Roger Avary

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.[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 and Quentin Tarantino worked on the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, for which they won the Academy 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 named Pandemonium Reigns he had written himself.[8]

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.[9]

After winning an Oscar for Pulp Fiction, Avary reached out to Don Coscarelli and expressed an interest in writing a Phantasm sequel.[10] 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".[10] Reggie must lead a secret government operation, called the "S Squad", into the Plague Zone to defeat the Tall Man.[10]

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.[10] 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.[10]

In 2002, Avary directed the film adaptation for The Rules of Attraction, based on Bret Easton Ellis' novel, which he also executive produced.[11] The Rules of Attraction was the first studio film to be edited on Apple's Final Cut Pro editing system.[12] Avary became a spokesperson for Final Cut Pro product,[13] 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.[14]

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.[15]

Avary and novelist Neil Gaiman wrote the screenplay for the 2007 film Beowulf which was directed by Robert Zemeckis.[16]

In September 2017 Avary directed his own screenplay, Lucky Day, a semi-sequel of Killing Zoe.[17]

In 2021, Quentin Tarantino announced that he and Roger Avary would launch a podcast titled The Video Archives Podcast.[18] 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.[4] The duo discussed John Carpenter's Dark Star (1974) and Ulli Lommel's Cocaine Cowboys (1979).