Michael Bay might be the king of all things that go BOOM! but doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have basic fears. As it turns out, one task early in his career was something he was pretty afraid of and that was directing Sean Connery in his hit action film, The Rock.
During a recent talk with Collider, Bay admitted to being quite afraid of directing Connery when they were making The Rock. Bay was an up-and-coming director, only on his second film, so the task was pretty intimidating. During their first day working together, Bay was hesitant to give Connery any direction because the actor had a reputation for being a “director eater” but the two eventually developed a strong second-hand, and he says that Connery actually liked him by the end of shooting:
“Okay, let me explain the very first day working with Sean Connery. I’m still a kid. Sean’s done 75 movies. I’ve done, this was my second. We’re doing the interrogation scene, with his long gray hair and the beard. I was so scared to give him his first direction. So we do one take. All right, let’s do it again. Do a second take. I’m like, oh my God, I got to give him some direction right now. “Um, Sean, can you just say that less charming?” He goes, “Sure boy. Sure boy.” So my name on the set was Boy. And he’s a director eater. He hates directors. For some reason, I remember I was down on my knees. Effects were not that good during The Rock at that time. I wanted to be a magician. I really didn’t make that much money. I knew I would never beat David Copperfield, but I did magic for birthdays when I was a kid. Okay. But I had a big quarter, a large sized quarter. And I put a wire in it, a steel bar and I would spin it towards a camera. So it looks like, there’s a scene where he takes a quarter, it flips on the table, and that’s the thing that he gets out of his handcuffs. He kind of hits his chair and he dents it, and he gets out of his handcuffs. So I was spinning this quarter, I’m down there, I’m doing it myself. Sean Connery’s looking at me and he’s got this wry smile. He was a tough love guy, but he liked me. I learned so much from that guy. And he really, really taught me a lot. He was a true, true movie star, and a consummate worker, and just his work ethic. I was very sad when he passed away. So I put The Rock line in this movie because of that.”
What better actor to work with on your second film to get all of the butterflies out? If you could work with Connery, you could work with just about anyone so that experience probably gave Michael Bay the confidence to tackle any task after that. I would imagine directing Connery was way more daunting than handling any one of Bay’s signature explosions. If you haven’t seen the crazy outtakes from The Rock – do yourself a favour and check them out now although they’re very NSFW. Connery seems a lot less scary than Ed Harris.
The Rock was released in 1996 and also starred Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris, William Forsythe, and Micahel Biehn. In the movie, a team is assigned by the Pentagon that comprises an FBI chemist and a former SAS captain with a team of SEALS to break into San Francisco’s infamous Alcatraz. A rouge general and a group of marines have seized all the tourists on the island and they make a threat to launch rockets filled with nerve gas upon the city unless their demands of being paid $100 million to the next-of-kin of 83 men who were killed on missions that the general led and the Pentagon denied aren’t met. The film was a critical and financial success, largely cited by most as Michael Bay’s best film. The Rock went on to gross $335 million worldwide on a $75 million budget.
What are YOUR thoughts on Michael Bay being afraid to direct Sean Connery on The Rock?