"You start as an audience member and create a world you're interested in, and then you move into the telling of those stories, bringing what has interested you as an audience member"
About this Quote
Creation begins with appetite, not authority. Neil LaBute’s line quietly demystifies the director as some omniscient puppeteer and recasts him as a highly motivated spectator who couldn’t find what he wanted onstage or onscreen, so he built it himself. That first clause, “You start as an audience member,” isn’t modesty; it’s a philosophy of control rooted in desire. The artist’s origin story is consumption: the private catalog of scenes, cruelties, jokes, and tensions that lodge in you when you watch other people’s work.
The subtext is that taste is destiny. LaBute isn’t describing inspiration as a lightning bolt, but as a long-term obsession: “a world you’re interested in” suggests a repeatable ecosystem, the kind auteurs return to because it keeps paying emotional dividends. It also hints at a moral edge. LaBute’s work is often preoccupied with power games, intimacy as leverage, the smiling brutality of ordinary people. Framing that as “interest” is revealing: he’s admitting the lure of discomfort, the curiosity about what people do when romance curdles or ethics get negotiated in real time.
Context matters here because LaBute comes out of theater and indie film cultures where budget is limited but point of view is not. You can’t outspend Hollywood, so you out-stare it. The quote argues that storytelling craft isn’t primarily about inventing new planets; it’s about converting the viewer’s itch into a deliberate system. You don’t escape being an audience member when you become a director. You weaponize it.
The subtext is that taste is destiny. LaBute isn’t describing inspiration as a lightning bolt, but as a long-term obsession: “a world you’re interested in” suggests a repeatable ecosystem, the kind auteurs return to because it keeps paying emotional dividends. It also hints at a moral edge. LaBute’s work is often preoccupied with power games, intimacy as leverage, the smiling brutality of ordinary people. Framing that as “interest” is revealing: he’s admitting the lure of discomfort, the curiosity about what people do when romance curdles or ethics get negotiated in real time.
Context matters here because LaBute comes out of theater and indie film cultures where budget is limited but point of view is not. You can’t outspend Hollywood, so you out-stare it. The quote argues that storytelling craft isn’t primarily about inventing new planets; it’s about converting the viewer’s itch into a deliberate system. You don’t escape being an audience member when you become a director. You weaponize it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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