DAVID AYER

‘WHAT H A PPENED W ITH SUICIDE SQUAD, IT SEA RED MY SOUL. BUT I ’M TENACIOUS. I ’LL N EV ER STOP. YOU’VE GOT TO K ILL ME. I HAVE SO MANY STORIES TO TELL’

Training Day. End of Watch. Fury. Writer/dire c tor David Ayer was revere d in Holly wood until Warner Bros . recut his Suicide Squad and he took all the blame. Ayer’s been trying to rebuild ever since, and now looks to re gain his footing with Jason Statham action thriller The Beekeeper. ‘I grew up on the old-school action movies ,’ he says .

David Ayer is 6ft 2½in. Built. He looks, you might say, like a character in one of his movies –a corrupt cop, perhaps, or the leader of a street gang. His narrowed eyes exude don’t-mess-with-me authority.

They’ve seen it all. And we don’t just mean the highs and lows of Hollywood, from Denzel Washington winning a Best Actor Oscar for one of his first screenplays, Training Day, to Warner Bros. shoddily reworking his ‘dark, grounded, soulful’

Suicide Squad into a crappy comedy. This guy lived with his cousin in South Central LA when he was kicked out of his Maryland home, and spent his teenage years tussling with cops. He joined the US Navy to escape street life, working as a sonar man on a nuclear submarine.

These life experiences pour into his work. Jobbing as an electrician when he left the Navy in the late 80s, he shared some of his stories with a screenwriter whose house he was wiring. The enthusiastic response encouraged Ayer to turn to scripting.

Screenplays for sub movie U-571 and 2001’s The Fast and the Furious, focused on the subculture of LA street racing, opened doors, and then his spec script for Training Day attracted Washington.

Ayer was good to go. Screenplays for Dark Blue and S.W.A.T. came next. He directed his own scripts for Harsh Times and End of Watch. All four of these movies leaned on what he knew, and continued his ascent. Arnold Schwarzenegger comeback vehicle Sabotage, about an elite DEA task force being taken down one by one, was his first critical mauling. He bounced back with uncompromising World War Two action drama Fury, starring Brad Pitt and Shia LaBeouf in a Sherman tank.

Then came Suicide Squad. Warners loved the dailies… until quippy Deadpool opened to major box office and sombre Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice tanked.

‘Hollywood is like watching someone you love be fucked by someone you hate,’ Ayer would say about having his movie turned inside out. The injustice was intensified by critics aiming their scorn at him.

Since Suicide Squad, there’s been a sense that Ayer’s been winged. Fantasy action thriller Bright and crime thriller The Tax Collector both misfired, and now he’s directing The Beekeeper, a Jason Statham action vehicle, from a Kurt Wimmer script. Wimmer wrote 2008 Ayer movie Street Kings, but his more recent fare (Point Break, Children of the Corn, Expend4bles)… Well, let’s just say they’re not Training Day.

But what if it’s not such an odd choice? What if Ayer’s consciously entering a new chapter? What if he wants to riff on the Stallone and Schwarzenegger movies he watched growing up? And what if The Beekeeper, in which The Stath plays a former operative who’s forced out of retirement to embark on a rampage of revenge, is actually a Statham B-movie done on A-movie scale, luminously lensed and with higher stakes?

‘I mean, it’s funny,’ Ayer muses. ‘I don’t want to say I’ve turned up my nose at genre pictures in the past, but I’m in a different place [now] as a filmmaker. To me, it’s less about being the angst-driven artist creating this new thing that no one’s seen before. Now it’s like: “OK, what movies work? What do the audiences want to see? And what happens when I take all of my filmmaker energy, and then add a genre chassis?” That became the exercise. It’s like: “OK, if I’m going to make a genre picture, how do I blow the doors off of it?”’

We’re keen to find out…

AJason Statham movie is its own thing, and a different tack for you…

Yeah. I love Jason. He’s just a movie star, which is a very specific thing. It comes with its own set of skills and rare abilities. The camera loves him, and the audience loves him. I just felt like he could do so much more than he’s been invited to lately. I grew up on the old-school action movies – 90s movies and 80s movies. There’s something very accessible about them. You know, the cinematography, the look, the way they did the action. But, more than anything, they were always primarily about the character’s emotional journey. I wanted to give Jason reasons. And I wanted to put Jason in something where the audience could see how truly capable he is. He has broad shoulders, and can carry a big movie.

You’ve done action before but never fight scenes like these, with a trained fighter…

I’ve done a lot of choreo. But in this case, you’re working with an actor who is a legend. He’s an incredibly physical person, and capable, and talented, and has had many different lives in the physical space. You know, he’s a diver [laughs]. He’s a fighter. He’s a bit of a street guy. He knows how these things work. He challenged me, in a good way, and I hope I challenged him.

The Beekeeper is a throwback to movies like Commando and Rambo: First Blood Part II. Did you go back and study them?

Yeah, absolutely. Even just watching Die Hard –it’s a slow-boil opening. It’s a lot of character work in the first act. Until the bad guys come and shoot the place up, nothing really happens. But by the time the bad guys show up, they’re an obstacle towards our hero getting emotional closure. We want him to get with his wife. We want him to get with his kids. We want them to have Christmas together. It’s amazing how spending time and building a character arc can add so much drive to the action itself. You know, I worry about my industry sometimes, because that cinematic feel is few and far between. I just wanted to shoot a beautiful movie, and have this amazing action star in this beautifully rendered world.

Alot of action thrillers now, especially on streaming services, are plastic and CGI-heavy…

Yeah. Imean… [Sighs] I think filmmakers get told what to put, and what to use, and how to use it, whether intentionally or not through the budgeting process. When you have a big company, things sort of end up becoming recipes, you know? I just love the classics. I watch a lot of Bogart movies. I watch Chinatown. Why does it feel the way it feels? What’s happening in these shots? So, as a filmmaker, I like to think I’ve created more than an action movie.

You had a troubled youth. Did you manage to find time to watch movies? Absolutely. I grew up on home video. You’d go down to the corner shop, and walk the aisles for an hour, and pick your three or four movies for the weekend. My life wasn’t great, growing up. I could put on a movie, and I could go to anew part of the world; I could meet people I’d never meet; I could learn incredible things. I remember when I saw Scarface for the first time. I was, like, 14. I got it on VHS. It blew my head off. It opened a door that’s never been closed.

‘I SAW SCRFACE ON VHS – IT BLEW MY HEAD OFF ’

You wrote a script for anew Scarface movie. Wasn’t it turned down for being too violent?

One of the best scripts I’ve ever written was my Scarface draft. It gets passed around in Hollywood, underground [laughs]. It’s funny when people talk about the project. ‘Is it the Ayer script?’ ‘No, it’s somebody else.’ ‘Oh, OK.’ [Sighs] It wasn’t too violent. Violence –I can cover it. If someone gets shot, I can photograph it where a head explodes and have a hard R, and it’s not going to alienate people. That’s easy. That’s filmmaker 101. I created this rich, soulful journey through the drug trade, and kind of what it is. The studio just wanted something more… fun. Scarface is its biggest IP behind Jurassic Park. They want to capture as big of an audience as possible. I fucking love Universal. Amazing people. I had this really honest conversation about the movie they wish they had, and the movie that I wished to make. There’s a lot of daylight between us. It’s just easier to be like, ‘Let’s park this.’

Probably your most revered script is your big breakthrough, Training Day. It won Denzel his Best Actor Oscar!

Yeah, it was a strange journey. I wrote it in 1996, and it took years to get made. People told me, ‘It’s too unrealistic. Cops aren’t like that.’ I was just writing what I was hearing on the streets [laughs]. It wasn’t that exotic. And finally, things came around. People realised, ‘Maybe there are some crimes in policing. Maybe things like this do go on.’ And then getting Denzel attached added an incredible momentum to the project.

Didn’t the studio add some action to the finale? Your original idea for the ending was more low-key?

The ending was always about his requiem… You know, his eulogy for Denzel’s character. It was always about: ‘He’s going to die. He’s a flawed, tragic character that was never going to make it.’

Then came another corrupt-cops movie, Dark Blue. You inherited the script from James Ellroy, a legend. Did that add pressure?

I felt the pressure, but James Ellroy is so LA in how he grew up and what he experienced and his view of the city. Just having a similar understanding of LA’s vapours helped me out. Had it been that I was from another city, with a different lifestyle, I’d probably have been way more intimidated. But Iknew the things he was writing about. Iknew the places. And there’s a weird voodoo to LA. The sun goes down, and there’s just a strange, haunting energy. It’s very specific. It’s this twilight world. I think James Ellroy absolutely tapped into that, and that’s also something that I’ve been chasing.

Do you see yourself as a successor or maybe filmic equivalent to Ellroy? You both know the world of LA cops and criminals, and have a knack for dialects…

I do. I consider him an incredible writer. But he’s also lived a life, and experienced some dark things, and has gone through his own pain, and found a way to bring that to the page. I respect that incredibly.

How important is it to have that life experience? Some writers take everything they know from other movies.

I think it’s very important, always, for me. And it’s tough, because you see some good things, you see some really terrible things. You get into these arguments with studio executives, because they make movies based on what I call the corporate map of the human soul [laughs]. It’s an accepted construction of human behaviour, which I find very reductionist and childish. There’s so much going on. The human spirit is uncontainable. I’m always curious about what’s happening at the dark edges of it.

How much of your own life experience do you directly use? Harsh Times, for example –a friendship torn apart by violence. Does that come from somewhere?

I mean, it’s a little bit of me and my friends, a little bit of different things mixed in, and some stories I’ve heard. It’s like making a stew, you know? You throw in some meat, you throw in some veg. I wrote it after Training Day because I wanted to make a more intense, more difficult version of life in LA, on the streets. It’s almost like a parallel universe.

You grew up in South Central LA and had your fair share of being chased down alleyways by cops…

Oh, yeah. I got the shit beaten out of me by cops. I got shot at. I’ve seen a lot of death. I’ve had people die in my arms. I dropped out of school. I was on a dark path. I was caught up in the legal system. I saw an immense –immense –amount of violence. It changes you. The Navy saved me.

And the writing?

It was the military. You know, getting on a submarine. If you notice, at the very end of all my movies, I put a thanks to the US Navy Submarine Force. Because that’s how I learned how to sit down, and grind, and learn, and apply myself. You have to, to be a writer. You have to, in the film industry. There’s a ridiculous amount of labour that it takes to just even get a job [laughs], let alone finish a show or a movie.

How did you find directing for the first time, on Harsh Times?

It was a fever dream. I mortgaged my house. I broke all the rules. Being on set, directing it, I found what I want, and that’s directing, and working with actors. I mean, working with Christian [Bale] as a first-time director… he taught me so much about actors and acting and craft and professionalism. It was a gift.

I took him all over LA, and had him meet all these people so that he could get a sense of the human energy.

Talking of energy, End of Watch has buckets of it, brought by the jagged mockumentary format. How did you settle on that? Well, it was just like: ‘All right, let’s do some found footage about cops.’ I went online, and was looking at home videos and a lot of videos of things inside the LAPD. Somebody, a cop, sent me a bunch of videos that they’d shot. The departments were just getting to have cameras. As a filmmaker, it’s like, ‘OK, if the conceit is that this is found footage or really happening, what does that look like for performance? What does that look like for writing? What does that look like for camera set-up? How do you even do that?’ We ended up inventing equipment just to get the cameras onto bodies, and we created systems that had never been used before but are now pretty standard. It’s technical and difficult to get that energy of the naturalism, and the naturalism in the performances.

How much has policing changed since you made Training Day, Dark Blue and End of Watch?

It’s like night and day. On the policing side and on the gangster side. As a kid, someone would just walk on a bus with a gun and a pillowcase, and just take everybody’s bus passes. You’d just say, ‘Whatever. It’s normal.’ You let it happen. Because do you have a quarter? You’re going to run off and call on the pay phone? [laughs] There were no security cameras. Everyone was invisible. And now it’s documented. Back in the day, the cops were ridiculously aggressive. It was just guns, and getting in everybody’s business. And now they just sit back, and wait for calls to come in, because it’s safer.

‘I DROPPED OU T OF SCHOOL . I WAS ON A DARK PATH ’

Ellroy originally backdropped Dark Blue with the 1965 riots, then updated it to the Rodney King riots in 1992. Could the film be made now and set against the Black Lives Matter protests, say?

I think so. You just have to be very open and very respectful about policing, and about how you tell the story.

World War Two movie Fury was a departure for you. It’s the kind of film they made in the 40s and 50s, but not now. Was it hard to get it to the screen?

It came together in a snap, honestly. I wrote the script pretty quick, and then it got to Brad [Pitt]. He raised his hand immediately. With Brad committed, everything fell into place. It was a blessed journey. Which, of course, never happens [laughs].

It’s a war film without the Hollywood sheen. Often sickening and miserable…

It’s gloomy and miserable, but inside of that, it’s this incredible love that these men have for each other, and this incredible family that’s formed out of the most horrific conditions. And then they get this young, new brother, who, in order to join the family, has to be dehumanised and terrorised and brought to understand his own capabilities for violence in order to survive; in order for the family to live. That was always my approach. And, again, it’s just about rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal. These guys really bonded. They drove around in tanks. They knew how to do all the tactical drills, and operate as infantry. By the time we were shooting it, you couldn’t separate them. Even if someone wasn’t going to be on camera that day, they were going to be in that tank.

The characters could easily have been archetypes, or stereotypes. You worked hard to flesh them out…

My family was in the war. My uncle was on a B-17 out of Ipswich. It’s something that touched my family. I was reading about it and understanding it. Interesting people are fighting in the war, you know?

With Suicide Squad, you similarly wanted to make something grounded and soulful. Then Deadpool came out and Warner Bros. twisted your vision…

Here’s the thing: if I’d shit the bed, and my cut was not good [laughs], then I’d walk away. That’s not the case. I’m not like other people. In this industry, you just shut up, and do your job. You’re just happy that somebody let you have a job. We’re all beaten children, you know? Everyone’s scared of these multinationals. Everyone’s scared of these massive companies. One wrong movie, and you don’t have a career. So I always just kept my mouth shut. And the reviews were just so utterly over the top, and personally vicious. And that’s what got to me over the years.

What made you eventually rip the tape from your mouth?

I’d never shown anybody my cut. And then I showed it to some people that I trusted. I was absolutely ready for them to go, ‘Yeah, it’s shit.’ And it was absolutely the opposite. People were shocked that the movie wasn’t released. They were shocked at what it was turned into. They were shocked at how different the films were. They’re two totally different movies. And then to have new movies released… The film did an immense amount of financial business, and has spawned several other movies and IP based upon it. At a certain point, it’s like: ‘How can Ishow this bravery in the military? How can Ishow this bravery on the streets when I’m a kid? How can I show this bravery in life? And yet suddenly I’m a coward, and I take the blame when it comes to this?’ At a certain point, it’s just too much.

Will we ever see your cut?

I think so. I’m going to be hopeful. You know, there are a lot of people that are invested in certain narratives that don’t want it to see the light of day. So there’s an immense political headwind against it, because if that cut were made public, the cowardliness and the whole just general shittiness of how the film’s been treated, and how the actors have had this great work that they’d done taken away… That narrative blows up once people see the movie. But it’s coming. Something’s going to happen. Something’s going to be revealed. The truth always comes out.

It always comes out.

Is it true that the execs at Warner Bros. were so impressed with your dailies there was talk of you becoming the main man for the DCEU going forward?

When I was shooting the movie, there was a whole world of possibilities. And… yeah. The pain didn’t start until after I’d finished shooting it [laughs].

Did you see James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad? And if so, what did you think of it? Um…

[Long pause and sigh] They made the movie they wish they’d made originally.

That’s a good way of putting it.

Look, I get it. It’s a business. Everyone’s doing their best. Nobody wants to fail. But I think it’s like any business –any group of people can get hung up on narratives. They’re invested in narratives. They get invested in stories they tell themselves about themselves. And it becomes about reinforcing stories about themselves, versus ‘Fuck it, let’s roll up our sleeves and make an amazing movie, and be daring’. No studio executive has ever been fired for saying no. They’re only fired for saying yes.

Did what happened to you change you as a filmmaker? The stuff you’ve done since –Bright and The Tax Collector and 2024’s The Beekeeper –seem more audience-friendly films.

It… [Sighs] It’s like going to war, and getting injured. I’m a veteran. I’ve sat in a submarine with canned oxygen and bad food for months at a time. What happened with Suicide Squad, it seared my soul, and I’m still figuring out who Iam after that. When Imake a movie, it’s life and death. It’s my soul. And then when it gets slapped around, and there’s things you can’t control, and then being blamed over it, and then to get cut out of the fun… I’ve been trying to rebuild ever since. But I’m tenacious. I’ll never stop. You’ve got to kill me. I have so many stories to tell.

It’s surprising that you’ve worked with Warner Bros. again, given how you were treated on Suicide Squad.

They’re gone. The leadership of that studio is like two or three companies ago [laughs]. Warner Bros. is always my home studio. It’s like a family studio. It’s evolving now, and they’re trying to figure out their business.

‘NO STU DIO EX ECUTIVE HAS BEEN FIRED FOR SAY ING NO’

So what do you think of them binning projects such as Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme as tax write-offs? It’s so brutal to those who made them…

It’s show business, not show friends. It’s not something that necessarily was seen before. Iknow that movies have been killed in the past, but usually you don’t see that from a major, with A+ IP. But the world’s different. Things are evolving. Things are working in the market that didn’t before. I’m sure they’re absolutely freaking out over how to manage their brand, and how to manage their IP, and how to manage DC. It’s like, we’re seeing how difficult it is for Marvel. They’ve been a crack team. But everything changes. Nothing is constant. Warner Bros. made cowboy movies for 70 years, and then you couldn’t sell a ticket to a cowboy movie. The problem with a lot of studio management is, they don’t look forward. They only look to the past. Every conversation is ‘How can we make this like this one thing that did business?’ versus ‘Let’s break new ground, and really create something unique and beautiful that you haven’t seen’. And I get it. They’re investing shit tonnes of money in this stuff, and they want as much of a guarantee on their money as possible.

So let’s look forward. What’s next for you? IMDb lists Commando, The Dirty Dozen and The Wild Bunch in preproduction. Are any of those moving?

No. Those are all just flapping away right now. I’m trying to figure out what’s next. I love working with Jason [Statham]. I’m dying to do another World War Two movie. I have an incredible passion for the truth of the street experience, and it’s a world I know. I’m open to any challenge. [Pause] I’m very in the moment now, and I sort of let go of all these ideas I had about who I am, and who Iam as a filmmaker. Mainly I just want to be on set with cool people.

THE BEEKEEPER OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 12 JANUARY 2024 AND IS ON SKY CINEMA LATER NEXT YEAR.