Roger Avary
Roger Avary is the Oscar-winning co-writer of Pulp Fiction who went from Tarantino's right-hand man to a convicted felon, and is now quietly staging a comeback.
Roger Avary: The Forgotten Architect of ’90s Cool
Roger Avary is a Canadian-American screenwriter and director best known for co-writing Pulp Fiction (1994) with Quentin Tarantino, work that earned him a shared Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He also directed Killing Zoe (1993) and The Rules of Attraction (2002), a cult adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel. Despite his early promise, his career stalled dramatically after a fatal 2008 car crash.
Avary first crossed paths with Tarantino while both worked at the legendary Video Archives store in Manhattan Beach, California, a now-mythologized film-nerd hub where the two famously traded ideas, stories, and screenplay concepts throughout the late 1980s. The creative exchange that began there eventually produced some of the most quoted dialogue in cinema history.
His directorial career was gaining steam in the early 2000s, with The Rules of Attraction earning genuine critical respect and Beowulf (2007, co-written with Neil Gaiman) reaching wide audiences. Then, in January 2008, Avary was driving drunk at high speed in California when he crashed, killing his passenger Andreas Zini. He was convicted of vehicular manslaughter and served time in prison, a catastrophe that effectively wiped out his Hollywood momentum.
Post-release, Avary has worked on long-gestating projects, most notably The Electric State, a sci-fi adaptation he developed for years. He remains a significant, if cautionary, figure in Hollywood history: proof that the most talented collaborators don’t always get the most famous names.