Innate within Detroit, Michigan, LaBute was raised in Spokane, Washington. He exposed Theater at Brigham Young University (BYU), where he joined a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At BYU, he as well met actor Aaron Eckhart, who would play leading roles inside will of his films. At BYU, he produced a total of plays that pushed a envelope of what was permissible at the straight-priggish Latter-day Saint university, a few of which were immediately close down when their premieres. LaBute besides did graduate work on a University of Kansas, New York University, and a Royal Academy of London.

Around 1993, he returned to Brigham Young University to premier his play In the Company of Men, for which he received an award from a Association for Mormon Letters. Later on, he taught drama & film at IPFW in Fort Wayne, Indiana in the early 1990s where he adapted and filmed a play, launching his career as a film director. A film won a Filmmakers Trophy at a Sundance Film Festival, and major even awards or nominations at a Deauville Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Awards, the Thessaloniki Film Festival, when well as from either a Society of Texas Film Critics Awards and the New York Film Critics Circle. It besides resulted inside his disfellowship (a precursor to excommunication) from a LDS Church by disapproving local ecclesiastic leaders. (He has since formally left a church. [http://www.timesandseasons.org/index.php?p=1873])

LaBute has received high praise from either critics for his jittery & typically unsettling portrayals of relationship. In the Company of Men portrays two misogynistic business community (of these played by Eckhart) cruelly plotting to romance, then emotionally kill, the indifferent woman. His next film, Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), with an ensemble cast including Eckhart and Ben Stiller, was a shockingly honest portrayal of the sex lives of three suburban couples who were friends. Around 2000, he wrote and directed an Off-Broadway play entitled Bash: Latter-Day Plays, a placed of 3 short plays depicting au fond proficient humans (world health organization happen to become Latter-day Saints) doing disturbing & violent items. a single of the plays was a good deal-talked-all about one-human performance by Calista Flockhart.

LaBute's 2002 play, The Mercy Seat, was one of the number one major theatrical reactions to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Assault September 12, it concerns the human world health organization worked at the World Trade Center, but was out of a professional when you took a attack--by owning his mistress. (A play was reportedly inspired by an urban legend along these lines.) Knowing that his personal probably believes that he was flushed in the towers' collapse, he contemplates the possibility of using the tragedy to begin out of his married woman & babies & start a fresh life by owning his lover. Starring Liev Schreiber and Sigourney Weaver, a play was a considerable commercial message & critical profits, around heavy a portion because of its willingness to look at the myths that numbers of Future Yorkers experienced constructed sequentially to console themselves fallowing the attacks.

Filmography
The Shape of Things (2003) Possession (2002) Nurse Betty (2000) Tumble (short) (2000) Your Friends & Neighbors (1998) In the Company of Men (1997)

Theater productions
A select few Girl(s) (2005) This Is How else It Goes (2005) Plump Pig (2004) Merge (2003) A Mercy Seat (2002) A Few feet away From either On this text (2002) A Shape of Items (2001) bash: latterday plays (1999) In the Company of Men (1992) Filthy Talk For Riotous Times Lepers Rounder Ravages Sangguinarians & Sycophants Dracula Woyzeck