At a time when independent American cinema appears poised on a precipice, Neil LaBute, once a darling of the movement, is desperately seeking a mainstream hit. His last picture, a puzzling remake of THE WICKER MAN, performed weakly at the box office (despite being a Leelee Sobieski-dropkicking hit on YouTube!), and while the stage offers an ever-welcoming refuge (he is the resident playwright of the MCC Theater in New York City), LaBute needs film; it's where he made his name, and it's a medium he understands inherently. True, it's debatable as to whether he's topped his blisteringly brilliant debut, IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, but, aside from THE WICKER MAN, he has never failed to provoke thought or challenge basic (i.e. lazy) notions of male/female relationships.

So it's nice to see LaBute adroitly pushing these buttons in the service of what would've otherwise been a PG-13 knockoff of UNLAWFUL ENTRY (for starters). Though LAKEVIEW TERRACE ultimately opts to give the audience that to which they're accustomed (shades of gray turn black and white before long), LaBute and co-writer Howard Korder have found ways to slyly subvert David Loughery's formula screenplay about a veteran Los Angeles police officer (Samuel L. Jackson) who needlessly starts static with his socially progressive new neighbors (an interracial couple played by Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington). LaBute and Korder have dared to humanize Jackson's Abel Turner, whose behavior is at least explicable if not at all defensible, while painting Wilson and Washington as a brash, upwardly mobile duo who are obnoxiously wrapped up in their home-owning bliss. The couple may be in the right most of the time, but they bungle nearly every opportunity to defuse the tension (Wilson's character is especially unsympathetic whenever he ineptly strains to match Abel's alpha male intensity).

Give the Overbrook Entertainment brain trust of Will Smith and James Lassiter credit for taking a chance on LaBute when they could've just as easily hired a no-fuss hack like John Polson. For the most part, it sounds like they let him make his movie - although, after I'd stopped recording, LaBute did confide that the Mychael and Jeff Danna score was forced on him (it's unobtrusive and effective enough, but LaBute was lobbying for no score; by the way, I do believe this is the first time Mychael Danna has been forced on anyone).

As I got settled in LaBute's room at the Casa del Mar in Santa Monica, we began talking about our moviegoing habits. By the time I got the recorder going, LaBute was just finishing his thought.

Neil Labute: I still sneak away to the movies a lot. It feels like it's at least part of the job.

Mr. Beaks: Do you watch movies when you're making films?

LaBute: Yes. Not always to emulate or to say "I have done that sort of thing." I've often had it in my head that this is the kind of film I'm making. When I made my first proper movie, YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS... I screened CONTEMPT, MANHATTAN and CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, and I said to the actors, "I'm going to show you three films better than the one we are about to make. But this is what we're shooting for." I was actually saying, "These give me ideas about what we're doing." But I just like movies. It's a great way to escape.

This is also why I'll often go do a play. People will be like, "Why are you directing a play when you're editing a movie?" And it's because it allows me to escape. Because if I don't, if I just go home, I'm going to keep thinking about that movie; If I don't concentrate on something specifically, that's all I'm going to do. So movies help me escape in a creative way. Mostly, I spend a lot of my time going to international stuff. It's easier to get into because it's usually a lot of actors you don't know. It's not like, "Oh, there's Daniel Day Lewis!" No, it's a whole new world that I don't know.

Beaks: I'm glad you said CONTEMPT, because that's especially relevant to IN THE COMPANY OF MEN. The way the camera occasionally follows the actors around as they plot or squabble has a sort of Godard-ian quality to it.

LaBute: At least in that movie. His quality changed every time he made a movie.

Beaks: Yeah, by the time he got to WEEK END, the guy who made BREATHLESS was a distant memory.

LaBute: (Laughing) I have a friend who saw WEEK END the other day. He was like, "What the fuck? What was that?" I was like, "It's Godard! The guy was evolving faster than the species."

Beaks: See it again. That's what I always say with WEEK END.

LaBute: To watch what he did in the '60s... and then by the '70s you're going, "Huh!" Other than TOUT VA BIEN, there's not much that you can cling to.

Beaks: I could do this all day, but we should probably shift gears a little.

LaBute: Sure.

Beaks: LAKEVIEW TERRACE is your second film as a director only. NURSE BETTY being the first...

LaBute: Yeah, these are the two on which I willingly said, "I'm not going to try to get credit." I did work on them, but they were first scripts for people. Also, I only really worked on what was there; I didn't work on changing anything a great deal. It felt like the right thing to do.

Beaks: Whereas NURSE BETTY had a much more whimsical sensibility--

LaBute: There's not much whimsy here.

Beaks: (Laughing) Yes. LAKEVIEW TERRACE is not whimsical. It's also a straight-up genre piece. The dynamic struck me as a cross between DO THE RIGHT THING and FATAL ATTRACTION - aesthetically, at least. How did you handle that balancing act of making something that's got to be extremely commercial while trying to inject some of your own sensibility into the film?

LaBute: You're attracted to those opposites. Overbrook [Entertainment], Will Smith's company, came to me. I don't think it was Will or his partner James [Lassiter] going, "Oh, who's this guy?" It really was somebody who I knew was working there: Joe Pichirallo. I'd known Joe for a few years, and he thought I might be an interesting match to the material. I'm not the first person they would look at and go, "Thriller! Yes!"; it's just not something I'd done. But I think within the trappings of the genre - and it's made by a company [Screen Gems] that's made a lot of genre pictures, and they definitely want it. They're looking at it going, "Do all your stuff, but make sure there's trailer stuff, and make sure we've got stuff for the poster. This is what we do." You want to supply all of that. That's an interesting thing for me to do because I haven't done it. That's the challenge. The other stuff, I go, "Oh, I understand this husband and wife who aren't happy with each other. That's something I can do. And the racial stuff has been interesting to me; I've written about it. So that dynamic is something I think I can bring to the table as well. It's seeing what the framework is, and knowing you have to provide that. But within that you can shuffle the walnuts in whichever direction you want, and hopefully it still pops up as a thriller at the end, that people will walk out satisfied. If people don't walk out satisfied, if they go, "That was really boring!", then I think we've failed. A thriller should continue to get more and more exciting as you go. And yet within that, if you watch the trailer, you don't really know that there's a marital strife going on. I hope that when they see that, they don't go, "Oh, and there was this boring stuff about some couple." Hopefully, you're just subverting the genre a little bit.

Beaks: Subverting it while working within a PG-13 framework.

LaBute: (Laughs) Not as easy. I'd rather try to subvert a genre than work PG-13. It's its own difficult thing, and there it's much harder for me to sleep at night. It's surprising how hard it is. When you meet with these people - and they're all perfectly nice and want to work with you - they have their stipulations. There aren't really firm rules; it's all about how they feel. That's a really tenuous place to be. It's like, "You keep calling that a sex scene. They don't have sex." Even if the next thing you cut to is them in bed [post-coitous]. So I'm responsible for even what I don't show. It becomes very difficult. And I think when race is on the table, they don't want to talk about it; they don't want to say that it has to do with that, and that it's just about the content. When that's there... pervasively, they go "I don't know. It just feels like an R." It's very difficult to chip away at what made it that way and still make it a PG-13.

And still feel like it legitimately works. There was only so far you could go with a bachelor party and still make it feel believable that these guys would be at it - especially if these guys are cops and they've got a bunch of girls there taking their clothes off. You have to be creative. That was one of the places where I actually felt most creative thanks to the MPAA. They had difficulty with they way we cut the scene with Chris [Patrick Wilson's character] and the girl on top of him. Watching it over and over again with my editor, I finally went, "You know what we're doing wrong? We're showing it twice. We're showing it, and then [Kerry Washington's character, Lisa] watches it. What we should do is cut back to her; what's worse is her not knowing what's going on over there." So after we've been with Chris all this time and we see him go down to the ground [under a gyrating stripper], we cut to Kerry, who's sitting in their house wondering, 'What is going on over there?'" And then we cut back, and he comes home, and we see he's pissed off, but we haven't seen [what happened with the stripper]. We only see it when she sees it on the DVD. Then it made sense, and the MPAA was less offended with it being done that way.

Beaks: That also heightens the tension, because when you cut back to Kerry, we're wondering if she's going to walk over there herself.

LaBute: Exactly. And that was one example for me where working toward a PG-13 actually made the film better.

Beaks: I thought you worked within that framework well, and yet there are moments where I feel you're going to push in what is identifiably your territory. There are plenty of moments where the characters are at each others' throats. Yypically, when you're going at someone like that, you don't exactly edit your language. Did you ever shoot those moments and say, "God, these people don't sound like normal people having a fight?"

LaBute: Sometimes. There aren't many film rules for working within that framework, but one thing I did know was how many times we could say "fuck". We'd been told twice. So there were a couple of times when people would say it, and I'd be like, "Okay, now try it again without saying it so we can cut it if we need to." That also gave us material to keep cutting down; we felt like we were doing what they were asking. But we knew that we had to have the ones in the bar, where Chris says, "Fuck you.". This guy's gone from "Can't we all just get along" to "Fuck you, Abel." And then Abel reiterates it: "Is that a 'We-Are-the-World fuck you'?" They were like, you can't really have two. And we said, "But we were told we could." We couldn't cut around it. There was nothing that would give us the impact. That was one of those times where I knew we had to purposely try and keep that, so other places I would give up. But you're right. How do you make these cops or tough kids believably sound like people who live in that world and still keep it PG-13? It just forced us to be creative.

Beaks: I was happy to see Howard Korder's name in the credits. He's written some great plays like A BOY'S LIFE and...

LaBute: SEARCH AND DESTROY.

Beaks: Right. Being a playwright yourself, did you have anything to do with getting him involved?

LaBute: I can't say that I had anything with getting him involved. Again, that was Joe's idea. Joe had worked with him on HOLLYWOODLAND and really liked him. So when he brought his name up to me, I just said, "Yes." I didn't even know he worked on screenplays, but I'd always liked his writing. I was like, "Cool. Howard Korder. He'll be fucking great." I was really happy to be working with him, and that was another reason why I didn't try to get a writing credit on the film. I wanted him to get it. I felt like he did a big job on this. He didn't get one on [HOLLYWOODLAND], so I fought for him, writing letters and saying that he definitely deserved credit on this movie. And he got it. But, yeah, he's pretty awesome.

Beaks: What did he bring to the script?

LaBute: He was very helpful in making it less a thriller and more like what you see: less black and white, Abel being a bad guy... I could tell you any number of changes. Abel's wife was alive in the original one, the whole ending was completely different, the backstory was much different and completely simplistic... all facets. The dialogue was sharper. He brought everything that a playwright brings to it. He just knew character. But he was also able to do very well with the plotting of it. He changed the ending - an ending that still is not in the movie.

Beaks: The ending is interesting in that Abel finally becomes the villain. What's odd about this is that the film begins with Abel; he's our way into the world.

LaBute: Also a change from the original script. The original script started with Chris and Lisa in a motel waking up on their way to move in. So we suddenly said, "This is a more interesting way." And that was Sam's notion. Sam crawled out of bed and started praying, and I was like, "Really? We're going to go there?" And Sam said, "That's what I would do if I were this guy." So I said, "Alright. I like it!"

Beaks: Is Sam the kind of actor who brings those little flourishes?

LaBute: Absolutely. He was very instrumental in helping us create that backstory. I always thought it was going to be a really hard sell to have an L.A. cop who is bothered by a mixed race couple. I mean, this guy has to deal with every kind of person in the world. Why is he so bothered by these people? And Sam was very helpful in finding something that was not just a legitimate backstory for him, but also a perfect one for a policeman to not know the answer to something. And his own marriage was the one thing we thought could kind of set this guy off and ruin his plans.

Beaks: It's good that you see that on-the-job stress. The problem in life is that everyone has their reasons.

LaBute: Yes. Hopefully, you walk away from it - because of Sam brought to it and the changes we made - feeling sorry for Abel in some way.

And thus concludes the dialogue with Mr. LaBute. I'll be back shortly with words from the almighty Samuel L. Jackson.

LAKEVIEW TERRACE opens wide on September 19th.