Shane Carruth‘s time-travel film Primer is one of the smartest sci-fi movies of the past decade. It is also a particularly compelling one because it tells a time-travel story with a very unadorned indie aesthetic. The look of the film may be born out of budget and necessity, but it makes Primer stand out, and makes the very detailed explanation of the film’s mechanics feel more grounded, and consequently more effective. The film is Carruth’s only movie, and we’ve been eagerly awaiting a follow-up. (So much so that word of his participation on Rian Johnson’s new film Looper was enough to cause ripples of excitement.)
Primer is meaty enough to withstand a great deal of conversation and scrutiny. As we wait for another film from the director, there is still plenty of territory to explore in his first. If you’ve already memorized the DVD commentary track, check out the infographic below, which seeks to sort out all of the film’s many timelines. It could make the events of the movie more clear, but perhaps not at first glance. Read More »
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If you’re a fan of Shane Carruth‘s one and only and wonderful movie Primer, this photo should put a spring in your step. If you’ve never seen Primer, I suggest checking it out, then looping back here to this post to begin again.
So this is Shane Carruth, aka the writer, director and star of Primer, on the set of Rian Johnson‘s new film Looper. It’s one of the very few images of the director we’ve seen in some time. In September 2009, Rian Johnson said, “Shane is alive and well and has a mind-blowing sci-fi script. Let’s all pray to the movie-gods that he gets it made soon.” That script is A Topiary, for which a teaser website went up last year, but funding is reportedly thin.
Now Shane Carruth is working on Looper, and Badass Digest got confirmation that he’s doing “some effects for the time travel sequences.” Given that Primer is one of the best time travel films ever made, with some great home-made effects, and Looper is a promising time-travel movie from the talented Rian Johnson, it seems that things are coming together nicely. Now let’s get A Topiary funded. Please. [LooperMovie]
Shane Carruth‘s Primer is one of the movies that completely blew my mind. It was my first time at the Sundance Film Festival, and I was working as a volunteer. I had heard about this film which was made for next to nothing ($7,000) which had something to do with time travel (one of my favorite story devices). I’ll admit, I wasn’t even sure I liked the film the first time I saw it, but I knew I had seen something special. Like many others, it took a couple more viewings of the film before I could even understand the timelines completely. I dragged my friends into Boston when it came around with the Boston Film Festival, and eventually bought it on DVD (where I would loan it out systematically to friends). Basically, if you haven’t seen the movie, seek it out.
Carruth not only wrote and directed Primer, but edited, produced, composed the score as well as handled both the production and sound design of the film. So what has Carruth been up to since the 2004 Sundance Film Festival? Good question. IMDb lists no credits, and all I had heard about the man was an update from Brick director Rian Johnson, who sent out a tweet claiming that that “Shane is alive and well and has a mind-blowing sci-fi script. Let’s all pray to the movie-gods that he gets it made soon.” io9 discovered a webpage for Carruth’s next project bearing a cryptic message. If you go to ATopiary.com, it reads “Over and over you have been promised ADVENTURE but have not found it.” Weird, huh? Now we have even more information about the film’s plot.
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XKCD has produced a series of highly detailed charts showing the character interactions in the narratives of some of the most popular films of all time, including the Lord of the Rings, Star Wars (original trilogy), Jurassic Park, 12 Angry Men, and the insanely complicated to follow indie sci-fi film Primer. Click on through to see the chart in high resolution.
