A Repertory Company of One

Even if you’d never seen pictures of Aaron Eckhart and Neil LaBute, it would be pretty easy to figure out which one acts and which directs. Eckhart is the lean, blond guy with chiseled features who leaps up from a hotel sofa to impersonate, in slo-mo, the neighborhood coyote that lopes through his Coldwater Canyon neighborhood at dusk. LaBute, burly and bespectacled, sits still and does most of the talking.

In “Possession,” which opens Friday, directed and adapted by LaBute from A.S. Byatt’s 1990 novel, Gwyneth Paltrow and Eckhart play scholars who fall in love while researching the letters of an 18th century poet. It marks the fourth collaboration in five years for Eckhart and LaBute, who worked previously on “In the Company of Men” (1997), “Your Friends and Neighbors” (1998) and “Nurse Betty” (2000).

Why do these two stick together? LaBute explains: “The obvious answer is, there’s respect, there’s the convenience factor and there’s a shorthand. Basically, Aaron allows me to talk and doesn’t say anything.” Eckhart laughs. But LaBute says he keeps casting Eckhart “because I know I’m going to get good work from Aaron and good work is hard to find. I like him, I like his work, so why not use him?”

For Eckhart, having a history with LaBute means he can experiment with bold character choices instead of worrying about making a good impression on an unfamiliar director. “I know how to speak to Neil and I can go right to him without worrying about peripheral players. There’s a certain trust there.”

The bond forged during their previous projects came in handy on “Possession.” “That was a whole ‘nother ballgame,” LaBute says. Paltrow’s celebrity provoked a media frenzy wherever the production touched down during its 12-week shoot in England two years ago. “It was a circus,” LaBute says.

Furthermore, the filmmakers were subject to intense studio scrutiny. Says LaBute: “We did ‘In the Company of Men’ in 11 days. We had less technical support then, but we had autonomy. Nobody was there telling us things, whereas in this production, we had two studios and we were shooting in England, so we were constantly sending stuff back to the States. That’s not an easy environment to be creative in.”

Eckhart elaborates: “We were in a country with an English crew, all these different locations--we were fish out of water. I’d see all these faces I didn’t know staring at me, and Gwyneth’s there, who I was just getting to know. There’d be these great English actors in the room, and me, and I’m saying, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ But in the middle of all that,” if things got too weird, he continues, “I knew I could go to Neil for a barometer reading and say, ‘Neil, am I crazy?’ ”

LaBute jokes, “I’d tell him, ‘Yes, but not in this particular instance, no, you’re not.’ ” For LaBute, having a ready-made rapport with Eckhart streamlined the “getting-acquainted” process on set. “I had great respect for Gwyneth, yet I didn’t know her at all. You go into that situation feeling everything from ‘Gosh, will she like me?’ to ‘How do I get the best work out of her?’ I don’t know what she likes and what she doesn’t like. “Whereas with Aaron, that honeymoon is past, there’s none of that ‘I have to get to know you’ thing. That sort of dance is already done.”

LaBute, now 39, and Eckhart, 34, met at Brigham Young University in the ‘80s when the actor took a film ethics class from professor LaBute. Says Eckhart, “I’d never experienced anybody like Neil before, somebody who had big ideas and a big vision.”

“We also had a darker sense of humor and a contempt for what that university represented at the time,” Eckhart continues. “They wanted to do these mundane plays that don’t challenge you. Neil always challenges you. Spend the afternoon with him and you’re going to come out smarter.”

There’s one more factor, Eckhart says. LaBute believed in the actor’s talent when nobody else cared. “In New York I was struggling for years,” Eckhart says. “I’d sit at home watching something on TV and go, ‘I could do that!’--but nobody’s asking you to do it.”

About five years after they had parted ways at Brigham Young, LaBute raised $30,000 to make a film version of his play “In the Company of Men.” When he tracked down Eckhart, the actor was happy to reprise the smaller role.

“Then Neil called me up and said, ‘Well, what about doing the [larger] part?’ I said, ‘I don’t think I can do it.’ Then I hung up the phone, looked around at my little apartment and called Neil back. I said, ‘I’ll do it.’ ... I felt, if Neil trusts me enough to do the part, well, that gave me the confidence I needed.”

“In the Company of Men” starred Eckhart as a misogynist who plays a cruel trick on a deaf woman at work. The movie raised hackles, got rave reviews and served as a calling card for both men. Eckhart landed roles in a few independent films, “Thursday” and “Molly,” while LaBute found backers for his next effort, the 1998 dyspeptic ensemble drama “Your Friends & Neighbors.”

When it came time to cast “Friends,” LaBute let Eckhart pick among the three male characters. Eckhart opted for a less showy role, adding a mustache and 45 pounds to portray a narcissistic cheat.

In “Nurse Betty,” the LaBute-directed 2000 satire starring Renee Zellweger, Eckhart again got to choose: handsome soap star (ultimately played by Greg Kinnear) or Betty’s worthless husband.

Eckhart picked the smaller role.

By this time, Steven Soderbergh and Sean Penn had become fans. Soderbergh cast him as the title character’s biker boyfriend in “Erin Brockovich,” and Penn chose the actor to play a detective in “The Pledge.”

As with John Turturro and the Coen brothers, William H. Macy and David Mamet, or Philip Baker Hall and Paul Thomas Anderson, Eckhart serves LaBute as a kind of one-man repertory company. LaBute does not write parts with Eckhart in mind; he produces a script, then lets Eckhart decide.

“Aaron’s range allows me to say to him, ‘This is what’s available in this script, so go for what interests you.’ It’s not about how many lines or how much screen time you have. If you commit to a role, the person you play is supposed to come alive,” LaBute explains. “So for ‘Nurse Betty,’ Aaron went to Barstow and tramped around car dealerships hanging out with the kind of guy he imagined Del was. It’s the same level of commitment he showed in sculpting the person in ‘Possession.’ ”

Neither LaBute, who lives in a Chicago suburb with his wife and two children, nor Eckhart, single, who lives in Los Angeles, seems particularly surprised that they’re still making pictures together and sharing laughs.

“As friends, it’s as strong as it ever was,” LaBute says. “And we’re guys, so the relationship is virtually unchangeable. We’re incredibly close on a very surface level. That’s the way men operate.”

For LaBute and Eckhart, the ties that bind are wrapped around the work, and their methods remain essentially unchanged from their college years.

Back then, LaBute recalls, the university allotted three hours for finals. LaBute would structure his exams to last only one hour so he could spend the extra time putting student actors through their paces on stage.

“We used to rehearse the hell out of those plays, if I remember,” Eckhart says.

“Yeah,” LaBute adds, “like at 12 at night. Those were good days, but they aren’t the ‘good old days’ because we’re the same way now--the more rehearsal we can get, the happier we are.”

“Look,” says LaBute, casting an unsentimental glance at their tandem journey, “as a student your job is to question the way things are done, and that’s all we were doing. We were very good at questioning authority. And it’s still a matter of questioning authority, because nobody really expected something like ‘Possession’ from us. So why not do something that people don’t see coming?”

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Hugh Hart is a frequent contributor to Calendar.