Gary Roma Filmmaker & Comedian

Gary performs his unique brand of pun-filled standup comedy at association conferences, universities, and libraries nationwide. His routine features the story of Gary making a film based upon his favorite book—The Dictionary: A word travels back in time to try to prevent another word from coming into usage in the future. Arnold Schwarzenegger is The Terminologist.

He was a judge and entertainer at the 24th Annual O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships in Austin, Texas.

Puss in Books: Adventures of the Library Cat has been screened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC as well as having an extended run at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It has been screened at a dozen film and video festivals. It won the Best Documentary Award at the United States 8mm Film and Video Festival as well as the Brooklyn Film Festival. Puss in Books has been featured on Fox News Channel's nationally broadcast Pet News.

His first film, Off the Ground & Off the Wall: A Doorstop Documentary, won numerous awards; was screened at over two dozen film festivals in the United States, Canada, and England; and was broadcast nationally on Bravo and the Independent Film Channel. It won the Best Documentary Award at the IAC International Film and Video Competition in England, the Brooklyn Arts Council Film and Video Festival, and the University of Cincinnati Film and Video Festival.

Gary is currently in production on his next film. FLOSS! A Meditation on the Possibility of Change is the story of how one man comes to grips with dental flossing—and so much more. The film explores the broader topic of how to change old, deeply ingrained habits in our lives by using imagination to overcome cynicism. Using the "floss problem" as a metaphor and microcosmic example, the film looks at how to bridge the gap between intention and action. Gary has been awarded a grant for the production of FLOSS! from the Boston Film/Video Foundation, as part of the Massachusetts Media Fellowship Program. He received a fellowship also from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, California for the month of July, 2002. He will use this time to edit FLOSS!

He is writing a book of and about words that will include pun-filled stories, jokes, poems, and essays.

Gary was chosen by the Massachusetts Cultural Council to participate in the New England States Touring Program. Non-profit organizations from these states are eligible for artist fee support from the New England Foundation for the Arts.

He is also the Senior Interviewer at the Center for Strategy Research, a market research firm in Boston.

He is also a frog door stop collecter.

• interview dental historians about the history of floss.
• visit Perry, Ohio to place a strand of floss on the gravestone of Levi Spear Parmly, an apostle of oral hygiene from the early 1800's and one of the first advocates of dental floss.
• interview the author of an article that appeared in Periodontal Abstracts in 1973 entitled, "The Odor Emitted from Dental Floss Used on Flossed Teeth and Non-Flossed Teeth for a One Week Time Period." (In the words of Dave Barry, I'm not making this up.)
• film a cockatoo from Pittsburgh named Rikki that takes a container of floss, opens it, pulls out a strand, and flosses its beak.
• interview the winner of a Cheapskate Contest sponsored by the Philadelphia Inquirer who estimates that he saves $5.06 per year by sterilizing his floss and re-using it for two weeks.