Don't Worry: Mann is no Bay

In a recent comment I took a few shots at the new Vice, basically calling it Bad Boys III. In doing so, I may have committed a crucial error by insinuating that Michael Mann and Michael Bay were in some way similar in terms of directorial skill. Not true! In fact, directorial skill is pretty much the only real reason that the new Vice isn't simply Bad Boys III. I want to stress that point. What was a tongue-in-cheek post about Vice would just simply be The Truth if Mann was as big of a hack as Bay. Seriously. Mann's skill as a director is the only reason I can say the words "I was kidding" about that post. Just wanted to clear that up.

And while we're here, this also seems like a good time to point out a few other things about Bay:

1. He rips off pretty much everything you see in his movies. If he sees a photograph that he thinks is cool, he puts it in a movie. If he sees a great chase scene, boom, consider it jacked. In fact, he even stole the EXACT idea for his website from Mark Romanek (http://www.markromanek.com), complete with the changing photos on the front page. He was forced to change it, but if you check out Bay's site now (http://www.michaelbay.com), you will still see some striking similarities. For his action scenes, he tells an assistant the general idea (car chase ending in explosion) and has them put all the best car chases and explosions on a DVD so he can lift all the best stuff out and throw it in his latest piece-of-shit movie.

2. He is the biggest asshole on planet earth. I hear Mann is a pretty big a-hole as well, but nobody holds a candle to Bay. He made one assistant drive to San Francisco to retrieve his wallet from a restaurant. He threw a coffee in one person's face because it only had one Sugar in the Raw, not two. He has two 200-pound dogs that routinely lunge at strangers and drag personal assistants across four-lane highways. Will Smith once told him, "You are lucky this isn't the set of 'Ali' because I would knock your ass out." A real sweetheart of a guy. (No, I wasn't his assistant, just in case you were wondering.)

3. He almost got busted for ripping crap off when somebody filed a lawsuit claiming that The Island stole over 100 scenes from an old 70's sci-fi movie. The story kind of went away so either there was a settlement or Bay passed the buck on to the re-writers.

4. Due to the horrible failure of the aforementioned The Island, Bay almost lost Transformers, which is probably his last chance to leave a mark on the film industry. If he blows this, I think he's done. That said, it will probably look terrific (because he does have a pretty good eye for a shot, some incredible equipment, amazing DP's, and - of course - reels and reels of blueprints from which to work!) and make $250 million, which of course means that we will be subjected to many more Bay catastrophes in the future.

(I also want to add that while Mann has a pretty bad rep as well for being a jerk, I do love his movies. But how long are studios going to let him run long, overspend - usually by almost double the projected budget - and then fail to deliver at the box office?)