Roger Avary | |
|---|---|
 Avary in 2012 | |
| Born | Roger Roberts Avary August 23, 1965 |
| Nationality | Canadian American[1] |
| Occupation(s) | Director, screenwriter, producer |
| Years active | 1992–present |
Roger Roberts Avary[1] (born August 23, 1965) is a Canadian-American film, television director, screenwriter and producer. He worked with Quentin Tarantino on Pulp Fiction, for which they won Best Original Screenplay at the 67th Academy Awards. Avary directed Killing Zoe, The Rules of Attraction, Lucky Day, and wrote the screenplays for Silent Hill and Beowulf.[2]
Post Pulp Fiction, Avary had a falling out with Tarantino that lasted twenty years.[3] In 2022, Avary reunited with Quentin Tarantino to launch a podcast called The Video Archives Podcast.[4] The first episode premiered on July 19, 2022.[5]
In 1993 Avary made directed his feature film debut with Killing Zoe. The film follows an American safe-cracker (Eric Stoltz) who travels to Paris to aid a childhood friend (Jean-Hugues Anglade) with a bank heist. Along the way he meets and befriends a sex worker (Julie Delpy) whose fate becomes tied with the crime.[6] The film premiered at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival and went on to win the Grand Prize award at the 5th Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival. [7]
Avary and Quentin Tarantino worked on the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, for which they won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.[8] According to Tarantino, Avary originally came up with the plot of the boxer Butch Coolidge and his gold watch from a screenplay named Pandemonium Reigns he had written himself.[9]
In 1995 Avary wrote and directed the science fiction Mr. Stitch a film for the Syfy. Loosely a modern take on Frankenstein, the film features Wil Wheaton, Rutger Hauer, Nia Peeples, and Ron Perlman.[10]
After winning an Oscar for Pulp Fiction, Avary reached out to Don Coscarelli and expressed an interest in writing a Phantasm sequel.[11] Entitled Phantasm 1999, the film would have taken place in an apocalyptic future United States divided into three zones: Los Angeles, California; New York, New York; and the Plague Zone. The Plague Zone would be controlled by the Tall Man where he infects people with his "bag plague".[11] Reggie must lead a secret government operation, called the "S Squad", into the Plague Zone to defeat the Tall Man.[11]
Avary and Coscarelli spent years trying to get the film made and even had financing in place in 1997 before that company changed hands and the deal evaporated.[11] Eventually, Coscarelli made Phantasm IV without Avary, although as of 2022 Coscarelli still had interest in filming Avary's script, now entitled Phantasm’s End as 1999 has come and gone.[11]
In 2002, Avary directed the film adaptation for The Rules of Attraction, based on Bret Easton Ellis' novel, which he also executive produced.[12] The Rules of Attraction was the first studio film to be edited on Apple's Final Cut Pro editing system.[13] Avary became a spokesperson for Final Cut Pro product,[14] appearing in Apple print and web ads worldwide. In 2005, Avary, at the request of his friend, actor James Van Der Beek, played the part of a peyote-taking gonzo film director Franklin Brauner in the film Standing Still.[15]
The film Glitterati was finished in 2004 and stars Kip Pardue. It can never be released because of legal and ethical concerns.
In 2006, Avary wrote a screenplay adaptation to the Konami video game, Silent Hill (2006), with French director and friend, Christophe Gans, and Killing Zoe producer Samuel Hadida. Avary and Gans being long time gamers and fans of the Silent Hill series, collaborated on the film.[16]
Avary and novelist Neil Gaiman wrote the screenplay for the 2007 film Beowulf which was directed by Robert Zemeckis.[17]
In September 2017 Avary directed his own screenplay, Lucky Day, a semi-sequel of Killing Zoe.[18]
In 2021, Quentin Tarantino announced that he and Roger Avary would launch a podcast titled The Video Archives Podcast.[19] The point of the podcast is to discuss films from the actual Video Archives collection that they would recommend to customers when they worked there. The set is surrounded by actual VHS copies of films from Video Archives that Tarantino bought after the store went out of business. They are joined by podcast announcer, Gala Avary, Roger Avary's daughter. The first episode premiered on July 19, 2022.[5] The duo discussed John Carpenter's Dark Star (1974) and Ulli Lommel's Cocaine Cowboys (1979).
On January 13, 2008, Avary was arrested under suspicion of manslaughter and DUI, following a car crash in Ojai, California, where a passenger, Andreas Zini, was killed. The Ventura County Sheriff's department responded to the crash after midnight Sunday morning on the 1900 block of East Ojai Avenue. Avary was released from jail on $50,000 bail.[20] In December 2008, he was charged with, and pleaded not guilty to, gross vehicular manslaughter and two felony counts of causing bodily injury while intoxicated.[21] He changed his plea to guilty on August 18, 2009.[22] On September 29, 2009, he was sentenced to one year in work furlough (allowing him to go to his job during the day and then report back to the furlough facility at night) and five years of probation.[23] However, after making several tweets about the conditions of his stay on Twitter, Avary was sent to Ventura County Jail to serve out the remainder of his term.[24]
In a 2012 interview with IndieWire, Avary said, regarding the crash and incarceration, "Incarceration didn't change me," and after a long pause, "In many, many ways, incarceration galvanized me. The totality of the experience helped me." He went on to say, "I spend every waking moment thinking about how I can live my life in such a way to honor this terrible loss that occurred."[25]
In 2019, Avary said about the crash, "When something like that happens and an atom bomb sort of goes off in your life, it either blows you into pieces—if you allow it to—or you use the force of the blast to propel you forward."[26]
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1983 | The Worm Turns | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| The Boys | No | No | Yes | Also cinematographer |
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Executive Producer |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | Killing Zoe | Yes | Yes | No | Grand Prize at the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival |
| 1994 | Pulp Fiction | No | Story | No | Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay |
| 1995 | Mr. Stitch | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 2002 | The Rules of Attraction | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 2004 | Glitterati | Yes | Yes | No | Unreleased; Also producer, editor and cinematographer |
| 2006 | Silent Hill | No | Yes | No | |
| 2007 | Beowulf | No | Yes | Yes | |
| 2019 | Lucky Day | Yes | Yes | No |
Executive producer only
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Odd Jobs | Yes | Yes | Yes | TV pilot |
| 2012 | XIII: The Series | No | Yes | Executive | 13 episodes |
| Year | Title | Role |
|---|---|---|
| 1987 | Maximum Potential | Production assistant |
| 1987 | My Best Friend's Birthday | Lost film Cinematographer |
| 1992 | Reservoir Dogs | Writer of background radio dialogue[27] |
| 1993 | True Romance[27] | Uncredited writer[27] |
| 2006 | 36 Steps | Spiritual support |
