by Director Michael Bay
In the highly-anticipated "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," debuting June 24, 2009, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) again joins with the Autobots® against their sworn enemies, the Decepticons®. Michael Bay directs from a screenplay by Ehren Kruger & Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman.
www.zerodarkcinema.com
I am sure the whole world is watching the every move of this monster film. I for one will be spying on it with a vengeful eye. I adore the masterpiece of the original, i watched it with Abysmal Entertainment at the IMAX theater the day it came out in Orlando, florida. I'm sure the second installment will be mind blowing. I read the original treatment for the second installment when i was in L.A... don't ask how i got my hands on that... Nevertheless... their is a strange vengeance stirring in my heart. I wanted to take a minute to shed some light on that..
The year was 1997 18 years after my birth in 1979... I grew up in the woods after my family relocated me there as a baby to escape the darkness that was kept from me my whole life.. I was forced and encouraged to play sports... as it was... a country boy who played sports... then came the year 1986 and i was 7 years old. Transformers the Cartoon Movie came out in theaters... Optimus Prime Died.... Children across the nation were crying... However I was exhilarated... cartoons on television annoyed me.. there was just something unhuman, ungripping about them. The morals were exploited, the bad guys never lost... the bad guys were always caught. For a strange reason my perception of the duality of good and evil was ripe. When optimus died i loved it.. It was Maverick to me! Yes... the good guys die fighting too...
Back to the year 1997 i had just graduated high school and finally escaped the woods. You see my family never traveled... Never took me outside the boundaries of the woods, i was there... A strange kid misunderstood with a false identity of a sports hick. college was liberating and in my first semester i was drawn to the extra curriculum class "History of Film." At the end of the semester i was to write a paper on a film of my choice. I decided to do something maverick.. I decided to write a Feature Film Treatment for reasons i could not explain... and what did i do??
I wrote a feature film treatment on Transformers the Live Action Film. After the papers were past in the teacher a waspy older woman who was an intense film snob, without a single cinematic talent in her blood, took me outside the class room and told me she was giving me an A+, but i must do one thing for her in order to earn it. She told me that in order to receive the + in the grade. I must pursue film. Apparently she saw something in me that was different than most kids in the class. I am not here to tell you what she saw in me but i accepted the challenge.
And so it was... i was a filmmaker with out a single class in film and excited about an off-base history class of low relevance. a country boy with no life experiences who just accepted a quest of magnitude that even to this day humbles me. But who was i to turn the transformers cartoon into a live action film. Back in 1997 when the dreams of the youth are too glorious for the mature elders to comprehend i set forth. In order to make this film i new well and good that i had to start making films and start breaking into the industry.
In 2007 ten years later. I found myself back in Orlando after a short stint in Los Angeles. I had made films, i had entered film festivals, i had made music videos, i had broken into the film industry. Yet i was no more closer to getting Steven Spielberg to believe in me than i was ten years ago. Well maybe alot closer but still very far indeed. There i was sitting in the IMAX watching Transformers the movie on the super large screen... Enjoying every second while my heart boiled in rage... Every step i had taken in my life mirrored back... I had fallen.. i had failed... or had I?
What made the experience more grueling was the fact that Michael Bay was directing. I despised his style in previous films and the multitude of people that i know who have worked with him will tell you the same... he's a sociopath bastard of film. I know why he wins... I grew up with a sociopath. I know his type.. My whole life was built around overcoming the venom of sociopaths. I am their antithesis. Michael Bay however, sadly couldn't be my arch nemesis because i am an ant compared to him. Yet i long for the day to shine next to him and smile as my love for people and love for the art of cinema defeat his raping of the art form and his lack of compassion for the people who create around him.
Every filmmaker has stories like these. Stories of Smashed Dreams and yet we continue dreaming. Every day its a new story-line that sparks our imagination. I haven't missed a beat since that disappointment and it is now in 2009. With my unveiling of Zero Dark Cinema where i am launching forth into the deep, I hope to one day give Michael Bay a run for his money and Create a film that rivals his rendition of Transformers.
www.zerodarkcinema.com
