The site interviewed Michael Bay, Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, and Tyrese Gibson during the filming of the climax of the movie in LA involving most of the Transformers and the car modes of Bumblebee, Ratchet, Ironhide, and Jazz.
Michael Bay
CS/SHH!: How are you turning "Transformers" into a Michael Bay movie?Shia LaBeouf
Michael Bay: I don't know. I don't know if that makes any sense. It's got a lot of action but it's very funny. It's got heart. I only wanted to do "Transformers" if I could do it realistic. What I've seen, what we've done with our digital studies, putting it -- real world stuff that has lots of effects around that are real effects, that's how we make it realistic.
CS/SHH!: When did you realize the fanboyness of this movie?
Bay: Of course I knew, of course. When did it hit me? Before I even took on the movie. I knew there's a huge following for this thing. Steven called me I think a year ago last April. My first thought was no, I'm not interested. Just because I thought okay, how am I going to do a toy movie. And then I realized when I went to Hasbro, okay, start over and go for a realistic alien invasion robot movie on earth. So with that thinking in mind, that's how I went about it.
CS/SHH!: Are you going more family film or hardcore?
Bay: It's pretty edgy for a family film but it's definitely got stuff for families. It's PG-13 but it's edgy.
CS/SHH!: How do you introduce the idea of all the ridiculous names?
Bay: I'm not going to tell you but we justify how we do it. We have logic stuff in the script to explain why we say it.
CS/SHH!: Would you come back to this franchise?
Bay: Well, I'm having a great time making it. I really have. It's gone really smoothly this movie. It's been a lot of fun. So we'll see. I've done a lot of digital effects before but this is really fun because you're really animating characters and giving everyone a little different kind of thing going on, just from the way they walk, the way their armor's scratched or hurt.
CS/SHH!: How do you do that without the voices yet?
Bay: First you write down what are all the character points in your head? That's a tough thing. With Colin, he's not an actor actor. He's a voice actor so when you see his face, he's got a great voice but I need to hire another actor to do his voice. Does that make sense? He's going to do the voice and I'm going to have another actor study the video when he does how he's going to say it. They're actually having to work in tandem. They do this on animation features as well. We did a very funny study where we did De Niro and Hugo Weaving, we put our Optimus to Hugo and De Niro. It's hysterical. It looks just like 'em. It's very funny.
CS/SHH!: So it's motion capturing the faces?
Bay: It's not fully like a human face but it does have certain human things to it. Otherwise as humans we wouldn't associate with it as much. We did a lot of different studies, like if you do nothing, it's kind of like it doesn't hit us.
CS/SHH!: What did you try that didn't work?
Bay: If they're just frozen robots, pure metal that doesn't move and the eyebrow kind of thing. We have these eye slits that can kind of move and the eyes how they move. It's got to have some human things to it to make it so successful to us. You look at the cartoons, that is like 90% away where we have to go. Right now they're just big glowing eyes that have no emotions. It's what I keep trying to tell the fanboys is this has got to be so much more realistic than what they've seen in the past. But they're angry about everything. I hear they want to protest in front of my office by the way, but I won't be there. I'm shooting.
CS/SHH!: We're seeing four cars here? Who?
Bay: I don't have time to go through the whole thing because each one has got like three paragraphs. That's Ratchet right there [the ambulance], that's Ironhide the black truck, and that's a newly transformed Bumblebee. It started out as an old Camaro, becomes a new Camero, there's a reason for that in the script. and we've got Jazz right here [silver car]. Jazz, when you have full height on Jazz, I think he's about 13 feet tall. Bumblebee's about 16-17 feet tall. Ratchet's about 23 ft, 24 ft. Ironhide's very wide when he's transformed and he's about 26 foot tall robot. Then Optimus is I think 28. Megatron is like 34.
CS/SHH!: Changing Ratchet?
Bay: We just made him more like one of those kind of modern rescue kind of ground type vehicles.
CS/SHH!: Is that Furby truck a transformer?
Bay: No, we wanted to have burning Furbys. Burning Furbys somewhere on the ground. Have you seen those little Furbys? We're going to be blowing up a lot of little Furbys.
CS/SHH!: Tell us about the role you play.Megan Fox
Shia LaBeouf: I play Sam Witwicky, aka Spike.
CS/SHH!: How do you interact with the robots?
LaBeouf: He's the liaison between the robots – at least in our script – in a way, he's the liaison between the government and the robots. Because it's too outlandish for the government to cling on to, this idea of this alien and they're too close-minded to latch on to it, so they use me as a liaison between the idea of what these things could be and what they actually are.
CS/SHH!: With the Autobots?
LaBeouf: Right. Because they make first contact with me because my great great grandfather, Captain Archibald Witwicky, made first contact with Megatron in the 1800s and had – I don't know if I should be giving this all away.
CS/SHH!: Yeah, it's okay.
LaBeouf [I] had [a] language and maps burned into his glasses through a laser. And the glasses were passed on through lineage. And they wind up with me and me trying to sell them on eBay, as well as his other items – his compass and sextant and other things a 19th century seaman would use. And they come after me to retrieve these glasses, which have the directions to where the Energon Cube is at.
CS/SHH!: Do you have more action scenes in this film?
LaBeouf: Yeah, it's never been like this for me. Especially not with Michael Bay. Michael Bay is the fastest, most intense director I've ever worked with. The explosions are right here. They're not CGI. The other day they had me on top of one of these buildings, one-handed, with a wire here and a wire there. It was insane. But that's stuff that you usually CGI. And Michael doesn't CGI. He likes seeing the immediate…he likes being able to go into his trailer and go, "You're never gonna believe what I just shot." Rather than have to wait for the CGI to be put into green screen, he likes to see it immediately. Things like explosions are all very real.
CS/SHH!: Was that the craziest thing you had to do?
LaBeouf: No. I can't even list what we've had to do. I've never had to do anything like this. When we did "Constantine" and "I Robot," it was very minimal. Of course there was insane action. I had a shot gun and we were shooting demons, but the demons weren't there. They were ridiculous men in green suits and codpieces. It wasn't what this is, which is you actually have a Bumblebee, or it'll be a pole, but you'll see Megatron. He's really there. And they really go for it. It's just very real. My job is very easy here. It's very reactionary, as opposed to having to conjure up these fantasies of what I would think it would be, it's there.
CS/SHH!: Can you talk a little more about your action scenes?
LaBeouf: It's exciting. I mean yesterday they blew a helicopter up right over my head. You don't get to do that at home, you know?
CS/SHH!: Did you parents have concerns?
LaBeouf: Yes. I brought my mom to the set.
CS/SHH!: You seem to be the right age to have played with these toys as a kid.
LaBeouf: Yeah. For me it wasn't the comic book or even the toys. It was the movie. "Transformers: The Movie" was like, that was my sh*t. It was that and like Yogi Bear. That was like what I grew up on. Those were my movies and I watched them over and over and over again. I must have seen "Transformers: The Movie" 70 times before.
CS/SHH!: So what's it like for you to be in this movie now?
LaBeouf: Well, when you see "Transformers: The Movie," Spike is only in like three scenes. Then you find out he's even more apparent in the comic book. Other than the robots, he's the only character that goes back. So it's very rewarding to be here. It's also a humongous thing for my career, as you could imagine. So on a number of levels it's very fulfilling to be doing this. Again, it's a completely different film, you know? My goal at the beginning of doing this was to be as diversified as possible. This fits a part of filmmaking that I would never have been a part of, nor would I have ever thought of myself as being involved in this way. Ben Affleck has that job, Josh Hartnett has that job, not some Gary Shandling look alike. It's not something you would assume. I didn't assume that I would ever be sitting with Turturro and Megatron. It's just a thought that you could ever conjure up.
CS/SHH!: What is it about "Transformers" that you like?
LaBeouf: You know, the same reason that you guys are into it. The thought of having something like an alien life form be able to take the form of this and transform, it just became more real than, let's say, E.T. which was this magical figure that came down to earth and you'd never seen anything like it, whereas the Transformers were real. It was very real to me. If you had an imagination, you could sit there and look at a car and go, "Yeah," and you could conjure up ways that it could transform. It was more real than fantasy for me. The same thing with "Constantine" – you do stuff that you love. Like Neil Gaiman, Vertigo, that's what I love. The Transformers is that other side to me. It's more popular, yes, but it's realistic to me. I really think that there is a possibility that you could do some of the sh*t that we're doing. I mean, some of it is real. And it's not like this fantasy, like this alien life form that comes... it doesn't feel like that to me. It feels like it could really happen.
CS/SHH!: It's more tangible?
LaBeouf: Correct. It's more tangible. That's the word.
CS/SHH!: Seeing that you're part of the demographic, did you have more creative input into the decisions?
LaBeouf: No. Everybody's got their job and holds down the fort. I mean, Michael Bay knows what he's doing. It's not like he comes here and then is thinking of shots. He knows specifically. You used to hear stories about how [Stanley] Kubrick used to draw everything and create and Michael works the same way in that he has these visual effects shots that he created a year ago, that's the actual shot in animation form. Kubrick used to do these long-hand forms of his film, whereas Michael has already filmed the movie in digital and he's got all these VFX shots of sh*t that's already been conjured. So in that respect it's there. It's not ever questioned. My opinion means nothing as far as that goes. But Michael is very – and I've worked with some pretty dope directors – he's very freeing. "This dialogue sucks!" He takes the page out and throws it away. "Just roll with it." He'll let you ad-lib more than any director I've ever worked for. He literally hires people based on how they can ad-lib. In the auditions it was, "Ok, put the script down and go," for 20 minutes. Just go with this. When I was auditioning with Megan, 70% of our audition was just riffing. Where can you go? How can you keep it on the storyline without going in some weird place that's not helping us? And that's the way that Mike works. So people say that he's not an actor's director and all this garbage and I don't know. It depends on what kind of direction you want. If you want somebody to be there and be on you, and be the Woody Allen "Cough here and breathe here and sneeze here," he's not that. He's the director who's just gonna let you go. And so in a sense that is an actor's director.
CS/SHH!: What message do you have for Transformers fans?
LaBeouf: How do you describe what we're doing? This is nuts. I've never seen anything like it. We're staying true to a lot of it. But again, you can't make Megatron a gun. You make Megatron a gun and you've gotta have an orange cap, because you can't make a movie with a gun transforming when you've got kids out there killing each other. You can't publicize a gun like we used to in the '80s, when Megatron was a gun. If you were to make Megatron a gun now, you'd have to put the stupid orange cap and that would ruin Megatron. He'd look like Herbie the Love Bug or some dumb sh*t. If Bumblebee was a bug, it would be a totally different interaction. You wouldn't look at Bumblebee and go "wow." You wouldn't do that. You would look at him like he was Herbie. And that's not what Bumblebee was. We stay true to the tone of what Transformers was. But again, it's a movie and in movies it's a different art form. You're taking on another face. So you stay as true as you can and there are certain things that you do have to extend for the film, such as the human aspect of this. There wasn't a lot of human interaction in the Transformers movies. It was all about the Transformers. But to just have the Transformers talking would be like the new "Ninja Turtles" movie. It's just garbage. Now it's a Pixar film. That's not what we're making. It's not a Pixar film. We're trying to make the coolest action film ever. You gotta make it human.
CS/SHH!: How old is your character? Is he in high school?
LaBeouf: Yeah, he's 18.
CS/SHH!: And how old are you?
LaBeouf: I'm 20.
CS/SHH!: So yesterday you were hanging off a building. What are you doing today?
LaBeouf: Today? I know we're blowing something up. (laughter) I'm not sure what it is yet. But we're blowing something up for sure.
CS/SHH!: What was your personal favorite Transformer?
LaBeouf: My personal favorite? Soundwave. And he's not in this film.
CS/SHH!: Are you going to be made into an action figure?
LaBeouf: I hope not. I don't know. They can do whatever they want. They have their own contracts and I'm sure Hasbro is gonna try to profit off of it as much as possible, just like any company would. I don't know.
CS/SHH!: As an actor, is it hard for you to hold on to what you're doing when the crap is blowing up?
LaBeouf: No. It's easier when the crap's blowing up. It's harder when the crap's not blowing up and action – "The crap's blowing up! The crap's blowing up!" That's hard for an actor. Or interaction with the robots is tough. It's difficult to have any kind of emotional connection with Bumblebee when it's a pole with plastic. But when you're sitting there and Megatron is built, it's a different type of performance, because it's reactionary rather than conjured. Conjured sh*t is hard.
CS/SHH!: Have you seen any of the footage yet?
LaBeouf: Yeah. It all looks crazy. It's nuts. It's amazing looking.
CS/SHH!: Since you were a fan of the show, does it mean anything to you that Peter Cullen was cast as the voice of Optimus?
LaBeouf: Well, for everybody here that was a big deal. I know what it means to you guys and what it means to the fans. Michael knows the same. But then again you get into performance stuff – who's gonna bring the better performance? And when you start measuring the original to maybe an update? You have to think about that stuff, you know? If it had been Michael Clarke Duncan, would that have been a better voice in the original than Peter Cullen? A lot of people would say no, but then there's a fan base that would say yeah. So you have to modernize it. And thank God we got him in because it brings us back and we can still modernize the film but still keep some of this historical truth in the voices of the characters. So it's a big win for all of us and we're all excited to have him. I haven't met him yet or been able to work with him.
CS/SHH!: Are there any cast or crewmembers that you talk to about the Transformers as fans?
LaBeouf: I know Megan is a fan. I know Josh is a fan. I know that Turturro's son is a big fan. I know John is really into it based on what he's read. I don't know if he was a fan previously. But when you're here and you're seeing it, you're a fan. You're an instant fan. When you see Bumblebee, you can't not be a fan. When you see the actual Bumblebee standing there, you can't not be a fan. It's like seeing Batman's car. You're in right away. I'm sold. Boom, there you go. Done.
CS/SHH!: What does Dane Cook play?
LaBeouf: Dane Cook? I think he plays a gas station attendant. It's a small cameo. But there's a lot of cameos, you know? The way that Michael works is there's action, and in the middle of the craziest action there's a joke. If you watch his films, that's how he goes. He genre-flips. So there's a lot of humor with the action. Because we have the humor aspect we bring comedians in. There's a lot of comedians here.
CS/SHH!: Any other big cameos?
LaBeouf: Bernie Mac's got a big cameo. I'm sure there's other people coming in. It changes every day. It's a big movie, so there's a lot of people that want to be in it. They might create roles. I've heard a lot of names, but I don't want to throw them out there because I might be wrong and you never know if they might come in or not.
CS/SHH!: Who's gonna be the breakout character?
LaBeouf: I don't know. There's a couple of them. They all have personalities. I don't know if I could point one out. There's a bunch of different storylines happening with different robots, but of course it's Megatron and Optimus. Those are the dudes.
CS/SHH!: I understand there is a love story as well.
LaBeouf: The love story element humanizes this. It humanizes the story a little bit. Sometimes it gets fantastical when everything's a robot or everything's an explosion or everything's in the Secret Service. People in Iowa want to relate to a character. The love story humanizes the robot storylines.
CS/SHH!: Are you signed up for a sequel?
LaBeouf: Uh, hmmm…yeah, I'm sure there's something somewhere. I don't know. I was signed to do sequels for "Constantine."
CS/SHH!: What is going on with that?
LaBeouf: Well it's up to Keanu [Reeves] and where he wants to go. It really comes down to what he wants to do on his slate. If he jumps up and goes, "I want to play John again," – which I don't think he will 'cause that took a lot out of him – I don't know. He might; he might not. Again, people talk about an "I, Robot" sequel. Any movie that makes money, there's gonna be sequels. They made a "Kangaroo Jack" sequel, you know what I mean? That's "Kangaroo Jack." They made money. It's a business. At the end of the day, it's show business. It's a business.
CS/SHH!: Tell us about your character?Josh Duhamel
Megan Fox: My character's name is Mikaela. I'm essentially the Carly character from the cartoon. I'm Sam's love interest throughout the film and I sort of get sucked into all of the action and become a little bit of an action hero myself.
CS/SHH!: You were a fan?
Fox: I did watch the cartoon. I was a bigger "Ninja Turtles" fan if I'm going to be honest. With Vanilla Ice in the second one. But I did watch the cartoon and I did like the cartoon. It was really entertaining. I remember when they would always come back from commercial break, they had the one animatic. I don't remember which Autobot it was but he was like a motorcycle and he would transform in midair into a robot.
CS/SHH!: It's kind of unusual for girls to be so into "Transformers" or "TMNT" isn't it?
Fox: I don't think so. I don't think you can generalize girls as saying they all like to play with Barbies or whatever but I was a tomboy so I liked all of that kind of stuff. I found it very interesting.
CS/SHH!: Are you disappointed there's no female Transformers?
Fox: Not really. Can't say that I am. I think that would be lame. Kind of like I don't think women should be rock stars.
CS/SHH!: Any pressure walking into a franchise?
Fox: Sure. Not so much on my character because she was hardly ever in the animated series, so it's not like I'm taking on something people are attached to and expect me to perform in a specific way. But for me, just the realization of how huge this movie is and how many people are going to see it. Because the script was on lockdown and you couldn't really read it the whole time I was auditioning for it, I wasn't aware how large my part actually is and how much I'm in this film and how much people are going to see of me. So that's what's nerve racking.
CS/SHH!: Craziest thing you've done?
Fox: We've done a lot of crazy stuff like that. For me personally, I had to break a window, an actual car window with safety glass and all of that. Mike, who likes everything very realistic, so I had to break it with a sledge hammer and then he wanted me to reach inside and open the car door so I'm scraping my arm across the glass to get in. and it wasn't high action, it was just actually like I had shards of glass sticking in my arm afterwards. It' real. So for me, that was probably the hairiest thing.
CS/SHH!: What are you shooting today?
Fox: I don't know what I'm doing today. I think I'm a glorified background today. We're doing a lot of crane shots and reactionary shots of there's a big battle that happens on this set. We're just getting coverage, reaction, inserts, things like that.
CS/SHH!: Why will girls want to see this?
Fox: I'm not the person to ask because I don't really relate to women that well but the CG in this movie is incredible. Just that alone, I think is reason for anybody to go see it. But the love story. There's a really great kiss at the end. All girls like the kiss in "Spider-Man" and all that s**t, so that'll be in here also. It's just a sick movie. Everybody's going to want to be a part of it because it's so big.
CS/SHH!: Are you damsel in distress?
Fox: No, I'm not that girl. Luckily, my character is a tough girl. She gets into some situations where Shia's character, Sam, has to help her. He doesn't really necessarily come to her aid and rescue her. She doesn't need to be rescued. She actually kicks a lot of ass.
CS/SHH!: Why don't you relate to women well?
Fox: I just never have. I grew up, all my friends were boys growing up and I liked playing in the dirt and all of that. I liked sports and windsurfing, surfing. I'm just not very girlie.
CS/SHH!: What's going on with you and Shia before the robots come?
Fox: He's not the nerd in school but he's that offbeat guy that everybody kind of knew. He's cool but he's just very strange and my character is dating the jock, as things go. There's the fight between the two of them because I'm stuck in the middle. Each has an interest in me. He ends up helping me out in a specific situation and in his personality, I sort of fall for him. I start to at least. I don't know how much I can give away. Anyway, there's something specific that happens. He's selling the glasses on eBay and that whole deal. I get sort of caught in the middle of this chase and that's how I get dragged along and become a part of the rest of the film with the interaction with the robots and all of that.
CS/SHH!: Does your jock boyfriend get stepped on?
Fox: Not that I know of. I think he just sort of fades away. I don't think there's really a resolution to him at all.
CS/SHH!: Is it hard to play a story with explosions going on around?
Fox: Yeah. You sit and you think, "You know, this isn't realistic and people are going to hate this and I feel like such a douchebag and I can't do it." But then you think nobody's even going to give a s**t. There's going to be so much happening around it, they have to tie you into the story somehow because there are a lot of people that would just watch a movie that was nothing but robots fight. Sure, but the majority of people, I heard Shia say, they want it to be some sort of human interaction and human involvement. I don't mean unfortunately but they have to be thrown in there and we're trying to steer away from, we know the fans, they don't want any sappy bulls**t. We're trying to stay away from that and keep it as realistic as possible and as much to do with the Autobots and Decepticons as we can.
CS/SHH!: Do you and Shia get into swearing contests?
Fox: Does he curse a lot also? No, we don't get into swearing contests but we have ongoing battles like the other day I told him he wouldn't... I don't remember what it was over, but I said, "You won't do that for sure. You're a little girl." And he s**t in my trailer. So definitely that happens all the time.
CS/SHH!: In the toilet?
Fox: That time in the toilet but I'm afraid he's going to do it in my purse.
CS/SHH!: Did Michael ask you to improvise?
Fox: Yeah, Shia really excels in that. He's a comedian, he's so funny. They brought me into the audition and it was like the sixth time I had been in so I had been going off script, rehearsing. They put me in there with him and he was going off on all these tangents. Mike wanted me to follow along with it which is difficult for me because that's not my area of expertise. Shia, the most difficult thing working with him is that he's so funny, it's really hard to play it straight, to play the straight man in the scenes with him. Mike actually gives me, he writes my lines for me moreso than he does for Shia because like I said, Shia's a comedian and I'm not. So I sort of have to stick to some sort of scripted material.
CS/SHH!: What got you the job?
Fox: I'm pretty sure they wanted to cast an unknown. A lot of girls were blonde actually and I think the fact that I was dark haired played a part in it, the aesthetic of it. The other female lead is blonde and they had already cast her I think, so they wanted me to be opposite. And I just think Shia and I do have some sort of chemistry that worked well.
CS/SHH!: Do you have nightmares about Shia making you laugh in the middle of an important scene?
Fox: No but I have, not nightmares, but I do have dreams, like I never leave the set. I have dreams and I'm always dreaming about this movie. Sometimes it's me on set making this movie and sometimes it's me in the movie and I wake up and I feel ridiculous that I've had that dream, that I'm like all this stuff, the Energon Cube, I dreamed about that the other day. Because we spent all day filming where we're supposed to see the reveal of it, like 16 hours and then I went home and of course I dreamed about that all night, of the actual Energon Cube and how it did transform and all that stuff, I just feel totally retarded. I probably shouldn't say that word. That's going to be a big deal.
CS/SHH!: Did Michael start off with the most intense action scene?
Fox: No, not really. There's so much action in this film, the majority of what we've done is all action, but it would be hard to pick that scene and make it the first. I actually was working by myself my first day. Shia was working on some other movie he was doing and I had to film some stuff during a chase scene. It was high action. It was really difficult and I wish I could go back now and redo it because I'm so much more comfortable doing this stuff, it's going to kill me now to watch it. But I was made uncomfortable the first day, to answer your question.
CS/SHH!: How big of a break has this been?
Fox: Well, I try not to pay attention to that at all. But this movie, it's going to be big for all of us. It's just impossible to actually avoid if you want to because there is such a huge fan base for the series already and then just the trailers and things that are coming out, they're like ominous, the things they're putting out. It just makes you need to see this film so people are going to see me in it and they're going to like it or they're going to hate it or they're going to be indifferent. I guess there's a lot of things they feel but I am going to be seen, so I'm sure my profile will be raised on some level.
CS/SHH!: Have you received anymore offers yet?
Fox: I am but not necessarily the things that I'm interested in doing. It's really hard to pick what your next project is going to be after this movie because of the size of what this is.
CS/SHH!: What would you like to do next?
Fox: I actually would like to do a very small film that's character driven that I can really work on that way, sort of prove my ability as an actress.
CS/SHH!: How intense is Michael Bay as a director?
Fox: Michael's great with me. I got really lucky. I don't know what I did in the beginning or what happened but he is really great with me. He's great with Shia and he yells. People always talk about oh, he yells but he's not like malicious or scary when he yells. He's always half joking. He says things that if you don't have thick skin might hurt your feelings but if you don't have thick skin, you should get out of this business anyway.
CS/SHH!: Have you finished shooting with Jon Voight?
Fox: I don't know from day to day what we're filming and I have no idea. Really I have no idea what I'm doing here today. So I don't think Jon Voight's been wrapped for picture so I'm sure we will work with him again soon. We have approximately 16 days left in the shooting schedule and he by the way is the nicest man I've ever met in my life. He's really great. I feel really honored to even be in the same room with him.
CS/SHH!: What's your favorite Transformer?
Fox: From this film? I liked Starscream in the animated series. From this film, I would have to see Bumblebee. I know that's such a given but he's so heroic. I really like him. Megatron is really sick also, the artwork on this film is incredible and it's hard to pick but personality wise, I'd go with Bumblebee for this.
CS/SHH!: What is the difference between guys in green and guys in black?Tyrese Gibson
Josh Duhamel: The guys in black are part of the underground sector of government called Sector 7. I'm part of the regular military. I'm a captain of special forces in the army.
CS/SHH!: What's the name of your character?
Duhamel: Captain William Lennox.
CS/SHH!: How does he get involved?
Duhamel: Well, it just sort of happens. They're not expecting it, of course, which I think is part of the beauty of the script is the fact that it's set here, now, it's current and it deals with something that's actually going on. We're over in Iraq coming back from a special ops mission when we first encounter them. And the reason I guess, I don't know how much I can tell, but part of the reason is to take out communications. Yeah, we run across them just sort of accidentally and from there, we figure out... we try everything we have to penetrate or disable them a little bit. We finally figure something out and we come back here to help. It's pretty cool. I'm having so much fun.
CS/SHH!: Were you a big fan?
Duhamel: Yeah. I look at these things now and I'm like I'm gonna collect all these little toys. You can see the truck's going to be a toy.
CS/SHH!: So as a fan, you collected different Transformers?
Duhamel: I used to be a huge fan of these things when I was a kid. Just to be out here and just to see how they -- just the art alone on the Transformers and how it's sort of evolved. Just to be part of it, it's definitely a movie about the robots for sure. But I'm stoked to be able to be on a screen with them. I mean, right here, you can see--you can only imagine what it's going to look like when the Transformer takes the place of that big pole.
CS/SHH!: Did you do boot camp?
Duhamel: Yes, it was sort of... I wouldn't really call it a boot camp. I heard about military movies and how they put these guys through the ringer, they try to harden these p*ssy actors basically, which I categorize myself as. So I tried to get in shape for it before I went in. For three or four weeks, I was trying to get in cardiovascular shape, everything. I get there and it was more or less an intensive on... at Fort Irwin, that's basically the training ground where all the soldiers go from the army before they head over to Iraq. It was more or less an intensive learning, the preparation and the way they sort of live and everything else.
CS/SHH!: Are you working with real soldiers in the movie?
Duhamel: Yeah, those guys are all the real deal, all of them except for Tyrese. Navy SEALS, they're all Navy SEALS except for one of them who was a ranger. You learn a lot from those guys. You develop a real appreciation for, these kids are like 17-18 years old, men and women about to go over to Iraq and that's real. So, was something that was pretty valuable to me.
CS/SHH!: Have you seen any of your scenes finished with the robots?
Duhamel: I saw the opening sequence when we were over in White Sands when we first encounter the Transformers. It was still sort of rudimentary but it's pretty amazing, the amount of technology. This is beyond anything I think they've done as far as CGI and making it as photoreal -- they said this is going to be more photoreal than anything they've done yet.
CS/SHH!: Are you satisfied with your reactions to the robots?
Duhamel: With my reactions? I don't know. We'll see. That's my biggest fear is I just don't want to suck. Because you never know if what you were looking at, how tall it was. You don't even know what it looked like at the time. They seem satisfied so I guess that's good enough.
CS/SHH!: How much of your stuff is you interacting with invisible robots?
Duhamel: Quite a bit actually. Quite a bit of it. Everything we did in the beginning was fighting these things. even though you don't see them though, these guys, the explosive teams and everything, they make it feel like you're actually in war, only you don't see what you're fighting against. So it felt as if, you know, the bombs are going off, dust and everything was flying everywhere, so it felt real. We just looked where it was coming from and stuff like that, so I did see a little bit of that cut together and it looks pretty wicked.
CS/SHH!: What harm's way has Michael Bay put you in?
Duhamel: Jeez, the first few weeks was pretty intense. He goes as hard as any of us so you can't really be soft. You just have to be on the set ready to go whenever. It was 120 degrees out in the desert out there which kind of made it feel more real. But just mostly a lot of bombs. A lot of bombs going off in you ear. At one point, he was like, "Dude, you've got to lower your pitch. Your pitch is too high." And I was like, "What do you mean" and I pulled my thing [ear plug] out and I realized that that's what, I was trying to scream over the top, like give orders over the top of these earplugs. So there was one day that he was pretty rough on me but otherwise he's a lot nicer than his reputation. He really is.
CS/SHH!: Looking forward to getting back to TV?
Duhamel: We're shooting it now. At the same time. We worked last night until like 1:30 and then came here this morning. But it hasn't been bad. I thought it was going to be a lot worse because I knew there was going to be an overlap of about three months. But this three-four week period now will be the... because we're working all week on "Vegas" and then come here on the weekends. So, but hey, it could be much worse. I'd much rather have too much work than no work.
CS/SHH!: Do you have many scenes with Shia?
Duhamel: A fair amount. Like I said, the first few weeks, he wasn't there. It was mostly just the military team. Now that we're all kind of come together, we met up at Hoover Dam and a lot of this final battle stuff is with him. We're going to work together in sort of, he sort of takes the thing that he has to and sort of does his heroic thing here.
CS/SHH!: What scene are you shooting today?
Duhamel: Today is part of the final battle scene. We think that we've got them and the Decepticons deceived us.
CS/SHH!: Is there any talk about sequels?
Duhamel: As far as I know, yes, but it's up to them. However ,they write it afterwards. Part of the contract was to do two, but as you know, they can go any way they want in the second one.
CS/SHH!: Do you ride in any of the Transformer cars?
Duhamel: You know what? I actually haven't ridden in any of them. We do the dune buggies all the time and I look at them all the time. What are your favorites of the ones you see here? [we answer] I like Ironhide. I like the truck. You should see the Decepticons. They're really badass. Just mean. They look... it's different from before. I think that the people who sort of designed them really made it really cool again. I think people are really going to dig it. I hope.
CS/SHH!: You were a soldier in "Annapolis" and now again?
Tyrese: Oh my God, this is much more of a soldier than the "Annapolis" movie.
CS/SHH!: Were you a fan of the toys?
Tyrese: Loved it. I was just talking to my mom the other day and she said, "Well, I guess it wasn't bad that you missed homework all that many times after all." Now I know all about the movie. All they can do is give me my lines. I know everything about Transformers, Decepticons everything.
CS/SHH!: What are they doing right and wrong to adapt this?
Tyrese: I think the only thing people are going to be disappointed in, it's all over the internet already, but Bumblebee is not a bumblebee. It's a Camaro. But other than that, I think Michael Bay and Spielberg, when you think of the idea of them putting their heads together for one film, they both are doing incredibly well by themselves. So I don't really think between the opinion of Spielberg and Bay you could ever go wrong. The beautiful thing for me is sometimes you can get a huge director to do the first one but blows up and he decides for whatever reason not to do the second one… the beautiful thing is even though I know both of them will still be a part of the sequel, if Michael Bay decides I'd rather go do something else, we've still got Spielberg. Nothing like having an incredible cushion.
CS/SHH!: How much fun dressing as a soldier and fighting robots?
Tyrese: You talking about running up the street from things that ain't there? I love it, man. It's the biggest thing I've ever done ever, as far as an actor. It's a dream come true to work with Michael Bay. When I was doing "2 Fast 2 Furious," they were filming "Bad Boys II" in Miami. I remember I went to the set to visit Martin and Will and they were just schooling me on the $20 million club. I went to the set and it was big for me, like damn, that's Michael Bay. Now I'm on the set working with Michael Bay. That's the real deal.
CS/SHH!: Are you making $20 million?
Tyrese: No, no, not 20 million.
CS/SHH!: What's harder, singing or acting?
Tyrese: Singing is much harder. You can take like three days to do one song.
CS/SHH!: Seen any completed footage?
Tyrese: Oh yeah. Ooh. Ooh. This movie is something. This movie is going to be something.
CS/SHH!: What's the craziest thing you've gotten to do?
Tyrese: You know what? As soon as I think I've topped it all, we show up and wow. All I can say is everything is much bigger and much greater and much grander than you could ever imagine every single day. This is actually medium compared to what we're used to seeing when we show up to the set. Big huge like whoah. Just crazy. This is the biggest thing ever, man. It's almost like there's no limit to the things they can go by and do with this film.
CS/SHH!: Talk about working with real SEALS and real Rangers?
Tyrese: Oh, it's crazy. Crazy thing is we had actors in the film that were dressed up just like us and they've already died and they actually got the SEAL guys still alive. So the SEAL guys made it and the actors that were playing SEALs died. They're gone. I guess they were able to put on a believable death before they had to go.
CS/SHH!: Who is your character?
Tyrese: Josh is our captain. I'm a combat controller so we're like the ying and yang. He's telling everybody that's on the floor around us what to do, and I'm telling everybody in the air what to do. All the B2 bombers, B2 stealth bombers and all of the helicopters and Black Hawks and Medivacs and whatever else, they're all going under my command. I'm the CCT, combat controller.
CS/SHH!: Any internal conflict there?
Tyrese: Oh no, we don't have any internal conflicts at all. There's not one moment in this film where he's going to decide to do something and I'd say, "Why would you ever do something!" We're not at odds. We're having a good time.
CS/SHH!: Favorite Transformer?
Tyrese: Yeah, Michael Bay. The greatest Transformer of all time.
CS/SHH!: As a fan, did you care about having the original voices?
Tyrese: I didn't really get that far into it. I'm a fan of the thing but I'm not going to go on the internet and have an argument with somebody about the possibility of there being a new Megatron voice or Decepticon voice. It's all good. I told Michael Bay, I've got a nice voice. Let's have me doing a little voiceover work. I won't tell nobody.
CS/SHH!: Did he go for it?
Tyrese: He just went he he he.
CS/SHH!: You have two big gashes today?
Tyrese: That's makeup.
CS/SHH!: So the humans are taking a hard time?
Tyrese: No, no, we've just been going through some things. Sometime when you're running, you trip and fall, scrape your neck.
CS/SHH!: Do you ride in any Transformers?
Tyrese: No. I know, right? It's messed up.
CS/SHH!: But the army vehicles are cool?
Tyrese: Oh yeah, I love it. We've been having a good time though. This will be the biggest film of 2007. Guaranteed. No questions asked. And I'm just honored, very honored all over again to be a part of it. There's no one day that I show up to this set like all right, I'm used to it, I'm here, I've arrived. It's a big deal.
CS/SHH!: Can you talk about Anthony Anderson's scenes?
Tyrese: He has a little more than a cameo. He's probably worked all of 15 days so far, what I know.
CS/SHH!: And what about Jon Voight?
Tyrese: Oh yeah. My honor. I call him pops. That's my pops. Jon Voight is subtle. He's very subtle. He's one of them type of guys that if you do a scene really well, he'll just look at you when nobody else is looking and do like this. Then when he turns away, you're like Yaaaa!
CS/SHH!: Are they making an action figure of you?
Tyrese: Oh man, that would be nice. Maybe they can draw me some muscles I don't have.
CS/SHH!: How did you survive the desert heat?
Tyrese: Ooh, barely did, man. Ooh, that was a problem. It's a lot of work, man. A lot of work to be out there making all that stuff happen in that hot sun. One day it was 124 degrees and we were in the sand dunes, the white sand dunes. The sun was beaming off the ground and it was heavy on your eyes. It was a big challenge working out there but we was out there for four days and we at least shot probably 25% of the movie there because he works fast. He probably does 30-40 setups a day. He got camera angles everywhere you can think of. He's not going to miss a beat. That's why my appreciation for him as just a director went through the roof. You look around, everybody on this entire street is here because of this film and he knows what everybody on this entire street is supposed to be doing on this film. Including the camera people, including the lighting, including all of us as the actors. It's hard. I know some directors who can't even handle this amount of actors, let alone a cast and a crew and know everything. He don't miss a beat. He can tell you what you did wrong through the smoke.
CS/SHH!: Favorite Transformer?
Tyrese: I can't say. Don't even try it. He thinks he's slick.
CS/SHH!: Are you doing a superhero, Cage?
Tyrese: I don't know. Why'd the microphones get so close? Right now, they're doing a rewrite on the film and John Singleton got me at the top of his list. I'm not full on committed to the project but it's something that I'm extremely interested in. Met up with Neal Moritz a few times about it, met up with Avi Arad a few times about it. We'll see what happens. It's not my movie, for the record, but it's something they're really interested in me being a part of. I'm interested in being a part of it and I think we'll be able to determine if John Singleton, if me or whoever else is going to be on the project, we're waiting on the product. We can't do a movie without a good bible. What are we going to read?
CS/SHH!: Your stock will go up after Transformers?
Tyrese: Oh, I'm rich. I'm rich. Oh, I'm rich. No. Not yet. I can enjoy my modest years because it's on the way. Ooh.
CS/SHH!: Your production company?
Tyrese: Right now we got about 12 different projects in development and about four of them are set up at studios. And it's called HQ Pictures. It's one of my more prouder accolades because you out here looking for projects, trying to figure out what you should attach yourself too and not too many people got the courage to go and try to do it themselves. So we've got a bunch of directors looking at various projects, bunch of actors reading and actresses reading. Right now it's crazy. We're having a little back and forth amongst a few agencies about representing my production company.
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