Interesting article from Wired about Industrial Light and Magic had two interesting Michael Bay anecdotes.

BAY: A lot of artists worked on Optimus’ face. Getting it right was very important. But it’s like a bad face-lift. And I’m there meeting with the artists and we can’t figure out why it doesn’t look right.

PHILLIPS: One of our technical directors—the artist who designs how parts move relative to each other—is a guy named Keiji.

BAY: Keiji wasn’t even on Optimus’ face, but he had a meltdown.

KEIJI YAMAGUCHI (TECHNICAL ANIMATOR): I wanted Optimus Prime to look like a hero, but he didn’t, and I exploded. It was very gentle; I wanted the transformation to be huge, like a wrestler in a sumo ceremony. I said, “You’re insulting the Japanese idea of animation.”

PHILLIPS: Nobody talks to Michael Bay like that.

BAY: I just smiled and I’m like, “Oh my God, I want you to do Optimus Prime.” So he took it and fixed the face. And he also was the genius who helped us figure out how to take these 10,000 parts and make them transform.

WAYNE BILLHEIMER (VFX EXECUTIVE PRODUCER): The second Transformers was my first real working relationship with Bay. I went into a couple of early preproduction meetings with him where I began to get what was going on: “I’m going to shoot it, I’m going to give it to you guys, and you guys are going to have to come up with some stuff. It’s going to be brutal.”

BAY: It has gotten heated a few times. Directors like me love our crew and we love the people we work with, but we push ’em and push ’em and push ’em.

BILLHEIMER: There was a point toward the very end of production when he lost it. He had just come from a screening with Jerry Bruckheimer and didn’t have a complete third act. He called me, screaming: “I just saw a movie that I can’t fucking release!” It was nuclear-level Bay screaming. All I could do was scream back at him. There was a good five minutes of screaming along those lines. The next day he goes, “That was a fun little yell yesterday.”

BAY: They never let you down.

BILLHEIMER: He gets very hot very fast, and very sweary, which is always entertaining.

PHILLIPS: He’s a tyrant. He’s a nonstop string of obscenities. He’ll berate you and tell you you’re an idiot. But he always makes your shot better.

BILLHEIMER: And the movie makes a billion dollars.