The first day of shooting for Michael Bay‘s latest multi-million dollar toy commercial Transformers: Age Of Extinction in Hong Kong went a little haywire when he was approached on set by two “drugged up” individuals demanding money, with one of them eventually attacking him with (wait for it…) an air conditioning unit. Presumably Bay responded by saying something like “Talk about a cold shoulder!” or “Cool it!”, then the air conditioner exploded and Bay walked away without looking at it.
Various versions of the story have done the rounds of the internet overnight, but the director has posted his own take on what happened to his website:
Hi, it’s Michael.
Yes, the story is being passed around is not all true! Yes, some drugged up guys were being belligerent asses to my crew for hours in the morning of our first shoot day in Hong Kong. One guy rolled metal carts into some of my actors trying to shake us down for thousands of dollars to not play his loud music or hit us with bricks.
Every vendor where we shot got paid a fair price for our inconvenience, but he wanted four times that amount. I personally told this man and his friends to forget it we were not going to let him extort us. He didn’t like that answer. So an hour later he came by my crew as we were shooting, carrying a long air conditioner unit. He walked right up to me and tried to smack my face, but I ducked threw the air unit on the floor and pushed him away. That’s when the security jumped on him. But it took seven big guys to subdue him. It was like a Zombie in Brad Pitt’s movie World War Z—he lifted seven guys up and tried to bite them. He actually bit into one of the guards Nike shoe, insane. Thank god it was an Air Max, the bubble popped, but the toe was saved.
Then it took fifteen Hong Kong cops in riot gear to deal with these punks. In all, four guys were arrested for assaulting the officers.
After that, we had a great day shooting here in Hong Kong. The place couldn’t be better.
As ludicrous as it sounds, this sequence of events still kind of makes more sense than Transformers 3. And yes, it does look like Michael Bay just used product placement in an anecdote.
Via MichaelBay.com. Lead image via SouthParkStudios.com
