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David Ayer Breaks Down Making of ‘The Beekeeper’ & Talks ‘Scarface’ Remake

Jan 12, 2024


The Big Picture

The Beekeeper was a rewarding collaboration with a star-studded cast and an “old-school movie star” like Jason Statham. David Ayer is determined to get his idea for a new WWII film produced. Ayer believes there is a vastly better version of Suicide Squad, stating he made one of the best comic movies ever made, but it got the guts ripped out of it.

As a self-proclaimed fan of watching Jason Statham punch people in the face, — and really, who isn’t? — Collider’s Steve Weintraub was excited to recently host an exclusive Q&A with director David Ayer following our early IMAX screening of The Beekeeper. During their sit-down, the screenwriter-turned-director was forthcoming about his Hollywood history, sharing behind-the-scenes from the star-studded Fury, opening up about Warner Bros. disemboweling his cut of Suicide Squad, and more.

While past projects could have left a bitter taste in the filmmaker’s mouth, production on The Beekeeper allowed for a rewarding collaboration with its classic action star and ensemble cast, including Jeremy Irons, Josh Hutcherson, Phylicia Rashad, and Emmy Raver-Lampman. Working alongside his second unit director, Jeremy Marinas, who trained under John Wick’s Chad Stahelski, and with the expertise of an “old-school movie star,” like Statham, this B-movie ’80s throwback was almost as much fun to make as it is to watch.

Check out the full non-spoiler conversation in the video above, or you can read the transcript below to find out how Ayer achieved “this level of execution for the price,” how hands-on Jason Statham is when it comes to his brand, and how the supporting cast elevates Kurt Wimmer’s self-aware script. Ayer also shares his traumatic behind-the-scenes stories from Fury ahead of its tenth anniversary, an idea for a WWII film he’s determined to get produced, the drama behind Suicide Squad and the status of his director’s cut, and just how much of his DNA still lives in the Fast & Furious franchise. Read on for all of this, tons more, and what’s next for Ayer and Statham.

The Beekeeper In The Beekeeper, one man’s brutal campaign for vengeance takes on national stakes after he is revealed to be a former operative of a powerful and clandestine organization known as “Beekeepers”. Release Date January 12, 2024 Rating R Runtime 105 minutes Writers Kurt Wimmer

Read Our ‘The Beekeeper’ Review

COLLIDER: If someone has never seen anything you’ve directed, what is the first thing you like them watching and why?

DAVID AYER: That’s a really good question. I’d say End of Watch because it’s just such a natural, kind of vibey, chill LA movie.

I read that they were developing an End of Watch TV series. Whatever happened with that?

AYER: Yeah, we were gonna do it. We were developing it with Fox, but we never quite got it off the ground. The pandemic hit and then the usual sort of Hollywood thing.

Related David Ayer’s ‘End of Watch’ Set for TV Series Adaptation at Fox Like the movie, the series will follow the daily grind of two young police officers in Los Angeles who are partners and friends.

What do you think would surprise people to learn about making movies in Hollywood?

AYER: I think how complex it is. Like the paperwork. Every movie has a stack of paperwork like that thick. Any day on set is, like, 1,000 arrows moving towards the exact same part at the same time, but they all have to be launched weeks and months in advance. So, it’s like the amount of logistics, the amount of prep, the amount of organization. I mean, you have an entire department, the paperwork department, accounting, payroll. It’s an immense, immense, immense amount of work. Just even the property on set and figuring out the insurance, it’s an unbelievable endeavor.

Do you have a lot of unproduced scripts?

AYER: I have a stack literally that high.

If you could get the financing to make anything you want tomorrow, which of those scripts is the one that you would say, “This has to be the one?”

AYER: I haven’t written it yet.

Is it something in your brain? Is it something cooking up that could be your next thing?

AYER: Probably not my next thing, but hopefully it’ll be done soon.

Do you want to tease anything?

AYER: World War II. Real talk — everyone’s like, “Fascism this, fascism that.” Let’s see what it really looks like. Let’s wake people up. Let’s see what the bad guys were actually like and see how they actually treated other human beings, and put them in a combat environment and show the true heroism in human nature and how people came together to defeat that enemy. There’s a whole lot of stories there that haven’t been told yet and they need to be told.

Years ago I said, “Why do they keep on making these World War II movies? It seems like every year we’re getting one.” And then I realized, as I’ve gotten older, this shit needs to be reminded every year. We cannot forget about what happened during that time. And it is alarming how many people just think things didn’t happen or just casually want to forget.

AYER: Yeah, or they look back on it and sort of put this respectability on groups and organizations that have no business having any of that. Monsters are monsters. You gotta call ‘em out.

David Ayer Revisits the Traumatizing Set of ‘Fury’
Image via Sony Pictures Releasing

This is actually gonna be the 10th anniversary of Fury. If you haven’t seen Fury, it’s a great movie that he wrote and directed. It’s a crazy cast, but the thing about that film is it had a lot of deleted scenes. There’s like 45 minutes or so of extended or deleted scenes. For that film, did you ever want to release an extended cut or was the theatrical cut of that movie the one you were like, “This is the one?”

AYER: That’s the one. At the end of the day, you write a script and you’re just throwing cards at the wall. You hope it works, right? Because movies are not a script; the script is like a basic guideline. People will say things and will say these words in any location, but when you actually shoot the stuff and convert it into film, now you have like a million-and-a-half feet of footage, you’ve got to assemble that. Over time, you kind of figure the movie out, you reduce it, you boil it down. It’s like making soup, you just keep boiling it down and condensing it, and then eventually it gets the right flavor. So with Fury, that’s the movie as I wanted it to be, for sure.

You had Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Jon Bernthal, Michael Peña. You had this incredible cast. When you think back on the making of that film, what’s the first thing that comes to you?

AYER: Probably the rehearsals because they had to feel like a tank crew, they had to operate like a tank crew. Rehearsing could be anything from us sitting in my office in LA in the early days, just talking about characters and the situation and the dialogue, and how it all works and comes together, and then running some scenes, all the way up to right before we shot a rehearsal would be four tanks, 60 trained infantrymen, Brad on coms, the entire crew on coms, running an actual combat scenario with blanks and blank weapons fires, and things like that, to get everybody used to that choreography so we weren’t just doing it on the day. So, it got surreal at a certain point.

I did a set visit on Fury and I remember you directing, and you called me over to look at video village and the mud and the tanks. You guys were really going for it in terms of, this was in the mud and muck.

AYER: Yeah, it was. It kind of gave me PTSD for cold weather. I’m a Cali boy. It’s like, I’m there and it’s February and it’s ice-cold, and just the chill that gets in your bones and there’s nowhere to hide from it. You’re outside all day, 14 hours a day, and the crew is wearing — by crew, I mean Brad and the team — are wearing actual World War II gear and World War II clothing, and it ain’t that warm. They soldiered up. They did it.

David Ayer’s ‘Suicide Squad’ Director’s Cut Is “Vastly, Vastly Better”
Image via Warner Bros

I think I know the answer to this, but of all the films you worked on, which one changed the most in the editing room, and why?

AYER: Look, it’s like, which editing room? [Laughs] Did I know about the editing room? It’s Suicide Squad, obviously.

Does it get old? I see on Twitter everyone always asks you about it, but does it get old with everyone always asking, or are you sort of just like, “It’s part of my history. People are gonna talk about it?”

AYER: It’s part of my history. It is what it is. I would have shut up about it a long time ago if my cut was like, “Oh, it’s a tweaky thing. This scene is 30 seconds different,” or, “We used different takes,” or, “There’s a scene I cut.” People don’t understand how plastic film is, how you can come to two totally opposite results with the same medium as photographed. So, I mean, I’m coming off of Fury. I basically made a war movie in the DC space. So I made a David Ayer movie, and DC’s like, “Well, we want a DC movie.” And the results are what we got. But the DNA and the character and the sense of place and the visuals were so strong in it that people intuitively connected to it. It was ridiculously freaking successful, but there’s a vastly, vastly better version. I mean, I’m just gonna say it, I made one of the best comic movies ever made, and it got the guts ripped out of it.

AUDIENCE: Is that the director’s cut?

AYER: That’s the director’s cut. You guys deserve to see it, but it ain’t my property. It ain’t my ID.

I have to ask because I’ve wanted to know this for a long time, do you actually have a copy at home of your cut or is it all in the vault at Warner Brothers?

AYER: They control it.

Fast & Furious Wouldn’t Be What It Is Today Without David Ayer
Image by Federico Napoli

A lot of people don’t realize you worked on the first Fast & Furious movie, and I believe it was you who called it to go from New York to LA to do street racing. A lot of the DNA of The Fast and the Furious came out of your brain, and I don’t think enough people give you credit for that. That’s what I’m more interested in. Can you talk about your involvement in that franchise at the beginning?

AYER: Yeah, Scott, back in the day he was a senior VP at Universal, and he calls me up, and I know him, and he’s like, “Dude, there’s a script.” And I read the script, and it was like Italian kids in New York, and it wasn’t really like a racing world or like the streets that I knew. And so I told Scott, I’m like, “Hey, I’m in, but I’m gonna set it in LA, and it needs to look like the LA I know. It needs to look like the people I grew up with. It’s got to be a different thing than it is.” And to his credit, he’s like, “Yeah, go for it.”

So, I just did what I do and I hit the streets and I started talking to the heads that are out there turning Honda Civics into 500 horsepower cars. They’re running, like, nine-second quarter miles in a Honda Civic. I’m like, “Bro, what’s going on?” This was back before any of this was legit or anybody knew about it, and these dudes are getting engines, and I don’t know where the parts are coming from, and these are the first guys to crack the computers on the custom fuel curves and everything, and I just put it all in the movie. And Rob Cohen, the director, I’m like, “Bro, come on.” I took him to some car shows and he saw the vibe and the looks and the aesthetics and had a talk with people. It was straight up LA street culture put into Hollywood, and the rest is history.

Again, I just want to make sure people understand your involvement. So one of the first big movies at Netflix was Bright. That was the first one that broke through, and there was always talk about a sequel. What happened with that?

AYER: It’s like everything else. Bright, it’s a hard world to crack. It’s hard to crack a world like that. It got complex. I’ll say that.

Whatever happened with your script for Scarface, and how come I never saw that movie?

AYER: I was gonna do a remake of Scarface. Dropped the script, and it was one of the best that I’ve ever written, and it didn’t get produced. Right before I was about to go prep the movie, I had an honest conversation with a senior exec at Universal, and I was like, “Hey man, I know you want this to be different than it is. This is the movie I wanna make. I don’t want it to become adversarial and I don’t want it to get taken away from me in post, so if we’re not on the same page…” and he respected it. He was like, “Yeah, let’s call it now.” But it’s one of the best scripts I’ve ever written or produced.

I am so disappointed. You have been involved in some kick-ass action sequences. Do you have a favorite, or do you have one that you’re like, “I can’t believe we pulled this one off?”

AYER: That’s gonna be the opening scene of End of Watch because we blocked off a lot of South Central. We had all that blocked off, and I’m in the car operating the camera deck. It was just stupid. Like, the way we were driving stuff…all that was real. I think because I was in it and experiencing it and seeing it in the way I am personally, and I tried to cut it to make it feel like I felt. I tried to create that feeling.

‘The Beekeeper’ Is a Throwback to ’80s Action Movies

Jumping into why I get to talk to you, how did The Beekeeper actually happen for you? Talk a little bit about the genesis and what was it about the material that said, “I wanna direct this?”

AYER: It’s like everything, you want to switch it up, you wanna try new things. I got this amazing script from Kurt Wimmer, and Kurt got Jason involved, and I’ve always been interested in working with Jason. I just saw so much potential and ability in him as an actor. And then here this script comes along, and it just felt like the movies I liked growing up, like 48 Hrs., Beverly Hills Cop, or Die Hard. Just that passion and sensibility, which is really, really, really hard to write and really hard to structure and really hard to pull off. People have no idea how hard it is. So when a script comes along that has those ingredients and has that magic built in, you have to dive on it.

You have history with the military; how much shit is actually going on that you’ve heard about that is, like, off-books? Is a lot of that stuff real or is that all just Hollywood make-believe? I’ve always wanted to know.

AYER: You know, people sign paperwork and then things happen.

I’ll leave it there, and say maybe it’s true. So, I wish the opening 10 or 15 minutes of this movie could be seen by every person over the age of 70, so they could actually understand what people are doing. One of the things I really enjoyed about this is bringing in what’s really going on with people instead of it being what a lot of us have seen again and again. Talk a little bit about trying to depict that as accurately as you can. Is what is on screen really the way it happens?

AYER: You have a lot of sophisticated people out there who take a lot of money from people who are innocent. Normal people. It’s our friends, our family, our parents. And when I read that scene and I read the progression of it, it was stomach-churning and cold-blooded, and preying on the best of people for the worst reasons. So, it just sets the movie up perfectly, and it’s hard to set these movies up so you actually care what’s going on and you care what the hero is doing. That’s the hardest experience as a filmmaker. There’s something about having Phylicia Rashad endure this. She’s so sympathetic and so lovable, and it feels like the people we know, so it’s a great example of what you need to do to protect yourself.

How many people think this movie was filmed in Boston? It was not. Where did you film this movie?

AYER: London.

I couldn’t believe it. Was it London due to tax breaks or because you could get really good actors there?

AYER: Kind of all the above. The reality is, when you write a script, you just write, like, “Fade in tax rebate location,” and then you just figure it out from there. It’s like, the rebate you get on the money you spend is basically giving you your money back, so it’s more money you can put on the screen, and that’s the difference in getting stuff made these days. So it then becomes like an exercise as a filmmaker, like “Okay, now I’m just running all over London and the countryside and trying to find locations that felt like the East Coast.” That’s a credit to the brush designer and art teams on locations.

One of the things that I think elevates this film is the supporting cast. When you have Jeremy Irons delivering exposition, you buy into it so much more than when an actor is doing it over the top. Jeremy Irons delivering those lines, it’s like, “Oh, it’s fucking Jeremy Irons.” So, talk a little bit about the whole supporting cast because I think that’s what elevates everything about this.

AYER: For me as a director, I love actors. That’s why I became a director, because I wanted to work with actors. Everything else is just an excuse to be on set with the actor. They’re doing the real work, and they’re so much more creative in design. I can’t be in front of that camera. And so, you wanna work with the best actors possible, and it was kind of a miracle to get this cast. It was really exciting. I mean, I’m shooting Minnie Driver, and she’s so amazing and has such a presence and such credibility you believe she’d be running the CIA. And it’s creating that sense of reality. Jemma Redgrave, who plays the president — incredible. She sells it, her presence. Getting an actor to have that presence, that commanding presence, is not easy. Then obviously Jeremy Irons is gonna read the phone book and it’s gonna be [amazing]. It’s like a basketball team, you want the best players you can get.

What Do ‘The Beekeeper’ and ‘John Wick’ Have in Common?
Image via MGM

This movie has a ton of action in it, so talk a little bit about how you chose Jeremy Marinas for second unit, and maybe for people who aren’t familiar, what a second unit director does and how you collaborated with Jeremy to craft what people saw on screen.

AYER: So all of the stunt work, everything is figured out ahead of time for repeatability and safety. Everything was choreography, storyboard it, stunt vis. So Jeremy would get the stunts for us together, act out the scene, photograph it, come up with some ideas, “Do you like this? Do you like that?” Jason has a lot of opinions about action. I mean, he is absolutely encyclopedic, so he somehow literally knows every freaking punch ever thrown in cinema history. “That was done in this. That was done in this back in the ‘70s…” So, you really have to be on point with him. And Jeremy comes from the 87Eleven school and is like Chad [Stahelski’s] protégé. He’s like an artist in the sense that his grammar is how the human body movies. He’s one of the people with the best understanding of human kinetics that I’ve ever seen. Ever. So, those guys I hired to make me look good, and I have to pretend it’s me being smart but it’s them being rock stars.

The movie has a ton of action, so talk a little bit about the balance of putting what you can on screen with the time and budget that you have, and the choices you have to make, because you might only have a day or two to film something when maybe in a bigger budget you would have 10 days.

AYER: That’s the thing. It’s crazy, on a big show or a big movie, a $100-million-plus movie, you can have two weeks to do what we would do in a day. So it really comes about being on the same page of the grammar and the language of the photography, right? When I set up a shot, I’m literally like, “Okay, stunt player $1,300, the stunt pads, that equipment… That’s gonna be $10k. Repeatability, the extra catering…” I have to think in money and budgets, and I think that’s what makes me different from other directors. I know how to stretch a dollar and cheat. I call it like a high school play, where it’s like cardboard cutouts and it’s all fake, right? So, everyone kind of needs to just get off a high horse a little bit and roll up their sleeves and be like, “Okay, how can we do this?” The camera only sees what you point it at, so if I point it here, I’m not worried about any of this. I don’t care. I need that to work, and if I spend the money to make that work and don’t worry about what’s over here, I’m good.

One of the things about Jason is that he knows lenses, cameras, where to stand, lighting. He knows all of that stuff. Him and Keanu just know it all in terms of action. Talk a little about collaborating with someone like that who knows as much as maybe a director in terms of all of that kind of stuff.

AYER: It’s scary. It’s like old-school movie stars. There’s a difference between the generation that came up on film and the generation that came up on digital. With film, you have a 1,000-foot mag, which is like 10 minutes of 24 frames. So, by the time you’ve called action you’ve already burned through 1,000 feet, and then it takes a minute to reload the camera. It’s not like a digital camera, which could have 30 minutes on a chip, and then you just swap cards and you’re good. So with film, you have to be hyper-disciplined, and that old-school discipline, and how you have to light for film and the precision of lighting for film, trains these guys. They know their angles, they know their lighting, and they know their lights, and a good actor can walk on that set, and it’s like, “Okay, the key lights over here. I know they like me backlit, so I’m gonna keep my face here.” They know their exact angles, their eyelines. You can see them, like they’ll cheat their heads and then look a certain way. It may look unnatural in person, but on the monitor it can be stunning. And then you pick the right lens. So when you shoot close-ups, it’s technically a specific lens choice, but how you move in that frame… You can tell a classic film actor because before they move, they do this: they look, then they go, and they know the timing. It’s so intuitive that it just makes it a pleasure to photograph them.

So you get in the editing room, you have your assembly cut — who do you trust for honest feedback on those early screenings when you’re still unsure about, “What exactly is this movie?”

AYER: That’s the absolute worst part. You shoot the movie, “Yay! Big accomplishment. It’s so great.” The movie is never better than the first day you turn the camera on, and it’s never worse than when you see the assembly. It’s like having a kid, except it’s born inside out, and all the organs are all outside of the body. It’s absolutely horrifying. You know you have a good surgeon in the form of an editor to kind of fix it and put it back together, but I’ve never not been mortified by an assembly. The later you can wait to show anybody you’re at it, the better, because it’s like a patient on the table. You know there’s work to do, you know the scene’s running long, you know this beat’s not working, so it’s a long process. But I have friends and my partner, Chris [Long]. I have my kids. My kids are brutally honest, “That sucks.” [Laughs]

For this film, did you have a longer cut? Was it a much longer cut? Talk a little bit about how this film changed in the editing room from assembly to what people saw tonight.

AYER: The assembly came in at three hours, and they always do. So, a released scene could be, like, 30 seconds and the assembly could be like a three or four-minute scene, and so that adds up. It’s really about pacing. Like with this, it was shaping. I wanted the classic action thrill ride. In my movies, typically, I have a long burn first act because I’m setting up the character, and then once it goes, there’s always gonna be a certain point where once you hook in you’re going. So, for me, it was really sticking with the spirit of Kurt’s script, and getting it as fine-tuned and fast, the pace of it fine-tuned.

What was the last thing you cut out before picture-locking?

AYER: I’m pretty ruthless about killing your darlings, so I’m the guy that’s like, “Oh, let’s cut this scene,” and everyone else is like, “No!” [Laughs] So, I’m pretty aggressive and pretty experimental. But towards the end it was about finesse, and really making the action work. Then I get a call from Jason, “Hey, mate, you gotta cut two frames off that one punch in reel six.” “Yes, sir.”

I was talking to a lot of filmmakers and they say that after you’re in the post for six months, you have to show it to people because you lose track of what’s working. I’ve spoken to directors that say they took out this joke because they thought it wasn’t funny because they heard it 1,000 times.

AYER: That’s absolutely it. You can sort of become numb to your own work and what you’re seeing, and that’s why it’s important to get in front of an audience. So, I’m actually a big believer in the testing process. They’ll see things that you don’t see, or if it’s not working, trust me, they’re gonna let you know.

You Can Count on One Fist Every Time Jason Statham Takes a Punch
Image via MGM

What is Jason like? You mentioned he suggested cutting two frames, but how involved is he in post and how much is he sort of like, “Don’t show it to me until you’re really close?”

AYER: He was pretty involved in the edit. He wanted to see the assembly. He’s very smart about his brand and how he presents. And I think one of the reasons he is a star is because he understands what makes him look good and what works for him. So for me, it’s like, “This guy is a star. It’s his movie. I gotta figure it out. I gotta make him look good.” Not every actor is capable of doing that because a lot of times they can be really judgemental and get kind of nervous about their own work. He’s confident. He comes from a confident place. But as a person, he’s really normal and quiet. He’s just like a guy. He’s got a family, he’s got kids. He’s, like, all about his kids. You’re constantly adjusting the schedule so he can go home and see his kids. So, he’s really grounded and has great boundaries in a business that can blow through your boundaries.

One of the things about Jason, and I am a huge Jason Statham fan, but I will fully admit that sometimes in movies, he does not like to take a punch, he doesn’t like to be beaten in any scene. I don’t want to say it’s in his contract, but it could be in his contract. Watch his movies again and see how many times he actually takes damage. It’s very rare. So when I was watching this and he actually took damage, I was like, “Fuck, how did you pull this off?”

AYER: The greater the villain, the greater the hero. If the hero takes a knee, we’re gonna clap when he stands up. So, it was a bit of a negotiation. I’ll be honest.

Again, I want everyone to re-watch Jason Statham movies. He does not get knocked down that often. But that’s one of the reasons I think that fight scene is so good is because it’s brutal hand-to-hand with all those mirrors, and then he gets hit and you’re like, “Oh, wait a minute… What is this?”

AYER: He can get hurt. If your hero can get hurt… It’s like an old Batman movie. Batman gets in a fight and he’s got bruises, and it’s like, “Oh, wait, he’s one of us.” So, you humanize the hero by having them be vulnerable.

I love watching Jason Statham punch people in the face. What is it about Jason that we all love watching him punch people?

AYER: It’s crazy. It’s so compelling. I don’t know how to explain it or why it works, but it does. I mean, you can build an entire film around that. For me, it’s like taking this thing we all love and connect with for some reason and then creating a better mousetrap. Just make a more elevated version.

So I believe the film has, like, six action set pieces. Talk a little bit about how you wanted to present them. Each one is different, so talk a little bit about what you wanted out of those set pieces, because people are coming to see the action.

AYER: It’s a language. It’s storytelling. I always think, “What is the story happening in this sequence?” When you look at Kurt’s script, the action sequences are pretty true to what he’d written because it’s about character-based action. Like, how does the actor perform? What is the language? What is the grammar of the action? How do you make the action specific to that character? And then, you don’t want to blow it out too soon. You’ve gotta go somewhere, and by the end it’s pretty nuts with him chewing through the secret service when at the beginning he’s whacking on a couple of guys. That’s where Jeremy is really strong, is finding a grammar language for each action sequence.

I really like when he walks out in front of the building and takes on all the FBI agents. You filmed that on the street, and I heard people were watching. Do you enjoy when people are watching like that, or are you like, “Man, it looks so good because we’re out on location, but it would be so much better if we were on a soundstage?”

AYER: I started out shooting in the streets, and I like that energy. I’ll be dead honest, it’s cool to be able to share that with people, right? It’s Piccadilly Circus and there’s people from all over the world visiting London, and we could have been jerks and put up barriers so nobody could see anything. It’s interesting, you go and you kind of interact with people and you see what they’re seeing, and it sort of reminds you that, “I’m not sitting in an office doing spreadsheets. I’m doing something really cool, and I’m really lucky to have this job, and I’m really lucky to be able to share it with other people.”

Was there one sequence or one aspect of the film that you’re like, “We have to allocate more resources to this?”

AYER: You’re always squeezing a balloon, and you only got so much money. You always get told, “Yeah, it’s your money. You decide, figure it out. It’s your problem.” I’ve done it enough to instinctively know where I need to spend. In that house where all those action sequences are, it’s like a reel-and-a-half, almost two reels, of continuous action, so I knew I needed the support, the second unit’s support, the stunt support. It was also towards the end of the schedule, and if you’ve been on good behavior you should have a little firepower left, so I had some money left I was able to put in that scene. But usually you know where it’s gonna get absorbed.

I don’t know what you spent on this, but I’m impressed with what you put on screen based on what I’m feeling.

AYER: No one believes the number it was made for. You can’t do that with the money I was given. But if you’re in the weeds, and you actually show up and do your prep and do your homework, and you’re ruthless about it, and you constantly solve, and you get screamed at by your partner because you’re spending too much, then you can kind of figure it out.

One of the things, though, by filming in London, rather than say, Baton Rouge or whatever, you were able to get those actors because you’re in London. Doesn’t that help that?

AYER: That’s the thing. There’s great stunt crews, there’s great below-the-line, there’s amazing actors. I’m a big fan of British actors because they come out of, like, the London School of Drama and Cambridge drama, and they have such good ad-libs. When they read, you can literally see them reading the commas and the semicolons in the dialogue. But you can definitely be a lighthouse that attracts some amazing talent while you’re in a city like London. It’s the same in LA; when you shoot a movie in LA people are like, “What? I get to sleep in my own bed?” So, it helps.

I try explaining this to people, that if you actually shoot in LA, you’re gonna get a level where your whole supporting cast is raising your game because you can say, “You can work from home.”

AYER: Absolutely.

David Ayer Decided to Direct on the Set of ‘Training Day’
Image via Warner Bros.

We’re just about out of time, but I just want to ask you real quick, early in your career you did Training Day. What was it like that early in your career writing that movie and having Denzel deliver that performance? Can you sort of reminisce a little bit?

AYER: I’d been writing scripts, I’d written a couple, and kind of saw the game and hadn’t really sold anything, so I just wanted to write something for me. I wanted to write something I knew wouldn’t sell. I mean, I’m from South Central, I’m from the hood. You hear all the stories from homies, like, “This is happening, and that’s happening,” so I started writing shit down, being a scribe. Hollywood thought, “Cops aren’t like this. None of this stuff’s real. You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know anything about law enforcement.” Then the Rampart scandal happened, which kind of broke open, “Oh, that’s how they roll?” It’s like, “Yeah, dude.” And Denzel got attached, and I was co-producer on it. It was the first time I got to see a script go through the process of prep — the pre-production, physical production, post-production, all the way through. I watched Antoine [Fuqua] on set, and I’m like, “Man, I wanna be a director.”

You now know how much things cost. When you’re writing now for yourself or for other people, how much when you’re writing a scene are you sort of editing to budget in your brain when you’re writing a scene where you’re like, “Well, this scene could cost a million dollars, or I can do it this way and it’s $100?”

AYER: That’s the whole game right there. I literally have an Excel spreadsheet in my head, or I better be able to figure it out, because I have to justify everything I do. So, at every scene and everything you do, at some point there’s gonna be multiple meetings and budgets for multiple departments, so you have to know what you’re doing and why. A lot of people don’t worry about it. They just do it. But that’s how I’m able to get this level of execution for the price, because from the script, I already know how I’m gonna do that, how I’m gonna shoot it. And so when I read it, I’m like, “Oh, it’s gonna be four days and 600 grand,” and I’m like, “No, I’ll do it in a day, and all those assets will cost $9,000.”

David Ayer Is Re-Teaming Up With Jason Statham for ‘Levon’s Trade’
Image via Lionsgate

Do you know what you’re doing next?

AYER: I am doing Levon’s Trade. I’m going back to the UK and doing another movie with Jason based on a series of books.

Are you filming this year? Is it that far where it’s filming?

AYER: Yeah, we’re gonna shoot in spring.

Is this something that could be multiple movies?

AYER: Yeah, there’s a series. It’s Chuck Dixon. He did a series of 10 novels. It’s about a former military dude who punches guys in the face.

If Jason is willing to do another project with you, you know what that means? He likes you.

AYER: He tolerates me.

I don’t know, man, this looks a lot bigger than I think you had the money for. I’ve spoken to Jason and he likes working with actor’s directors and surrounding himself the way he did. This is a good movie, man. I think he had a good time.

AYER: We got along. It was actually a great collaboration. You go to set and you’re exhausted. It’s another day, it’s 4 a.m. and you’re dragging yourself in there, and then I see Jason and he’s smiling, I’m smiling. We catch up, we hang out. That’s not normal. A lot of times it can be very straightforward, very professional, so to be able to collaborate, feel safe and joy working with someone, and working with someone with that talent, is a gift. Then when that happens and when that connection happens, it just raises everyone’s game.

The Beekeeper is now playing in theaters and IMAX.

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