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Harsh Times
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 Harsh Times Production NotesFrom the creator of Training Day comes Harsh Times, a hyperrealistic story of friendship, loyalty and ambition set on the extremely rough streets of south central L.A. As gritty and unsentimental as Training Day, Harsh Times follows two lifelong friends as they each try to rise above the violence of the streets yet are continually dragged back down by the world in which they live.
Since coming back from the Gulf War, Jim Davis (Christian Bale) hasn't been able to get his life back on track. He still feels the residue of that far off desert on his skin, still screams in his sleep from visions he just can't shake.He has burned through his savings waiting for an offer from the L.A.P.D. that hasn't come. He tells himself that if he only had a job, everything would turn around - he could marry his devoted Mexican girlfriend, Marta (Tammy Trull), bring her back to the States and settle down.
But until something else materializes for Jim - some other way to help his country and not die of boredom at some desk - he'll just chill with his best friend, Mike (Freddy Rodriguez), also unemployed. And Mike's longtime girlfriend, Sylvia (Eva Longoria), whom Mike helped put through law school, wants an equal, not a dependent, so he too finds himself on the job hunt.
Jim offers to help Mike find a job, but instead they end up cutting a swath of chaos through the mean streets of South Central, looking for trouble - just like when they were kids. In a misguided quest to get their lives together they joyride, get high, plan for their glorious future and start trouble wherever they land.
After the L.A.P.D. job evaporates and Jim gets a call from the much more complicated foreign office of Homeland Security, Jim and Mike's misadventures take on a darker edge, one haunted by violence and the echoes of combat Jim can't seem to shake. They no longer need to look for trouble.
As the city that was once their playground now seems to press in on them, each choice Jim and Mike make will not only test their loyalty to each other, but their ability to survive the mean streets they hope to leave behind.
Christian Bale (Batman Begins, American Psycho), Freddy Rodriguez (“Six Feet Under”) and Eva Longoria (“Desperate Housewives”) star in Harsh Times, a coming-of-age drama written and directed by David Ayer, the acclaimed screenwriter of Training Day, S.W.A.T. and The Fast and the Furious.
Harsh Times is produced by Andrea Sperling (D.E.B.S., But I'm A Cheerleader) and Ayer, with Christian Bale serving as executive producer. The creative behind-the-scenes team is led by director of photography Steve Mason (Strictly Ballroom, Basic), production designer Devorah Herbert (Mysterious Skin, Lovely and Amazing) and Oscar-winning editor Conrad Buff (Titanic, Training Day). Music is by Graeme Revell (Sin City, Kingdom of Heaven).
Synopsis
From the creator of Training Day comes a taut, authentic, coming of age drama - featuring an intense, gritty performance from Christian Bale - about two best friends who, in spite of their best efforts and the women who love them, are unable to escape the streets.
Former Army Ranger Jim Davis (Christian Bale) hasn't been able to get his life back on track since he came home from the Gulf War. Plagued by nightmares and unwilling to take a desk job, he burned through his savings waiting for an offer from the L.A.P.D. that never panned out. He tells himself that if he only had a job, everything would turn around - he could marry his devoted Mexican girlfriend, Marta, and bring her back to the States and settle down.
But in the meantime, he's just killing time with his friend Mike (Freddy Rodriguez), who's also unemployed. Mike's high-powered girlfriend, Sylvia (Eva Longoria), is sick of hearing his excuses, so Jim offers to help Mike find a job; instead they just end up cruising the streets of South Central looking for trouble. They drop in on Jim's ex-girlfriend, and get jumped by her boyfriend and his homeboys. They get deeper and deeper into the streets, and unwittingly sew the seeds of their own destruction.
About the Production
David Ayer wrote Harsh Times a decade ago as a reflection on friendship on the mean streets of Los Angeles. The two main characters, Jim and Mike, claim downtown and all it casts in shadow as their own private playground - an echo of Ayer's own childhood in L.A. “Harsh Times is about friendship and growing up,” Ayer says. “It is a parable, a cautionary tale. I wanted to capture the moment in someone's life where that individual simply grows up. It is about being twenty something.”
Ayer wrote the screenplay while in his early 20s, between the sometimes rocky path he left behind, and the future as a successful screenwriter he had yet to fulfill. “I wanted to portray a version of Los Angeles seldom seen outside its mazes of neighborhoods in the shadow of downtown,” he says, “streets I know from my teenage years. I wanted to write a story about friendship that had its own code and rules. I wanted to write about the kind of people I knew from growing up in L.A. Many hearts and lives have been destroyed by these streets. And many more have grown strong and thrived. What makes the difference? Usually it's the choices people make.”
Adds Terry Crews, who appeared in Training Day before landing the role of Darrel in Harsh Times, “Here's a story about a man who has moral choices to make, and he seems to make the wrong ones,” says the actor. “He keeps making these wrong moves, yet they don't hurt him, they actually help him. And it really shows how things can work for you good or things can work for you bad, and it just really breaks down as a big morality play right here in Los Angeles. That's what I love about it.”
Jim Davis, played by Christian Bale, is “a guy back from the war, trying to get a job as a cop,” says Ayer. “Unfortunately, Jim has brought the war home with him. It plagues his dreams, blurs his sight, makes him scream in his sleep.”
An actor who claims one of today's most diverse and compelling careers, Bale was immediately taken with the screenplay. “He got a hold of the script a few years back and he got hooked on it,” Ayer recalls. “He wasn't going to let anyone else play that but him.”
Jim's only relief from horrors he'd rather forget is his friendship with Mike Alvarez, played by Freddy Rodriguez. “For them high school never ended and South Central is their playground,” says Ayer.
Rodriguez describes Mike as “a guy who grew up in the hood but never became a product of his environment,” says the actor. “He always knew all the drug dealers, all the gangbangers, but never quite became one. A guy with a lot of potential, but always backslides into being a slacker. A guy who loves a party. He loves to hang out and get drunk and high, and that's why his bond to Jim is so tight is because they both like doing the same things.”
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Eva Longoria and Freddy Rodriguez with Writer and Director David Ayer on the set of Harsh Times.
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