UPSTREAM COLOR, a new film from Shane Carruth (Primer)

Quitting is pretty lame imo

He does come across as someone you’d probably prefer to avoid working with. Of course that seems to describe 95% of film directors/producers, regardless of budget

Scanning the credits of his two finished movies, he seems to do the bulk of the work himself anyway.

like iirc he starred in, wrote, directed, produced, edited and scored UC lol

he could still hate working with himself

Cant blame him for quitting tbh. When he started 20 years ago it was always going to be hard for a guy like him to make the movies he wanted to make unless you were willing to do everything yourself, spend a decade a decade of your life raising chickenfeed, and be ok making zero money. Today its impossible. Easy to imagine him finally coming to terms with the fact that if hes not willing to jump through hoops directing streaming episodes of Aquaman High School or whatever then theres no future for him and he might as well peace out.

I’ve had so many emails to myself that never made it past the drafts folder, knowing I’d never read them anyway

The Dead Center was a neat little movie. If nothing else it would be neat if he did more acting.

I don’t blame the guy for moving on either, I’ve been lucky to get opportunities to get out of ruts on multiple occasions; he just comes across as a pretty arrogant, condescending Muskoid in that interview

Yeah, person with principles who no one anywhere has any beef with (that I know of) and don't like spending other people's money to fund his projects... that's some Muskoid shit right there

Upstream Color was so hard to watch and so amazing I just cannot fault him.

You don’t get any “I’m smarter than everyone in this crooked town” vibe from that interview? OK

I mean is he not? He might be. FSVO smart.

otoh he’s a rick and morty guy

Again, I don’t know this guy, I can’t fault him. He just comes off like a dick according to my instincts. I know lots of dicks.

I can’t really harsh on anyone who acts like they are smarter than everyone else bc I’ve been doing that my whole life and only consciously trying not to for some of it.

Yeah I mean I’m sure he’s a dick, comparing him to Elon Musk just seems extreme! Why would a non-dick say to himself “I’d like to make movies but I can’t accommodate the very idea of collaboration.”

There's value in knowing how you prefer to work and not dicking around doing it some other way only to make an inferior product. And in the meantime he's chipping in on other people's projects, idk seems sensible enough to me.

Incidentally that teaser trailer for the movie he didn't actually want a producer credit on (lol) looks insane.

Oh lol I already said that. It's late

Yeah I always assumed he did everything himself not due to being a control freak but just due to having no money? Primer was as $7000 movie, I think Upstream Color was $100,000. I'm sure the guy would have loved to have been able to afford cinematographers and composers and designers to collaborate with. Actually seems like kind of the main thing he's bitter about tbf, go figure.

i mean the guy literally devoted 15 years of his life to making these two insanely weird & personal movies, both of which were only remotely possible bc he did almost everything himself. Whats he supposed to say, "i suck and shouldnt be allowed to make movies, garfield rules"?

It makes sense he'd be pals with the Coatwolf guys, who are just as fiercely independent / unwilling to mess with studios (and thus make a movie a decade, seemingly)

One is meant to be there so you can make out with your date on a Friday night, and the other is there so you can be edified for the next 30 years. We just pretend they’re the same.

rockism is alive and well and finding spiral patterns in your favourite paintings ;)

that trailer gave me the same sinking feeling that UC did and I am probably not the right audience for any of this stuff tbh

Did anyone read the screenplay for 'A Topiary'? I'm sad it never got made.

imago UC is dope and probably a lot more unsettling than you're expecting. His score is cool as well.

i saw it at the time!! parts of it were really cool, notably the sound design, but it largely left me cold

Damn not in touch w yr spirit pig

worth checking out who literally invented the 'spirit pig' meme :P

has anyone seen Amy Seimetz's Sun Don't Shine w/ Kate Lyn Shiel? always been curious about that one

i love sun don't shine. more than most iirc. thought it was extremely impressive how the mental/environmental warp of a florida swamp is the texture of the film, you feel overcooked and crazy as the characters through the whole thing. i've only seen it once but it really stuck with me

i've also only seen upstream color once bc it was too intense of an emotional experience, one of my favorite movies of all time still

I don’t want a credit. I told him that. All of this is made-up bullshit.

reading this interview made me love shane carruth

"what sort of art really impresses you these days"

"the last supper"

my man

the rockist pose doesn't even bother me because he's not a critic, he's a writer/director. of course he would feel that way given the effort he pours into his work. "these guys over here are making bullshit the only purpose of which is marketing while i'm barely getting buy trying to say something." anyone who's spent any amount of time trying to perfect their craft while money gets thrown at the hacks around them to make hackwork can feel this on a fundamental level cf. i am feeling this on a fundamental level

fwiw I interviewed him around the time of Primer, and looking back at some quotes I transcribed, his attitude/stance is not that different from that recent interview. He was pretty burnt out, jaded, disgruntled, self-deprecating etc. And he wasn't a dick, if memory serves. One quote I got from him was basically him complaining that "Primer" took so much time and energy from him, with so little reward, that he would sooner go back to engineering rather than attempting anything like that again.

primer won the grand jury prize at sundance, its not crazy imo for that person to be annoyed that after almost 20 years of grinding hes been able to get exactly one project off the ground for the equivalent budget of apprx 8 minutes of Tiger King

I always liked how he ended up "having" to cast himself in Primer cause everyone he auditioned was "acting too much' or something to that effect.

I've said this before but fans of Carruth and ppl in his orbit really need to see at least s1 of The Girlfriend Experience, the series, which involves pretty much that whole loose squad (Carruth, Lyn Shiel, Seimetz, as well as Lodge Kerrigan)

didn't he do the music for that?

yep, and he has a memorable cameo as well

he should just suck it up and sell out a bit imo

otm

you'll be happy to learn he's in Amazon's Tales From the Loop (anyone seen it?)

I've watched half of it so far, it's very good

should just go back to engineering

I'm sure it's been said around here before but rockism doesn't really apply to film in the same way it applies to music

engineers are dime a dozen. he’s probably not even that good at it. he should dumb his shit down and make one Nolanesque MOR brainblaster, get super rich and famous, then do whatever he wants. it’s obvious

It’s always obvious what other people should do!!

"we need more garbage, he should go make some"