He's Not Bad, He Just Writes That Way: On the Eve of His Broadway Debut, Playwright and Screenwriter Neil LaBute Takes on His Critics' Charges That He's a Misogynist, a Homophobe, and an Embodiment of the Worst Aspects of Male Behavior

Voss, Brandon, The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine)

AFTER SHOWING A CLIP of male Democratic presidential candidates verbally attacking Hillary Clinton during a 2007 debate, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart deadpanned, "It was like the most boring Neil LaBute play ever." Accustomed to being called out for the misogynistic themes he explored as writer and director of the films In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors, LaBute appreciated the pop-culture name-drop. Then the flip side of the quip sunk in. "I was trying to decide what he'd pick as the second-most boring Neil LaBute play," he says, "because that one I actually wrote."

It's a safe bet Stewart wouldn't select reasons to be pretty, an explosive comment on America's beauty-obsessed culture that opens April 2 at New York's Lyceum Theatre, marking the prolific playwright's Broadway debut. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find a boring scene in LaBute's controversial oeuvre, celebrated for its amoral characters: heartbreakers, baby killers, gay bashers, and other boys behaving badly. But while beauty may be skin-deep, such ugliness in mankind is quite the opposite, and LaBute delights in examining our darkest impulses. Because his repugnant male characters are so often unapologetically disrespectful toward women …

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Publication information: Article title: He's Not Bad, He Just Writes That Way: On the Eve of His Broadway Debut, Playwright and Screenwriter Neil LaBute Takes on His Critics' Charges That He's a Misogynist, a Homophobe, and an Embodiment of the Worst Aspects of Male Behavior. Contributors: Voss, Brandon - Author. Magazine title: The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine). Issue: 1025 Publication date: April 2009. Page number: 80+. © 2008 Regent Media. COPYRIGHT 2009 Gale Group.

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