Michael Bay's films are huge hits at the box office - but that doesen't endear him to the critics, writes Donald Clarke
Do I detect a whiff of brimstone as Michael Bay ascends from the Underworld to discuss his new film, Bad Boys II, with me? Of course not. But, such is Bay's standing among critics and cultural commentators, that one half expects cloven hooves and a tail. The 38-year-old may not quite be the most financially successful director on the planet (though he's not far off it), but he is surely the most reviled. His five hugely expensive action pictures, all produced by the similarly unloved Jerry Bruckheimer, have broken new ground in their ability to induce severe tinnitus and nausea without damaging - or in any other way engaging with - the brain.
We were prepared to be reasonably tolerant of his first three movies - Bad Boys, The Rock and Armageddon - because, unpretentious romps all, they were no better than they ought to be. But Pearl Harbor is the sort of film that encourages snooty French intellectuals and cartoonists on the New Yorker to muse upon the decline of Western civilisation.
"Yeah, I suppose I am a good target," he says, morosely. "A critic in LA - one of the top guys - once said to me: 'We are going to hate you until you do a different kind of movie. Your movies make too much money. They cost too much. They are everything we hate.' But, you know, I've only made five movies and they have made over a-billion-and-a-half dollars. So, somebody must like them."
But boasting about the amount of money he has made is not going to change anybody's mind about the vulgarity of his approach. And, sadly, there is nothing about Bay's demeanour to suggest any hidden depths. (Although he does mention that his next film might be a "cool, dark character piece".)
Thin and casually dressed with thick, collar-length hair, he has the sleek good looks you would expect to find in a tennis pro at an expensive country club. I imagine - and this is not necessarily a compliment - that Michael is the kind of man Jerry Bruckheimer could really rely on.
Actually, I wonder who is in charge in their partnership.
"Oh they are my movies," he says. "Jerry is very rarely on the set. But he taught me an awful lot about script, casting, about the logic of film. He is superb in the editing room."
Bruckheimer and his then partner, the late Don Simpson, talent-spotted Bay in the mid-1990s while he was still one of America's most successful commercials directors. The creator of the "Got Milk" campaign (the one with the white moustaches) was catapulted into the big time with the first Bad Boys movie, a characteristically deafening cop thriller starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.
"I was terrified of ending up in movie jail," he says, mysteriously. "A lot of guys from commercials and music videos had made one picture, it had flopped and they never worked again. They were then never let out of that jail. Then [former pop video director] David Fincher got Alien 3 and he was very difficult with the studio. I was going around town saying: 'I'm not David Fincher. I'm real easy to work with.'"
Again, this is the sort of thing that gets up people's noses. Accusations that he is Bruckheimer's pet monkey and is only let out of his cage once every few years to throw his doings at the public, will not die down while he is bellowing about how easy he is to work with.
He certainly can be his own worst enemy. A few years ago, he invited further ridicule during an episode that many people felt had to be a sophisticated hoax by an Internet prankster. Bay, the adopted child of middle-class parents from Los Angeles, set out to find his real parents and, on discovering that the great film director John Frankenheimer had had an affair with his birth-mother, decided that the aging helmer must be his father.
The notion that the creator of The Rock believed himself to be carrying the genes of the man behind The Manchurian Candidate inevitably caused much undignified tittering. The tittering became guffawing when Frankenheimer, understandably alarmed, dug into his medical records to prove that he was not the progenitor of Bay and all his terrible works. Bay remained unconvinced by the DNA evidence presented by the older man, who, sadly, died last year.
"That is a non-story now," he says. "I was adopted. I don't want to talk about it. It wasn't fair to talk about it then. He didn't want to talk about it. So let's just leave it."
Bay deflects the question with good humour. Indeed, he remains convivial throughout and gives no hint of the volatile temper which allegedly reveals itself on set. He laughs as he tells me that the director, James Cameron, who has been known to throw the odd tantrum himself, heard rumours of Bay's irascibility and declared himself a brother in fury.
"'I hear we are a lot alike,' he said. And I said: 'No, you are a lot meaner.' That perception of me is not right. I do shout a lot during action sequences, but then you have to shout to make yourself heard. And if you don't it can be dangerous."
He must have bellowed himself hoarse during the shooting of Bad Boys II. Over an exhausting two-and-a-half hours, Smith and Lawrence demolish staggeringly large amounts of Florida and Cuba. This level of destruction is what we have come to expect from a Bay picture, but Bad Boys II is by far the most violent film he has directed. Blood and viscera are everywhere about.
"Yeah that was a reaction against being stuck in a PG13 world with my last two movies," he says. "I originally wanted Pearl Harbor to be an R movie, but they insisted on PG13. I was also reacting against a campaign to regulate movies that was associated with the Al Gore and Joe Lieberman campaign. A letter went round saying: 'Movies need to clean up their act or we will do it for you'. That really got to me. You have no right to tell us what to do."
This is almost controversial, almost interesting. In some peculiar way Bad Boys II is a bold declaration in favour of freedom of speech. I find myself disliking it ever so slightly less. And, in his defence, Bay does occasionally demonstrate that he is capable of mature self-analysis.
When I ask him what he now feels about Pear Harbor, he seems almost humble. "I did meet a lot of veterans who couldn't understand the terrible reviews," he says. "But maybe the love story was a bit sappy, even if it was accurate as to how people were then. Maybe that part didn't quite connect with audiences."
At the time, it was reported that Bay was very upset by the critical mauling Pearl Harbor received. He now says he doesn't care about the professional pundits, though he admits to getting in a fury about Roger Ebert's review of Bad Boys II.
"I reckoned that he couldn't have seen it with an audience. So I phoned Sony Marketing and asked them and they said: 'Yes, he doesn't like to see films with other people.' So, he just didn't get the vibe that was coming from the audiences." On a roll now, he admits to coming across one more dire notice: "I was called the antichrist by a paper in Wyoming or somewhere."
So, despite his protestations, Bay does still seem to care what the ladies and the gentleman of the press think. And, in so far as it is possible to feel sorry for somebody who has generated more than $1 billion before his 40th birthday, who owns more than one Ferrari and who is currently dating a former Playmate, I feel a little bit sorry for him. While he continues to blow things up, we will deride him for his lack of ambition.
But dare one imagine what his "cool, dark character piece" might be like? Sometime in the next few years, Bay will deliver a three-hour drama about handicapped children learning to parasail and we - I'm speculating here, of course - will tell him what he can do with it.
Bad Boys II is on general release