Filmmakers who have to wait

There's a price to be paid for making crazy, brilliant films and doing whatever you want in them.

Sometimes you have to wait for your next project.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

When I watched Upstream Color for the third time (but first in six years) on Friday night, I was inclined to wonder when we would be getting our next film from its director (and writer, and producer, and editor, and DP, and composer, and star), Shane Carruth.

But it's not going to be any time soon. See, Shane Carruth is a filmmaker who has to wait.

He had to wait nine years between his debut film, Primer, and Upstream, despite some high praise (though not by me) and a cult following for the former. It came out in 2004 and Upstream wasn't until 2013. It's not yet been another nine years, so maybe that's why his third feature has not yet been forthcoming.

It's easy to see why a studio or other investor would not take a risk on Carruth. His immense respect for his audience means that he doesn't spoon feed them anything, meaning they have to make what they will of opaque stories that are more like poetry than narrative filmmaking. And what gorgeous poetry, at least in the case of Upstream, which looks about as good as any film I've ever seen -- and a big step forward from his understandably grungy origins in Primer.

So I convinced myself that Carruth shot himself in the foot for future funding efforts when he made Upstream, but that should have only been the case if the reviews for the movie were tepid. A stroll through its Wikipedia page reminded me how rapturously the movie was received, how effusive (most) critics were in their praise. They may not have known what to make of it any better than most of us, but they knew it was something singularly enthralling. And how often can you say that about any movie?

Carruth has had other work since Upstream, but no features in which he sat in the director's chair -- only a single episode of a TV show I've never heard of called Breakthrough. This could be some kind of self-imposed hiatus, but I doubt it. I have to figure that a guy like Carruth, reaching an inarguable peak in his command of the language of cinema, would have had other inscrutable stories bursting forth from him. Heck, if you're Carruth, you don't even need a story. All you need are dreamy story fragments that you can sequence in such a way as to deliver us another singular experience.

It hasn't happened yet. And I see no future feature in pre-production on IMDB.

In doing a little deeper googling (er, in googling at all) I have discovered that he was preparing work on something called The Modern Ocean, which was to have had a star-studded cast, but that it was shelved. Maybe he shelved it, and maybe that was a good thing. I'm not sure "star-studded" is a good look for Carruth. He apparently was also working on something ages ago called A Topiary, but this was even before Upstream.

I'd like to think he's just following his own iconoclastic path, but I have to think that if someone gave him some money he'd make something quick smart. But even in the face of overwhelming critical acclaim, investors are gun shy if they know they just won't make any money on it.

I thought of another guy in a similar boat who also had a movie in 2013 ... and before that a movie in 2004.

Jonathan Glazer did not impress me with his debut film, much like Carruth in that sense. I couldn't understand the praise for 2000's Sexy Beast, which I found laughable in parts, and not the parts it (may have) wanted me to laugh at.

But after that, forget about it. I was mesmerized by 2004's Birth, which I saw twice, and even more so by 2013's Under the Skin, which I have now seen four times. That makes it one of the highest total number of viewings of any movie this decade. I only watched it a couple months ago most recently, and if someone wanted to put it on again tomorrow night, I'd be down for that.

But these are not financial winners. They leave regular moviegoers scratching their heads. Sure, the promise of nude scenes from Scarlett Johansson undoubtedly goosed the box office of the latter film, but it still made only $2.6 million in the U.S., and only twice that worldwide. That's nothing, especially since it cost $13 million to make.

But oh the reviews. They were breathless in some quarters, including this one.

Jonathan Glazer will not have to wait as long as Shane Carruth. Next year he's scheduled to release a film with a truly great title: Untitled Jonathan Glazer Project. That'll jump right off the marquees.

The Wikipedia page for the movie is only a placeholder, and the IMDB page has little more than that, nary even a star attached, and only "Plot unknown" to describe anything about the movie. It does tell us that Glazer is both writer and director.

"Plot unknown" could be the description of these directors' films even after they've been released, and that's why I love them. I don't love all abstract films that have lost their moorings from reality, but I love the films of Shane Carruth and Jonathan Glazer -- after they got their first misfire out of the way, anyway.

But to keep nourishing that love, it is I who will have to wait.