Can you give a few examples of your favorite movies that aren't easily summed up in the narrative?
Like, okay, the thing is if I say this, I’m not trying to say that my film’s as good as this.
Understood.
Okay, “2001.” “Primer’s” not anywhere as good as “2001” obviously but do I want a Kubrick commentary explaining to me that it’s about the nature of man? Do I want to know why Hal freaks out on them at the end or do I want to figure it out on my own? These are things that I would like to ponder on and not be told exactly what’s happening. So I don’t know. It’s tough.
But people have the option of not playing the commentary track.
See, that’s the thing. I’ve thought about this before, when it comes to thematically, there’s a point when an author needs to show up on “Charlie Rose” or do whatever and own up to what it was that he was actually intending to say or to intending to do. But when it comes to this plot and this whole puzzle idea, that I don’t know about so much. I’m still trying to figure it out, so we’ll see.
When will the DVD be released?
What I imagine is that this juggernaut that is “Primer” will probably stay in theaters the next three or four years. (Laughing) No, I don’t know. I’m just kidding. It’ll probably by February or March, whenever it’s been a couple months after the theatrical run. I can’t wait. I’d love to do some stuff going from storyboards to the actual shoot and just show how that all came together.
Were your storyboards really close to what ended up on screen?
Yeah, they are. I storyboarded with 35mm stills with tungsten slide film so that I could experiment with compositions and lighting set-ups and color temperature and depth of field and stuff. So when we showed up, a lot of it was just matching the stills that I storyboarded the script with. So it looks real close. There isn’t a shot of this that wasn’t storyboarded. There’s nothing where we just showed up and tried to figure out where the camera went. I mean, some of the storyboards aren’t the actual stills. Some were actually hand drawings for locations that I would just find out about two days before or something. But everything was pretty strictly storyboarded.
Does that mean there isn’t much in the way of deleted scenes?
That is true. It’s a 78 minute and I think maybe an 80 minute movie could have been made out of it. There’s very little left and what is left has nothing to do with the plot. It just would say more about Abe and Aaron and how they are in the situation that they’re in, where one of them has a family and a home and is the unofficial leader of this group of guys. And then the other one doesn’t have these things.
You did everything on this from the music to the editing. Do you suggest other new filmmakers take all that on?
You know, I don’t know. I wish that there was a way to kind of objectively show that yes, it can be done for the money and here’s how much work it is. Because if I would have known that equation, I would have found more money. It was way too much work because I was so cheap with the money.
