 With
his knack for staging visually flashy blockbuster mayhem, Michael
Bay became the commercial leader among a new 1990s
generation of advertising-and-MTV-bred directors. Hollywood to
the core, Bay has claimed that he was the illegitimate child
of a popular director of the 1970s -- although he won't reveal
whom -- and was given up for adoption at birth. Raised in Los
Angeles, he spent his childhood staging Super-8 action movies.
He studied film at Wesleyan University and the Pasadena Arts
Center, where a Coke commercial he shot as a student project
attracted offers to make the real thing. His Coke, Nike,
Budweiser and award-winning "Got Milk?" ads resulted
in a 1994 Director's Guild nomination for Best Commercial
Director. Tapped by producers Don
Simpson and Jerry
Bruckheimer to make the kind of slick escapism that
defined their 1980s heyday, Bay's directorial debut Bad
Boys (1995) became a star-maker for Will
Smith and Martin
Lawrence.
Bay made his movie name with his second feature The
Rock (1996). While the lead trio of Sean
Connery, Nicolas
Cage and Ed
Harris lent a modicum of class to the over-the-top
story concerning treason and Alcatraz, Bay's rapid edits,
mobile camera, multi-colored lighting effects, and extreme
camera angles never let the narrative energy flag. Popular
beyond expectations, The Rock re-made the idiosyncratic
Cage into a 1990s action star and put Bay on the directorial
A-list. Bay's third film, Armageddon
(1998), proved that The Rock was no commercial fluke.
Although it was the second "asteroid" movie in three
months, Armageddon's
adrenalized, effects-laden exploits and a cast mixing veterans
with hip newcomers turned it into one of the summer's top
hits. Bay's success enabled him to secure a record-setting
budget for his World War II movie about Pearl Harbor. -- Lucia
Bozzola, All Movie Guide
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