Michael Bay

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Michael Bay (2006)

Michael Benjamin Bay (born February 17, 1965 in Los Angeles , California ) is an American director , film producer , actor and camera operator who specializes primarily in action films.

Life

Michael Bay, like his younger sister, grew up in the Westwood District of Los Angeles as the adopted child of a child psychologist and accountant. At the age of 20 he met his birth mother, and his father is said to have come from the film industry. Bay reports that his mother named John Frankenheimer as his father, but who denies paternity.

Bay completed his education at Wesleyan University in Connecticut . After being rejected from a prestigious film degree, he studied at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design . Michael Bay began his career in the movie business in 1984 after making a pastiche on a Coke advertisement. He first made a name for himself as a director of music videos for artists such as Aerosmith , Tina Turner , Meat Loaf and the Divinyls and was nominated for several MTV awards. In the advertising industry, he staged multiple award-winning clips, including for well-known automotive companies, Californian milk and Levi's .

Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson brought Bay into the film business in the mid-1990s for the film Bad Boys . The action film starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence was a huge box-office success and marked the breakthrough in Smith's career. Bruckheimer and Bay remained a team in other films such as The Rock - Rock of Decision (1996), Armageddon (1998) or Pearl Harbor (2001), only The Island (2005) was shot by Bay without his participation.

With his production company Platinum Dunes , founded in 2003 , he has set himself the task of remaking horror classics. For example, he produced the remake of the horror classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Michael Bay's Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) , the remake of Amityville Horror in 2005 , and the prequel Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and the remake The Hitcher in 2006 . He also produced the remake of the horror classic Nightmare on Elm Street (Eng .: Nightmare - Murderous Dreams) from 1984 with Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger , with Jackie Earle Haley taking the lead role in the remake of the same name . Further projects are planned (2008) , including a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic Die Vögel .

Michael Bay (2006)

In 2007, Bay directed the action film Transformers . He was also responsible for the sequels Transformers - Die Rache (2009), Transformers 3 (2011), Transformers: Ära des Untergang (2014) and Transformers: The Last Knight (2017). For the spin-off Bumblebee (2018) he only stayed as a producer. Bay directed the action film 6 Underground, which was released in 2019 and cost around 150 million US dollars, for Netflix .

Bay was also planned for the live adaptation of the computer game series Prince of Persia , which was released in German cinemas in May 2010. This post was taken over by Mike Newell due to lack of time .

reception

The early Bay films in particular often meet with rejection from film critics , especially because of Bay's origins as a director of commercials and music videos. They would neglect the plot, expose the viewer to more visual and acoustic stimuli and focus too much on action sequences. The film The Rock can be listed here as an example . The lexicon of international film certified the film as having “uniform material battles” and “calculating video clip aesthetics”, while Thomas Groh from the Filmzentrale criticized “the most vulgar scientific blah”, a “lurid story” and “two-dimensional figures”.

Jeanine Basinger is a professor of film studies at Wesleyan University , whom Bay met at the age of 18. She wrote an essay on Bay and his film Armageddon , which characterizes the early films of Bay ( Pearl Harbor , Armageddon , The Rock ).

“Armageddon is a perfect example of how Bay tells his stories with the motto 'no prisoners'. In this way he shows confidence in his audience to reason things for themselves. One of his strengths is a maximum of flawless representations, which overlay the inevitable pseudoscience behind the films. Yes, the viewer has to process a lot. Yes, it changes quickly from place to place, person to person and event to event. But it's never confusing, never boring, and nothing less than a brilliant mix of what films are supposed to do: tell a good story, describe characters through active events, evoke an emotional response from the audience, and entertain simply and directly without great pretense. "

- Jeanine Basinger

Bay was for the movies Armageddon and Pearl Harbor for the Golden Raspberry as Schlechinger tester director nominated and saw the allegations initially left:

“I make films for teenage boys. Oh dear, what a crime. "

- Michael Bay

Filmography

Director

Feature films

Music videos

producer

actor

Awards

Recognizing film awards

Negative awards

Golden Raspberry

Web links

Commons : Michael Bay  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Erik Hedegaard: Fast Cars, Hot Blondes, Big Budgets, Bigger Explosions . In: Rolling Stone , May 29, 2001, accessed July 30, 2008
  2. ↑ a b c Michael Bay in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  3. ^ Website of the Clio Awards
  4. ↑ Mike Newell to Direct Prince of Persia? Rotten Tomatoes , Nov. 8, 2007; Retrieved July 30, 2008
  5. ↑ Mike Newell Drops Early Prince of Persia Details! Rotten Tomatoes , Nov. 12, 2007; Retrieved July 30, 2008
  6. ^ The Rock - The Rock of Decision in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used
  7. ^ Thomas Groh: film review on filmzentrale.com; Retrieved July 30, 2008
  8. ↑ Jeanine Basinger: Essay ( Memento of the original from April 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of Armageddon : “It is true that Armageddon, a perfect example of Bay's work, illustrates his 'take-no-prisoners' form of storytelling, in which he trusts an audience to figure things out. (One of its strengths is its minimum of dreadful exposure that over-explains the inevitable pseudoscience.) Yes, it gives audiences a lot to absorb. Yes, it cuts quickly from place to place, person to person, event to event. But it is never confusing, never boring, and never less than a brilliant mixture of what movies are supposed to do: tell a good story, depict characters through active events, invoke an emotional response, and entertain simply and directly, without pretense. " @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.criterionco.com
personal data
SURNAME Bay, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bay, Michael Benjamin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American director and producer
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH los Angeles