It’s difficult to chart the early career of a film director. Bay’s early 1990s are full of music video and even some television commercial examples. However most of these don’t show up on IMDB because Bay is only credited on a compiled collection of videos that were released in a special record release, or through different means than feature or even short films usually are. However, he is credited in this Playboy video.
Yes, Michael Bay, directed it. Isn’t that weird? I watched it purely out of scientific curiosity. I AM COMMITTED TO MY CRAFT, PEOPLE.
The video features several interviews with Kendall mixed in with music-video style set-pieces featuring Michael Bay’s favorite things – soldiers, muscles, muscle cars, hot weather, and babes. Well, just one babe.
It is not particularly tasteful.
One of the things Michael Bay does really well is balancing close-ups with wide shots to convey place, action, and emotion all at the same time. This makes him an excellent director of action pieces. Everything is always changing. The camera angle, the zoom, and distance. This also would make Bay a pretty bad documentarian. And porn is, in a lot of ways, a documentary form. Or depending on who you talk to, maybe a dramatic re-enactment form.
I felt awkward watching this, and I feel awkward writing about it. But here’s the thing: The movie is 50 minutes long. This is Michael Bay’s first and only foray into feature film length directing prior to his first Hollywood release, Bad Boys (1995).
Isn’t that ridiculous? The guy was running around shooting 4 minute music videos and 30 second commercials and at some point someone had to sell Jerry Bruckheimer on using an unknown filmmaker in a production starring Will Smith and a selling point had to have been that Bay directed a softcore porn in 1990. Hollywood is weird.
Every Tom Cruise Movie 