The 'Suicide Squad' director is frustrated as he has 'nothing to show' for his contribution to the screenplay of the first installment of the Vin Diesel-fronted franchise.
- Aug 25, 2023
AceShowbiz - David Ayer has revealed he has "nothing to show" for writing "The Fast and the Furious". The 55-year-old filmmaker helped write the screenplay for the first film in the high octane franchise - which originally saw Gary Scott Thompson and Erik Bergquist write drafts based on a Vibe magazine article "Racer X" - but he insisted the nature of Hollywood means he doesn't reap the rewards.
"Biggest franchise in Hollywood, and I don't have any of it. I got nothing to show for it, nothing, because of the way the business works," he told host Jon Bernthal when appearing on the "Real Ones" podcast.
While Thompson and Bergquist wrote the drafts, Ayer has claimed he changed the focus to be on the culture he knew in Los Angeles, and ensured there was diversity in the 2001 blockbuster. He added, "When I got that script, that s*** was set in New York, it was all Italian kids, right?"
"I'm like, 'Bro, I'm not gonna take it unless I can set it in LA and make it look like the people I know in LA, 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 s*** about street racing at the time."
The franchise has gone onto gross more than $7 billion around the world, with a further 10 films already released and more to come. However, Ayer insisted "the narrative" is that he "didn't do s***."
He explained, "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 f****** 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 socialised in that part of the problem. I was never socialised in that part of the problem so I was always like the dark, creative dude, beware."
Instead, he's focused on finding independence in other film projects and cutting out the "middlemen." He said, "I can f****** 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."
