Roger Avary

Oscar-winning screenwriter Roger Avary was trying to revive his wife in the middle of the road when a witness came upon his smashed-up car on a rural state highway near Ojai. "He was yelling, 'Don't die, Gretchen! Don't die!,' " said former Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, one of the first witnesses on the scene after the single-car crash early Sunday that left one man dead and Avary's wife, Gretchen, seriously injured.

Prosecutors charged Oscar-winning screenwriter Roger Avary with gross vehicular manslaughter on Friday, alleging that the author of such hits as "Pulp Fiction" and last year's "Beowulf" was driving drunk when he killed a passenger and injured his wife in a rural Ojai car crash. Avary, 43, pleaded not guilty in a Ventura courthouse to manslaughter and other charges connected to the Jan. 13 single-car collision.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Roger Avary has been sentenced to a year in jail for causing a car crash that killed a passenger and injured Avary's wife in Ojai. The co-writer of hits such as "Pulp Fiction" and "Beowulf" pleaded guilty in August to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and other charges stemming from the Jan. 13, 2008, crash. Avary, 44, was at the wheel of a Mercedes sedan that was traveling at more than 100 mph when it crashed into a telephone pole, according to investigators.

If this were one of his screenplays, Roger Avary might have sent gun-packing, wisecracking thugs to settle his beef with Bill Gates. Instead, the Oscar-winning co-writer of "Pulp Fiction" is sending his lawyer. Avary on Monday sued Microsoft Corp., accusing the world's largest software company of stealing his idea for a genre-bending video game for Microsoft's Xbox console. "Yourself!