Michael Bay - Auteur?

There may be no name in film more infamous than that of Michael Bay. He may be the only filmmaker to be called both the Anti-Christ and the Devil. On an episode of “South Park,” Kyle claims that since Bay still gets to make movies as proof that “there is no God.” So why is there all this outpouring of emotion for such an odious director? Why not ignore him like the other nameless directors of countless cookie-cutter popcorn action flicks? (Quick – somebody tell me who directed Eraser without looking it up!) Truth is that Bay has become a brand name director. Audiences and critics alike both know what to expect when they go to see a Bay film – big dumb action, lots of car chases, explosions, cursing, etc. However, the question would still remain as to whether this directorial style would make Bay an auteur.

In Truffaut’s original auteur argument, “A Certain Tendancy of the French Cinema,” he claims that the auteur differs from the metteur-en-scene since the auteur makes highly personal cinema. Bay himself claims in an article with Bryan Curtis that he “make[s] movies for teenage boys.” Lest we forget, Bay himself was once a teenage boy and might still be stuck into that mentality. His childish on-set antics and tantrums on the set of Pearl Harbor concerned big-name producer Jerry Bruckheimer and help to make this point. In an interview with Nelson Argueta, Bay expresses his disdain for the “snobbery” of film criticism:

Argueta: I had a very ultra-orthodox film studies teacher...
Bay: Like how?
Argueta: Well, to begin with, she was very snobbish. And she ragged on how cinematic codes and rules are being broken, and the usual blah-blah-blah given to film students. She also praised Citizen Kane day and night and said the usual stuff about it being the greatest movie of all time, etc. And how the movies have lost their true purpose, become too commercial. You know, all the stuff taught to film students here in New England.
Bay: What you need to tell her from a very big director is that there are no rules in film. And any film teacher that teaches rules is wrong. Citizen Kane, when it came out, it was a very mocked film. People did not like it. It was very unrespected. It was thought of at the time as very uncool. But he wasn't the inventor of all that stuff. All that stuff had been done in other movies, through silent movies, through musicals, yadda-yadda-yadda. But it was the first movie to really put all those things together into a movie. If she would've taught Orsen Wells, he would've laughed at her.
Argueta: When some of us in film class mentioned that we liked Armageddon, she labeled us an "easily impressed minds."
Bay: What you need to tell her is that Armageddon is the 8th highest grossing movie of all time worldwide.
Argueta: It's 4th in Japan right?
Bay: It's 3rd I heard. I think its E.T., Jurassic Park and then Armageddon. Doesn't she like exciting movies?
Argueta: Nope. She goes on to say that movies should move us to see the depth in humanity and...
Bay: Well, she's wrong. (Transcript from Big Media Vandalism Blog)

This interview helps to prove how Bay loves his types of films and will constantly argue for their credibility even when facing the criticism mentioned in the introduction paragraph. They seem very personal to him, which would be the penultimate requirement to be defined as an auteur in Truffaut’s definition. Although one could claim that Bay is not involved with a film from the very beginning of pre-production, as a true auteur would be, it should be noted that both John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock, both established as auteur figures, did not write most of their features. Therefore, the writing argument holds little weight.

Using Andrew Sarris’s interpretation of the auteur, Bay would essentially be placed in a ranking system in which the auteur makes films which are inherently better than the traditional director. Using this definition, Bay surely would not be considered an auteur... Right? After all, we can merely place him at the bottom of the rankings. But, unfortunately, this cannot be so. First of all, as the biggest problem with Sarris’s definition in general, the rankings are extremely subjective. As many of us know, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. For some, cult directors Ed Wood and Al Adamson may top their auteur rankings. For others, it would be the traditional Hitchcock and Welles. Quentin Tarantino has claimed Kinji Fukasaku and Budd Boetticher to be among his favorite directors and has claimed them to be auteurs with little critical fanfare. In addition, Bay has become an auteur within his genre. There is a reason why his name on a film commands a higher price than that of Bay knockoffs like McG, Brett Ratner, Pitof, or the countless faceless action directors. With Bay in charge of a film, it is almost guaranteed to be a “great” action film.

Lastly, Corrigan’s definition of the brand-name, celebrity-auteur seems to fit Bay perfectly. He has made a name for himself by making a certain style of film. And audiences, whether they love it or hate it, certainly know the name.

As much as I hate to admit it, Bay has rightly earned his place as a contemporary action auteur through his distinctive style of visceral, non-stop, and extremely immature filmmaking.