Placing Yourself In the Wrong Company II

Gee, first Orrin Hatch compares John Roberts to Jesus, then Michael Bay says this:

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

"It hurts," Bay added. "It's always the director's fault."

Spielberg, Zemeckis, Kubrick and Bay. Which of these things is not like the other? Which of these things just doesn't belong? Spielberg has run hot and cold in his career. It's sometimes hard to believe that the same man who made Schindler's List and Raiders of the Lost Ark also made Jurassic Park II and 1941. I'm less familiar with Zemeckis's failures than with his successes. I can say I vastly prefer Back to the Future to Forrest Gump, though both movies show a zest for their themes. Kubrick was one of the greatest film directors in movie history. Even his least interesting pictures have 1,000 times the appeal of Micahel Bay's best. (Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen a Kubrick movie that I've disliked.) What separates these three from Bay is not so much talent, though all three exceed by millions of times Mr. Bay's meager store of the substance, as it is a conception of film making as something other than a means of separating a few million popcorn-munchers from their money. The other three directors were surely interested in money--it's hard not to be in a business where production costs are so high--but they also wanted to produce something worthwhile, something that would be remembered when they were dead, something that both honored the great fictions of the past and compelled future generations of artists to respond.

If Mr. Bay saw himself this way, he would never claim that he was "five-for-five." He'd know what everyone else knows; he's a hack. He doesn't make movies. He makes 140 minute commericials for movies. Now that he's had his big failure he'll discover something else. There are a lot of hacks out there who can make junk, and they'll do it at half Bay's price. I hope, for Bay's sake, that he saved his money. He may very well need it.