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There are themes in the film Christians will appreciate—greed is bad, trust is good, and so on. Are you coming from any kind of a spiritual or faith perspective on this?

Carruth: I'm a Christian, I was raised in the church, and for a long while I've been very devoted to my quiet times, where I meditate on the Bible. So everything that I believe is informed by that, including this film. I meet people and I know that what they're doing is hurting people, though the intention isn't there. They found a way to make it work. And so I'm just trying to understand it in a more practical way: How can it be that we've got all these well-intentioned people, and yet at the end of the day there's conflict. I think it's a very complicated problem. I'm just trying to understand how it actually manifests as opposed to whether it's a sinful nature or not.

You did everything in this film—conceived, wrote, directed, edited, scored and even acted. Is that because you had a limited budget? Or are you a bit of a control freak too?

Carruth: Number one, because of the budget. But I think I am a little bit of a control freak. (Laughs.)

So, if you had the money, would you have given some of these responsibilities to other people?

Carruth: Yes. I would have hired a cinematographer, but then, I knew so little about cinematography at the time that I wouldn't have had the vocabulary to explain exactly what I needed. So I needed to puzzle it apart myself. A lot of this was just necessity for me to learn as I was going.

If you had had more money, would you have made a better movie?

Carruth: If I wouldn't, that would be really sad, wouldn't it?

Does more money necessarily mean a better movie?

Carruth: What the money would have bought me was less stress for my life, and it would have bought me back about a year and a half of my time. I didn't use the right tools, and I wasted a lot of time doing that. To keep the budget down, we only shot one take of everything. But even if I'd had more money, it would have been roughly the same movie, I think.

If somebody were to say, "Hey, I've got seven grand, and I want to make a movie," what would you say?

Carruth: I would say get some more money. Or I'd say, "Yeah, if you've got three years to kill, by all means, do it." I don't know. Maybe it depends upon your age. When I'm 30 years old and spending 18 hours a day in front of a monitor editing this thing and people ask me what I do for a living and I don't have a good answer, that's not a fun place to be.

What has the movie's success at film festivals done for you financially?

Carruth: Nothing.

It would have to do well at the box office, then?

Carruth: Yes. I get paid as the theaters get paid. My ability to make another film the way that I'd like to make it is directly related to whether people show up for this one.

Shane Carruth's brother, Caleb, is a Christian musician and a former bandmate of Shane Barnard, now half of the popular duo Shane & Shane. (Yes, that's a lotta Shanes to keep straight.)

Learn more about Primer at the official website. The film is distributed by THINKfilm, which also brought such winners as The Story of the Weeping Camel and other fine movies.

Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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