Tony Clams Produces Primer

In 2001, Tony (Anthony) Clams, who was working as a police officer in Los Angeles County, pulled over then engineer Shane Carruth on his way home from work. Carruth was one of the thirty people Clams would pull over that day in what Clams would later describe as, "[...] My one-man war against the Zodiac Killer", which would later end in a shootout with the Good Year Blimp and Clams's subsequent firing.

Clams would question Carruth extensively before confirming his innocence regarding the five murders accredited to the Zodiac killer between 1961 - 1979. Carruth describes the encounter as tense, claiming in a 2005 press junket for Primer that, "[Clams] had his guns drawn and pointed at me the entire time. He never asked to see my license or registration or anything, he was just leaning through the drivers side window, lackadaisically pointing his guns at me, one in each hand. Even after he knew I wasn't the Zodiac Killer, and we were just talking friendly, he kept pointing both guns at me". Carruth would cite this encounter, along with Clams's subsequent explanation of his plan to catch the infamous killer, as his inspiration for the 2002 indie sci-fi film Primer, which follows two tech entrepreneurs who inadvertently discover time travel. Carruth would elaborate on this in a 2006 interview with GQ magazine, stating, " [Officer Clams] just kept going and going with his plan to catch the Zodiac. He kept using all this terminology, this science terminology that I didn't really understand. And if I tried to get him to clarify anything, he would just fire a bunch of shots into the air and call for backup, which really through me off. It was really surreal, honestly, to just listen to this explanation. Every time I thought I knew where it was going, he would introduce something that would change the entire plot and throw me off. It almost felt like he was bragging about how smart he was, rather than actually trying to catch a serial killer. I thought, 'what if someone made a movie like this?'".

Carruth claims he wrote the first draft of Primer later that night. " I basically just rewrote everything he said, but replaced Tony Clams with Abe and the Zodiac Killer with Aaron". Clams would go on to sue Carruth upon reading the final draft of Primer, citing the use of his intellectual property without permission and assault of a police officer. The lawsuit, sometimes referred to as 'Clams v. Primer', would dovetail into two year long legal battle that would end in Clams being awarded a producer credit for the film. Carruth would describe the case as, "the most stressful time in my life. We showed Primer to the jury and they all hated it. The case itself was actually pretty cut and dry, it was just that we had to spend so much time explaining the plot of Primer to everyone."

Clams, who on an unrelated had invented time travel shortly after first meeting Carruth, would go on to levy much criticism at the film, specifically the premise itself. Clams would claim that any attempt to prevent the Zodiac killings using the film's method of time travel would inadvertently result in the creation of the Zodiac Killer. For more on this, see Tony Clams Becomes the Zodiac Killer.