Audiences everywhere proved it's not quite time yet for Christmas flicks, as Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan not only held onto first place at the box office this weekend, but it promptly took its lead and used it to beat down those playing catch up -- most notably, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. Borat chomped on those numbers and spit out a whopping $29 million, whereas Tim Allen's holiday pic hobbled into second place with $16.9 million. See, your film can have all the buzz in the world heading into its release, but at the end of the day if the final product fails to entertain (ahem, Snakes on a Plane), it's all for nothing. (Oh, and it also helps to screen your flick beforehand. Hint, hint.)

If you took Borat out of the equation, most of its audience probably would have helped propel Will Ferrell's Stranger Than Fiction into the weekend's top spot. However, with the Kazakhstani news reporter wreaking havoc, Ferrell's film fell to third with $14.1 million. Regardless, after a fall full of drama, violence and horror, it's nice to see three comedies dominate the box office. I say bring on the laughs -- we desperately need them. Speaking of horror, Saw III managed a fourth place finish, even if its $6.6 million was a little blah. But what does that say for everything behind Saw? Not much, apparently. Hey, but you have to hand it to Babel ($5.65 million) for beating The Departed ($5.2 million), The Return ($4.8 million), The Prestige ($4.6 million) and Harsh Times ($1.8 million).

Full numbers after the jump.

With his directorial debut, David Ayer chose to create a film around subjects he knows all too well: Military veterans, law enforcement, the ghetto and violence. To completely understand Harsh Times, you should be aware that Ayer grew up on the streets of South Central Los Angeles and was exposed to "ghetto life" at a very young age. He later went on to join the Navy, only to return home to a life full of various jobs in construction. That is until he discovered writing, and finally had some sort of output for all the characters and life experiences running rampant throughout his mind.

Shortly after leaving the military and long before he struck Hollywood gold with a script called Training Day, Ayer tapped into all those unforgiving memories from his youth and penned Harsh Times. While Training Day was his meal ticket to a successful screenwriting career, Harsh Times was more personal; it was his heart and soul. Ayer was so protective over this script that he refused to give it to anyone else, hell-bent on directing it himself. So, he took out a mortgage on his house, managed to attach an up-and-coming star in Christian Bale and set out to bring his long gestating vision to the big screen. But was it worth it?

Stepping into David Ayer's hotel room, for the first time in my life I felt as if I was shaking hands with a screenwriter who could literally snap me in half without even flinching. It's not that he's muscular, menacing or intimidating -- in fact, he's none of those things. However, as my eyes met his, I could tell the man had traveled (mentally and physically) to some dangerous places. And, although he managed to survive a tough childhood, going on to become one of the most sought-after screenwriters in Hollywood, his gritty past was written all over his face.

While I was a big fan of Ayer's script for Training Day (a film which saw Denzel Washington take home an Oscar for Best Actor), as well as interested in talking about his directorial debut Harsh Times (opening this Friday), I really wanted to know more about Ayer, and what attracted him to such dark, rough material. Here's a guy who grew up on the streets of South Central, Los Angeles, who somehow found a way to escape by joining the Navy and then wound up writing Hollywood screenplays. How does that happen? Well, I did my best to find out ...

Cinematical: What was it about the story and the idea behind Harsh Times that made you so determined to get this thing made? I know you took out a mortgage on your home to finance it yourself -- I mean, what was about it that spoke to you that way?

David Ayer: Well, I wanted to direct and I wrote it with the intention to direct. I know the world, I know the characters and I know how to do it right. And there's also a uniqueness to it because it's so personal and I knew I could really duplicate some of what I've seen in my experiences and thoughts. I couldn't hand it over to someone else, and it was just time for me to direct -- it was time for the career change. I believed in it. It was a Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab Script, and we ended up doing a table reading at the silent movie theater for like 350 people. People were crying at the end, and I'm like okay -- this is a movie. I have no doubt now, this thing could be a movie. So I was just determined to get it to the screen.

It was about 15 months ago when I sat down at a Toronto Film Festival screening and enjoyed the hell out of David Ayer's Harsh Times. It's a stark, dark and (yes) harsh piece of 70's-style hard-boiled character study, and one that features two fantastic performances: one from Freddy Rodriguez and the other from the mega-chameleon known as Christian Bale. It's the story of a frantic Gulf War veteran who desperately wants to earn a career in law enforcement -- despite the fact that the guy's maybe three whiskers short of Postal Mode. Anyway, it's a damn good flick, so I kept my eye out to see when the thing would hit the cinemas already.

(Harsh Times was obviously a labor of love for Ayer, who, after penning the screenplays for The Fast and the Furious, Dark Blue and Training Day (among others), decided it was time to re-finance his house and use the money to direct his first feature. And so he did.)

The New York Times just published a rather excellent article that details what went on after the upstart Bauer Martinez boys offered Mr. Ayer $4 million for his movie. Needless to say, bitterness and animosity bubble just beneath the surface: Ayer hasn't received his full paycheck, Martinez claims to have dropped $15 million on advertising, although that money most likely came from MGM. Oh yeah, apparently MGM will be doing the distributing for Bauer Martinez ... which is weird because Bauer Martinez was supposed to be, well, a distribution company.

Long story short: Harsh Times will (finally) hit about 800 screens come November 10th, although most of you movie fans will have to be content with catching it on DVD some time early next year. Bale's performance is pretty much a force of nature, but I doubt a flick this "low profile" will be yielding any Oscar nominations. And that's a shame, because Bale's long overdue for some award-time affection. Isn't he?

Indie film Smother is getting underway with Liv Tyler, Dax Shepard and Diane Keaton signed to the flick. Inferno Distribution will finance and produce the pic with Jay Roach's Everyman Pictures. The script was penned by Tim Rasmussen and Vince Di Meglio, and is about a 30-something guy who is fired from his job just as his wife wants to have a baby and his overbearing mother moves in with them. Di Meglio will make his directorial debut with the film. The scribes have another project in IMDb listed as Untitled Rasmussen and Di Meglio Project, about a "Southern father meeting his three daughters ethnically diverse boyfriends for the first time at Thanksgiving." That project has been sold to Warner Bros and David Dobkin (Shanghai Knights, Wedding Crashers) attached to direct.

The Pleasure of Your Company, which premiered at Toronto, has been picked up by MGM for North American distribution. The romantic comedy, written and helmed by Michael Ian Black, stars Jason Biggs (American Pie) and Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers, I Heart Huckabees). MGM also recently acquired Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, and is set to distrib The Weinstein Company's Bobby and Harsh Times.

Speaking of the Weinsteins, TWC has also pegged Tony Leondis to helm animated CG pic Igor, which will focus on a mad scientist's assistant. Script is being written by Chris McKenna. Leondis previously scribed other animated flicks including The Prince of Egypt and Home on the Range.

Three-time Oscar nominee Frank Darabont, currently listed on IMDb as writing and directing an adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, has optioned rights to the book Rescue Me, He's Wearing a Moose Hat : and 40 Other Dates Over 50, a comedic memoir by Sherry Halperin about her misadventures reentering the dating world after being widowed at the age of 51. Halperin will co-produce on the project.

(Ed's note: All links to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter stories require a subscription to read the full piece, but you can get a free 14-day trial from Variety.)

More release dates were moved around this week, as studios struggle to get the last quarter of 2006 in order. The most recent changes range from dumped indies to major releases rescheduled to increase Oscar exposure. Here are the details:

• First and most importantly, Alfonso Cuarón's spermless futuristic thriller Children of Men has been pushed back from mid-September to Christmas Day. Can you say ... Oscar? The buzz on this one is that the people at Universal think they've got an award-worthy film on their hands, and want to give it as high-profile a release as possible.
• Since we saw a production still from Killshot -- a story about a couple in witness protection (Diane Lane, Thomas Jane) being tracked by a hitman (Mickey Rourke) and his nutso protege (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) -- back in December, all of the perceptible progress on the film has been backwards. It was originally slated for release in March of 2006, but was then pushed back a full six months to October. And now? The movie's been pulled and not rescheduled. Yikes.
• Harsh Times, another film that has already appeared on release schedules several times this year (the most recent date was September 8), is now slated to hit theaters November 10. Directed by David Ayer from a script he wrote before penning Training Day, it's been described as very similar to that film in terms of character and structure, with Christian Bale in the central crazy guy role. It's hard to know here if the studio thinks Bale's reportedly flashy performance merits some attention during awards season, or if the date changes have been for internal reasons.
• Starter for Ten, an indie British flick, has been pulled by from its October release, and is now slated to hit some time in 2007. (From a personal point of view, I find this very irritating -- I already saw and wrote up a review of the thing, and it's not even coming out now?! Damn you, Picturehouse!) The movie is a well-acted coming-of-age story about a young man's first year at Bristol University; its 1985 setting is an excuse for a great freaking soundtrack, if nothing else.
  

dys·func·tion also dis·func·tion  -- n. Abnormal or impaired functioning, especially of a bodily system or social group

When I think of the word 'dysfunctional,' part of me wonders why no one ever suggested taking my picture and placing it next to said word in the dictionary. And if such a picture was ever presented before me, what sort of face do I put on in front of the camera? Do dysfunctional people smile? Should I frown? What if I kind of half-smile and squint my eyes, alluding to the fact that there's something missing -- ya know, leave it up to the reader to make their own assumptions.

Then again, aren't we all a little dysfunctional sometimes? Aren't we abnormal? What is abnormal? Heck, what's normal? And, if there is a person out there who is completely normal, not a worry or problem in the world -- wouldn't that classify them as abnormal? Where am I going with this? Did I even have a point? Do I need one?

Needless to say, the following films all deal, in some way, shape or form with dysfunction. Seeing, feeling and wanting things that, to the average, functional person, may seem a bit bizarre. Be it ghosts, dreams, people out in the middle of the woods with mutilated hands or any film that stars Christian Bale -- this week we're delving into the world of the abnormal ... or normal, depending on which dictionary you subscribe to. Welcome to another edition of Trailer Park:

About a year after subsuming most of its activities into the Sony corporate beast, MGM is close to setting up deals with the Weinstein Company and other indie studios and acquisition houses to independently distribute films. Over at Variety, Nicole Laporte is reporting that studios are interested in pacting with the House That Louis B. Meyer built in order to have total control over marketing in both the theatrical and DVD realms. MGM, meanwhile, is looking for content to shore up their library, primarily in terms of meeting new CEO Harry Sloane's mandate to aggressively pursue new digital outlets. Negotiations with the studios seem to be pretty far along, with Weinstein apparently committed to sending at least five films down the MGM pipeline this year. But the first distribution adventure for MGM looks like it's going to be Harsh Times, the Iraq-veteran drama starring Christian Bale that new player Bauer Martinez picked up at Toronto and plays to release this spring.