Shane Carruth

Shane Carruth
Carruth at South by Southwest 2013.
Born	1972 (age 44–45) Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, United States
Alma mater	Stephen F. Austin State University
Occupation	Film director, film producer, writer, editor, actor, musician
Years active	2004–present

Shane Carruth (born 1972) is an American film writer, composer, director, and actor. He is the writer, director, and co-star of the prize-winning science-fiction film Primer (2004). His second film, Upstream Color, was released in 2013. Carruth also composed the scores for both these films. In recognition of Carruth's idiosyncratic and, at times, bizarre filmmaking, director Steven Soderbergh told Entertainment Weekly, "I view Shane as the illegitimate offspring of David Lynch and James Cameron."

Carruth was born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in 1972. He attended Stephen F. Austin State University as a Mathematics major. Before becoming a filmmaker, he worked as a developer of flight simulation software.

For his independent film Primer, Carruth wrote, directed, produced, and performed one of the two main roles, and composed the music. The film was honored at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival with the Grand Jury Prize and the Alfred P. Sloan Award. Carruth, a former software engineer with an undergraduate degree in mathematics, used his technical knowledge on the project.

David Sullivan, one of the leads in Primer, tweeted that "Shane Carruth's next project, A Topiary, is in the early stages of pre-production". Filmmaker Rian Johnson tweeted that it would feature a "mind-blowing sci-fi script." In 2010, several news sources reported that A Topiary was in the works and that the script had been written. There was already a website for the movie which, according to Carruth in an interview to io9, "The website for now is just a place mark as financing has yet to be completed. I'm cautiously optimistic that this can happen soon and couldn't be happier with the filmmakers that have committed to the project so far." However, the film (which Entertainment Weekly described as "a sci-fi epic about a group of kids who build a giant, animal-like creature") stalled, and in early 2013, Carruth told EW that it was "the thing I basically wasted my whole life on." Carruth no longer pursues the project; some VFX test footage of the film is visible in Upstream Color in a scene when a character is examining the video for technical flaws.