Roger Avary
Avary in 2012
Born	Roger Roberts Avary (1965-08-23)August 23, 1965 (age 60) Flin Flon,Manitoba, Canada[1]
Nationality	Canadian American[1]
Occupation(s)	Director, screenwriter, producer
Years active	1983–present

Roger Roberts Avary^[1] (born August 23, 1965) is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known for his work withQuentin Tarantino on the script forPulp Fiction (1994), for which they wonBest Original Screenplay at the67th Academy Awards. Avary has also directed films such asKilling Zoe (1993) andThe Rules of Attraction (2002), and wrote the screenplays forSilent Hill (2006) andBeowulf (2007).^[2]

In 2022, Avary reunited with Tarantino to launch a podcast calledTheVideo Archives Podcast.^[3] The first episode premiered on July 19, 2022.^[4]

Roger Roberts Avary was born inFlin Flon,Manitoba, in Canada on August 23, 1965, to a Brazilian-raised father, who worked as a mining engineer, and a German mother, who worked as a physical therapist. They later moved toOracle,Arizona, and laterTorrance,California, before settling inManhattan Beach.^{[1][additional citation(s) needed]}

In 1993 Avary directed his feature film debut withKilling 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.^[5] 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.^[6]

Avary andQuentin Tarantino worked on the 1994 filmPulp Fiction, for which they won theAcademy Award for Best Original Screenplay.^[7] According to Tarantino, Avary originally came up with the plot of the boxer Butch Coolidge and his gold watch from a screenplay namedPandemonium Reigns, which Avary had written himself.^[8]

In 1995 Avary wrote and directed the science fiction filmMr. Stitch forSyfy, then The Sci-Fi Channel. Loosely a modern take on Frankenstein, the film featuresWil Wheaton,Rutger Hauer,Nia Peeples, andRon Perlman.^[9]

In 2002, Avary directed the film adaptation forThe Rules of Attraction, based onBret Easton Ellis'novel, which he also executive produced.^[10]The Rules of Attraction was the first studio film to be edited on Apple'sFinal Cut Pro editing system.^[11] Avary became a spokesperson forFinal Cut Pro product,^[12] appearing in Apple print and web ads worldwide. In 2005, Avary, at the request of his friend, actorJames Van Der Beek, played the part of apeyote-taking gonzo film director Franklin Brauner in the filmStanding Still.^[13] The filmGlitterati 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 theKonami video game,Silent Hill (2006), with French director and friend,Christophe Gans, andKilling Zoe producer Samuel Hadida. Avary and Gans being long time gamers and fans of theSilent Hill series, collaborated on the film.^[14] Avary and novelistNeil Gaiman wrote the screenplay for the 2007 filmBeowulf which was directed byRobert Zemeckis.^[15]

In September 2017 Avary directed his own screenplay,Lucky Day, a semi-sequel ofKilling Zoe.^[16] In 2018 he shot an adaptation ofJean Cocteau's playLa voix humaine that remains unreleased.

AfterPulp Fiction, Avary had a falling-out with Tarantino that lasted nearly twenty-five years.^[17] The two rekindled their friendship after Tarantino heard Avary being interviewed on a 2019 episode ofBret Easton Ellis's podcast. In 2021, Quentin Tarantino announced that he and Avary would launch a podcast titledThe Video Archives Podcast.^[18] The point of the podcast is to discuss films from the actualVideo Archives collection that they would recommend to customers when they worked there. The set is surrounded by actualVHS 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.^[4] The duo discussedJohn Carpenter'sDark Star (1974) andUlli Lommel'sCocaine Cowboys (1979).

After winning an Oscar forPulp Fiction, he was originally attached to direct an adaptation ofNeil Gaiman's comic bookThe Sandman, which merged the "Preludes and Nocturnes" storyline with that of "The Doll's House". Avary was fired after disagreements over the creative direction with executive producerJon Peters. It was due to their meeting on theSandman film project that Avary and Gaiman collaborated on the script forBeowulf.^[19] Avary had originally intended upon directing his script ofBeowulf himself as alive action film, to be shot inIceland with a $10 million budget. "I wanted it to be like an earlyTerry Gilliam film, likeJabberwocky," he said. The film was ultimately directed byRobert Zemeckis and instead produced usingmotion capture technology.^[20]

In the late 1990s, Avary reached out toDon Coscarelli and expressed an interest in writing aPhantasm sequel.^[21] 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 theTall Man where he infects people with his "bag plague".^[21]Reggie must lead a secret government operation, called the "S Squad", into the Plague Zone to defeat the Tall Man.^[21] 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.^[21] Eventually, Coscarelli madePhantasm IV without Avary, although as of 2022 Coscarelli still had interest in filming Avary's script, now entitledPhantasm’s End as 1999 has come and gone.^[21]

Through the 90s and early 2000s Avary attempted to direct a film based on the life ofSalvador Dalí that hadAl Pacino attached to star as the painter at one stage, but the project fell apart and never came to fruition.^[22]

AfterThe Rules of Attraction andGlitterati, Avary had intentions to film his screenplay ofBret Easton Ellis's 1998 novelGlamorama.^[23]Kip Pardue was attached to reprise his role as Victor Ward. The project never moved beyond the pre-production stage. When asked about the film's status in a 2010 interview, Ellis said: "I think the days of being able to make that movie are over."^[24] However, the following year Ellis confirmed that Avary was planning to shoot the feature in 2012.^[25]

In 2006, French directorAlexandre Aja was set to direct a feature film adaptation of theBlack Hole comics, withNeil Gaiman and Avary attached to adapt the screenplay.^[26] By 2008, it was reported byMTV that Gaiman and Avary had left the production and that their script would not be used forDavid Fincher's planned version,^[27] which was ultimately not produced. He was also attached to write and direct aCastle Wolfenstein film adaptation both in 2007 and 2012.^[28]

While in prison, Avary came across an "oldPenguin paperback" on abook cart of aRobin Hood story written byE. Charles Vivian and decided to adapt the material, sending the pages he wrote to his lawyer to have his daughter type up into a script. "I was crying when I wrote it," Avary noted. "When you're writing like that and you're feeling that much, it's not a bad thing."^[20]

Following his prison sentence, Avary had worked on adaptingPaul Verhoeven's bookJesus of Nazareth for Verhoeven to direct, oversaw rewrites on the screenplay for a plannedDuncan Jones-directed biopic onJames Bond creatorIan Fleming, and additionally had plans to adapt the earlyWilliam Faulkner novelSanctuary.^[29] Also in 2012, Avary was planning to reteam with authorBret Easton Ellis to direct an adaptation of his novelLunar Park, with financing fromWild Bunch.^[29] Ellis himself took toTwitter in 2011, praising Avary's script as "great" and saying he "hopes he makes it."^[30] Also according to Ellis, Avary planned to shoot the project in September 2012, and hinted aboutAaron Eckhart's potential involvement.^[31]

At some point afterJohn Milius' stroke, Avary, along with his daughter Gala, worked with Milius to retool his unproduced feature script onGenghis Khan in the form of alimited-run series.^[20] As of 2018, Avary was slated to directUnwind, co-written with his daughter Gala and based on thedystopian novel of the same name.^[32] Avary has also written an as-yet unproduced script based onThe Devil Soldier byCaleb Carr, which was in development withAntoine Fuqua directing andMark Burman producing.^[33]

On January 13, 2008, Avary was arrested under suspicion ofmanslaughter andDUI, following a car crash inOjai, California, in which his 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.^[34] 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.^[35] He changed his plea to guilty on August 18, 2009.^[36] 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.^[37] However, after making severaltweets about the conditions of his stay onTwitter, Avary was sent to Ventura County Jail to serve out the remainder of his term.^[38]

Unreleased film

Wikimedia Commons has media related toRoger Avary.

• Official website
• Roger Avary atIMDb
• Roger Avary talks to Edge Magazine about Silent Hill
• Roger Avary Interview on Suicide Girls
• Webwombat.com Interview
• Screen-It deconstructs the sex, drugs, and violence in The Rules of Attraction
• JoBlo.com Interview on Silent Hill

• 1965 births
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