Michael Bay: Bay Watch

Q: So, Disney was saying no to its biggest hit-making producer and biggest box-office director?

A: I took this personally. I felt I'd always delivered for them, broken my ass for them, and I'd never even gotten a point on any of my movies. Hollywood's not kind that way. But I didn't protest. I just thought, "Well, times have changed." We've been seeing that for a while. Studios now look for returns every quarter on their stock, and that's not the way the movie business works.

Q: It sounds like you've never been given the star treatment.

A: On Bad Boys at Columbia, I think I made $125,000. I knew this film was my one shot and if I blew it, I'd be fucked. So I was determined to not fail. Two days before we started shooting, Don Simpson sent Jerry a six-page memo essentially saying, "Let's take our names off this movie." I ended up writing Columbia Pictures a check for $25,000, a fifth of my fee, to shoot the ending scene they wouldn't pay for. And you know what? They cashed that check and didn't pay me back until the movie had made $60 million. And then we had to beg them for it. They treated me like shit.

Q: But you'd moved to Disney and made them a fortune on Armageddon. Didn't that make a difference when it came to Pearl Harbor?

A: Michael Eisner was saying, "Jerry, lose $10 million. You've got to bring it down to $135 million." Jerry says, "We can do this." He always says that; he's an optimist. But I'm the one who has to figure out where. I'm good at that--I learned from commercials and videos how to spend the money wisely. I say, "No, we can't." Somehow, though, we got to within $1 million of what they demanded. They said, "Nope."

Q: How did you finally make their number?

A: I cut money from plane crashes at the end. The whole movie is a class-A production, but there were these cheesy crashes at the end. My thinking was that if the studio wanted to fix it later, they could.

Q: Were you angry by then?

A: I was miserable because I'd been toyed with. It was heart-wrenching. I quit five times, but Jerry just kept saying, "You have to make this movie." I'm glad I listened. We brought it in, only going a couple million into our contingency. I would never have predicted we'd have been able to do this. Maybe it was the blessing that the state of Hawaii requires you to do for any film shot there. This guy who did the blessing starts talking and he goes on half an hour and I'm thinking, "This just cost us 50 grand." But thank God for that prayer. Despite the number of explosions and dangerous stunts we did, we only had three sprained ankles, a broken collarbone, and one guy with 10 stitches on his head.

Q: James Cameron gave back his fee to Fox when Titanic doubled its $100 million budget. Michael Mann took responsibility for overages on Ali. Is it good for directors to be held responsible for things like this?

A: No, I don't think it's healthy. Take Armageddon. They say, "We want more effects shots at the end," and the budget goes over. Or they say, "We want you to edit 45 minutes for a presentation at Cannes." That adds to the cost. The Rock got pushed from July to June 7, so we were working three editors on overtime--the budget goes through the roof. That's not the director's fault. I can tell you right now: I'm not giving my fee ever again.

Q: What was your visual game plan for this movie? Did you look at every World War II film?

A: No, I'm not one of those guys who decide to make Pearl Harbor and order up every war movie. I saw a lot of documentaries and I watched this amazing film John Ford shot when he was a photographer for the military. He filmed planes from a battleship, got some great shit.

Q: How did you and Randall Wallace work out the problem of rallying the audience from the horror of the bombing?

A: That's the real movie moment. We had to get the audience back. We needed to have Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett fight the invading Japanese. We based their story on actual events, on two fighter pilots who went to an airbase off the beaten path and got two planes up and shot down seven Zeros. They were the only guys to get planes up there.

Q: When you signed on for Pearl Harbor, did you say, "I'm going to present a terrific love triangle," or "I'm going to show the invasion as it really happened"?

A: A bunch of visuals means nothing. I was hooked by the love story in Pearl Harbor. Believe it or not, I have a really soft heart and I can be sappy. Wow, that sounds pretty bad. But it's what this movie is driving towards. At the same time, you're taking the viewer on an experience they've never seen before. Some of the Pearl Harbor survivors got upset, saying, "Why do you have a love story? Why can't you just film the attack?" I'd remind them of Titanic. Break it down and you've got a ship sinking, and without that love story, there's nothing to care about. Then they understood.

Q: You have a walk-on in Pearl Harbor, and you've been onscreen before--I saw your performance as an evil frat boy in Mystery Men.

A: Oh, God [groaning]. The director called me up, and I just did it. Actually, it was interesting to wait two days in a trailer to be used for five minutes. I realized, Actors must hate this! I used to think they had such easy lives. Now I've been asked to be in "Felicity," playing a wannabe director who's only into art films.

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