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| Birth Name(s) : Michael Bay |
Date of Birth: N/A |
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Single
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Partner:
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| Profession:
Actor |
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Full Michael Bay Biography
Michael Benjamin Bay (born February 17, 1965) is an American film director and producer. Bay has achieved financial success with such movies as Transformers, Armageddon, The Rock, Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys, and Bad Boys II. Bay is also one of the members of the LA music video production company Propaganda Films.
After graduating from school, Bay broke in to the music video industry and worked on videos for artists such as Meat Loaf, Richard Marx, Donny Osmond, Lionel Richie, and Tina Turner, among many others. He also began directing television commercials for many large companies, including Nike, Reebok, Budweiser, and Coca-Cola. His most successful advertising campaign creation was the series of "Got Milk?" commercials, which won him the Grand Prix Clio for Commercial of the Year and the Cannes Silver Lion.
In 1998, he collaborated again with Jerry Bruckheimer to direct Armageddon. The film, released at a time when disaster films were seeing a comeback, was about a group of tough oil driggers who are sent by the NASA to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. It was starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and Ben Affleck. Despite the poor reviews and criticism, Armageddon was nominated for four Academy Awards (Best Sound, Best Special Effects, Best Effects Editing, and Best Original Song).
His films are known for both their fast paced action sequences and ultra-kinetic cinematography reminiscent of director Tony Scott.
Bay's Transformers has broken the world record for largest seven day box office debut of a non-sequel at $153 million, beating Spider-Man.
In August 2007, Bay announced his withdrawal from the planned Transformers 2, citing Paramount Pictures' decision to release future high definition versions of its product exclusively on the HD-DVD format. However, he later retracted this, stating, "I over-reacted." However, on October 23rd, 2007, Bay stated, "It's short-sighted and it has delayed consumers' moving to HD (home video). "As a director, my critical eye is that Blu-ray is where my money is. Consumers are smart, and they are going to wait it out," in reference to Paramount's move.
Bay's films contain several common directorial and cinematographic trademarks. For example, there is often a 360-degree pan at some point in the movie, often with the character alone in some setting. Characters are very often framed in tight close ups just above the brow and above the chin. The camera is almost constantly in motion. All of his movies feature helicopters silhouetted in slow motion against a vivid sunset. Cinematographically, his films have a strong industrial feel to them, and Bay uses lots of greys and blues to emphasize this. There is also usually a high-octane car chase or some other vehicle chase in every movie as well as multiple explosions with high levels of destruction of cities, buildings and vehicles (especially cars). Transformers featured a scene depicting a building with Megatron dragging Optimus Prime through one side and out the other; this is very similar to the scene in Bad Boys II where a slow motion bullet breaks through glass bottles.
Bay often cannibalizes his own films, so visual motifs are relayed from one movie to the other; Grace Stamper (Liv Tyler)'s appearance in the latter half of Armageddon is almost identical to Kate Beckinsale's character in the latter half of Pearl Harbor; the car-hurling freeway chase in Bad Boys 2 is very similar to the train wheel-hurling freeway chase of The Island, and the effect where Bay uses CGI to allow his camera's point-of-view to perform physically impossible 360 dolly maneuvers during gunfights is first done in Bad Boys 2 and then again in Transformers. In addition, all of his movies feature a chiselled brunette women with ample cleavage, such as Tea Leoni in Bad Boys, Steve Buscemi's wife in The Island and Megan Fox in Transformers. Bay is infamous for his frequent use of magic hour during his films. Characters are often seen in an outdoor setting, moving in slow motion and lit by magic hour light.
Critics have attacked Bay for a brash, shaky quick-cut editorial and directing style that many feel emphasizes superficial dramatization and pointless action. Bay is often criticized for directing films that lack character development and progression, thus making his films more of an eye candy appeal.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park spoofed the work of Bay. Bay is the focus of the song "The End of an Act" from the Team America: World Police soundtrack, which criticizes the film Pearl Harbor as one of the worst films ever produced. The song opens with "I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made Pearl Harbor" and contains the line "Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?". In the fifth season South Park episode "Cartmanland", Kyle says, "Job has all his children killed, and Michael Bay gets to keep making movies. There isn't a God." In Season 11, Episode 10 "Imaginationland", Michael Bay is brought in by a group of G-Men to come up with an idea to stop terrorists, however he fails to comprehend the difference between original ideas and special effects.
In the third season of Entourage, Vincent Chase gets upset when he hears that Michael Bay instead of James Cameron is directing Aquaman 2. |
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