Sometimes it feels like the chatty, possibly unhinged Megan Fox is obsessed with her working relationship with her “Transformers” director Michael Bay. Is she walking into interviews for her other projects going, “Oh, do you want to know about Michael Bay? What can I tell you about Michael Bay?” It’s at the point where we’re expecting her to finish an interview much like Sarah Silverman’s joke in “The Aristocrats” with a somber, “Michael Bay raped me.”
In an interview with Wonderland regarding “Jennifer’s Body,” a film with no association to Michael Bay, she discusses Hollywood’s king of excess in perhaps properly hyperbolic terms. “[Michael] wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he’s a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and he’s not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he’s so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. It’s endearing to watch him. He’s so vulnerable and fragile in real life and then on set, he’s a tyrant.”
We find it particularly endearing that Fox thinks Bay, like Hitler, is secretly a fragile, vulnerable man, since we all know what a pussycat Der Fuhrer was when not sponsoring The Final Solution. Also, the bit where she finds what she says to be some sort of compliment — {Spoiler, for those that didn’t see the trailer} clearly we were all saddened to see the man’s face blown off in “Inglorious Basterds,” and what director wouldn’t want that sort of reputation?
Perhaps Fox is giving her own view of who represents the true evil in Hollywood. The racist, sexist, misanthropic piece of shit “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” made it to the end of the summer as the year’s most popular movie, suggesting that Bay, for all his bluster, is only an enabler for the worst instincts of moviegoers. Perhaps the real evil doers were those who stood by and let this human rights atrocity happen, namely Steven Spielberg (a Hollywood vet who should know better) and Hasbro (who now come across as filthy cash mercenaries after the “GI Joe” smash-and-grab).
Or perhaps the real evil is done by the likes of Akiva Goldsman, who, like an avenging archangel, swooped down to attach himself, leech-like, to two comic properties, “Lobo” and “Fantastic Four: Tokyo Drift.” Bay may generate the headlines, but aside from his modest, useless Platinum Dunes lineup (total half-decent-to-good movies released- 0), Bay only directs a movie every two to three years. Goldsman has somehow become a cottage industry of terrible, moving from embarrassing screenwriting attempts to prolific garbage producing credits. He started out as a walking warning with not one but TWO tacky John Grisham adaptations before writing “Batman and Robin,” largely considered one of the worst films human beings are capable of making.
Somehow, the industry was unfazed, and he ended up wrangling a spot on the script for “A Beautiful Mind,” a script based on a book about a disabled mathematician that was half white-washed and half completely outright plagiarized. Earlier last year, Goldsman manipulated the Writers’ Strike to scheme his way into a screenwriting-record $4 million fee to adapt the turgid piece of awful “Angels and Demons,” only to end up sharing credit with David Koepp. Yes, the man who foisted tripe like “Lost In Space,” “The Da Vinci Code” and “I Am Legend” got $4 million to write MORE, only for the studio to turn around and tell him his work was too inconsequential to shoot as is. Is screenwriting that easy a profession?
Fox has a role in next summer’s “Jonah Hex,” a Goldsman production, which makes us think, does she know she’s working with what we’d assume she’d feel is the Third Reich of filmmakers? In comparing Bay to Hitler, is she considering that Hollywood is a league of historical evildoers? Does any of this make Adam Shankman Goebbels? Discuss.
This is why I love this blog. A valiant voice in the epic (losing) battle to keep Hollywood from sucking.
i sense a little sexual friction in the air… maybe Megan Fox and Maestro Bay are banging. or is david silver still in the picture? either way master Bay-tor should hit that megan fox and shoot it at magic hour on a sand dune while a squadron of F-18s fly overhead and a camel explodes in the distance.
As a producer Goldsman does have the Valerie Plame story "Fair Game" (with Sean Penn and Naomi Watts) coming up.
This movie sounds like it could be good, but you have me worried now.
And as for Fox, we'll see if she has the drive to take more of an acting role in future films. Instead of just running in front of explosions. Hasn't she already talked about Diablo Cody as a little odd and script-obsessive about her project "Jennifer's Body"?
Y'know, I always thought Adam Shankman was only responsible for the remake of Hairspray which, hey, I enjoyed. (yup, I know.) Then I checked his IMDB and oh goodness…
Goldsman is an interesting case because he's not even 50 yet (47)c and has produced and written several high profile movies, so he could be around for quite a while longer.
Is the concern here that he's become a go-to guy for blockbusters? It doesn't help the argument for quality character/plot over CGI Italian cities, churches, Eiffel Tower and robots that this summer 2009 was the highest grossing ever. Thanks go out to Todd Phillips, Sandra Bullock, Megan Fox running in front of explosions and Goldsman.
I can't wait for the re-release of Slumdog in 3D.
Also, I like that you guys here at the Playlist and some other sites (and not just the comments section) gives it to the stars who "slum it" for some of these blockbusters.
– SK