Barry Michael Avrich (/ˈeɪvrɪtʃ/AYV-ritch;[1] born May 9, 1963) is a Canadian film director, film producer, author, marketing executive, and arts philanthropist. Avrich's film career has included critically acclaimed films about the entertainment business including The Last Mogul about film producer Lew Wasserman (2005), Glitter Palace about the Motion Picture Country Home (2005), and Guilty Pleasure about the Vanity Fair columnist and author Dominick Dunne (2004). In addition, Avrich produced the Gemini-nominated television special Caesar and Cleopatra (2009) with Christopher Plummer. Avrich also produced Canada's Sports Hall of Fame Awards (2015) as well as the Canadian Screen Awards (2015-2017) and The Scotiabank Giller Prize (2015-Current).
Avrich was born into a Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec, the son of Irving Avrich, a garment industry executive, and Faye Avrich, a housewife.[2] His parents immersed him in the arts as a child. In school, Avrich produced talent shows and started experimenting with films. While attending Vanier College, he gravitated to the film program and while there, he produced many films. In 1980, he moved to Toronto where he continued to study film, art and theatre at both Ryerson Polytechnical Institute and the University of Toronto. While in school, Avrich started Rent-A-Fan Club, a company that offered "celebrity status" to people as a novelty by using his fellow acting students to create fan clubs. Soon after graduating, Avrich made two short films that would get him noticed: The King of Yorkville (1985) was a satirical parody of the 1980s dating scene that was picked up by local television stations in Canada, and The Madness of Method (1995), featuring M. Emmet Walsh, won a Gold Medal at the Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Films.[citation needed]
In 2017, Avrich announced plans for a docuseries on American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein; however, he decided to scrap the project after Epstein's suicide in August, 2019, claiming the topic to be "too distasteful".[3] In 2018, Avrich directed and produced The Reckoning, the first "#metoo documentary on Harvey Weinstein, which premiered at Hot Docs Film Festival and was sold to CBC and Hulu. In 2018, Avrich produced and directed an acclaimed and award-winning documentary, Prosecuting Evil, on Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz, which was sold to Netflix. In 2019, Avrich directed and produced Off The Record, a biography of Grammy award-winning producer and composer David Foster, for Crave and Netflix, which premiered at TIFF. In 2020, Avrich produced Made You Look, a documentary about the infamous Knoedler Gallery art fraud scandal which was sold to Netflix.[4]
In 2021, Avrich directed and produced Oscar Peterson: Black + White, a docu-concert on jazz icon Oscar Peterson that had its world premiere at TIFF on September 12, 2021. In 2022, Avrich began production on three new documentaries: Without Precedent (on Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella), Sacrilege (narrated by Brian Cox), and The Palm Beach Diaries.
The Last Mogul (2005) is probably Avrich's best known film to date. The Variety critic Robert Koehler said of the documentary about Lew Wasserman that it "draws a full and balanced measure of the man, from his stratospheric rise to a remarkably humbling fall, and includes as thorough a study of the super-agent-turned-mogul's shady ties with organized crime as any feature docu could hope to muster."[5]
Awards and Controversy
In April 2022, Avrich received a Canadian Screen Award for Best Documentary Program for Oscar Peterson: Black + White. When called up to the mic to make an acceptance speech, his remarks ended with the following statement: "There are so many Black stories in Canada that need to be told. It doesn't matter who tells them, we just need to tell 'em." At least 11 Canadian film-sector organizations issued prompt statements condemning these remarks,[6] including the Black Screen Office, whose statement called out Avrich's "supreme disrespect of our history" that "cleverly weaponizes the non-Black community";[7]Reelworld Film Festival, whose statement called out Avrich's words as "reflective of a past system that we are working to change"; and, without naming Avrich, the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television that is responsible for the Canadian Screen Awards.[8] Avrich's statement the next day said that he had "misspoke" and that "[o]f course, it matters who tells stories."[9]
Business
Avrich began a marketing career in 1985 at Borden Advertising where he worked on national campaigns for the Canadian original production of Les Misérables and Miss Saigon. In 1989, Avrich joined Echo Advertising where he became partner and eventually CEO. While at Echo, Avrich and his staff developed award-winning international campaigns for such clients such as the Toronto International Film Festival, the Rolling Stones, American Express, Sprint and for Broadway productions such as Ragtime, Show Boat, Fosse,Kiss of the Spider Woman and Canadian productions of The Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Les Misérables. Avrich left Echo in 2005 after it was sold to a UK-based marketing firm and he started a boutique advertising agency.
Filmography
The King of Yorkville, 1987
The Madness of Method, 1996
Unforgettable: 100 years Remembered, 1998
Glitter Palace, 2002
Guilty Pleasure, 2002
A Criminal Mind, 2005
Satisfaction, 2006
City Lights, 2002
The Madness of King Richard, 2003
The Last Mogul, 2005
One x One Gala, 2007
Bowfire, 2008
Citizen Cohl, 2008
The Ultimate Jew, 2009
Caesar and Cleopatra, 2009
Amerika Idol, 2009
Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Story, 2010
The Tempest, 2010
An Unlikely Obsession: Churchill and the Jews, 2011
Show Stopper: The Theatrical Life of Garth Drabinsky, 2012
