Jessica’s buddy has made this totally amazing thing, which is an oral history of Michael Bay cobbled together from various interview quotations from all sorts of people. IT IS FASCINATING. It must have taken forever to put together! Boy I’m glad I don’t work for a real magazine.
One of my favorite parts is how Bay manages to go to Wesleyan and be in a fraternity.
Some samples:
Bay: The offer to do Got Milk? came to me and I’m like, “Milk? That’s embarrassing.” When I did it, I was like, “This is a terrible commercial. I don’t get it.” It won the Grand Prix Clio for Commercial of the Year. I think it’s an OK commercial.
*****
LaBeouf: It was probably the worst argument I’ve ever had with a co-worker—under a spaceship, screaming at him, “You motherfucker!” All this insanity. Really crazy stuff that I don’t feel comfortable repeating, actually. Really gnarly.”
*****
Thornton: I was sitting at the table read-through with Owen [Wilson] and Buscemi, and we were all sitting there kind of nervously. And Steve looks at me and goes, “What the fuck are we doing here?”
*****
Brian Goldner (CEO, Hasbro): He knew that Transformers existed; he knew that they were robots and cars, but he didn’t know all the mythology.
Bryce: I think Michael would be the first to say that he didn’t get it in the beginning.
Bay: I thought it was a dumb idea.
*****
Bay: He kept calling me “boy.” And one time he called me a “cock.” [In Sean Connery accent] “You cocksucker!” It was his last day of the shoot, and he didn’t like holding his breath underwater. I had United States SEALs holding him down because there was a fireball going over the water, and if he came up, he would burn his face off. So whatever, he called me names.