The blue glint on the ambulance parked behind him is wrong.
Gaffers flock to his side, nodding and making adjustments.
Everyone else in the room journalists, publicists, A-list actors will have to wait.
Director Michael Bay on the set of ‘Ambulance’.Andrew Cooper/Universal Pictures
Bay knows that, to some people, he’s a punchline.
He doesn’t care.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Before we talk aboutAmbulance, let’s touch on Bruce Willis.
Steve Buscemi, Will Patton, Bruce Willis, Michael Clarke Duncan, Ben Affleck, and Owen Wilson in ‘Armageddon’.Everett Collection
What was it like working with him?
And what do you think of his family’srecent announcementthat he’d be retiring due to a diagnosis of aphasia?
MICHAEL BAY: Listen, I’ve worked with Sean Connery, and he was very tough on directors.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Jake Gyllenhaal in ‘Ambulance’.Andrew Cooper/Universal Pictures
He was wearing a long gray wig.
And he goes, “Sure, boy, sure.”
So he called me “boy.”
Martin Lawrence and Will Smith in ‘Bad Boys’.Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock
But he weirdly took me under his wing.
He was a very tough-love guy, but I could tell he really liked me.
He would never show it.
Eiza Gonzalez and Michael Bay on the set of ‘Ambulance’.Andrew Cooper/Universal Pictures
But he taught me a lot.
Did working with Willis remind you of that?
And Bruce goes, “Wow, you should have shown that to me earlier.”
The set of ‘Ambulance’.Andrew Cooper/Universal Pictures
And ever since then, we got along.
Does that make sense?
It does, and those questions of trust and control figure in Willis’s situation especially.
Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage in ‘The Rock’.Everett Collection
I loved working with him.
I thought he was a stunt mogul, but apparently that wasn’t his thing.
I’m like, “What?
He was amazing inDie Hard.”
Apparently, it was a stunt man.
I love Bruce because he was funny he would do improv.
There are certain people that are movie stars.
He was one of them.
Anyway, it’s very American.
Would you call yourself a patriotic person?
And do you feel that the American dream in is disappearing?"
And I’m, like, “That’s a very astute observation.
And yes, I do.”
I feel the American dream has been twisted and is disappearing, and that’s how I feel.
The first time I worked with the military wasThe Rock.
I was the very first director to have real United States SEALs in a movie.
How would you do it?"
And they explained, “This is how we would do the incursion.”
They came back with stripes on their face and I’m like, Okay, that is badass.
I’m like, “Okay, we’re shooting that.”
So it’s a matter of authenticity?
I’ll tell you the reason why I do it.
And I’ve been so admiring of people that would do that.
It was always a very scary thing for me, being a little kid and seeing the body count.
I think they had the body count on the news, and they showed war footage.
It was always very scary.
But you came through that experience with a deep love of country.
There’s nothing like it in the world.
It’s the land of the big toys.
And it’s like: This is just awesome that we could do this.
Because it’s just the brain power and the total American can-do spirit.
And I think we’ve lost that can-do spirit.
It also lets us ride along with two bank robbers, another distinctly American obsession, especially in movies.
I feel your signature in it: the slo-mo flags and the dappled sunlight and the grandeur.
Where does your visual style come from?
Well, there’s only one flag in this movie.
He leaves the house and you see the flag.
And you never see it again.
Oh, actually, wait, there’s one more flag.
I made a mistake, okay?
I like the flags.
I’m just very curious about what inspires you, visually.
Well, there are a lot of people that inspired me.
When I sawStar Wars, I was awestruck.
I filedRaiders of the Lost Arkstoryboards.
They were big, beautiful, like a cartoon.
Cut to a year later, I see it in Grauman’s Chinese Theatre with my parents.
We would go most Sundays to movies.
And I’m like, Oh my God, this movie is awesome.
This is what I want to do.
So you weren’t quite sure at first, but the film persuaded you.
Movies can be huge memories for kids growing up.
They’re markers in life.
And then the Coen brothers it was about their style and they’re funny and then Scorsese, Kubrick.
But as a 13-year-old, I was very into photography, and I thought I sucked at it.
It was very theoretical.
But I had an amazing teacher, Jeanine Basinger.
I was going to ask you about her, because she’s a legendary film scholar.
Not a lot of people know this about you.
Her knowledge of film, it’s unmatched, from musicals to Westerns to comedies.
And to hear her talk, she’s like a normal grandmother.
But she is inspirational.
And what I meant by not “accepted,” I was in a fraternity.
I played baseball, I was sitting next to Joss Whedon or Toby Emmerich, they were classmates.
And she saw my visual acuity when I wanted to analyze them.
My senior thesis I know I ramble a lot, so you’ll have to edit all this crap.
I’m not going to stop you.
I remember going for my senior thesis, and a friend and I wrote the script.
It was calledMy Brother Benjamin.
I gave it to this guy, John, I forget his last name.
He was sort of an a–hole professor.
I walked down the hall in the arts building at Wesleyan and I’m depressed.
You have those moments in life where it can change your life.
Meanwhile, what is it aboutthat camera move, circling the characters?
It’s a signature of yours.
You even use it inAmbulancefor a scene that seems to last two minutes.
It gives a weird tension.
I’ll tell you how that shot came up inBad Boys.
Sony didn’t believe in the movie, because two Black actors don’t sell overseas.
They had no faith in it.
I have only $9 million.
And they shut me down, literally.
They shut the power off.
That’s how rude they were on this movie.
Where does the circle shot come in?
So I remember we’re driving our van.
The line producer, he didn’t like me.
I don’t think he liked anybody.
I said, “Stop the car!
Stop the van.”
We don’t have time for this."
I’m like, “This is going to be the trailer shot.”
For some reason, I just came up with this shot as we’re driving.
And I said, “Where’s the circle trolley?
Get the circle trolley.”
And we made this round move and you guys rise up and it became a very famous shot.
It’s the first movie that really traveled overseas.
Ambulancefeels like a Michael Bay movie, but times ten.
Manic would be understating it.
Where does this newfound drive come from?
Were you bored during the pandemic?
I said to my agent, “God, I just want to do something.
I just need to be around people.”
Because I love to shoot.
And I’m a director who doesn’t have a trailer, doesn’t have a director’s chair.
I don’t have a video village.
I am not that guy.
I’m there on the set the whole time.
And I create this energy.
How do you feel about that term?
I think it’s good because there’s a reason why I do it.
I shoot very fast.
I’m a very fast shot-maker.
I know my movie very well before I’m even there.
It’s in my head.
I don’t even have a script supervisor.
What do you love about explosions, and why do you put them in every film?
Well, for one, I know how to do them very, very well.
Do you get upset when critics call you the guy who just likes explosions?
Here’s the thing, I don’t read the critics.
Don’t tell me anything about critics because I don’t read them.
Bruckheimer always told me, “Don’t read the good, don’t read the bad.”
I make movies for audiences.
And to each their own.
You could like a book, you could not like a book.
So I’m fine with it.
Box office speaks for itself.
So there’s plenty of loyal fans.
And I’m comfortable.
You could either like it or not.
Ambulanceactually feels more character-driven and concentrated than the term Bayhem would suggest.
There are explosions, sure, but it’s more about forward momentum.
I wanted to give it that very immediate feel.
Because I think we all fantasize about robbing banks.
I think everyone’s had that fantasy.
But what would it feel like to actually be on a crime?
I said, “Listen, this is not a movie about action.
This is a movie abouttension.”
On this movie, we had only 38 days.
A very ambitious movie for the cost.
I think it was about $41 million that I was able to make it for.
There are indie films that have longer shoots.
I would shoot about 120 setups a day.
A normal shoot, it’s about 20 to 25, maybe 30.
We’re doing 120.
What it made me realize is, it’s fun.
It’s fun to do guerilla film shoots.
It’s fun to have just ten people on the crew.
It’s fun to just go with the actors in a car and just drive.
It’s just me, them and a sound person.
And it’s a blast.
It’s real filmmaking.
This is all the money you get.
it’s crucial that you make it work.
Ambulancefeels like a product of emergency.
And it was stressful.
It seems heavily improvised, especially the dialogue.
Yeah, you’re right.
It had to be.
I think it helped the energy of the movie.
It’s very hard to keep that level of tension for actors if you’re not shooting fast.
There’s so much screw-around time and wasted time in moviemaking.
I love it when your films take a breath from the action for some incidental joke.
Talk to me about that strategy.
What does it mean when you inject a lighter laugh like that into a high-adrenaline action movie?
That was Jake’s idea, by the way.
I’m not surprised by that at all.
What does it accomplish?
Comedy’s always been in my movies.
I do a lot of improv with the actors.
And I’m like, “Steven, I’ve got these great comedy actors.”
I totally improvised that.
When I watch something likeThe Rock, I see Nicolas Cage just having a ball, scene after scene.
There’s nothing funny written in that script.
That’s all improv.
And Nic didn’t want to do any of that.
I’m like, “Dude, you’re an FBI agent who’s never used a gun.
You’re a chemical weapons expert.”
But Nic is brilliant in the movie.
Will Smith is a big part of your filmography.
What went through your mind when you saw what he did at the Oscars?
At first, immediately I’m like, Did this just happen?
Then I saw the yell from Will.
That’s a real Will yell.
Will is an amazing fighter.
He’s studied boxing.
First of all, it’s wrong to do, no matter what.
Let’s just get that out there.
But when people said, “Oh, he could have killed him.”
No, a slap is different.
Yeah, you might kill someone.
Will gave him a slap.
I’m thinking, Everyone’s talking about this, but you know what?
You start thinking about life and it’s like, Oh, my God.
Because I’ve been very affected by this Ukrainian war right now.
I’m friends with the Klitschko brothers.
I’ve been to Kyiv, I’ve met with the mayor.
And I’m like, you know what?
There are babies getting blown up by the hundreds right now and people are so concerned about this.
I don’t know.
To me, it’s just like, enough of it.
Would you work again with Smith?
Absolutely, 100 percent.
He’s a very even-keeled guy.
We talked about Bruce Willis and his retirement.
What do you want your legacy to be?
I haven’t even thought about that.
It’s funny when I hear directors that are younger than me talk about their legacy.
To me, that’s sort of…
I don’t know.
I don’t think like that.
I really don’t.
I think a day at a time, a week at a time, planning a movie.
Because I’m never going to die.
We’re all immortal.
Ambulanceis playing in theaters now.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Want more movie news?
