In Defense of Michael Bay Walking Off The Stage At CES

The internet is abuzz with Michael Bay "flaming" out during this presentation. This is an email I wrote to my pals about it and I thought it was worth sharing.

Regardless of all his glorious cinematic excess Michael Bay is a human being with strengths and weaknesses. It appears that like many people Bay is not the best public speaker. This is perfectly normal. When was the last time you spoke in front of more than 10 people? 100 people? 1000? Everyone seems to say that he flames out here, but the fact of the matter is he was expecting a teleprompter to work and provide him with his rehearsed lines and the people at Samsung couldn't get their shit together.

Let's use an example: if you were asked to do a DJ gig by some mega huge company  and were told that all equipment would be provided and then one minute in all the speakers shorted out and you couldn't execute as promised, I'm sure you potentially would some level of awkward reaction as well. Oft the cuff speaking is very hard to do, particularly when it's about a product you may not be that familiar with so I'm not surprised Bay decided "well these clowns can't figure out how to work a teleprompter, I'm going to probably do more harm to their brand/myself if I try to wing so fuck it."

On a more cultural note, why are we so happy to watch successful people like Michael Bay fail? Isn't failure what makes us the most human?

On a more cinematic note: Michael Bay is a fucking God of cinema who's given us multiple masterpieces of cinematic visual excess. Here's an analogy for all the haters.

Film: Food

Michael Bay : Birthday Cake Oreos

Yeah you know that they're bad for you and have no merit but they're good as fuck. Sure there may not be that much plot, characters, or substance in the Transformers movies and Bad Boys II is an hour too long but who gives a shit? NO ONE else is giving you badass VFX, babes, and insane explosions. Sorry if I like fun shit that is probably bad for me.