Summer is the season of action blockbusters, and few names are as synonymous with the genre as Michael Bay. Often derided for taking the MTV approach to filmmaking to an obnoxious extreme, Bay’s films are big, bombastic affairs, tailor-made to be seen on the biggest, loudest screen imaginable.
Like many of that era, Bay got his start directing TV commercials and music videos. Coming up through the Propaganda Films factory that also produced David Fincher, Zack Snyder and Spike Jonze (to name just a few), Bay directed music videos for Donny Osmond, Tina Turner, Styx, and a whole host of other 80s-era acts whose stars were definitely fading as the 90s began.
Speaking of 1990, Bay got his first taste of blockbuster filmmaking* in 1990 directing the music video for Chicago’s “Hearts in Trouble” for the Tom Cruise NASCAR film Days of Thunder. Like many of the videos he directed in that era, it finds the band performing the song in a vacant warehouse with blinding lights streaming in through gigantic, slowly rotating fans. It wasn’t his first video, but it did bring him into the Jerry Bruckheimer sphere of influence. For that reason alone, I’m calling it a foundational text in the story of Michael Bay.
Bay continued directing videos for hair metal also-rans like Great White, Winger, Slaughter… Are you sensing a theme here? It almost seems like Propaganda Films built their entire business model out of taking fading stars and pumping a little more juice into their image. Sometimes it worked, most times it didn’t. And then every once in a while, you’d get a video that became a bona fide sensation, like the time Bay directed the video for Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself”.
While the song itself became a hit largely as a joke, and remained so long into the 90s (see also its inclusion in Austin Powers), it’s hard to deny how Bay shoots it. This is a deeply, unapologetically horny song, and Bay knows exactly what we’re here to see: Singer Christina Amphlett cooing and gyrating on a sofa while background models wear skimpy outfits in very flattering tableaus. It also occurs to me that this video looks just like the half dozen videos David Fincher directed for Madonna, and I’m sure that’s no accident.
At the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, “I Touch Myself” was nominated for three awards: Video of the Year, Best Group Video, and Viewer’s Choice. It lost the first two awards to R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion”, and the Viewer’s Choice Award to… Hang on. This says the award went to Queensryche’s “Silent Lucidity”, but that can’t be right. “Losing My Religion” was also in that category, so how the hell did Queensryche, the one Seattle group in the early 90s that had nothing to do with grunge music, walk away with a Viewer’s Choice award for anything? I dunno… I’m sure Michael Bay lost some sleep over that one.
The zenith of the Michael Bay music video came in 1993 when he teamed up with Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman to direct three videos for Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell II”, the 16-years-late sequel album to Meat Loaf’s best-selling debut. The lead single, “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” is a 12-minute magnum opus about all of the things Mr. Loaf says he’ll do for the one he loves, but specifically not “that”. “That” apparently confuses a lot of people who claim he never says what “that” is, but it’s pretty obvious from context clues in the back end of the song that he means he’ll never cheat on his woman.
The music video, trimmed down to 7:48 to maximize airplay (it was cut down to 5 for radio), finds Meat Loaf riffing on Beauty and the Beast. He portrays a lovelorn monster with a Klingon face, singing sweet nothings to a beautiful woman he’s apparently kidnapped and taken back to his mansion. The cops are hot on his trail and closing in as he tries to convince her to run away with him.
We have the faintest whiff of a story. We have lots of bright lights streaming through dark, shadowy curtains. We have a police chase, a beautiful leading lady and lots of broken glass. It’s the prototype for everything Michael Bay’s about to embark on as a feature film director wrapped up in one of the longest, most bombastic music videos of the MTV era. There’s no wonder Bay made the leap to features. He directed three Meat Loaf videos (“Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” and “Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are” were the others) and the famous Aaron Burr “Got Milk?” ad, and he was ready for the big time.
UP NEXT: Bay’s first feature would land in the spring of 1995, featuring two sitcom stars who were also ready to make the jump to movies.
*He’s listed as an uncredited intern on Raiders of the Lost Ark, and also a production assistant on the TV series Night Court, but this is directing we’re talking about here.
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