Incarcerated “Pulp Fiction” Screenwriter Tweeting from Behind Bars
Posted: Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Los Angeles, CA—An Oscar-winning screenwriter who is currently serving time in jail for vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated appears to be sending “tweets,” or messages on the popular social networking platform Twitter, from behind bars.
The inmate whose tweets are gaining a following among the Twitterati – and attention from law enforcement officials – is thought to be Roger Avary, who co-wrote the popular movie Pulp Fiction with Quentin Tarantino. The posts on Twitter began around September 26, which is when Avary began serving a year-long sentence at the Ventura County Jail in California.
According to police, Avary had been driving more than 100mph on a January night in 2008, in Ojai, when his car hit a telephone pole. His passenger, Andres Zini, 34, an Italian who was honeymooning with his wife, was killed. Avary’s wife, Gretchen, was injured when she was ejected from the vehicle. Avary pleaded guilty to a charge of gross vehicular manslaughter and was sentenced to one year in jail.
Tweets are brief, 140-character messages which are transmitted via the Internet. The Twitter feed of a user named @Avary describes life in jail, from the monotony to the lack of privacy and rest he receives at night. There has been some speculation that the tweets are originating from an imposter, but the account is linked to Avary’s personal website, and many friends, including writer Neil Gaiman, who worked with Avary on the film Beowulf, have confirmed that the tweets are authentic.
Under California law, inmates are prohibited from accessing the Internet while in state custody. Avary, however, is part of a furlough program, in which he may leave jail in order to work during the week, but must spend his nights and weekends incarcerated. This may have explained previous tweets, but the screenwriter was recently transferred from the work-release program back into regular confinement. Several days later, a post appeared on the Twitter feed saying that Avary was “’rolled up’ to a higher security facility for exercising his first amendment rights. The truth he has discovered is too dangerous.” By Monday, that post appeared to have been deleted.
Another explanation as to why the tweets are still appearing on @Avary’s account is that he is conveying them to a friend on the outside via letters or telephone calls, which authorities say is within the bounds of acceptable inmate behavior.
Twitter accounts can gain “followers” — people who subscribe to the feed of posts – and as of late last week, the account believed to be Roger Avary’s had garnered over 13,000 followers.
Bookmark This Article:
| del.icio.us: 
|
Digg: |
Technorati:
|
Newsvine: 
|
Reddit: 
|
Furl: 
|
|
| Stumble Upon: 
|
Yahoo!: |
Google:
|