You might be wondering, "What would possess someone to do something like this?" Well, fortunately, I was invited to write a column for Film School rejects about why I wrote the book in the first place.
The real genesis of the book came Summer 2014, when I saw a lot of people on Twitter talking about going to see the latest Transformers film despite being certain it was terrible. (That’s somewhat amusing when contrasted with the latest Ghostbusters conversation, where you can get into a fight with a Ghost-Bro who hasn’t seen the film and STILL is certain it’s terrible.) Unsurprisingly, these people walked out of the film with their assumptions confirmed and somewhat disingenuously acted shocked at how much they disliked it.
I won’t say I felt bad for Bay, but I briefly considered that perhaps his audience was seeing in his films what they wanted to see. So as an experiment, I resolved to view Transformers: Age of Extinction with not only an open mind, but one that gave him the same benefit of the doubt that Hitchcock and Scorsese are afforded when their films are dissected in film school.
You can find the rest of "Why I Wrote A Book About The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay's Films" here on Film School Rejects.
If you want a taste of the book, read the chapters on TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION and THE ROCK for free at their respective posts.
Self-publishing has made it almost too easy to write a book. Even though I'd toyed with a couple book ideas before this one, you only get to make one debut and I didn't want to put something out there until I had something interesting to say. Though the book never became the huge best-seller I dreamed it might be, I don't regret a minute I spent working on it.
The only downside of the book is that it set the bar pretty high as far as coming up with a "book-worthy" idea. I don't have any interest in repeating the Michael Bay thesis on another filmmaker and if I ever do write another book as The Bitter Script Reader, I want it to be something memorable and the kind of thing no one else would write.
So yes, if you were holding out on me doing a greatest hits kind of book, featuring the best of my blog posts, I'm going to have to disappoint you. I just don't see the appeal in being just another screenwriting advice book out there. Maybe some day I'll compile all my interview transcripts into a book, or do a new book of interviews, though.
The original announcement of the book can be found here.
All related MICHAEL F-ING BAY posts can be found here.
Why not check out the appearances from my "media tour?"
My interview with Scott Myers on Go Into The Story:
Part 1 - Michael Bay's JUNO.
Part 2 - "Michael Bay is the Tyler Perry of China."
My interview with Amanda Pendolino.
My interview on the Broken Projector podcast:
You can find the episode embedded at Film School Rejects here.
Download the episode directly here.
My interview on the Draft Zero Podcast
Go to the episode's page here.
Download the episode in mp3 form here.
But what if you don't have a Kindle or a tablet with a Kindle app? Good news, you can still read MICHAEL F-ING BAY! Go here and download the Kindle reading app for your computer.
Here are the instructions for the Kindle for PC program.
Here's where you go for Kindle for Windows 8.
Here's the site for you Kindle for Mac people.
Link roundup:
Amazon Author Page here.
$4.99 Kindle version of the book here.
$10.99 Paperback edition here.
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