David Ayer (born 1968) is an American screenwriter and film director. Ayer was born in Champaign, Illinois, grew up in Bloomington, MN and Bethesda, MD. 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. His next script, Squids, 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, a fictional account of Americans capturing the Enigma code rather than the British. Ayer admitted that U-571 distorted history by this assertion, and that he would not do it again. "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 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. He also collaborated on the script for The Fast and the Furious in 2001.
Ayer's directorial debut was with the film Harsh Times. It is a drama set on the streets of South Central Los Angeles and shows how drug use and past military experiences affects peoples' attempts to lead normal lives. Ayer also has directed the crime thriller Street Kings released in 2008.