Shane Carruth's sophomore film Upstream Color debuted at this January's Sundance Film Festival to great reviews. Despite Carruth's success with Primer — his brainy sci-fi debut — making a second film was no easy task: Carruth effectively disappeared from the filmmaking scene for eight years as he struggled to finance a sprawling, two-part science fiction epic. The director ultimately stepped away from the project to make something more manageable, and to make it the way that he knew best, by keeping the production small and self-financed. Wired spent time with Carruth and describes the events that led to Upstream Color's release.