At one point in Lost in Translation, Scarlett Johansson’s Charlotte, the disaffected photographer’s wife who spends much of her time lounging in her underwear in a Tokyo hotel room, laments to Bill Murray’s Bob, the jaded movie star...

Photo by Robert Yager "MONEY IS LIKE CRACK," CHUCKLES DAVID AYER, gazing out at the smoggy sprawl from the balcony of his Wallace Neff-designed home in the Los Feliz hills. "You need it, man." Money and crack, it turns out, are two things about wh...