Made on a Mac: Roger Avary
“I designed ‘Rules’ to be a culture bomb.”
By Joe Cellini

Roger Avary The three hats worn by writer/director/producer Roger Avary while filming his new movie, “The Rules of Attraction,” made him highly accountable, creatively and fiscally — to himself.

Enter Final Cut Pro and Cinema Tools, applications that smoothed the delivery of a movie that matched Writer/Director Avary’s vision while meeting Producer Avary’s form-fitting budget. The QuickTime-based architecture of Final Cut and Cinema Tools allowed Avary and editor Sharon Rutter to shuttle freely between film and DV while shooting and editing to achieve complex effects, including rewinds and split-screen, required by a uniquely non-linear script. These capabilities, according to Avary, “worked like lightning and saved hours a day.”

And with a full editing suite in his home, on a Power Mac G4, Avary could edit any time, while pulling on another hat to watch his kids. “If I have an idea at 3:00 a.m, I can edit it a 3:03 a.m.,” says Avary. Leaving plenty of time to take a meeting with, say, his writer, director or producer.

The Critics Think Twice
Once was not enough for notable — and notably decisive — film critic Roger Ebert. After leaving a screening of Roger Avary’s just-released “The Rules of Attraction,” unhappy with the film’s subject, he had second thoughts, which provoked a second look and a revised opinion. Ebert still disliked the subject matter but confessed that these feelings may have steamed his glasses to the point that he missed the film’s skillful and appropriate technique.

“The movie is actually very funny, very light and highly moral.” The image of Ebert’s notorious thumb diving south, twitching, then coming closer to level says much for Ebert’s integrity as a critic and even more about Avary’s effectiveness as a filmmaker, a visceral approach that finds its way into the heads and hearts of viewers, through the gut.

Although Avary dislikes negative reviews as much as any director, he knows that with “Rules” he has at least achieved one of his creative goals. “You can’t really hate something that doesn’t affect you. And what bothered some people about this movie is that it works so well. And what they’re arguing with is not the movie itself, but what they felt. The movie is social criticism, a condemnation of the luxurious debauchery of the ruling class. It’s designed to upset people.”

For the record, Avary makes the thematic case for the film that some audiences, expecting a typical teen movie, missed. “I designed this movie to be a culture bomb, to land in culture and to have repercussions, an explosion that will ripple outward. What people sometimes miss is that although the script was extremely tough and violent and dark, the movie is actually very funny, very light and highly moral. It’s not an amoral experience. It’s not even nihilistic, although it has nihilism in it. At the end of the day, it’s all made to push an extremely moral point of view.”

Continued: Avary’s work on “Killing Zoe” and “Pulp Fiction” established his reputation
Pro/Film

“The Rules of Attraction”
1. Culture Bomb
2. Method and Madness
3. Deep Edits


Tools of the Trade
Power Mac G4
Cinema Display
Mac OS X
Final Cut Pro
Cinema Tools
QuickTime



Changing the Industry
Avary see the technical advantages he enjoyed on his project changing filmmaking forever, for him and for the industry.

“There is a revolution on the horizon. It won’t be long before small-form progressive scan cameras will be available. You’ll be able to shoot essentially with a handy cam the level of quality a Hollywood film today has. That will create a revolution on par with the French New Wave, when suddenly film cameras became light enough that you could take them out of the studio and you could go out into the streets and shoot on location. The minute you can go down to Best Buy or wherever and buy a $2,000 [USD] digital camera and a system like Final Cut Pro, maybe 4.0, suddenly some 14-year-old in the centre of the country will have the exact same tools that Hollywood has. And that’s when you’re going to see a real revolution in filmmaking.”



Useful Links
“The Rules of Attraction” official site
“The Rules of Attraction” trailer
Coming “Attraction”