Michael Bay has rarely given the impression of a man who sat meekly in the corner when he was told off at school, and as the likes of Megan Fox have found out in the past, if you criticise him in the media, then he generally doesn’t tend to take it very well.
Not that Hugo Weaving seemed to be massively criticising him earlier in the week. Taken out of context, the actor made comments about his voiceover work on the Transformers movies, where he said it was “meaningless to me”. However, to be fair to him, he was talking about the body of work that he was interested in, rather than apparently aiming a flame gun at Michael Bay’s head.
Still, not helped by sites such as this one, the story took a different turn, and Michael Bay has responded. It sounds like Hugo Weaving won’t be getting a Christmas card from Bay Towers this year.
“Do you ever get sick of actors that make $15 million a picture, or even $200,000 for voiceover work that took a brisk one hour and 43 minutes to complete, and then complain about their jobs?" wrote Bay on his website. "With all the problems facing our world today, do these grumbling thespians really think people reading the news actually care about trivial complaints that their job wasn’t ‘artistic enough’ or ‘fulfilling enough’? I guess The Hollywood Reporter thinks so".
He continued: "What happened to people who had integrity, who did a job, got paid for their hard work, and just smiled afterward? Be happy you even have a job – let alone a job that pays you more than 98% of the people in America”.
He then suggested that unhappy actors should just donate their fee to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Africa, offering to match any donations they make. Whether you like Bay or not, due credit to the man, and given the manner in which the story was reported, he’s perfectly entitled to respond.
Here’s the post at his website.
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