Roger Avary is one of America's most popular cult film-makers, co-writing Pulp Fiction, producing the film Killing Zoe and, in 2002, unleashing The Rules Of Attraction.
Born Franklin Brauner on the 23rd of August 1965, Avary was originally from Flin Flon, Manitoba, Canada. His father's job as a mining engineer meant a great deal of moving around, though he grew up mainly in Los Angeles, where he broke into the movie business making student films. It is possible that winning the Los Angeles Student Film Expo at the age of sixteen shaped his future career; he moved onto study film at the Art Centre College for Design, editing a number of straight-to-video titles for Empire Entertainment at the same time. Other spare time was taken up with the TV show Cops. After graduating, Avary focused on television commercials for some time, working with the agency D'arcy Masius Benton And Bowles.
It was whilst working that the Video Archive in Manhattan Beach, California, however, that Avery met his future collaborator, Quentin Tarantino. Both were working as clerks at the time, and in 1992 the background dialogue and logo for Tarantino's masterpiece Pulp Fiction flowed from Avery's pen.
Avery's own directorial debut took place in 1994 with the film Killing Zoe, a genre-driven violent crime film that deals with an ill-planned bank heist. Quirky, and described as nihilistic by several critics, the film was typical of Avary's style. The script of his second film, Pandemonium Reigns, had provided the basis for Pulp Fiction but was quickly followed by the sci-fi film Mr Stitch in 1996. Originally to be the pilot for a TV series, the film starred Rutger Hauer in a tale of cobbled-together body parts and split personalities. It was released directly to video.
Around six years later, Avary returned to the public eye as writer and director of The Rules of Attraction, an adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel starring James Van Der Beek. | 
