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The second instalment of the weekly 'Directors in Focus' feature takes a look at director and Oscar-winning writer Roger Avary who gave us cult films Killing Zoe (1994) and The Rules of Attraction (2002).
Roger Avary is a name that you are unlikely to hear on its own. It is a name that so often sits in the shadow of another name, a name that casts one of the biggest shadows in the film industry. Although it isn't exactly a bad thing to be so closely associated with Quentin Tarantino, I'm sure Avary would rather the association was not one which merely chronicled him as a mere influence to one of the most original contemporary directors in Hollywood, especially considering that Avary is a brilliant director in his own right. Avary, originally from Canada, moved to Manhattan Beach, California in the '80s where he worked alongside Tarantino as a clerk in the now famous store 'Video Archives'. He and Tarantino went on to be good friends and Avary has rewritten and helped to write many of Tarantino's scripts including True Romance (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994) and Pulp Fiction (1995) for which he and Tarantino shared the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Avary failed to be anywhere near as successful as Pulp Fiction with his Parisian crime flick Killing Zoe despite its success at numerous international film festivals. He has stayed in relative obscurity as a director ever since. However, as a writer Avary has managed to excel and his recent accomplishments Silent Hill (2006) and Beowulf (2007) earned him some further recognition and have helped him shake off his image as Tarantino's junior partner.
Avary is a director that despite being panned by tabloid critics - he has a rating of only 33% on Rotten Tomatoes - has a large cult following, and there is good reason for this. Avary is controversial. So are his films. Whether you are entertained or appalled there is no denying that Avary strikes a nerve. Rape scenes, murders, violence and the like are inherent to most of his stories - but he pulls it off. It's only needless when it's supposed to be. And that's how it's supposed to be.
Avary has strangely had great difficulty in winning over film critics. He's directed four feature length films to date, all of which seem to have developed some or another kind of cult following. The biggest cult hit of Avary's is certainly his 2002 movie The Rules of Attraction which is an adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis novel of the same name. Ellis loved Avary's variation, commenting that Avary very closely captured what he was trying to put across in his books, and went on to sell him the rights to another one of his novels: Glamorama. You will probably be shocked by The Rules of Attraction which tells the tale of a group of American students at a fictional New England university. Its main theme is the death of romance and you will have to work hard to find as much nihilism in another film. That said there are some fantastic moments in this film and as a whole it really is enchanting. I can't recommend it strongly enough.
As already mentioned Avary purchased the rights for Glamorama but has yet to produce a script and it seems unlikely that he will in the near future. Avary is currently in jail for manslaughter after an incident involving him driving dangerously. He was originally sentenced to one year's prison sentence, whilst being let out in the day to continue his job, however after some 'tweets' regarding his time spent in jail his punishment was revised and he was ordered to serve the remainder of his sentence in full-time custody. The prospect of future films is therefore postponed. Avary has been attached to writing and directing a film version of the video game Return to Castle Wolfenstein; we know that Avary will be released this year, but a release date for the film has yet to be announced.
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