A self-professed graduate of the school of life, screenwriter David Ayer has made a specialty of creating hard-boiled, testosterone-heavy screenplays that pack both a visceral kick yet also deliver poetic moments dipped in machismo. Born in Champagne, IL, Ayer bounced around the country with his family until he was a teenager, when he was deposited at the home of some cousins living in South Central Los Angeles, a predominantly black urban environment plagued by poverty and violence. He attended high school in the gang-plagued Rampart district, which would in the late 1990s become synonymous
