Primer is a 2004 film about four friends/fledgling entrepreneurs who, knowing that there's something bigger and more innovative than the different error-checking devices they've built, wrestle over their new invention, which appears to be able to distort time.

Written and directed by Shane Carruth.

If you always want what you can't have, what do you want when you can have anything?taglines

Aaron

• You're talking about making a bigger one.

• Are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon.

• I am trying, okay, I really am here.

• What's worse, thinking you're being paranoid or knowing you should be?

• That is no static shock.

• You know what they do with engineers when they turn 40? They take them out back and shoot them.

• [narrating; repeated line] They took from their surroundings and made it something more.

Abe

• Aaron, I can imagine no way in which this thing could be considered anywhere remotely close to safe. All I know is I spent six hours in there and I'm still alive... You still want to do it?

Dialogue

Kara: Did you call pest control?

Aaron: Babe, I'm telling you, they're birds. You don't want a bunch of dead baby birds up there. Do you?

Kara: They don't sound like birds.

Aaron: [to Abe] She thinks there are rats in the attic.

---

Abe: I just want you to see it the way I saw it.

Aaron: I am trying, okay, I really am here.

Abe: Look, everything we're putting into that box becomes ungrounded, and I don't mean grounded like to the earth, I mean, not tethered. I mean, we're blocking whatever keeps it moving forward and so they flip-flop. Inside the box it's like a street - both ends are cul-de-sacs. I mean, this isn't frame dragging or wormhole magic, this is basic mechanics and heat 101.

Aaron: This is not mechanics and heat.

---

Abe: [Notices Aaron's ear is bleeding] Whoa. You're bleeding.

[Takes handkerchief and places in on his ear]

Aaron: I got it.

[Holds it to his ear]

Aaron: Is this normal? This isn't normal.

Abe: For the machine?

Aaron: [Irritated] No, for people! What do you think, it's the machine?

[Abe looks as if to help]

Aaron: All right, I got it!

---

Abe: Do you have anything important going on at work today?

Aaron: I hope you're not implying that any day is unimportant at Cortex Semi.

---

Aaron: Do you feel like a steak?

[Abe gives him a bemused look]

Aaron: To eat?

Taglines

• If you always want what you can't have, what do you want when you can have anything?

• What happens if it actually works?

Cast

• Shane Carruth - Aaron
• David Sullivan (actor) - Abe
• Casey Gooden - Robert
• Anand Upadhyaya - Phillip
• Carrie Crawford - Kara