: Jurassic Park. He doesn't jump around the genre map very much. And I think it's just as sloppy of an argument to say that a director is not responsible for the messages of his film because he didn't write the screenplay. And yeah, I think he's an asshole, but the argument is that he used to be an asshole who was trying to make a point, which even if he failed was a noble endeavor. Now he's just an asshole.
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