Quentin Tarantino reveals heroin-fuelled night out in Paris that inspired 1990s film

Tarantino collaborater Roger Avary wrote cult film ‘Killing Zoe’ after a night out in the French capital

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino and his friend, fellow director Roger Avary, have opened up about a drug-fuelled night in Paris which inspired one of the latter’s films.

The 61-year-old, who has recently shared criticism of films like Dune and Toy Story, recently appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, alongside Avary, who won an Oscar for his writing on Pulp Fiction, along with Tarantino.

Avary was one of several young contemporary filmmakers that made a splash in Hollywood in the early 1990s. Among his hits were teen comedy The Rules of Attraction in 2002 and crime thriller Killing Zoe from 1993.

Killing Zoe, starring Eric Stoltz and Julie Delpy, focuses on a bank heist in Paris which quickly spirals out of control.

According to Avary, the inception of the film was inspired by a raucous night out he had in the French capital while doing scouting work for Tarantino’s first film, Reservoir Dogs, which he wrote dialogue for.

“I had just been travelling through Europe,” explained Avary. “I had been telling Quentin the stories, and he said, ‘Oh, you should do a movie called ‘Roger Takes A Trip‘.”

Tarantino joked in response: “I still think it should’ve been called that”.

Once upon a time in southern France: Quentin Tarantino at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 (Getty Images)

Avary added: “I had been in Paris, I had bumped into a guy I knew who was from Los Angeles who was a French guy. He was like, ‘I’ll show you the real Paris’, and I went out with him and his friends – Henri, Jean, Claude, all of the characters from the movie.

“He drove me through Paris, and next thing I know, he’s doing heroin…He was like, ‘Now, we do heroin, hold my arm’. I did hold his arm, I had never seen anything like that…He was like, ‘Hold my arm while I shoot up.

“His friends were like, ‘Ohh, doing it through the nose doesn’t even affect me anymore’, and I’m like writing these lines down, like, ‘This is great s***!’.”

Avary continued: “And so I get back and I told Quentin about this whole story. Basically everything in that movie was stuff that I’d actually seen. So when the time came to make it as a bank robbery film, it just became a movie about a guy going some place and everything he thought he knew was wrong. You haven’t seen your friend in a while, you go see him, it’s all about that friendship and that misconception.”

Roger Avary (Getty Images)

Although the film is set in Paris, Avary actually shot it in Los Angeles on a modest budget of just $1.5m.

Killing Zoe received mixed reviews upon its premiere at the Raindance Film Market in October 1993 but has since obtained a cult status. It later won the 1994 Cannes Prix Tres Special award.