Michael Bay
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| Born: | 17 February 1965 Los Angeles, California, USA |
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| Occupation: | Film director and producer |
Michael Benjamin Bay (born February 17, 1965) is an American film director and producer, known for making movies that place the emphasis on action rather than character or plot.
Bay has achieved massive financial success with such movies as Armageddon, The Rock, Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys, Bad Boys II and The Island. Bay is also one of the most successful members (in regards to Box Office returns) of the LA production company Propaganda Films.
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Biography
Early life
Bay was born and raised in Los Angeles by his adoptive parents. He was educated at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and graduated from Wesleyan University.
Director
After graduating, 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 Commerical of the Year and the Cannes' Silver Lion.
The first movie to be directed by Bay was Bad Boys in 1995, which was a box office success. He has since followed this with several more large-budget, action-oriented films. All these movies combined took in more than $1.5 billion dollars worldwide, although from Armageddon onwards (with the exception of Bad Boys II) each has been less successful than the last.
His most recent film, The Island, was released in 2005. It is the only Bay-directed movie to flop at the U.S. box office, an unusual fate for a director whose previous four films made more than a combined total of 1,6 billion. International markets were more accepting of The Island, pulling in $160,285,073 worldwide.[1]
His films are known for both their fast paced action sequences and ultra-kinetic cinematography and lack of character and plot development.
Bay and Wydncrest Holdings recently bought the special effects company Digital Domain from former owners James Cameron and Stan Winston. [2] He also runs his producing company Platinum Dunes that produces horror genre films (mostly commercially successful remakes of 1970s films).
Awards
In 1995, Bay was honored by the Directors Guild of America as Commercial Director of the Year.
Bay has won many MTV Music Video Awards.
Filmography
As of 2006 Bay has directed six feature films and is scheduled to direct a seventh.
Director
- Bad Boys (1995)
- The Rock (1996)
- Armageddon (1998)
- Pearl Harbor (2001)
- Bad Boys II (2003)
- The Island (2005)
- Transformers (2007; currently in post production)
Producer
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
- The Amityville Horror (2005)
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)
- The Hitcher (2007)
Criticism
- Critics have attacked Bay for his highly stylized, quick-cut, bombastic directing style. He has received two Golden Raspberry Awards nominations for his directorial work on Armageddon and Pearl Harbor.
- Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park frequently criticize 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 said, "Cartman gets his own amusement park, and Michael Bay gets to keep making movies. It's true. There is no God."
- Vincent Chase, the lead character of the show Entourage, expresses dismay when his agent tells him that the sequel to his successful film adaptation of Aquaman is being directed by Michael Bay.
References
External links
- Official website, with FAQ and blog
- Michael Bay at the Internet Movie Database
- Michael Bay at All Movie Guide
- Fast Cars, Hot Blondes, Big Budgets, Bigger Explosions, a June 2001 Rolling Stone article
- Criterion Collection essay on Armageddon, from a Wesleyan University professor under whom Bay studied
- What Has Our Society Come To When March Of The Penguins Is The Blockbuster Hit Of The Summer?, an August 2005 article from The Onion, "written by" Bay
- Article confirming relationship between Michael Bay and Jaime Bergman
