Shane Carruth rocked the 2004 Sundance Film Festival when his $7000 directorial debut Primer won the Grand Jury Prize over such films as Garden State, Maria Full of Grace and Napoleon Dynamite. But it was accolades well deserved because Primer is one of the most brilliant and complex films to come out of America in many a year. Primer is the story of a small group of men who when attempting to make a breakthrough in error-checking devices instead make a breakthrough in time travel. Soon one of them is using the device for the wrong reasons and they all must confront one another.
Buy the DVD of Primer
Daniel Robert Epstein: How did Primer do in the theaters?
Shane Carruth: Terribly.
DRE: Did it make back the money that ThinkFilm spent on it?
SC: I have a hard time nailing down what they spent on it but from what Ive heard there is no way they could have made that money back.
DRE: How did that affect you?
SC: I have limited information about what happened so I dont know. On the Primer website forums and from what I heard it was frustrating to hear that there were people who wanted to see the film but they couldnt find a theatre near them that had it or if they did it disappeared after a week. I live in Dallas and I would go out to Los Angeles for a meeting every month or so, because Im a total sellout now, and even during the week of release and about a month afterwards people were asking me if I had found a distributor yet. The marketing wasnt even touching the people who would be into this type of film.
DRE: When did you know that the DVD was going to be released by New Line Home Video?
SC: I found out when ThinkFilm asked me to add New Line to my errors and omissions insurance policy.
DRE: Whats that?
SC: There is something called errors and omissions insurance policy that if you accidentally put a logo from a corporation in your film and you get sued later you have insurance policy to cover that. A couple of months ago they asked me to add New Line to that policy.
DRE: You must have been a bit excited because obviously New Line is a huge company.
SC: Yeah I guess so but I didnt know what that meant and I still dont know what it means. There is more marketing now than there ever was theatrically. I go onto websites and there are Primer DVD banners. But I honestly dont know who is doing that.
DRE: For the DVD, did you do things like supervise the transfer of the film?
SC: Luckily what is on the DVD is precisely what was turned into Sundance. We went through a digital intermediary process where the original Super 16 is scanned into the digital world in a hi-res format and then thats lasered out to a 35mm negative and thats where the all the prints, including the one that went to Sundance, came from. So were actually going back to the digital form that I first gave to ThinkFilm and thats what they made the DVD from.
DRE: There are not a ton of extras on this, just the two commentaries. Will they do a better DVD if this one sells well?
SC: I dont know. I had tons of stuff I wanted to put on there but I couldnt reach an agreement with ThinkFilm about it.
DRE: What kind of stuff do you have?
SC: A lot of making of stuff. I edited these featurettes together where it compared the original storyboards to what we ended up with. Some of them are even animated storyboards.
DRE: How was doing the commentary?
SC: Im really glad that we have the crew commentary because those guys were really involved during the shoot and this was the first time we were able to get together and talk about it. Im glad the experience of that shoot is documented because it really wasnt that great. For my commentary I tried my best to be informative about the preproduction and the postproduction process because Ive listened to so many commentaries that I felt werent informative enough. I hated doing my commentary because I put a lot of pressure on myself for that reason. There are no silences in my commentary and I never say Oh that so and so was a joy to work with. I dont think you can tell but I redid a lot of it. I would talk for a few minutes then stop and tell the engineer to let me listen to it then if I didnt like it, I would redo it.
DRE: Is that attention to detail what made the shoot itself so hard?
SC: Possibly [laughs]. It was definitely not the number one reason, that was lack of funds.
DRE: When we last spoke you had said you met with the head of Paramount. Well now they have a new head of Paramount, did you meet with him?
SC: No I havent [laughs]. All my cache is out the window now.
DRE: Have you gotten the chance to do rewriting work?
SC: Ive been talked to about that but Im not interested so those conversations dont go far. Ive been sent scripts and I try to understand what someone in my position has the opportunity to do but in the end I have to write what I want to direct. So its been a year of becoming sure enough to do that. Im writing now and Ill be done in about four months.
DRE: Did they send you scripts that you read and wondered what the heck they saw in Primer that made them want to send you those scripts?
SC: Yeah thats happened. The first maybe five scripts I got all had to do with time travel. Ok now Im time travel guy.
DRE: Your costar in Primer, David Sullivan, is going to be on an HBO series called Big Love which is about Mormons and polygamy. Did he get that as a result of Primer?
SC: I dont think so. I know he auditioned for it so he must have got it out of sheer performance. The guy has been out there for a while and if Primer was going to be his lunch ticket I think it would have been that a while ago. Its weird because at one point in my life I was interested in doing a story about polygamy. I thought it would be a good background for a murder mystery.
DRE: Do you think you will want to act in the next project you do?
SC: I doubt it.
DRE: Did you like your performance in Primer?
SC: Most of it is fine but I dont think its great. Considering we only did one take on many shots, it's passable. But Im not really an actor. Im more interested in writing and directing. When directors act in their films Im constantly trying to figure out whether its a distraction or not. Whats weird is that if any director has the ability then they should perform as a character in the rehearsals. Any information I have to be able to communicate with actors comes from the fact of experiencing the scene with somebody. I would find it difficult to be outside the rehearsal and be effective in talking to people about it.
DRE: Is the next movie youre doing this nautical romance I read about on CHUD.com?
SC: That one I hope to do eventually. Ive kind of been taken away with what Im working on now. Its about some kids, religion and ideology.
DRE: What religion were you raised with?
SC: Christian, my parents used to be in a pretty charismatic church but my grandfather was a Baptist preacher. There was a lot of back and forth between regular Baptist church and then the more hippie church.
DRE: Will your movie tackle those ideas?
SC: There is actually no mention of religion in the film because its all subtextual. Its the story of the beginnings of ideology and how different people can look at the same sort of the same magic and come up with a different set of rules to explain it.
DRE: So its like Primer, meaning it tackles a lot of things without the characters coming out and saying it directly.
SC: Thats the hope.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy the DVD of Primer
Daniel Robert Epstein: How did Primer do in the theaters?
Shane Carruth: Terribly.
DRE: Did it make back the money that ThinkFilm spent on it?
SC: I have a hard time nailing down what they spent on it but from what Ive heard there is no way they could have made that money back.
DRE: How did that affect you?
SC: I have limited information about what happened so I dont know. On the Primer website forums and from what I heard it was frustrating to hear that there were people who wanted to see the film but they couldnt find a theatre near them that had it or if they did it disappeared after a week. I live in Dallas and I would go out to Los Angeles for a meeting every month or so, because Im a total sellout now, and even during the week of release and about a month afterwards people were asking me if I had found a distributor yet. The marketing wasnt even touching the people who would be into this type of film.
DRE: When did you know that the DVD was going to be released by New Line Home Video?
SC: I found out when ThinkFilm asked me to add New Line to my errors and omissions insurance policy.
DRE: Whats that?
SC: There is something called errors and omissions insurance policy that if you accidentally put a logo from a corporation in your film and you get sued later you have insurance policy to cover that. A couple of months ago they asked me to add New Line to that policy.
DRE: You must have been a bit excited because obviously New Line is a huge company.
SC: Yeah I guess so but I didnt know what that meant and I still dont know what it means. There is more marketing now than there ever was theatrically. I go onto websites and there are Primer DVD banners. But I honestly dont know who is doing that.
DRE: For the DVD, did you do things like supervise the transfer of the film?
SC: Luckily what is on the DVD is precisely what was turned into Sundance. We went through a digital intermediary process where the original Super 16 is scanned into the digital world in a hi-res format and then thats lasered out to a 35mm negative and thats where the all the prints, including the one that went to Sundance, came from. So were actually going back to the digital form that I first gave to ThinkFilm and thats what they made the DVD from.
DRE: There are not a ton of extras on this, just the two commentaries. Will they do a better DVD if this one sells well?
SC: I dont know. I had tons of stuff I wanted to put on there but I couldnt reach an agreement with ThinkFilm about it.
DRE: What kind of stuff do you have?
SC: A lot of making of stuff. I edited these featurettes together where it compared the original storyboards to what we ended up with. Some of them are even animated storyboards.
DRE: How was doing the commentary?
SC: Im really glad that we have the crew commentary because those guys were really involved during the shoot and this was the first time we were able to get together and talk about it. Im glad the experience of that shoot is documented because it really wasnt that great. For my commentary I tried my best to be informative about the preproduction and the postproduction process because Ive listened to so many commentaries that I felt werent informative enough. I hated doing my commentary because I put a lot of pressure on myself for that reason. There are no silences in my commentary and I never say Oh that so and so was a joy to work with. I dont think you can tell but I redid a lot of it. I would talk for a few minutes then stop and tell the engineer to let me listen to it then if I didnt like it, I would redo it.
DRE: Is that attention to detail what made the shoot itself so hard?
SC: Possibly [laughs]. It was definitely not the number one reason, that was lack of funds.
DRE: When we last spoke you had said you met with the head of Paramount. Well now they have a new head of Paramount, did you meet with him?
SC: No I havent [laughs]. All my cache is out the window now.
DRE: Have you gotten the chance to do rewriting work?
SC: Ive been talked to about that but Im not interested so those conversations dont go far. Ive been sent scripts and I try to understand what someone in my position has the opportunity to do but in the end I have to write what I want to direct. So its been a year of becoming sure enough to do that. Im writing now and Ill be done in about four months.
DRE: Did they send you scripts that you read and wondered what the heck they saw in Primer that made them want to send you those scripts?
SC: Yeah thats happened. The first maybe five scripts I got all had to do with time travel. Ok now Im time travel guy.
DRE: Your costar in Primer, David Sullivan, is going to be on an HBO series called Big Love which is about Mormons and polygamy. Did he get that as a result of Primer?
SC: I dont think so. I know he auditioned for it so he must have got it out of sheer performance. The guy has been out there for a while and if Primer was going to be his lunch ticket I think it would have been that a while ago. Its weird because at one point in my life I was interested in doing a story about polygamy. I thought it would be a good background for a murder mystery.
DRE: Do you think you will want to act in the next project you do?
SC: I doubt it.
DRE: Did you like your performance in Primer?
SC: Most of it is fine but I dont think its great. Considering we only did one take on many shots, it's passable. But Im not really an actor. Im more interested in writing and directing. When directors act in their films Im constantly trying to figure out whether its a distraction or not. Whats weird is that if any director has the ability then they should perform as a character in the rehearsals. Any information I have to be able to communicate with actors comes from the fact of experiencing the scene with somebody. I would find it difficult to be outside the rehearsal and be effective in talking to people about it.
DRE: Is the next movie youre doing this nautical romance I read about on CHUD.com?
SC: That one I hope to do eventually. Ive kind of been taken away with what Im working on now. Its about some kids, religion and ideology.
DRE: What religion were you raised with?
SC: Christian, my parents used to be in a pretty charismatic church but my grandfather was a Baptist preacher. There was a lot of back and forth between regular Baptist church and then the more hippie church.
DRE: Will your movie tackle those ideas?
SC: There is actually no mention of religion in the film because its all subtextual. Its the story of the beginnings of ideology and how different people can look at the same sort of the same magic and come up with a different set of rules to explain it.
DRE: So its like Primer, meaning it tackles a lot of things without the characters coming out and saying it directly.
SC: Thats the hope.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 16 of 16 COMMENTS
Great interview DRE!
I must say I didn't grasp it, making me feel
rather stupid, but I was at least being
mesmerized by it. My brother and friend
in the room knew it and would frequently
make looks at each other. Maybe I
was distracted by that? or led me to different,
misleading thoughts? Or maybe I'm just stupider than I thought.
Regardless, I must buy this movie.