The Shape of Things Story aired: Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Writer and director Neil Labute's award-winning films are relentlessly cruel; perhaps that's what makes them so powerful and provocative.
While not all of his films are mean-hearted -- "Nurse Betty" wasn't -- the main characters in his first film, "In the Company of Men," will go down in history as two of the most inhumane, vengeful, and damaged guys you'll ever come across on the big screen. These two thirty-something mid-level businessmen are fed up with their jobs and with women and decide to get their own sick-and-twisted revenge on all females by plotting to romance a vulnerable woman and then dump her viciously without explanation.
Labute's second film, "Your Friends and Neighbors," continued the battle of the sexes, and now his new piece, "The Shape of Things," carries on this legacy of cruelty between men and women.
It was adapted from a play. Labute also writes and directs for live theater, and the couple at the center of the story are Adam, an undergrad, and Evelyn, an art student, played by Paul Rudd and Rachel Weisz.
"The Shape of Things" is a modern-day "Pygmalion," a sadistic "My Fair Lady" that explores relationships and the meaning of art. Here and Now producer Andrea Shea asked Labute and leading man Paul Rudd to meet her at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to talk more about the film.
Guests:
Neil Labute, writer and director, "The Shape of Things."
