On Perfectionism

Even though the just-released Transformers DVD has broken this year’s first-week sales record, director Michael Bay, ever the blowing-shit-up perfectionist, isn’t completely satisfied with the product: “I was travelling promoting (Transformers) while they were doing the DVD. You try to guide people as to what to do (in making it), but ultimately if you rush your date, you are not going to get the DVD as good as it could be. … Studios want to pump this stuff out, and my job is to care about it and try to put the right people on it. They just see it as a show they are selling, and I see it as a movie.” Included in the features that will have to wait for the Transformers: Special Fauxteur’s Cut DVD: a behind-the-scenes clip in which an uncompromising Bay reduces star Shia LaBeouf to a weeping mess by repeatedly screaming a suggested line-reading through a megaphone, footage in which the phrase “you talentless little baby” figures prominently. [USA Today]