David Ayer is an American screenwriter, respected for his insight into the dual worlds of L.A. street life and submarines, both of which he knows very well. Ayer was born in 1968 in Champaign, Illinois where he was kicked out of his house by his parents as a teenager. Ayer then lived with his cousin in L.A. His experiences in South Central Los Angeles is the inspiration for many of Ayer's films.
Ayer wrote the screenplay for crime drama Dark Blue, and it was his research into the LAPD that led to his most famous script, Training Day. The film sold for a million dollars and Ayer sold his next script, Squids, for $1.5 million. That story was based on his experiences as a submariner in the US Navy, experience that he had earlier put into rewrites of the submarine thriller U-571. The film suggests that Americans captured the Enigma code rather than the British. In an interview broadcst on BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme, Ayer admitted that U-571 distorted history by this assertion, and that he would not do it again. He said he "did not feel good" about that aspect of the story. "It was a distortion", he said, "a mercenary decision to create this parallel history in order to drive the movie for an American audience. Both my grandparents were officers in World War Two, and I would be personally offended if somebody distorted their achievements."
Ayer signed a contract worth $2 million to write a script for S.W.A.T. based on his original story pitch. The film was directed by Clark Johnson and released in 2003.
Ayer's directoral debut was with the film Harsh Times. It is a drama set on the streets of South Central Los Angeles and shows how the violence affects peoples' attempts to lead normal lives.
Ayer is set to remake The Wild Bunch set in modern day Mexico, and Andre De Toth's Crime Wave, a crime drama set in the tough parts of L.A., with Ethan Hawke.
