Jason Statham’s new action movie The Beekeeper is buzzing around cinemas. We spoke to director David Ayer about the experience and his favorite bee joke.
The new Jason Statham January action movie The Beekeeper is what it suggests on the tin: a tongue-in-cheek, bee-themed action comedy where Staths doles out punishment to any bad guy who has the misfortune of buzzing his way.
It’s classic Statham stuff, but it’s a different kind of project for director David Ayer, best known for gritty crime dramas like Street Kings and End of Watch, and for 2016’s Suicide Squad. Ayer spoke with Polygon about working with Statham, his excitement around taking on a different kind of genre project, and his favorite bee joke from a movie that has a veritable hive of them.
Polygon: What first drew you to the project?
David Ayer: I got the script, Jason was attached. And the script had amazing character, this really interesting plot structure that just kept crescendoing. I read a lot of scripts, and I already know what’s going to happen before I turn the page. And this one got ahead of me. So I knew there was something there. And it was an opportunity to work with Jason, who I’ve always esteemed as an actor. Great performer, great physical action guy, I think he’s the best. So the opportunity to build a fun, soulful movie around him was a no-brainer.
What was your collaboration with him like?
What I really had to understand is, he almost has this unspoken contract with the audience about how he plays and what he’s going to do, and what he doesn’t do, and how he’s going to deliver for them. I had to learn his language as an actor, and then do my best as a director to showcase that and elevate it. He’s really normal and humble off-duty. He’s just a regular guy, and he’s kind of quiet. But then on set, he’s A-plus-game all the way, and demands everybody else brings their A-game.
I actually ended up learning a lot about action. I’ve shot a lot of action, but I’ve learned more about action from working with Jason Statham than all my other films combined.
Like what?
He has an encyclopedic knowledge of cinematic action. So you can do a piece of fight choreo, and he can tell you where he’s seen that in another movie 20 years ago. He knows body kinetics, in how it plays on camera, better than anybody I’ve ever met. And so he already knows if a punch is going to sell — he knows it instinctively.
So we’ll be on set. He’ll do his thing, and he’ll know it’s not to his standard. And he’ll [say], “We’re going again, we’re going again,” and [I’m like], Yes, sir. And then you go and look at the monitor, and he knows when it’s right without looking at the monitor, which is a really rare gift.
Second unit director Jeremy Marinas is one of the absolute best. What was working with him like? What did he bring to the table?
Jeremy is a great guy. Bay Area kid, just a total martial arts, karate geek. From the 87eleven school of hard knocks of stunt performance, he has this visual understanding of how to get the look and the choreography needed on camera.
It’s a tough game now, because the bar on action is so high these days. You go watch a movie 20 years ago, and it’s like, Wow, I remember that differently.
