How I pissed off Michael Bay and became my own greatest hero.
Last year, on my now defunct wordpress blog “College Butter,” I made a post about my inclination that Michael Bay may be Hitler incarnate. To accompany the piece I took 2 minutes to photoshop a Nazi hat onto a photo of Mr. Bay smirking. It was a moderately well-received piece.
Cut to: Yesterday, I received an email from a gentleman in Paramount’s marketing and social spin department (not actual name). This was a fairly exciting prospect. Given my moderate social media prowess and past experience in film review, I figured it could be a request to participate in some sort of viral campaign for Paramount.
I researched this guy. CNN money did a piece on him. He’s a pretty big deal.
Today, I spoke with him. He said that his boss had tasked him with asking me to remove the photo, because it was coming up fairly high in image search results for Michael Bay (Page 2- I checked).
He said there was no legal precedent, and since the photo was mine, this would solely be a personal favor.
But I got to wondering how this was discovered in the first place. Surely Paramount executives have better things to tell their employees to do than scurge the internet for photos of people who are partnered with them (Bay’s company Platinum Dunes- which produces godawful films, including just about every 80’s slasher remake- signed with Paramount a few years back).
It seems to follow that, given how important the guy who called was, that his boss is more important. It also doesn’t seem to be a stretch to infer that Michael Bay googles himself, because he’s an egotistical prick.
I think that the original order may have come from Bay Himself, who told someone under him to do something about this, and so on, until it reached me. Just a hunch.
Anyway. I decided to take the photo down, although I still have a copy.
In closing, here is a picture of Michael Bay relishing in the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. Because I can:
Feel free to send it to all your friends and family, put it on your Easter cards and paste it onto telephone poles around town.
