4. Star Bursts And Giant Robots
With the release of Upstream Colour, fans of left-field, cerebral and utterly unique film making have had Shane Carruth pop back into their collective consciousness with the sort of headscratching reverence befitting of the man Steven Soderbergh potently described as "somewhere between David Lynch and James Cameron". His first feature, "Primer" emerged back in 2001 and has been confounding the living crap out of just about everyone since. The obscure, strange, dreamlike and scientifically plausible (at least within the films context) time travel drama announced Carruth as an instant writer, director and actor of fanatical cult like presence. Then he sort of fell of the face of the film making world for the better part of a decade. What happened? His now abandoned second feature "A Topiary" that's what. The intriguing inter-locking stories of a man obsessed with a unique star burst pattern he sees everywhere and a group of young boys who build weird semi-sentient machines formed the basis of "A Topiary's" beguiling narrative. The script picked up rave reviews from those that had read it, being described as operatic and rhythmically similar to P.T Anderson's masterwork Magnolia. Despite a teaser website (that's still online) popping up in 2010, the project never amounted to anything. The cause? Carruth's habit of getting lost in a rabbit warren of research and development for the project. His obsessive nature meant that he lost incredible amounts of time on just about every research element of the proposed $20 million picture. He built his own CGI equipment, visited VFX houses, agonized over the look of the "creatures" created by the boys all for way, way too long. Most importantly though, despite the full throttle influence of Steven Soderberg and a selection of purposely constructed FX teasers to show studios what he had in mind, he just couldn't drum up the necessary interest and confidence to get the money required together. With the news that Upstream Colours' follow up will be entitled "The Modern Ocean" and is based on an idea that proceeds both Upstream Colour and A Topiary, it's looking more and more unlikely that Carruth will be returning to his great lost project any time soon.