Pity Michael Bay. He stands before you, one of the most commercially
successful and yet critically reviled directors of the modern movie era. His
films, such as The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and Transformers,
have taken nearly $3 billion (£1.8 billion) at the international box office.
They are, it is said, movies that celebrate militarism, machismo and visual
excess; that pummel viewers into submission through a brutal screen
aesthetic of synapse-splitting mayhem. They are, it is also said,
commercials for Bay himself, a former ad-man, a 44-year-old sports jock and
a terrifying on-set martinet who drives a yellow Ferrari, owns enormous
mansions on both sides of America, and personally earned $75 million from
the first Transformers movie and merchandise. He is, apparently, both
a figure of hate and a one-joke punchline for industry watchers, journalists
and tastemakers everywhere.
Michael Bay in person, however, is a different story. Yes, he wears a brown
box-fresh cotton shirt and jeans, and paces his Bond Street hotel suite with
the gait of an athlete (he played baseball in college). And yes, he is
mostly in lock-and-load mode when speaking of his new movie, Transformers:
Revenge of the Fallen (see review, page 13), another blockbusting
behemoth that is set to be the biggest hit of 2009. Typically, he defends
the film robustly against accusations that it is aimless noise without any
hint of artistry. “Look, it’s easy to go shoot an art movie on a winery in
the South of France,” he says, with a baffled shake of his trademark
Seventies surfer hairdo. “But people have no idea how hard it is to create
something like Transformers. How many people it takes to devise it.
These movies are a totally different animal.”
Shooting the film, he says, was no cakewalk either. Indeed, to film the
movie’s Middle Eastern climax he called in favours from King Abdullah of
Jordan, who turned out to be a “big Transformers fan” and
allowed him to film on the top of the Great Temple at Petra. This was
followed by another favour from another Transformers fan, Zahi
Hawass, the secretary-general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of
Antiquities, who allowed Bay to film in the Giza Pyramid complex (the first
Hollywood team permitted such an honour for more than 30 years). “A lot of
directors would’ve done it digitally, and it would’ve looked cheap,” Bay
says. “But when I go for locations I go for gusto!”
And yet, beneath the bluster, there is a flickering softness in Bay. When
discussing Transformers, for example, he talks repeatedly about
getting “slammed” by critics. “They review me before they’ve even seen the
movie!” he sighs. “But you get used to it. They started slamming me with Pearl
Harbor. They said it was going to be a flop, but it wasn’t.” Do the
critical attacks hurt? “Sure,” he says, before adding slowly, deliberately,
“Yes. Of course. Absolutely.”
Not that he does himself any favours with Revenge of the Fallen (see
review, page 13), a movie of such sensory fury that it pushes Bay’s own
style (gliding cameras, pulsing music, sudden explosions and slow-motion
set-pieces) to breaking point. And yet even here there is ambiguity. Though
he defends the film comprehensively, he describes it as a dutiful chore,
something that he did out of obligation to the franchise. “It’s like [his
former producer] Jerry Bruckheimer says: ‘You’ve got to do your franchise
when you’ve got the chance.’ But after the three and a half years I’ve spent
doing these movies I feel like I’ve had enough of the Transformers
world. I need to do something totally divergent, something without any
explosions.”
He then describes his career in unusually haphazard terms, as that of a gifted
commercials director who drifted from blockbuster to blockbuster — starting
with the Will Smith vehicle Bad Boys — out of sheer chance and the
need to prove himself in the mainstream market, while always harbouring the
desire to make a movie that was smaller, more intimate, and less, well,
Michael Bay. Along the way, of course, he became a Hollywood player,
developing a fearsome reputation on-set, and going head to head with alpha
male actors such as Bruce Willis and Sean Connery. The latter, famously, on
the set of The Rock, called Bay a “f***head” in front of the crew.
“That was his very last day of shooting,” he explains. “We were holding his
head underwater and there was a fireball flaming overhead. It’s
claustrophobic, and he took it out on me. He was a class act otherwise.”
On-set, he says, he is the master of his ship. He shoots quickly, is merciless
with disobedient extras, and when he arrives, viewfinder at the ready, his
crew are known to announce: “Bay’s coming in, and he’s coming in hot!”
It is in this persona that he has redefined the action genre, often forsaking
emotional complexity for bigger and louder set-pieces. And yet there are
cracks of light and hints of emotion too. I tell him that I am drawn to a
scene from Armageddon in which Bruce Willis’s hardened rig-boss
Harry, with only minutes left to live, sends a message of reconciliation to
his estranged daughter Grace (Liv Tyler), via video-link. “God gives us
children so that we can have roses in December,” he says, a line that is
uncharacteristically poetic and, well, yes, moving. “I have deep emotions,”
Bay says. “And just because I do these types of movies doesn’t mean I don’t
have access to them.”
I wonder, too, if the scene resonates with Bay because it speaks of
parent-child bonds that tap the primal undertow of his own past — he was
adopted in LA as a baby by Harriet and Jimmy Bay (an accountant), but was
once rumoured to be the illegitimate offspring of the movie director John
Frankenheimer (who always vigorously denied it). “We don’t talk about that!”
Bay says, flinching. “It’s not interesting.” There is a moment of awkward
reflection and then, softening again, he confesses: “Well, I mean there’s
always something emotional when you’re adopted. You wonder who your parents
were and what it would’ve been like. But I adjusted very well. Some people
don’t. I had a great family growing up.” Then he qualifies, in a delicate
whisper: “A great childhood.”
Bay’s childhood, he says, revolved around baseball, magic tricks and an early
aptitude for photography. But then, crucially, at 16, a neighbour got him a
summer filing job at Lucasfilm, headquarters of the Star Wars creator
George Lucas. “I was filing Raiders of the Lost Ark storyboards
and I thought the movie was going to be terrible,” he says. “But then I saw
it at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and I thought: ‘Wow! I’ve gotta do this!”
He studied English and film at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and by the
age of 26 was directing commercials for Coke, Budweiser and Nike. Today he
is still amazed that figures such as Lucas and Steven Spielberg (an
executive producer of the Transformers films) are suddenly his peers.
“Steven Spielberg, whom I idolise, calls me ‘buddy’,” he says, stifling an
incredulous chuckle. “ ‘Hey, buddy! What are you doing, buddy?’ It’s so
weird.”
The conversation ambles on, this way and that. How his mother criticises early
cuts of his movies (“She says: ‘There’s too many f***s in the first scene in Bad
Boys.’ ”). And how he refuses to put his money into shares (he was burnt
by a rogue broker in his early days), but has already funded a film wing at
Wesleyan and is thinking, this summer, of supporting a yet-to-be-named
wildlife charity. We talk some more about his emotions. He says he cried
bitterly when his father died in 2001, but that he’s generally a happy guy.
He adds that the happiest moments in his life have been fleeting — writing a
college essay, or being asked to hand-deliver a package to George Lucas
during his fateful summer job. He says that although he has no plans to
marry (he is dating “someone not in the movie business”), he is keen to be a
father. “It’s hitting me right now,” he says. “I might not be the marrying
type, but I love kids. I’d definitely better get going soon.”
He says that mostly, for now, we’ll have to trust that there’s a new Michael
Bay on the way — a smaller, more modest movie project; a dark comedy, based
on a true story. “Very Pulp Fiction-y.” The film, he says, will
have no special effects. “It’s just real characters and very little action.”
And definitely no explosions, then? “Zero!” Not even a little one? He grins,
and adds: “Although one guy does pour gasoline over another guy and sets him
on fire.”
Metal mayhem: 20 years of robot wars
The 1986 movie The Transformers: The Movie, was set in the future, 2005.
Peter Cullen, who voiced Optimus Prime in the first movie, has reprised his
role in the new one two decades later. His other famous incarnations include
Eeyore in recent Winnie the Pooh films and K.A.R.R. in Knight Rider
When it opened in the UK, Michael Bay’s first Transformers
helped to contribute to the biggest weekend attendance record to date when
it was released in July 2007. In Malaysia it grossed $5.2 million, making it
the most successful film in the country’s history.
The first Transformers was the last film of Orson Welles. In 1986, at
the age of 70, he voiced the evil, shape-shifting planet sized robot
Unicron. Eric Idle was also in it.
The Marvel US Transformers comic started out in 1984 as a four-issue
limited series guest-starring none other than Spider-Man.
The Times once listed Optimus Prime as the 30th best movie robot, scoring
highly in the “coolness” and “dangerousness” stakes.
Typical transformers change into cars, jets and trucks but some mutate into
antiquated (and somewhat less cool) objects like gondolas, cassette tapes
and players.
Imogen Eveson
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is released tomorrow
