When Michael Bay wants to screen a cut of his movie, he calls Anthony. Anthony flies from L.A. to wherever Bay is with a pair of digitally encrypted hard drives one primary, one backup that will allow Bays movie to be projected in a certain theater at a certain time before, basically, self-destructing. He does this for Steven and me, Bay says, meaning Spielberg. Tonight, the theater is in a South Beach multiplex that Bay has arranged for the occasion, where hes sitting in the third row of a totally empty theater, Nikes propped on the seat in front of him. We dont do anything small, he says.
Michael Bay, small? Thats like telling the sun not to shine, the grass not to grow, the 10-megaton nuclear device not to explode. FromArmageddontoPearl Harborto his $3 billionTransformersfranchise, Bay has spent his 20-year career going bigger, louder, more explode-y. Together, his 11 films have grossed a staggering $5 billion-plus, making him the fourth-most-successful director of all time. Thats international, corrects Bay politely. Domestic, Im number two.
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Bays new film is called13 Hours,and its about Benghazi. More specifically, its about the six American CIA contractors who defended a U.S. diplomatic outpost on September 11th, 2012, after it was attacked by Libyan militants. Four Americans were killed, among them Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and two former Navy SEALs.
Benghazi, of course, has also become a political weapon for congressional Republicans attempting to derail the presidential campaign of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, so when a filmmaker of Bays pedigree (Victorias Secret commercials,Bad Boys II) announced he was doing a movie, it sparked no shortage of dubiousness. The jokes practically wrote themselves:Starring Martin Lawrence as President Obama! Adriana Lima as Hillary Clinton!Even people making the movie wondered if Bay was the right choice. It might be hearsay, Bay says, but I heard [producer] Erwin [Stoff] said, I dont want to use Michael as the director. Id rather a better director do it.
(Says Stoff, I think thats been twisted a little bit.)
Bays alleged cinematic sins have been well documented: the explosions, the hammy one-liners, the epileptic editing, the indifference to narrative logic, the explosions, the explosions. By now, he has little interest in defending himself. Whats to defend? he says. See the movie. Make your choice. What I do know is that when I show these guys doing their stuff, its accurate. We tried getting it really right.
Its fair to be skeptical about claims of realism from a director who once said, of a fireball inArmageddon,Now, I know theres no fire in space. But its a movie, and most people dont know that. Insome ways, though, Benghazi is a perfect fit for Bay.13 Hoursis based on a book of the same name, written by journalist Mitchell Zuckoff with five of the CIA contractors. Much of it sounds like something right out of a Michael Bay movie: Theres a weaselly desk-jockey boss, a family-man CIA contractor doing one last job. At one point, one of the heroes climbs into an armor-plated SUV and cant find anywhere to put his coffee and grumbles, Spend $250,000 on a damn Mercedes and theres no cupholder? What kind of bullshit is that? which is almost literally a line fromBad Boys.
The real-life contractors were happy with the choice. I thoughtArmageddonwas awesome, says Kris Tanto Paronto, a former Army Ranger. Adds former Marine Mark Oz Geist, Some people are like, Oh, Michael Bay, he does all the explosions. Well, the real event had plenty of explosions. So its not like he had to come up with any. And according to former Marine John Tig Tiegen, Bay had incentive to be accurate: We told him wed waterboard him if he got it wrong.
Bay is going to get into all of it, with one caveat. Some of the things I tell you have to be off the record, he says. Because they have to do with the CIA, and how they do what they do. A lot of people think they know the story of Benghazi, he says, like a human trailer. But they have no idea.
Bays house in Miami Beach is onNorth Bay Road, and if he didnt move there specifically to live on a street with his name on it, you get the feeling that it didnt hurt. Behind his antique Balinese gate is a coral-bedecked pool that looks like it should have a shark swimming in it, and two dogs the size of young hippopotami Bays very sweet English mastiffs, Rebel and Bonecrusher. Bays housekeeper, Carmen, answers the door with a smile, and behind her, the 50-year-old Bay strolls into the entryway in a plaid shirt, jeans and neon-green Nikes that say Bayhem on the tongues. He looks like an exceptionallyfit scarecrow.
Bay moved to Miami eight and a half years ago, after falling for the city while filmingBad Boys II.For a while he rented Madonnas old house, then bought this place from Hulk Hogan for $17 million. He has a house in Los Angeles too, where he was born. But he calls Miami home. I loved L.A. growing up, but its become too big and soulless, he says. Hes also filmed three movies in Miami, which buys him a lot of goodwill when, say, he runs his brand-new Jet Ski into a Coast Guard patrol boat. (Hey, Coast Guard! said Bay. I worked with you guys!Bad Boys II! Hey, said the Coast Guard. Dont do that again!)
Bay heads out to his lush backyard, with a stunning view of Biscayne Bay. It was here a few years ago that he hosted a dinner for some U.S. service members who were on their way to Afghanistan. You cant mention their name, because they like that Ive never told anyone, Bay says. But I had [a U.S. special forces group] over here. They were in Miami because they train with water. They didnt want to go out in public, to a restaurant, so I had them here. Bay says his house had to be swept for bombs, because they didnt want me to blow up a $90 million team. That aside, it was a lovely night. Literally, every person said thankyou, he marvels. You never get that at a party.
Bay has a well-known love affair with the military, which has cooperated on several of his films. I was the first director to have an actual SEAL team in my movie, he says. They were classified, but they let a SEAL team be inThe Rock.(A spokesman for the Department ofDefense couldnt confirm this.)
Bay has been trying to make a movie like13 Hoursfor a long time: He says he was offeredBlack Hawk Downbut passed (Ridley [Scott] did an amazing job, but I wish Id done it), and says that he and Spielberg tried to buy the rights toLone Survivor,but [director] Pete Berg got the jump on me by, like, six hours. He was also set to make a film about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, beforeZero Dark Thirty,but says a certain government agency told him it wasnt a good idea. The details, says Bay, should probably be off the record, for my safety.
When Bay heard about another real-life story involving terrorists, Navy SEALs and a September 11th attack, he was immediately interested. He met with producer Stoff to pitch himself for the job. I just said, Erwin, look I know these guys. Ive had 20 years of dealing with these types of people. There are some of them I call friends.' Stoff says that any misgivings I might have had were just about tone. Tonally, this is a very different movie for Michael. My first thought was someone more grounded or realistic.
Im going outside of my world a little bit, admits Bay. Theres no Will Smith zinging Qaddafi with a one-liner, no sun-dappled shots of Megan Fox fixing a Humvee. Bay did add a car chase, because a man can only be so strong, but otherwise he tried to stick as close to reality as possible. This is a true story, Bay says. You have an obligation not to make the battle bigger than it was.
Bay shot the movie in 10 weeks, on a $50 million budget roughly what hed spend on special effects for aTransformersfilm. (Not even, he says.) The casts biggest name is John Krasinski, best known as Jim fromThe Office,even though, says Bay, a very big movie star wanted to do this movie. I cant tell you who. How about a hint? OK, Ill tell you, Bay says. But you cant write it.
He says the name. It is indeed a very big star. According to Bay, he and the star had a meeting. I told him, If you want to do this, youre not gonna beyou.Youre gonna be the guy in the script.' But in the end, it didnt work out. I dont think he wanted to die [in the film],says Bay.
People think they know the story of Benghazi. They have no idea.
They filmed last spring in Malta, about 200 miles off the Libyan coast. I wish you could see me on set, Bay says. Its a fun set, but its a hard set. Youre going to work your ass off. We literally shoot 75 shots a day, and theyre not bullshit shots theyre real setups. Theres so much dick time in the film industry wasting money, screwing around. Sometimes youve gotta say,Get that camera over here. Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop.
Michael is very aware of the crews energy, says actor James Badge Dale, who plays CIA contractor and former Navy SEAL Tyrone Rone Woods. Hed come up to me and go, Badge, Badge look at the crew. Theyre bored, arent they? We gotta blow something up.'
Tales about Bays attitude on set are legendary. Sean Connery once called him either a cocksucker or a fuckhead, depending on what day Bay is telling the story, andTransformersstar Fox infamously likened him to both NapoleonandHitler. He really is like a drill instructor, says Tiegen. Hes like the general of the set, adds Geist. It made me think of some of your great leaders of America.
One of my favorite things, saysKrasinski, who plays SEAL-turned-contractor Jack Silva (a pseudonym), which was hard at the time but in retrospect is hilarious, was there would be takes where Michael would walk up to you afterward and go, None of what you just did is in my movie. He wasnt even pissed it was genuinely, like, That was awful.'
Ive worked on the nice, Bay says. But I can be impatient. I dont suffer fools easily.
The first time I saw the sizzle reel in Malta, I got extremely emotional, says Paronto. I had tears in my eyes, and I had a water bottle and I chucked it across the set into a wall. Everybody was like, Oh, shit he doesnt like it.' Paronto started to walk away, and Pablo [Schreiber, who plays him in the film] comes and gets me around the shoulders and goes, Whats wrong? Is it OK?'
Dude, Paronto told him. Its awesome.
The real-life Benghazi, ofcourse, was not awesome. Its become politically radioactive, the stuff of right-wing conspiracy theories about cover-ups and stand-downs. Some pundits are salivating that the film might achieve what years of Republican inquests have not: The movie Hillary Clinton should be very, very worried about, trumpetedThe New York Post.Even some folks involved with the film expect it to cause discomfort for some viewers: It aint gonna change everybodys view, says Tiegen. But for people who dont know anything about [Benghazi], I guaranteetheyre gonna come out of it with a bunch of questions. For Bay, who has assiduously avoided any political stance deeper than anti-Decepticon and pro-midriff, it seems a surprisingly divisive topic to wade into. Apparently, his mother told him not to do the movie, says Stoff. I believe her words were What do you need that headache for?'
Bay grew up in Los Angeles, the adopted son of an accountant and a child psychologist. He went to private school in Santa Monica, then studied film at East Coast liberal stronghold Wesleyan, yet somehow transcended these coastal-elitist roots to tap directly into the arteries of Main Street America. His patriotic tendencies were apparent even as a young commercial director, when he made adsfor Coca-Cola, Levis, Budweiser, milk pretty much the most American stuff imaginable. Ive always tried to be a true American, Bay says today. But13 Hoursis not a rah-rah America story. Quitethe opposite.
Bay says the main point of the movie is to honor the heroism of the guys, and he does. But in 2015, its also impossible to make a Benghazi movie that isnt, by its very nature, politicized at the very least adding fuel to a right-wing cause, even if it doesnt explicitly share their conclusions. Hillary haters will probably be disappointed; neither she nor any other senior official is blamed, either by name or otherwise. But the film does allege several institutional failures, from a lack of sufficient security resources on the ground to the militarys failure to send assets (fighter jets, gunships) to help despite officialfindings that none were available.
In making the movie, Bay had access to way more than an investigative reporter. I want tobelieve everything the government tells us. But not everything adds up. I ask if he believes there was a cover-up. Some of the talking points are fishy, he says,but I dont want to get into that. But we give you flight times. We give you mileage. They wanted F-16s there, anything making noise. Libya is not far [from Europe] its like flying from L.A. to San Francisco. We are the strongest country in the world, and we could have acted better that night.
The most contentious part of the movie will probably be the inclusion of a so-called stand down order on the ground. According to the CIA contractors, who were stationed at an annex about a mile from the compound, after the attack they tried to go help but were ordered to wait by the chickenshit CIA base chief, before saying screw it and going on their own. Multiple government investigations, including by both the House and Senate Intelligence committees, found that no stand down order was given; instead, the base chief prudently had them wait while he arranged sufficient backup. Nevertheless, stand down is in the movie.
I trust every Senate report, Bay says, grinning. But this is a story about these guys Im going with what they say. In my heart, I believe this happened. If you know these operators, lying is not in their DNA. (But for the record, Bay says, If I were [the base chief], I would do the same thing.)
Between his anti-diplomacy, pro-bomb-dropping cinematic worldview and the fact that he cant seem to go a single reel without featuring a shot of the American flag fluttering in the breeze, Bay has earned a reputation as something of a conservative filmmaker. Youll want to stay away from politics, he cautions. Ill never talk about my politics. That said, he adds quickly, his films are not conservative. I grew up in a Democratic household, all right? But I stay away from politics because I think a lot of the world resents Hollywood talking about politics the normal mom-and-pops.
WhenBay is in Miami,he works in his homes east wing, in a second-floor office withTransformersposters on the wall and a directors chair in the corner. On his desk are eight computer monitors mounted in a semicircle; it looks like the kind of place that could launch a drone strike. Two of them are connected to phone lines, so Bay can video-chat with his editors in L.A.; several others are connected to various editors computer screens, so Bay can watch what theyre doing in real time.
Between his producing duties and directorial work, Bay usually has a half-dozen projects going at once. Right now, in addition to13 Hours,hes doing post-production on the nextTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,which hes producing and which is due in 2016, and pre-production for the nextTransformers,which hes directing for summer 2017. Im doingTransformers5,is it? Bay says, temporarily losing track. He shakes his head. Ive taken on a lotof work.
Bay picks up one of his landlines and calls his office in Santa Monica. Hey, I gotta talk to ILM. Can you have em hook up? Industrial Light & Magic, the visual-effects company, is where Bay had his first summer job, filing storyboards forRaiders of the Lost Arkwhen he was 15. Now hes one of the companys biggest clients. While he waits, he drops onto his stomach on the carpet to demonstrate how he likes to do color timing. I like to get up close, he says, inching toward the monitor. The ILM guys appear onscreen. Hey, Michael? one says into the camera. Are you crawling around on the floor?
Bay turns around. Oh, hey. He stands up. So, what do we got?
They start withNinja Turtlesanimation. Pablo Helman, a visual-effects supervisor who worked on theStar Warsprequels, appears onscreen and shows Bay the latest version of Krang, a new-to-the-movies villain who is, essentially, a disembodied brain inside a giant robot. So weve eliminated the tentacles, Helman explains. Is it too monster-ish?
He could havesometentacles, says Bay. I just dont want them coming out of the side. He looks like a stupid octopus.
They show him a clip of two other new characters, a mutant warthog and a mutant rhinoceros named Bebop and Rocksteady. You gotta adjust that mass, Bay says. That mass is not too good yet. He watches a few more times. Is our rhino dudes head big enough, do you think?
We could make it bigger, Helman says. The ILM guys write it down.
Next is13 Hours.Bay has seen these effects already, so he goes quickly: a shot of a charred photograph fluttering over an explosion; a squirt of blood from a leg. Then he sees an effect that didnt need fixing. Guys come on! Who turned this shit over? Its fine the way it is! Seriously, thats just wasting money. Thats five grand we could have gone out to drinks or dinner with. (People dont understand, says Stoff, but hes one of the most fiscally responsible directors there is.)
Finally, theresTransformers.They show Bay an underwater rendering of a crash-landed alien spaceship, then a new dump-truck Transformer with a cloak. Neither are up to snuff. Boy, Ive got a lot of work to do, Bay says, shaking his head. I better finish this fucking13 Hoursmovie. He thanks ILM and kills the video link, then turns to me. Its not good when Imnot involved.
The movie industry has really changed, Bay says, apropos of nothing. The middle-[budget] movie is basically gone. They just want these big movies. (The irony of this statement goes unremarked-upon.) Transformers,I still have a great time. Its fun to do a movie that 100 million people will see. But this is the last one. I have to pass the reins to someone else.
I remind Bay that he said the same thing before each of the last twoTransformersmovies. I know, he says. J.J. [Abrams] told me, Youre the only guy that could do this. But its time to move on. One more.
Bay has a few genres hed like to try: a thriller, a quirky comedy, maybe a historical thing. (Not the Civil War, though: Ive never seen an interesting Civil War story.) Hes producing a reality show about a modern-day treasure hunter, and hes got another project in the works hes very excited about. Were prepping an IMAX documentary on elephant poaching, Bay says. Its disgusting whats going on. At the current kill rate, elephants have about 10 years left.
Bay walks me out to my car. You saw bad stuff today, he says. Bad stuff. ThatNinja Turtlesstuff has a long way to go. Hes quiet for a second. But I guarantee you that that rhinos head is too small.
One afternoon a few dayslater, Bay walks into Soho Beach House, the Miami branch of the members-only club with outposts in Hollywood and London. Bay is a member, but he forgot his card, so he has to stop at the front desk for a pass. And whats your name? asks the intimidatingly pretty receptionist, who wouldnt look out of place being objectified in a Michael Bay film.
Its Michael Bay? Bay says.
And your last name?
Um, B-A-Y, Bay mumbles.
Watching the scene unfold, Im reminded of the second half of Megan Foxs famous quote, which got much less attention than the first half. When you get him away from set and hes not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality, she said. [Hes] so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And its endearing to watch him. Hes vulnerable and fragile in real life.
I can sometimes be a shy guy, agrees Bay when were seated. At dinner Im reserved, but when Im on the set, Im not. Its weird.
When hes not working, Bay lives the life of a fiftysomething Miami bachelor. He works out, rides WaveRunners, plays paddleball on the beach with friends. (Were pretty good, he says. Sometimes we can get up to 50.) Occasionally, hell go for a night out at a South Beach club where hes friends with the owner. But its usually just a beer or two, and then back home.
Spend a little time talking to Bay, and its not hard to sense that hed like to settle down. I definitely, in the near future, want a kid, he says. Ive been close many times. Well see. Bay was in a longtime relationship with a formerPlayboycenterfold and has a reputation as a Hollywood tomcat, but he hasnt been publicly connected to anyone in some time. I ask if theres a lady to go along with this kid. Id best refrain from answering those questions, he says, smiling. I dont know. Well see how it works.
When it comes to his filmmaking legacy, Bay insists he hasnt given it much thought. I think thats such an arrogant word, he says. Yourlegacy.Give me a break. Still, of the six highest-grossing directors in U.S. box-office history Spielberg, Bay, Peter Jackson, Robert Zemeckis, James Cameron and Ron Howard all have best-directing Oscars, except for Bay. Doesnt he want one?
Well, wouldnt you love everything? Bay says, laughing. Wouldnt you love it if 100 million people saw your movie? Wouldnt you love a statue? Wouldnt you love if everyone was nice to you? But life is not that. Im not losing sleep over it. You reach a point in your life when youre comfortable with who you are and you dont need to prove anything to anybody. Do what makes you happy.
Of course, its easier to not care about statues when youre sitting on an ungodly shitpile of money. Bay owns a $50 million Gulfstream G550 jet, as well as a Bentley, a Range Rover, an Escalade, a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and two Camaros from theTransformersfranchise. Hes selling most of the sports cars, though: Theres nowhere to drive fast here. And I Uber too many places.) I ask him how much hes worth. Id say about half, he says. Half a B.' He admits thats a lot. But you save up your money and you give it away. Thats what Im going to do. Ill probably do a very large wildlife-protection fund something with Africa and big game. I ask how much hell give. All of it, he says. Not yet. One day.
Bay tells the story of his maternal grandfather, Jack Kearns. He grew up during the Great Depression, he says. He made a little money selling boiler parts for industrial laundry machines, and he saved every nickel. We would go eat dinner at his house, and he would take the salad dressing he didnt eat and pour it back in the bottle. It was Kearns who gave Bay some of his most treasured advice, advice that has served him very well: The only way to make money, he said, is to sell to Middle America.
Kearns also gave Bay some other advice. He always said, Youll never make it in film, Mike,' Bay recalls, laughing.And when youre done, youll come join the laundry business.'