If I Only Had One Line.....

In “Romeo & Juliet”, a stage play of some renown, William Shakespeare brings on an Apothecary to furnish Romeo the poison that he will take to kill himself and finally bring this romantic tragedy to its tragic conclusion. Now if the Bard of Avon had written this today, the Apothecary would have been a mere advancer of the plot is, a guy in a white lab coat who probably doesn’t even get a line. But because this was Shakespeare, the Apothecary gets not only a few lines that sing, but his own little arc within - he pays his poverty, see, and not his will. Respect.

I like that thinking of that way because that’s basically the way the Apothecary gets played by Hugh Fennyman. You remember Hugh Fennyman. He was “the money” in “Shakespeare in Love”, the guy who funded the Rose Theater to put on its various plays, for whom profits always came before art. Until he was granted a part in “Romeo & Juliet” by the Will Shakespeare and suddenly, delightfully becomes stricken with theatrical zeal. He memorizes his lines. He get himself a hat, just like one an Apothecary would wear. And when Fennyman takes the stage, he gives his lines everything he’s got. “Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua’s law is DEATH to any he that utters them.” And those caps are not flippant; Tom Wilkinson, playing the Apothecary, hits that word like a guy trying to make his moment in the spotlight last.

I like thinking about that so often that I thought it about the other night when at the commercial of some Sports Event I was watching, I flipped over to “The Rock” at commercial. And as I watched “The Rock”, there was a character, in a suit, in a conference, looking solemn, in the midst of grave goings-on, who picked up a phone and punched in a number and said this: “Get me the pentagon.”

Do you ever think about what might happen if you were ever enlisted, Fennyman-style, for a single scene in a feature film? What movie would you want to be in? Who would you want to be in the movie? And what would you want to say? Well, just like I don’t think Fennyman ever would have guessed that a romantic tragedy centered around a pair of imprudent teenagers would have been his choice, I don’t think I ever thought a Michael Bay movie would be my choice – or, perhaps more accurately, a Michael Bay-ish movie, a summertime blockbuster, a tentpole, a popcorn flick, a box office striver, a big dumb action-y movie where the dialogue is even dumber.

I close my eyes and I can see it. I would be in a suit. I would be in a conference room with other people in suits. I would be solemn for the goings-on would be quite grave. I would pick up a phone. I would punch in a number. I would say: “Get me the Pentagon.”

The One Thing Michael Bay Didn't Blow Up

“Candlestick (Park) is the sporting equivalent of the mythical island of Manikoora. You remember the movie: In the beginning, lovely sarong-wrapped Dorothy Lamour gambols in the sun; in the end she is lashed to a tree as the hurricane threatens to blast her to eternity.” – Ron Fimrite, Sports Illustrated

“KAPOW BOOM BLAMMO CRASHHHHHHHH. EXPLOSIONS EVERYWHERE, ALL OVER, EXPLOSIONS! EXPLOSIONS OF LOVE AND GOOD THOUGHTS AND HAPPINESS AND CHEER! BOOM! BANG!” – Jack Urwin, explaining to The Guardian why he loves Michael Bay 

Candlestick Park, the former home of the baseball Giants and football 49er’s in San Francisco, is set to be imploded in 2015, which to most is probably about 55 years too late. Which is strange because Candlestick Park was, in fact, christened 55 years before 2015 – 1960, to be precise, and from that moment forward was the windiest, coldest and most reviled baseball stadium ever dreamt up. Ron Fimrite, in fact, wrote the above statement in 1986, close to thirty years ago, meaning that in spite of being so hated, The 'Stick's outdated facilities still held on this long, in a woefully blustery spot by the bay in a bad part of town with bad traffic where no one really wanted to go.

Michael Bay is, of course, our pre-eminent Movie Explosion Maker. Three years ago, in fact, Jeffrey Frankenhauser compiled an infographic study of the correlation between Bay’s explosions and box office. In the graph, he notes that Bay’s films had accounted for a total of 992 explosions, or, in his words, “more than one explosion for each of Bay’s nine films.” “The Rock”, however, Mr. Bay’s second feature film, released in 1996, checks in on the chart with his second lowest explosions total with a mere 22, alarming not necessarily because there were not a great many additional things going kablooey but because there was not, simply, one more.

“The Rock” featured Alcatraz and its 81 tourists being taken hostage by a deranged if idealistic General Francis X. Hummel (Ed Harris) in a vainglorious attempt to get the American government to pony up a stockpile of cash and transfer it to the relatives who were never compensated for the deaths of their military spouses in combat. He intends to force their hand by threatening to launch a cache of seriously lethal VX gas–armed M55 rockets toward the City by the Bay. And sure enough, when his demands are not met by his chosen deadline, he launches a rocket.

But to where? At what? “Football game,” says FBI Special Agent Ernest Paxton (William Forsythe). At which point, Michael Bay cuts to a shot of the rocket up above and about to descend upon Candlestick Park.

Alas, General Hummel, proving he has a beating heart beneath those fatigues, manually re-alters the rocket's course and sends it soaring harmlessly out over the Pacific Ocean. And hey, that's swell. Really, it is. Prevention of needless death is a good thing. But then, needless death has never much concerned Mr. Bay, has it? As Mr. Frankenhauser documents in his infograph, there have been a grand total of 653 onscreen deaths in Bay films. And that, of course, as the statistic implies, does not account for off screen deaths - like, say, the entire 14 million population of Shanghai in “Armageddon”. A few arbitrary on/off screen deaths have never mattered much to Michael Bay.

That is not intended as a criticism in this context. Honest, it's not. To be sure, I have bemoaned many times before just how little death at the movies means anymore, and Mr. Bay is one of those responsible for this suppression of meaning. Still, his movies, as he has so often declared through a theoretical press junket bullhorn, are meant for teenage boys. Loss of life in his work is just CGI collateral damage. Which is precisely what makes it so furiously stupefying that he, Michael Bay, Sensei of the Explosion, the dude who blew up the Mir Space Station for absolutely no other reason than to force-feed a little extra "suspense" into a plot that was already about, you know, ARMAGEDDON, hit the re-route switch and had that VX gas–armed M55 rocket swing wide of Candlestick Park.

The one man most suited for the job of demolishing the most abhorred stadium in history in a single swift stroke politely declined. Who says Michael Bay doesn't get irony?