Interview (Written): David Ayer (“Suicide Squad”)
A Deadline interview with David Ayer, co-writer and director of the movie Suicide Squad.
DEADLINE: You write most of what you direct, and if it fails, you move on. What kind of adjustment is it when the stakes here are so high, where, if you fail, it will have consequences for the whole motion picture division of Warner Bros, and the future of the DC properties, since you are seeding movies that have characters that have nothing to do with your film?
AYER: Well, what you watched is my movie, the one I wanted to make. I admit at first it was a little overwhelming going into such a large situation and being part of a larger slate, but once I got into the work, you’re still just writing, prepping, designing, directing; the skills are the same. It was interesting to figure out how to help drop easter eggs and set things up for other movies. To do that, I just really familiarized myself with the world of the DC Comics, and Geoff Johns was a fantastic resource to give me that world map. I had a lot of help on this. After a while, I got my sea legs and it became a lot of fun for me.
DEADLINE: You went into production, and then Batman V Superman comes out and the reaction is it was way too serious. Then Deadpool comes out of nowhere to become the biggest R-rated film of all time, fueled by irreverent humor. A lot of work under the hood went into establishing a Suicide Squad tone that is somewhere in between those two films. What impact did the release of those films have on how you ended up?
AYER: This meme started, that we were re-shooting to make the movie funnier. But you saw the film. The tone is wall to wall. It was really, more than anything, about just taking time out of the movie, distilling it down and keeping it alive and kinetic. I don’t want to speak out of school, but I think the institutional lesson of Batman V Superman was, you have to put the film up for a large audience and see how it plays. I got the opportunity to do that a few times. I’m a big believer in audience testing. You have to listen to the audience. I think it really made the film a lot better. We interdicted some issues and then the re-shoots are great because as you slip time, you end up with these raw stumps. It helps you sew them together elegantly. And I also got some more action in there. It’s all a tough process, because in essence, you’re on trial and you have to defend your movie. And the burden of proof is on you to show that it works.
DEADLINE: How did you fare in this creative collision of a hands-on studio with much at stake, and with rumors swirling about every reshoot?
AYER: The hotter the fire, the sharper the sword. I’m a big believer in that. You know my Russian cinematographer Roman [Vasyanov] always says that art must be painful. It must be pain to have art. I think there’s truth in that. As a creative person, you have to have people calling you on your bullshit. There’s been plenty of times where that makes you realize it’s a bad idea, never mind. At the same time, you have to fight for what you know is a good idea. It’s the nature of filmmaking and it’s like that on any project. There’s definitely a lot of pressure that was put upon this film because of the circumstances, that it was never intended to bear. But this movie has broad shoulders and I loved the process. The studio was like, we want to help you do whatever you can to make this movie better because the stakes were so high. That’s the beauty of it. We got the resources and the support that made this achievable.
To read the rest of the interview, go here.