David Ayer says he has ‘nothing to show for’ writing ‘Fast and the Furious’ – The Hollywood Reporter
David Ayer said he has “nothing to show for it” when it comes to writing 2001s The Fast and the Furiousthe film that launched the long-running franchise.
In a recent episode of Jon Bernthal real podcastthe writer, producer and director spoke about the film, which hit theaters more than two decades ago and was originally adapted by a 1998 Mood magazine article.
“The biggest franchise in Hollywood and I don’t have any of it,” Ayer explained. “I have nothing to show for that, nothing, because of the way the business works.”
While Gary Scott Thompson and Erik Bergquist wrote drafts for the screenplay, Ayer said he was the one who added variety and street racing culture to the screenplay.
“When I got the script, that shit was set in New York, so it was all Italian kids, right?” he recalled. “I’m like, ‘Bro, I’m not going to take it unless I can play it in LA and make it look like the people I know in LA, right?’ Then I started writing about people of color, writing about the street, writing about the culture, and at the time nobody knew about street racing.”
Ayer continued, “I went to a shop in the Valley and met with the first guys who were hacking the fuel curves for the injectors and stuff like that and they just figured it out and they showed it, and.” I’m like, ‘Oh damn, I’m going to put that in the film.’”
The franchise, which currently consists of more than 10 films with more in the works, has grossed more than $7 billion at the global box office. But the filmmaker feels that “the narrative” surrounding his engagement is, “I didn’t do anything.”
“It’s like people hijack narratives, control narratives and create narratives to empower themselves, isn’t it?” he added. “And because I’ve always been an outsider and because I don’t go to the damn parties. I don’t go out to eat, I don’t do any of it. The people who did this were able to control and manage narratives because they were socialized into that part of the problem. I was never socialized in that part of the problem, so I’ve always been like the dark, creative type, beware.”
Hollywood executives involved Fast & Furious Franchises aren’t the only people in the industry that Ayer has had tensions with. He was also open about his troubles with 2016 suicide squadwhich is why creative freedom has top priority in his current projects.
“Fuck all middlemen, right? I get it. It’s up to me, I gotta save myself, right?” Ayer said. “I can fucking whine about being shot at and all the bullets I’ve taken throughout my career. I have to save myself and create an ecology that is safe for me to be creative in, and that’s all. And that’s exactly what I’m doing now.”
