Biography

Gary Ray Bugarčić began performing at an early age, appearing as a pickpocket in the musical Oliver at the Polka Dot Playhouse. By thirteen, he had landed his first paying stage work, playing bass guitar every Friday and Saturday night in the house band at the dangerous Question Mark Bar in downtown Bridgeport, Connecticut.

In the early 1980s, he became part of New York City’s post-punk scene, performing regularly at CBGB and Danceteria with the bands State of Desire and The Academy. During this period, he also worked as a studio vocalist, singing lead on disco versions of "Black Is Black" and "Working My Way Back to You."

In the mid-1980s, Gary Ray founded Darinka, a legendary performance club on New York City’s Lower East Side that became an early platform for emerging artists. The space hosted performances and film & video screenings by artists including Steve Buscemi, Mark Boone Junior, Nick Zedd, and They Might Be Giants, all early in their careers.

He is a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (New York City) and SUNY Empire State College, where he studied Theatre Arts and Dramatic Writing. In the early 1990s, he toured nationally with performance artist Karen Finley in The Theory of Total Blame, performing in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Rochester, New York. He attributes his improvisational skills to having appeared as a principal in more than forty national television commercials.

His film work includes appearing in Poison, the first feature by Todd Haynes, in which he also provided the voice of the mad scientist Tom Graves. He also appears in the iconic 1980s film Desperately Seeking Susan and in the underground film series The Manhattan Love Suicides, directed by Richard Kern. In the mid-1990s, he expanded into live television as a home shopping host for Q2, a subsidiary of QVC.
- IMDb mini biography by: Gary Ray Bugarcic