Barry Avrich

Barry Michael Avrich (born May 9, 1963) is a Canadian film director, film producer, playwright, 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). Avrich also produced the Gemini-nominated television special Caesar and Cleopatra (2009) with Christopher Plummer. Avrich also produced Canada's Sports Hall of Fame Awards (2015) and the Canadian Screen Awards (2016).

Besides films, Avrich has also authored three books and one play and supported many leading cultural institutions including The Toronto International Film Festival and the Stratford Festival of Canada. Avrich was also responsible for creating the world's first state of the art movie theatre inside Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. children's hospital. Avrich won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2008. In 2016, Avrich is publishing his memoir; " Moguls, Monsters, and Madmen".

Avrich was born in Montreal, Quebec, the son of Irving Avrich, a garment industry executive, and Faye Avrich, a housewife. 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.

...
Wikipedia