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

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"

it needn’t even be garbage, just accept that you work in a capital intensive and commercialized medium and figure out how to make cool art in that constraint. he could prob make something like 35% smarter than Nolan and still smash

worth trying it out before quitting at least \o/

the world is littered with ppl who agree with that, I am glad there are at least a few uncompromising ppl out there

In a field where collaboration is crucial to getting work completed, being uncompromising can be self-defeating

plenty of compromising ppl end up every bit as miserable anyway for the opposite reason! at least when he makes things they're actually worthwhile

xpost Unless you're the writer/star/editor/director/producer/composer/FX guy. But not Robert Rodriguez.

what he really needs to do is take part in a webinar about being a more effective manager

instead of complaining about the industry he should just hire a life coach, then he'll eventually get that promotion to senior regional filmmaker

there's only one mainstream project I want to see him star in, and that's as the grown-up, world-weary Brendan in the office-set Brick sequel that will only ever exist in my head

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

true he should just decide to make an extremely successful tentpole movie, someone should email him with that suggestion

people love tom cruise, he should try asking tom cruise to be in his next movie, then after that he'll be able to do whatever he wants

where does this instinct to sarcastically talk down to everyone you disagree with come from? Why did it become the second most popular way to post on these boards?

idk same place you got "dick" & "Muskoid" from?