Director Michael Bay ‘honored’ by H’wood
Amazing career
LOS ANGELES, May 24, (Agencies): Michael Bay sank his hands and feet into the forecourt of Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theatre on Tuesday as he was honored for a money-spinning movie career that has netted almost $6 billion.
The 52-year-old Los Angeles native is known for directing some of history’s biggest effects-laden blockbusters, from “Bad Boys” (1995), “Armageddon” (1998) and “Pearl Harbor” (2001) to the “Transformers” franchise.
“It brings back your childhood because I remember as a kid I came here. And this is where I went to the movies with my parents, this was the place where I saw ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ when I decided I want to become a director,” he told AFP.
Bay, who now calls Miami home, worked as an intern for George Lucas’s special effects company Industrial Light and Magic before kickstarting his directing career with commercials and music videos for Tina Turner, Lionel Richie and Meat Loaf.
His first feature film — “Bad Boys,” starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence — marked the beginning of a string of collaborations between Bay and veteran producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
“It’s bizarre as a kid to think, this was always untouchable to me, you know,” he said of being honored by Hollywood.
“You don’t ever think that’s possible, so it’s kind of a bizarre thing having your hands printed here.”
Known for high octane action, Bay’s movies have made $5.8 billion, allowing him to indulge a passion for aviation and motoring, according to Rolling Stone magazine, snapping up a $50 million Gulfstream jet and a fleet of luxury and sports cars.
Success
Yet his commercial success has not protected him from the barbs of critics that accompany each new release, and he has in the past been accused of “pummeling audiences into submission” rather than entertaining them.
Mark Kermode, the British film critic who came up with the phrase, wrote in a one-star review of “Transformers: Age of Extinction” in 2014 that it had all the director’s hallmarks, from its ludicrous plot and incoherent action to “endless leering shots of the leading lady’s butt.”
Bay, who directed all five installments of the smash-hit “Transformers” franchise about huge robots that turn into cars and hit each other, said he never reads his critics.
“They can say whatever they want. It’s all about the fans. I think it’s a real epic movie,” Bay said at a preview of “Age of Extinction” in Miami.
Bay’s fifth installment, “Transformers: The Last Knight,” is scheduled for release on June 21 and an untitled sixth movie is due 12 months later, although a director has not been announced.
For the record, Bay is a youthful 52, but it’s a credit to his career that his accomplishments over the past 20 years have put him in the ranks of his mentors Steven Spielberg and super producer Jerry Bruckheimer, both of whose imprints are also in the Chinese forecourt. And it’s full circle for Bay, a native Angeleno who discovered he wanted to be a director at that very theater.
At age 15, Bay was working at Lucasfilm, filing storyboards for “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” He openly admits he thought the movie would be terrible. “What did I know, I was looking at cartoon storyboness” for his success. “He is going to do it his way no matter what anyone says and I have great respect for that mindset.”
Bay’s rise to the top appears as fast-paced and exciting as, well, a Michael Bay movie. After making a name for himself with commercials and music videos, he was plucked by Bruckheimer and his late partner Don Simpson to make his feature debut with 1995’s “Bad Boys.” Bruckheimer says it was an easy call. “Michael is a true genius as a filmmaker. You could see it very early on, you could see he has a style and a wit, even when it was a 60-second commercial. Unfortunately, we were right and he’s gone on to have an amazing career,” he quips.
Budgets
“Bad Boys” was the first in a line of blockbusters that include “Armageddon,” “The Rock,” and five “Transformers” movies — films that at last count totaled more than $7.8 billion worldwide. That figure is sure to skyrocket even higher with the June 21 release of “Transformers: The Last Knight.” Then there’s his work as a producer with Platinum Dunes, his company with Brad Fuller and Andrew Form, which has produced a series of hits on smaller budgets and television shows such as “The Last Ship” and the upcoming “Jack Ryan” series for Amazon.
And yet, when first asked about being honored at the hands and feet ceremony, Bay admits to a slight feeling of imposter syndrome. “I was like, ‘No, no. They picked the wrong guy!’” he says with a laugh. He eventually changed his mind. “I remembered going there as a child and seeing these hand impressions and putting my hands in them — this was such an incredible honor.”
Talk to those who know Bay best, and no one is surprised by his meteoric rise to the top. Film historian Jeanine Basinger met Bay when he was 18 years old and a freshman at Wesleyan University, where she was his advisor. Bay came to her with interest in being a film major and showed her some of his photography work. “I was actually quite taken aback that it was the work of a high school kid because it was dynamic, had great compositions and angles, showed a real control and mastery, but the work had life and energy in it,” she recalls.
Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer on the set of “Armageddon,” one of their many profitable collaborations.
Fuller has known Bay since childhood, though the two really began their partnership in college. Fuller considers himself lucky to have paired up with Bay then, though they were in a class that included the likes of Joss Whedon. “All I can tell you is I sat next to the right guy in film class,” he says. “I knew that guy was going to be successful; he just saw things in a way that other people didn’t.”
If there was anyone who wasn’t confident of Bay’s inevitable success, it was Bay himself. “I thought I wasn’t going to make it as a filmmaker,” he says. “When my senior thesis came around I took my script to the head of production and he just kind of scratched his head and said something like this: ‘No, you’re never going to make it in this business, so I’m not going to let you do a senior thesis.’ And I thought, ‘OK, he knows more than me. I’m not going to do this, I’m not good enough.’”