Roger Avary
Avary in 2012
Born	Roger Roberts Avary (1965-08-23) August 23, 1965 (age 56) Flin Flon, Manitoba, Canada[1]
Nationality	Canadian American[1]
Occupation	Director, screenwriter, producer
Years active	1992–present

Roger Roberts Avary^[1] (born August 23, 1965) is a Canadian-American film and television director, screenwriter, and producer. He collaborated 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]

Career

Pulp Fiction

Avary & Quentin Tarantino collaborated on the 1994 film Pulp Fiction for which they won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.^{[citation needed]} According to Tarantino, Avary originally came up with the plot of the boxer Butch Coolidge and his gold watch from a screenplay he had written himself.^{[citation needed]}

The Rules of Attraction

In 2002, Avary directed The Rules of Attraction, from his adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel, which he also executive produced.^[3]

The Rules of Attraction was the first studio film to be edited on Apple's Final Cut Pro editing system.^[4] Avary became a spokesperson for Final Cut Pro product,^[5] 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.^[6]

Silent Hill

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.^[7]

Beowulf

Avary and novelist Neil Gaiman wrote the screenplay for the 2007 film Beowulf which was directed by Robert Zemeckis.^[8]

Lucky Day

In September 2017 Avary directed his own screenplay, Lucky Day, a semi-sequel of Killing Zoe.^[9]

Manslaughter charge

On January 13, 2008, Avary was arrested under suspicion of manslaughter and DUI, following a car crash in Ojai, California, where a passenger, Andrea 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.^[10] 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.^[11] 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.^[12] 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.^[13]

Filmography

Film

Television

Short films

Other credits