PRODUCTION UPDATE



  Playwright and theater director Neil LaBute makes his film debut with In the Company of Men, a chilling noir comedy of manners. The film uses a love triangle deliberately created by two business partners for the most byzantine of purposes to cast a long shadow over the cat-and-mouse games of power and control typical of today's maneuvers in bed and boardroom. "The character pulling the strings is almost sociopathic - he does something because he can get away with it," says LaBute. "The '90s have been very confessional and there's a sense that as long as we talk about our behavior, we're restored to grace. I don't think the gesture's enough."

LaBute, 33, grew up in Detroit and Spokane and has seen his plays produced extensively in regional theatre; he has an M.F.A. from NYU's dramatic writing program. His first foray into film came when his play Rounder was workshopped at the Sundance Playwrights' Lab in 1991 and Good Machine commissioned him to adapt it for the screen; now called Whacked, that project is slated for a '97 shoot with Beth B (Two Small Bodies) directing.

LaBute says he decided to direct Men himself after the L.A. producers who'd optioned his adaptation of another play, Lepers, left him "high and dry." He'd moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana by then to teach in nearby Chicago and hooked up with local commercial producer Mark Archer. They raised Men's budget through investments in a limited partnership Archer says totals "well below the million mark." Men shot in Fort Wayne for three weeks in June with a mostly local crew; LaBute cast his principals, including Hal Hartley regular Matt Malloy, in New York and L.A. and his supporting roles in Chicago. The filmmakers say they scoured the country for a rate break on the 16mm black-and-white stock LaBute thought best served his story's sensibility but found their best deal on 100,000 feet of discontinued 35mm color Agfa in an Atlanta lab and opted to process that to black-and-white.

Locations included Fort Wayne's new airport - complete with a jet donated by U.S. Air - a children's zoo with an African Veldt ride Archer calls "a miniature Jurassic Park" and Lincoln Tower, an ornate reduced-scale ringer for the Empire State Building. "The production value it added was enormous - we couldn't have built sets like that for 100 times our budget," says Archer. Men should be finished by year's end. All rights are available.

Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Matt Malloy, Stacy Edwards, Mark Rector, Chris Hayes, Emily Cline. Crew: Producers, Neil LaBute, Mark Archer; Executive Producers, Mark Hart, Toby Gaff; Screenwriter/Director, LaBute; Cinematographer, Anthony Hettinger; Production Designer, Julia Henkel. Production Coordinator, Lisa Bartels. Contact: Mark Archer, Atlantis Ent., 810 East Coliseum Blvd., Suite 107, Fort Wayne, IN 46805-1234. Tel: (219) 749-9853, Fax: (219) 749-4141.



 
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