Guardian Debut - ish: Clip Joint - Dead Pan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/oct/28/clip-joint-deadpan

Screenwriter Roger Avary's Tweets from jail are gut-wrenching, tragic and blackly ironic.

http://twitter.com/AVARY

Roger Avary, the co-writer of Pulp Fiction and Beowulf and director of Killing Zoe and The Rules of Attraction, currently finds himself spending a year doing bird following his conviction for manslaughter and driving under the influence in California during January of 2008. In September this year he was sentenced to a year in prison and 5 years probation. On September 26th, as befits his current cage, he apparently began to Tweet from within.

'FADE IN:3:36 PM Sep 26th from web'

His Tweets so far are both chilling and compelling but also unavoidably cinematic. They veer in style and form from script-like instructions, to scene-setters to darkly astute observations of prison detail. Somehow they manage to convey an eerie atmosphere of paranoia, sexual predation, repetition and tragedy.

'Long scratched into the black locker are two conjunctive words, never more true: "TIME" and underneath it "FUCK". It has become a mantra.about 24 hours ago from web'


'The loudspeaker in each cell blurts out commands ("Number 34 report to Control!") and is able to listen in on inmate conversations.6:22 PM Oct 31st from Twitterrific'


Avary was convicted for driving under the influence, causing two counts of bodily injury (including to his wife) and, worse, the manslaughter of Italian passenger and friend Andreas Zini. It is difficult to imagine the terrible fug of guilt and remorse which must cloud Avary's mind, yet bizarrely, as is symptomatic of our age, Twitter appears to offer something of a cathartic outlet for him and gives us insight into what he must be contemplating and how he is adapting to his stark, new surroundings.

'Night falls, and the only real activity is an endless recounting of the terrible and pointless events that brought us all to this sad place.12:38 AM Nov 3rd from web.'

His is now a career in freefall, facing the abyss of ignominy, it is a huge decline from what was, and probably still could be, a faily stellar career, wrecked by a moment of callous stupidity.

Now away from the gall and glamour of Hollywood, Avary has become like a character in a Bret Easton Ellis novel, which he once used for his own cinematic ends. He is like those characters whose capacity for narcissistic consumption only death-drives to inevitable tragedy. Fiercely intelligent though they are, the characters disarmingly acquiesce to the lures of narcotized daze. Is he aware of this terrible irony? The black tone of some of the posts seems to indicate the affirmative; they can be bleak, absurd but they can also be funny.

'The breakfast oatmeal comes in large sacks with a picture of a horse on them and labeled "Not intended for human consumption."4:52 PM Nov 2nd from web'

The strange confinement for expression that the Twitter 140 character framework provides actually neatly encapsulates the restrictive lines and bars which now surround Avary, yet the thoughts he chooses to share tell a thousand stories. The picture Avary paints in the mind's eye of his surrounds is of a tenebrous, looming, severe place, the neo-con nightmare for the West Coast liberal screen-writer where Fox news plays on repeat. There is also an acute sense of a kind of Ballardian boredom, a living death in a placed automated by remote means. Twitter's format in this context, diligently providing the exact time and date of the posts, casts the excruciating waiting and nothingness of prison time into new light. Or new darkness.

'The building is an imposing example of the Brutalist architectural movement. The windows are designed so as to not let too much light in.8:06 PM Oct 29th from web '

'The channels on the Rec Room television cannot be changed, and it's inexplicably always tuned to Fox.7:19 PM Oct 30th from web.'

Twitter is a way for Avary to diarise - a new, skeletal framework for the flawed celebrity memoir, like that of Easton Ellis' Lunar Park. Of course, the access his followers have and his ability to communicate via this medium raises all kinds of ethical questions. Should he be permitted this outlet at all given his conviction? It may not last long but for the time being these Tweets provide a fascinating but unnerving insight into the long, dark night of one man's soul.