Michael Bay: Anatomy Of A Blowing Shit Up Scene
Knowing that film is an inherently collaborative art form might quite logically lead you to believe that Michael Bay employed an army of writers to craft the visual poetry of his signature blowing-shit-up scenes in The Island. In an interview with Newsweek critic David Ansen, the legendary fauxteur sets the record straight:
[Ansen] Some of your action sequences are really spectacular. There's a chase on the highway where a pile of enormous train wheels fall off a truck and smash into the oncoming cars.
[Bay] I write my own action. That thought came to me as I was driving next to a truck that had rail wheels. My mind is very fertile, so I'm, like, "That's very dangerous."
We knew it! Life, not a writer, merely invites inspiration over to Michael Bay's mind for a harmless get-together, but it's only after the party moves into the rumpus room of his febrile imagination that the orgy of aneurysm-inducing quick cuts, whiplash camera moves, and pirouetting automobiles truly breaks out.