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

I chuckled at his/the UC Twitter bio

The second film from the award-winning Writer and Director of PRIMER. Also it did fine domestically so...

The Wanting Mare looks really promising. I'm a sucker for films/literature that are couched in a scifi/postapoc/fantasy world, but aren't about those worlds.

As for The Modern Ocean, I suppose I'll have to make do with container ship time lapses.

That's got me simultaneously excited and pissed off about movies all over again! I really wanna watch the full A Topiary now. might revisit UC.

He's released The Modern Ocean screenplay!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4xunl7kkmnvccgl/TheModernOcean_for_Steven.pdf?dl=0

https://t.co/x0tJTRN4qn

That's the script for The Modern Ocean. I kept it quiet for a long time because...I don't like scripts because they are not movies and movies are not film and I just didn't want to be embarrassed. But now I think it might be fun. It's all good, now.

— Upstream Color (@UpstreamColor) June 17, 2020

He's also posted some music clips for certain scenes, plus a load of artwork done for A Topiary and it looks like some video. All linked on his twitter (@UpstreamColor).

I'm very excited to see all this, but it also adds to my worry about him (he says himself in a twitter reply to the Modern Ocean script post that he's "not alright"). I hope he has some good friends and/or family.

Can you reveal the casting for this? I know Radcliffe, Reeves, Holland, Moretz are all attached at one point

— tindell (@jimtindell) June 17, 2020

Yeah, they were all attached. I spent a weird few months where I didn't know why we were casting all these famous people but Carmen Cuba guided me and we were so clear about 'we need color in this'. We really tried. It's not easy. I skyped with Irfan Khan...

— Upstream Color (@UpstreamColor) June 17, 2020

...who is/was one of the best actors in the world. I will never forget it. We only talked for 10 minutes. He was in New Delhi in an apartment smoking a blunt. We knew the same second yep this is going to happen. He would have been the captain of the Torc Eleanor.

— Upstream Color (@UpstreamColor) June 17, 2020

So there's a sort of Modern Ocean tease he posted, too?

https://t.co/PXo4T00ugK

— Upstream Color (@UpstreamColor) June 17, 2020

I basically don't read scripts but I might have to make an exception.

After looking at the cgi tests and fantastic illustrations, I'm doubly bummed out that I'm never going to get to see A Topiary.

Looking through the Topiary illustrations, those images of the doglike legs attached to those wooden crates... what a weird, rich piece of imagery.

Evidently Amy Seimetz has a restraining order against him, which he uh revealed with some artful framing on Twitter

So Shane Carruth posted a picture of a restraining order Amy Seimetz has against him and no one noticed what the hell #FilmTwitter https://t.co/w4pNyA2oTn

— Boomer CIA (@BoomerCia) July 25, 2020

ah, fuck.

This isn’t striking me as entirely shocking.

no comment

ahh jesus christ

mostly for the completely insane “just leaving this in the corner” bit but also my heart sinking in disappointment

kinda nuts no matter how you slice it

disappointingly unsurprised sigh

Yeah I don’t know wtf is going on here, pretty weird. Maybe unfair, but to me this dude has always exuded the kind of Sensitive Nice Guy Nerd aura that sends off some alarm bells. Like issues with women, questionable political takes, or a gross Reddit account surfacing wouldn’t surprise me.

wow, tombot proven sadly otm after all

He's proclaimed a lot of technological/social media ignorance lately on twitter, but I find it hard to believe it wasn't a deliberate thing to have it there in the corner of the photo, which is pretty bad in and of itself.

Variety has published some details and they're damning to say the least. My interest in him instantly soured on reading this.

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/shane-carruth-accused-abusing-amy-seimetz-1234717339/

I guess the real reason he couldn't get any projects off the ground is cuz he's a psycho, huh. Welp, time to go throw my copy of UC in the trash

Don't throw out UC because its director turned out to be a narcissistic and abusive asshole (as if the ludicrously self-important, world-against-me interviews weren't clue enough) - don't throw out the art with the artist - throw it out because it isn't very good.

why do you do this

i for one will never be able to watch it again bc it stars shame carruth and amy seimetz as two people in a relationship

“throw it out because it isn’t very good” fuck off

woof i wrote that before i even read the details, continue to fuck off lj

if you think it's good, don't throw it out idk

and yeah granted it might be hard to see it again given what's transpired with the lead actors irl but i'm firmly against the cancelling of art itself due to the artist's later transgressions

sorry if i phrased it a bit glibly but i was reacting to the extremely basic & regrettable sentiment 'welp time to throw out UC!' which is imo performative solidarity of the most pointless kind. you know that seimetz's work is in that film as well right?

at this point I can usually pretty comfortably do the art/artist separation jive when it comes to already released work (esp with film as there are so many components) but yeah no more interest going forward.

i'm firmly against the cancelling of art itself due to the artist's later transgressions

― imago, Tuesday, July 28, 2020 5:06 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i’m proud of you but did you have to make this argument fucking immediately

i’m not canceling upstream color. i will fundamentally never be able to watch it again without being sick to my stomach

that is fair

Doesn't sound like there's much chance of anything going forward. Agreed that the subject matter of UC and the fact that seimetz and carruth play the leads will make this a particularly difficult case of separating art and artist. My dvd (rewatched recently, it stands up imo) likely to sit unopened on the shelf for the foreseeable

I was being sort of glib the way I phrased it, so I get why imago reacted as he did, but Brad has well elucidated the reasons why I won't be able to watch this film again. I'm generally against "cancelling" works of art too, but you really can't separate art & artist here.

i'm disappointed in shane carruth
don't have much else to say
i wish male brilliance weren't so frequently paired with narcissism and abusive behavior

Upstream colour should be cancelled, as in no cinema should screen it again, nor should it be available on any platform either at least until Carruth isn't able to obtain any kind of material benefit from this.

He should never be involved in another project either, and he should be hounded from public life.

It's absolutely fine and sensible to throw out the art with the srtist. It's just not required to do so.

I'm glad we leapt immediately into this extremely fun conversation

every day my killfile grows stronger

LL otm

quick, let's write to theaters to make sure to cancel all their Shane Carruth screenings lol

unlike with most of these cases, the subject actually was never actually on the "winning" side of their industry so no real campaign to dislodge is required

Perfectly reasonable to think a small arthouse theatre might do a re-screening at some point in future.

I don't know about cinemas, but Primer was screening on Mubi just a few weeks ago.

I wonder, sadly, if his recent sudden release of the Modern Ocean script and various other things that he'd previously hidden away for years was some kind of pre-emptive attempt at distraction, or positive self-publicity, before any bad stuff came out.

wow that Variety article was stomach-turning

Sickened by this. I can forgive arrogance or eccentricity in artists, but not willful cruelty or stalking.

I suspect some substance abuse issues, and if that's the case I hope for his sake he has an intervention (and stays away from AS). I liked his movies, they were engaging puzzles or awkwardly affecting, and had a unique eye and voice. But he's off my list.

Fuck this guy