Roger Avary, Academy Award-winning screenwriter and director known for Pulp Fiction and Silent Hill, joins Joe Rogan for a wide-ranging conversation covering cinema history, conspiracy theories, and the nature of reality itself.

The discussion begins with classic Hollywood moments and Orson Welles' revolutionary filmmaking techniques in Citizen Kane, exploring how the film industry has evolved from the tactile experience of shooting on film to the digital age where executives watch color-corrected monitors in 'video village.'

Avary shares insights from his extensive film knowledge, discussing everything from Werner Herzog's My Best Fiend documentary about Klaus Kinski to the mathematical theories in Anatoly Fomenko's The New Chronology that challenge our understanding of historical timelines.

The conversation takes increasingly provocative turns, examining conspiracy theories around 9/11, the Epstein files, flat earth theories, and what Avary sees as a broader pattern of deception in modern society, while also celebrating emerging independent media like The Daily Wire's productions that operate outside traditional Hollywood systems.

Orson Welles and the Golden Age of Cinema Innovation

Citizen Kane showcased Welles' obsessive vision, including the famous opening tracking shot that required digging holes in studio concrete to achieve impossible low camera angles that other directors said were technically impossible

William Randolph Hearst allegedly destroyed Welles' career because Citizen Kane insulted him, with 'Rosebud' reportedly being Hearst's nickname for his girlfriend's clitoris - 'Word gets around' in Hollywood

Welles continued innovating with Touch of Evil's opening crane shot in 1958, using a massive Mitchell BNCR camera with soundproofing blimp that weighed hundreds of pounds compared to today's iPhone filming

Digital vs Film: The Death of Cinema Magic

Film captures light through glass exposing silver on acetate, while digital bounces light off sensors back through glass, creating inherently flatter images that require artificial lens flares for depth illusion

The transition eliminated the 'lightning in a bottle' moment where every frame cost money, forcing preparation and creating genuine performance pressure versus today's endless digital takes

Modern 'video village' allows executives to watch color-corrected monitors on set, destroying the intimate director-actor relationship that required standing next to the camera to judge performance

Netflix's white paper mandates specific story beats and pacing, following the rigid structure outlined in Syd Field's Screenplay book that studio executives now use as gospel for formulaic storytelling

Conspiracy Theories and Hidden History

The New Chronology by Anatoly Fomenko proposes that approximately 1,000 years were artificially added to historical timelines to justify Eurasian land claims, with Rome actually falling around 1600

Building 7's collapse on 9/11 'looks exactly like a controlled demolition' - falling at free-fall speed into its base rather than tipping sideways from structural fire damage

Jeffrey Epstein ordered 330 gallons of sulfuric acid in six 55-gallon drums immediately after his 2008 indictment - the first and only documented purchase of its kind for his island operations

Fight Club (1999) served as 'predictive programming' showing financial buildings collapsing, produced by self-described Mossad agent Arnon Milchan who also made films featuring planes crashing into buildings

Ancient Wisdom and Modern Deception

Ancient Hebrew gematria assigns numerical values to letters, where 'love' (ahava = 13) doubled equals 'Yahweh' (26), creating layers of meaning lost in Greek and Latin translations

'Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur' - 'The world wants to be deceived, therefore it is' - explains why people resist uncomfortable truths about reality

Flat earth theory represents the ultimate test of faith versus observation, where 'experientially, you will never experience anything other than what is effectively a flat Earth'

Eric Dubay's 200 Proofs Earth Is Not a Spinning Ball presents arguments that 'infuriate people' when delivered calmly, though he reportedly struggles against actual cosmologists in debates

The Rise of Independent Media

The Daily Wire's Pendragon cycle about Arthurian mythology 'is better than classic television' despite being produced outside Hollywood's traditional system

AI technology has revolutionized independent filmmaking, reducing visual effects costs from '$1 million per minute to $5,000 per minute' for high-quality production

The Chosen series demonstrates how faith-based content can achieve HBO-quality production values while operating completely outside traditional studio systems

Traditional Hollywood financing has become 'almost impossible' for independent filmmakers, while attaching 'AI' to projects instantly attracts investor funding for multiple feature productions