Special Guest Blogger: Michael Bay

Hey, gang, what's up? Everyone's ADD-ravaged teenage neighbor's favorite director, Michael Bay, here. Lons is out watching a movie, so I thought I'd log on and rap at ya for a little while. I don't really know what he's seeing, but I hope it's my new film, The Island, cause it got beat last weekend by Fantastic Four and that Candy Factory bullshit from that goth weirdo, which just makes me look bad.

I mean, did you see The Thing in that Fantastic Four trailer? I've seen more realistic rock formations in a game of Rock Paper Scissors.

Anyway, you may have seen the article in yesterday's LA Times where I blame the marketing department for my movie's miserable disgusting box office failure. I figured that was the classiest movie, short of finding the highest-ranking black guy who worked on the set and blaming him.

Speaking of which, I told Ahmed 5 times that if he didn't start key-gripping better, the movie would wind up a flop, but did he listen? No!

I also, in that article, compared myself to Stanley Kubrick. Here's the exact quote:

"Everyone from [Steven] Spielberg to [Robert] Zemeckis to [Stanley] Kubrick — they've all had big flops," he said. "I was five for five. You know it's going to happen."

Now, yeah, I realize that comparing myself to Kubrick isn't really fair. I mean, that guy had almost no hits, and he directed movies for, like, 40 years. I mean, Barry Lyndon? Ryan O'Neal can't open a tentpole movie to save his life. Dr. Strangelove? They spend the whole movie talking about explosions, and then nothing blows up until the very end! And even then, you only get one perspective on it, it's in black and white, and I think it might have even been stock footage. Plus, they're playing that old stupid song over it so you can't even hear the thing go BOOM! What was that Kubrick fag thinking? The ball-rattling boom is the best part!

If it were me, I'd have Sterling Hayden start blowing shit up within the first 10 minutes of the movie. And instead of that cowboy guy, I'd have Will Smith pilot the plane. And he wouldn't just ride the bomb down to the target, he'd bring some fly honeys with him and do a little dance number set to a song he's recorded specifically for the movie. With a title like "The Doctor Is In (Theme from Doc Strangelove)". Cause that guy's got style.

Which brings me to my latest awesome idea for a movie. As you may have heard, next I'll be working on a small indie film called The Transformers. It's a sweet, personal movie about a group of robots staging an intergalactic battle for supremacy who hide out on Earth disguised as trucks and weapons. The kind of low-profile, rewarding project I've wanted to tackle for years.

But after I've got an art film like Transformers out of my sytstem, I'm all set to blow your ass out of your seat in 2007.

The idea occured to me while I was casting The Island. What are my movies missing that other popular movies have? I've got big movie stars, explosions, loud blaring nu-metal songs, explosions, 10-ton items being hurled from moving vehicles and explosions. I mean, what more does a movie need?

And then it occured to me...retards. People love movies about inspiring retards, like Radio or Forrest Gump or the dude from Shine or Paul Walker. And what goes better with a heartwarming story about triumph over adversity than 500,000 massive, fiery explosions?

So in 2007, I'll proudly bring you Tardpocalypse. Here's my latest treatment, along with some of my dream casting. It's a Crushed by Inertia exclusive:

TARDPOCALYPSE, 1ST DRAFT
By Michael Tiberius Bay IV, Esq.

We open in a peaceful grassy meadow. Some kid in a helmet rides around on a tricycle, giggling. He runs into a tree and falls over. After rubbing his head for a moment, the kid explodes, giving off a huge fireball that ignites all that surrounds him.

We get the title in huge flaming letters - "TARDPOCALYPSE!" Maybe two exclamation points, I haven't decided yet.

CUT TO

A research laboratory. Dr. Randolph Thackeray (Sean Bean) inspects a test tube. It has red liquid in it (we can use Kool Aid!).

"The formula is still unstable," he says. "We'll need more test subjects."

CUT TO

Pleasant Springs Hospital for Retards. Two happy retarded guys, Ben (Ben Affleck) and Josh (Josh Hartnett) are, I dunno, playing around like doofuses or something. Whatever those guys do. I'll have to do some research. But I bet they play handball, cause it's not that hard and you can't really get hurt doing it, plus it's super-fun.

Suddenly, about 500 agents swoop in on them in helicopters and squad cars. Oh, and I'll whizz the camera around them in slow motion to show that they're, um, surrounded and scared. Oh, man, this movie's gonna ROCK! YES! KICK ASS!

So Ben and Josh start kung fu fighting (we can set up that the retard school had a karate class!) and they do okay, but eventually they are captured by the big, tough, mean head agent guy (Djimon Hounsou, or Michael Clarke Duncan, or Ving Rhames or somebody...)

CUT TO

In the underground laboratory, Sean Bean has Ben and Josh all tied up and stuff. He's talking to another science nerdy guy (Steve Buscemi...duh...) We can totally see Ben and Josh's awesome pecs. The girls will love it. I wonder if it will be less sexy because they're acting like retards. Maybe they can sort of half act like retards, but still half be kind of cool, so girls will still dig them. No drooling, I gotta remember to tell them that.

Sean Bean injects Ben and Josh with the serum. He says it's supposed to, like, make them super-smart, but instead it has a horrible side effect - the same side effect it has had on all the other test subjects. It makes them highly explosive!

Okay, so after Ben and Josh have been injected, they get scared and decide to escape from the underground facility. So we get a huge action scene where tons of stuff blows up. Tons. But not Ben or Josh because we need them for the rest of the movie.

Then, they escape on a freeway, and when Djimon or Michael or Ving chases them, they throw something really big at them. Like a horse. Or maybe a whole herd of horses! Or old-timey 1960's computers! The kind that used to take up a whole room!

Oh, man, that's awesome, and it's totally never been done before. Old-timey 1960's computer parts flying towards the camera in slow motion? That's hot shit!

And those things would really explode if you threw them out the back of a van hauling ass at 90 mph on the LA Freeway! Holy shit, just describing this scene is giving me an explosion boner. Truly, this will be my greatest work.

So, in black-and-white flashbacks, we find out that before Ben was a retard, he was a normal cool guy with a hot stripper girlfriend (Ashley Olson). So he and Josh go to his girlfriend's place to hide out, and she's all "no way, you just left me to become a retard," and he's all, "I'm sorry, baby, but that was a long time ago, and I still care about you." And she's like, "well, you chose to be a retard, so now you have to live with the consequences." And he's all, "Look, if you don't help me out, I'm gonna explode, alright? So later on, I'll apologize the way you want to hear it, but for right now, you're gonna let me and my retard buddy in this apartment, and that's all there is to it." And then they totally start making out.

I don't know, maybe I can work in some animal crackers or something to make it more interesting.

Anyway, this all leads to the final chase, where Ashley Olson and Ben and Josh have to escape Sean Bean and his minions in a rocket ship en route to Jupiter, except that they get knocked off course and have to fly through the Asteroid Belt, until they finally emerge on the other side and set off a series of massive explosions that I can cut between really super fast to make it seem way more exciting than it actually is.

Then they crash land on the Las Vegas Strip and have a foot chase through the Mirage Hotel, narrowly evading being eaten by CGI white tigers before they get into an alien spacecraft and fly at four times the speed of light to a far-off universe identical to our own except that everything is constantly exploding all the time.

I haven't quite figured out how to wrap up that last act, but Jerry Bruckheimer always has good ideas for that sort of thing. I figure, I'll kill off either Ben or Josh, or maybe just the counselor back at the mental hospital who always gave them extra cookies on Wednesdays. You know, to tug at the heart strings. And I learned my lesson from The Island, guys, so don't worry...Ashley Olson is totally getting topless.