Interview by Paul Salfen, Text by Christine Thompson for AMFM Magazine
When Oscar-winning screenwriter Roger Avary steps onto the stage at the historic Texas Theatre this Sunday for a special screening of Pulp Fiction, it won’t just be another career retrospective. It will be a full-circle moment for the man who co-wrote one of the most influential films of the last thirty years—and the first time he has ever hosted a public screening and Q&A for the movie that changed everything.
Avary, who shared the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with Quentin Tarantino for the 1994 masterpiece, is in Dallas as both guest of honor and jury member for the Oak Cliff Film Festival. The August 2 screening of Pulp Fiction (4:15 p.m. at The Texas Theatre) marks a personal milestone. “I’ve never hosted myself screening of Pulp Fiction, and I’ve never done a Q&A for it,” he told AMFM Magazine’s Paul Salfen. “I’ve just always shied away from it. So this is kind of like a great first for me.”
The appearance is also the latest chapter in Avary’s deepening relationship with Texas. After years of shooting almost exclusively in Los Angeles—even when stories were set in France or New England—he has “planted a flag” in Dallas. The catalyst was his daughter Gala, who produces his films and the Video Archives podcast he co-hosts with Tarantino. She had been meeting with the Texas Film Commission about the state’s new film incentives and urged her father to look beyond Austin.
What he found surprised him. “The first thing I recognized was… the light here. It completely reminds me of not just the light in Los Angeles, but the quality of the light is excellent,” Avary said. “It reminds me of Los Angeles in the 90s. Everybody’s film friendly… The commission is really helpful. You can go into locations and people are willing to let you take their location and shoot there. It’s popping here.”
Avary first fell for the city last year when the Texas Theatre invited him to present new transfers of his directorial features Killing Zoe (1993) and The Rules of Attraction (2002). The experience sealed the deal. “Those guys are just the best guys… That theater is a great theater. You just feel the love of cinema.”
Looking back on Pulp Fiction, Avary still speaks with the mixture of pride and mild disbelief that comes from having lived through a cultural earthquake. At the time, he was already in production on Killing Zoe and viewed the Tarantino collaboration as another ambitious indie. “I just accepted that this was just another indie movie,” he recalled. The game-changer was Bruce Willis signing on to play boxer Butch Coolidge—a role Avary had originally written with Matt Dillon in mind. “When Bruce Willis came aboard… I was like, ‘Bruce Willis is a global phenomenon.’ But it didn’t unbalance everything at all. In fact, it balanced the movie.”
For the young filmmakers he has been mentoring during the festival, Avary offers a deceptively simple formula he calls the Three P’s: Passion, Positive Visualization, and Persistence. “Passion is king,” he said. “You have to remind people of why we’re all in this business—because we love movies.” Positive visualization means seeing the finished film in the catcher’s mitt before you throw the ball. And persistence? “There’s plenty of talentless people making really good livings in Hollywood… because it’s not talent that rules, it’s persistence.”
That same mindset is driving Avary’s current projects. He and Gala recently launched Pulp Time (PulpTime.com), a streaming platform built around live watch parties and audio commentaries of both classic and new independent films. He is also fully embracing AI filmmaking, currently in production on an ambitious adaptation of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. “Unlike some filmmakers who are afraid of it, I’ve gone fully towards AI filmmaking,” he said. The technology allows him to create “an auteur-driven film that is a big canvas movie” without the traditional studio gatekeeping that once made such epics nearly impossible.
As he prepares for Sunday’s sold-out event, Avary remains grounded by the people closest to him—his daughter Gala and his wife, who is not in the industry. After the whirlwind of awards and attention that followed Pulp Fiction, it was family that kept him centered. “There is no greater element in life than family to keep you centered.”
For Dallas audiences, Sunday’s screening offers a rare chance to hear one of the architects of modern independent cinema reflect on the film that rewrote the rules—while standing in a city he now considers home. Tickets and details are available at thetexastheatre.com.
