With the conversation in Hollywood shifting to the mistreatment of writers, one filmmaker is adding his voice to the rally cries. David Ayer, writer of films like Training Day, Suicide Squad, and End of Watch, is opening up about his forgotten place in the history of The Fast and the Furious.
Ayer penned the script for the 2001 racing film, which has now gone on to be a franchise that has over $7 billion at the worldwide box office. But shockingly, most people don’t know Ayer’s influence in the script and what it did to help shape Fast and Furious‘ future.
“Biggest franchise in Hollywood, and I don’t have any of it,” Ayer said. “I got nothing to show for it, nothing, because of the way the business works.”
He adds, “When I got that script, that shit was set in New York; it was all Italian kids, right? I’m like, ‘Bro, I’m not going to take it unless I can set it in L.A. and make it look like the people I know in L.A., right?’ So then I started, like, writing in people of color, and writing in the street stuff, and writing in the culture, and no one knew shit about street racing at the time.”
He recalls how much the California vibes he knew played a party: “I went to a shop in the Valley and met with like the first guys that were doing the hacking of the fuel curves for the injectors and stuff like that, and they had just figured it out and they were showing it, and I’m like, ‘Oh fuck yeah, I’m going to put that in the movie.’”
But, nowadays, the franchise is mainly viewed as Vin Diesel’s baby, especially with long-time filmmaker Justin Lin no longer involved.
“The narrative is I didn’t do shit, right?” Ayer said. “It’s like people hijack narratives, control narratives, create narratives to empower themselves, right? And because I was always an outsider and because, like, I don’t go to the fucking parties. I don’t go to the meals; I don’t do any of that stuff. The people that did were able to control and manage narratives because they’re socialized in that part of the problem. I was never socialized in that part of the problem, so I was always like the dark, creative dude, beware.”
Ayer summed up, “Fuck all the middlemen, right? I get it. It’s up to me; I gotta self-rescue, right? I can fucking whine about getting shot at and all the rounds I’ve taken over my career — I’ve gotta self-rescue, and I’ve gotta create an ecology where it’s safe for me to be creative, and that’s it. And that’s what I’m doing now.”
David Ayer is currently awaiting the release of his upcoming action film, The Beekeeper, starring Jason Statham and Jeremy Irons. Ayer is also reportedly working with DC Studios on a Director’s Cut for 2016’s Suicide Squad, but we’ll wait for any movement.
As for the Fast and the Furious franchise, the eleventh mainline entry is set for release on April 4, 2025. The latest entry, Fast X, earned a worldwide total of $718.9 million.
