David Ayer faced a dark night of the soul after the controversy ofSuicide Squad.
It changed his career.
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Maybe it was also true of his cut ofSuicide Squad(2016), but weve never seen it.
That critically savaged comic book flick was reshot and recut into a release version reportedly nothing like Ayers original.
Since then, he has become more of a pure action director.
But he still has L.A. stories hed like to tell.
And hed still love to show us that now-infamous Ayer cut ofSuicide Squad.
Were these elements you brought to it?Yeah.
Chuck Dixons books are pretty hardscrabble Tampa, Florida, really raw.
But I started to see it as a little bit of a fairytale.
When I go into the process, Ill do illustrations, and all my illustrations were these gothic key-frames.
That moon was something we physically built and placed on the set.
The thing was 45 feet across or something.
I wanted this heightened fairytale thing, and to run Jason through that maze.
I really learned how to photograph him and learned his visual voice and style duringBeekeeper.
So, I was able to make it a little more elevated visually here.
They know how to move in front of a camera in ways that heighten their presence.
For years, Ive done a ranked list ofthe Worst Ways To Be Killed by Jason Statham.
And its made me pay attention to how hes filmed and cut.
There is this Buster Keaton quality.
It permeates everything he does.
He took that into martial arts and Muay Thai and combined that.
One thing he educated me on was the idea of body shapes.
Learning how to shoot him is about understanding his physical grammar.
What are the motion fragments we can put together to create these fight scenes?
Finding that flow in the motion and the photography.
Its an immense amount of work, but hes the best palette ever to do that with.
Hes also one of the last stars still doing action movies of a particular throw in.
Hes like the last baton relay runner, and he has that whole cinematic legacy on his back.
Im a student of those movies, and he can carry that kind of vehicle.
I know these arent political movies but there is a politics there.
Even in the early 80s, you had a repeat of that.
Superman was a product of that, in the 30s.
I think that these cycles roll through time.
For much of your career, you found personal angles into the stories you were telling.
You made more of a pivot in recent years to action.
Was it a conscious adjustment?
Was it just how the industry is evolving?I dont know, maybe its everything.
I did my first action inHarsh Times, my first movie.
But the difference with an action movie is thats the brand, thats what were selling.
Hey, this is not a raw, heart-wrenching drama.
That comes back to those 70s, 80s, 90s classics of structure and story and how they work.
Something likeFirst Blood, for example, is a masterclass in making an action movie.
The difference seems to be between anticipating action and dreading action.
Were terrified of what might happen to these characters.
Whereas inThe Beekeeper, were like, Oh, c’mon let the guns come out.
hey lets see Statham kill somebody.
Doesnt it feel like these movies engage different parts of our brains?Yeah, exactly.
A lot of my early movies were personal and working out whatever life stuff one does as an artist.
I really enjoyed wearing the mantle of the dark, brooding artist.
Im a rebel, and I want to do things my way.
Then you grow up, you get humbled, you start seeing things differently.
You look at the market and whats getting made.
Its a business that runs on spreadsheets and projections.
It works the way it does whether you like it or not.
So, it was a no-brainer to make another one.
Was that a turning point?For sure.
Its the Hollywood chutes and ladders.
Youre up and youre down.
I was coming offFuryand I could kind of do anything I wanted.
And I wanted to make a comic book movie.
I wanted to do what the cool kids were doing.
I went in and I made what I felt was this really human war movie.
MySuicide Squadwas a war movie.
I had just come off a war movie and I made another war movie.
There was a lot of character evolution.
So much context and setup and storylines were removed.
The studio got ambushed byBatman v. Superman, and the release of that wasnt the outcome they expected.
Normally, directors cuts are like, Okay, we put back in the deleted scenes or whatever.
No, this is an entire re-conception.
I didnt have a single needle drop in the film.
Steven Price, who didFury, wrote this beautiful intricate score.
My film was gothic and lyrical and dramatic.
The people that have seen my cut, its all been the same reaction: They get mad.
This is what we wanted.
Why didnt we get to see this?
There are flaws in it, but I think I made a really good film.
And I definitely got schooled on what these projects really are, as a socio-political engineering consensus machine.
Ive taken so much heat because of the way they broke it.
That got thrown back on me.
And its like, Guys, time out.
Thats the exact opposite of what I was trying to do, and what I did.
That really did create kind of a dark night of the soul for me as an artist.
I was like, Okay, this business is real.
This is a full-contact sport.
Thats when I really started to lean into the business, and it took a long time.
But yeah, thats a definite turning point.
And I want to get back to large-scale storytelling.
Are there people along the way that you feel like you really learned a lot from?Absolutely.
He let me into his world, and it was this incredible view of a top screenwriters working life.
I also helped Wes with some research and stuff.
People have no idea how much craft goes into this.
I saw how he operated and delivered within that world.
I remember whenFurycame out, it initially looked like it would be a classic war movie.
So, theyre just together.
Theres a hierarchy and a structure and rules, but theres also this rawness.
And the truest form of their personality comes out.
Ive always been fascinated by that space in World War II.
Theres so much truth in original sources.
I read this battle report from early April 1945, when the war was basically over.
This tank platoon, they get into this engagement.
I think they lost 13 guys in one day.
These guys fought savagely, just fought incredibly hard.
A bunch of guys dying, in Germany, end in sight.
I had a lot of family in World War II.
Both grandparents were in World War II, and they were career military officers.
My uncle was a B17 tail gunner.
I grew up raised by that generation of veterans and then raised by Vietnam veterans.
They made combat seem almost fun.
So its like, Whats this disconnect?
Thats something that always haunted me, and Ive always chased the truth of the war.
You were in the Navy.
A different experience than something likeFury, I imagine.For sure.
But I did 67 days submerged.
I know what its like to be locked in a machine for days.
Not just the experience but also the closeness of it the relationships.
You really get close to people.
And Ive always been a student of people, I guess.
Why do some people react this way?
Why do some people react that way?
Thats something Ive carried forward.
You didnt start screenwriting until you met Wesley Strick, but were you always a writer?
Were you writing stories as a kid?I dropped out of high school.
I was not a good kid and definitely not a good student.
But I would always write something at the beginning of the year in English.
I think its an assessment they do.
Hey, write a few paragraphs about something.
I would just write something and they wouldnt bug me for the rest of the year.
Theyd give me my D and everyone was cool.
So, I knew I could write.
I knew I had that skill.
You cant do it hiding in an apartment behind a computer.
Things were kind of broken.
There was no incentive there, and I changed schools so many times.
Also, I was just off in my head, I was always into movies.
I was staying up all night watching movies, or reading.
Just leaning heavily into my own world.
Then you go to school and its like, All right, this is really basic stuff.
What are we doing here?
Was this before you moved to L.A.?Yeah, we lived all over the country.
My dad died when I was four and then I was just… yeah.
What were your first memories of Los Angeles like?It was the 84 Olympics.
I was in South Central and it was such a different world.
It was a totally new thing here, and it was violent and intense and real and raw.
I was the only white kid, and it was just like, Navigate, figure it out.
That just ended up really being very natural for me.
In a lot of ways, thats home, I guess.
Are there L.A. stories you still want to tell?
A dream project you want to do?Yeah, for sure.
I love the Bogart movies and all those 40s and 50s noir films.
Because theres just insane stories.
L.A.s always been the same.
It has this intense dark past.
Its just been this scrimmage between forces and society and people for so long.
There are so many stories there.
Confidentialdid a good job.
But you have to be conscious.
You cant just be like, Oh its a noir film.
Look, its a new old movie.
It has to be a new new movie.
Its got to have the storytelling and consciousness and psychology thats going to get a modern audience engaged.
I had to take the bus to Crenshaw/Exposition and check in with my probation officer.
So, I started out running from them.
But over time you get to know cops, you get to know their culture.
There is a huge military-police crossover, and a lot of police are former military.
You learn about the institutional politics, the institutional truths and how the game actually works.
Ive had this really privileged peek behind the curtain.
So many say, Hey, I can show my wife what I do for a living.
Just like withFury, people respect it when you respect their subculture and can depict that.
You also havent shied away from showing corruption in the force.
A movie likeStreet Kingsis pretty unflinching.
Theres body cameras, everythings electronic.
The corruption is different now.
Its more like, How do we keep the statistics up?
How do we look good?
Its less about personal enrichment or violence and more about fudging the numbers and fudging the culture.
Its all brand management now.
Is there a finished film that could see the light of day?
How much work would need to be done for it to happen?Its pretty much a finished film.
Lee Smith, who editedThe Dark Knight, cut it, and hes amazing.
The problem is theres all this internal lore inside the studio about it.
I dont even know if anyone that has seen it is still there.
It would have to be a top corporate thing.
Because its all IP management, right?
They want to launch the new DC, and they have every right to do it unimpeded.
They dont want to start a negative conversation when theyre really trying to build up something new.
And thats fair, man.
But would I love a screening?
Just a screening, and let some film people see it?
