Roger Roberts Avary (Born 23 August 1965 Flin Flon, Manitoba, Canada).
- Met Tarantino back in 1987 while working at the Manhattan Beach Video Archives and quickly became writing partners scripting Open Road. Later on Avary was hired by director Tony Scott to doctor Tarantino’s original True Romance script, re-writing the ending. He also supplied the background radio dialogue for The Super Sounds Of The 70’s weekend in Reservoir Dogs.
- Avary is credited for stories in Pulp Fiction. He and Tarantino shared the Academy Award for Best Screenplay. It was after Tarantino produced Killing Zoe, Avary’s directorial debut in 1994 that Tarantino and Avary decided to go their separate ways.
- Avary’s own films include Killing Zoe and The Rules of Attraction.
- Roger co-wrote the screenplay for the Robert Zemeckis adventure film Beowulf (2007).
- Roger and Quentin re-teamed in 2022 for the Video Archives Podcast that Roger and his daughter Gala are producing.
The Open Road
The Open Road was an unfinished 80-page (some sources indicate 500 pages) script written back in 1987 by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary while working at the Manhattan Beach Video Archives. Eventually the script became the concept of both – or ended up being developed into – Natural Born Killers and True Romance.
Roger Avary described his vision of the script once: “An odd couple relationship between an uptight business man and an out-of-control hitch-hiker who travel into a Hellish mid-Western town together”.
