By now you’re probably wondering if this “Transformers” interview madness will ever end on Collider. The fact is I’m almost done and starting tomorrow you’ll start to get some interviews for “Evan Almighty”, “Eagle vs. Shark,” “You Kill Me,” “License to Wed,” “Hairspray” and a lot more. I’ve got so much to post I don’t know where to begin.

But that’s a problem for tomorrow, as right now it's time for some Michael Bay.

Posted below is the transcript of the great press conference that Michael gave at the “Transformers” press day. Every journalist covering the press day was there so you’re bound to read the same quotes all over the net. I think I’m getting it up before most so hopefully it’ll be new for most of you.

While sometimes press conferences are a waste of everyone’s times, I absolutely recommend reading or listening to it. Michael talks about everything – the actual budget ($145 million), how he is able to make his movies look so expensive, how he got involved with the project, what’s he doing next, his test screening process – if you’re curious about what goes on in the mind of Michael Bay this interview is for you.

As always, you can download the MP3 of the press conference by clicking here.

The last thing to know is spoilers are discussed during this interview. You have been warned.

“Transformers” will kick your ass on July 3^rd.

Question: I know my colleagues are going to have Transformers questions, but I wanted to know your reaction to Hot Fuzz which was so inspired by Bad Boys 2, and that you said that you were offered Die Hard 4 and I was wondering if this hadn’t come together would you have considered doing that?

Michael Bay: Die Hard 4, no, I don’t think so. Hot Fuzz, I haven’t seen it yet, because I was finishing this movie. It’s really hard, the end of your post schedule is such a grind, seeing a movie is like the last thing you want to do when you go home. I thought this would be an easy post, on our budget we had a hiatus scheduled in here, because I said, ‘Oh, my God, I have the longest post schedule,’ I didn’t think the robots would be that hard, but I was directing them all the way to the very end.

How did you balance the needs of your vision as a filmmaker with those of Spielberg and those of the fans? I noticed that there are definitely some Spielberg elements to this film.

Listen, I make my own movie, I don’t have someone tell me what to do. I’ve always been inspired by Steven. I was not a Transformers fan before I signed on to this movie. I think I was two years older when the toys came out, so I just discovered girls then instead of Optimus Prime. But I quickly became after I went to Hasbro, where you heard about that Transformers school? I really thought, ‘What the fuck am I going to Hasbro for Transformers school? I thought I was going to learn how to fold up robots, but I met with the CEO and I went through the whole Transformer lore.  I’ve been offered a lot of superhero movies before and nothing’s really appealed to me and in the room, because I’ve been such a fan of Japanese Anime it just hit me that if I make this really real it could be something very new and different. So I quickly became probably one of the bigger Transformer fans in the world, and I tried to make this movie for non-Transformer fans, okay, and I wanted it to be a little bit more, if you could say, adult, so I’m sure I’m going to get flack for – you made an edgy movie on a toy, how is that going to affect kids? I know there are Transformer fans that are 40 years old. Now that I’m rambling ….

One thing I kept hearing from this movie, from the actors is what a great actor’s director Michael Bay is, which is a whole new theme we haven’t heard before, did you do something different?

No, listen, the sound byte – press is very weird, because a sound byte gets out there, Michael Bay yells. Listen, I am very similar, I visited Jim Cameron on Titanic, I’m very similar the way he directs, he’s an assistant director, I’m an assistant director of my own sets, I move my own sets, I shoot very fast, I never leave the set, and I love working with actors, I love giving actors freedom, I love improv-ing with actors, it freaks studios out because they’re like, ‘That wasn’t in the script, what’s this, he’s wrecking the movie.’  And I’m like, ‘Trust me, it’s going to be funny,’ because there’s a whole issue of tone in this movie. But when I’m doing action scenes I’m going to be your worst nightmare basketball coach, that’s to get the energy, the adrenalin going.

How much of what we see is improvised and what about the Armageddon joke?

Well, that’s just me, I’m like, okay, this kid is so funny running I’m like, ‘Dude, you’ve got say this.’ He’s just funny. You guys all laughed, right? I’ll often add jokes along the way. A perfect example, because I will always hire actors that have a good improv skill, like Nic Cage in The Rock, there was really nothing funny in The Rock in the script, and that was all through improv, just trying to work with the guys and try to make it funny. A good example in this scene was when the parents knocked on the door of the bedroom when he’s hiding the robots, in the script it said, ‘Maybe he’s mas …,’ and that was the joke, and that’s pretty lame. So we actually brought him in the room and we just started this whole masturbation talk, and that’s because the mom’s such an amazing New York – she’s in New York plays.

She just won the Tony Award.

Did she really?

Best Actress in a Play, beat Angela Lansbury and Vanessa Redgrave. Julie White.

I know it’s Julie White (everyone laughs).

I believe it was Don Murphy said you had no nostalgia for these Transformers – does that make it easier to make the film, like a doctor operating on a stranger versus a friend?

Listen, I’m a huge Transformer fan now, I can officially say I’ve probably thought more about robots on earth than anyone in the past year and a half. Yeah, I actually think that because I wasn’t a fan I think makes it more accessible to other people, does that make sense? Megatron was a gun, and I’m like, ‘I don’t get that,’ and I did get a lot of flak from fans on the net, like, ‘Michael Bay, you wrecked my childhood.’ ‘Michael Bay, you suck. We’re going to protest his office.’ They protested my old office apparently. That’s true. The death threats freak me up, but I think we’ve – I would listen to fans on the net, I really would. I would kind of hear their comments, but I’m still going to make my movie and I’ll still put flames on Optimus.

That helped because when they were fighting I knew it was Optimus?

You see. Thank you.

But you gave them lips.

Well, because, you know we did a lot of facial studies, and emotion is so hard without that kind of movement. We tried it solid, it just didn’t look right.

There’s talk that they’re hoping to get Transformers 2 if this one is a success, as everyone’s assuming it’s going to be, sometime next year but aren’t you going to be busy with Prince of Persia?

I don’t know, I leave my negotiation open, because the President of Paramount is right behind you. He could probably kill me. I don’t know what I’m doing right now. There’s no script right now.

But you are directing Prince of Persia?

I don’t know, I don’t, I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I really don’t know what I’m doing. I’m unemployed right now. I finished the movie like a week ago.

You mentioned the tone of the film, I was wondering how you managed to balance between what seems to be a somewhat normal recognizable action film with the Transformers.

When Steven called me a year and a half ago, he said I want you do direct Transformers, it’s a story about a boy who buys his first car. To me that was a great hook. I hung up and said thank you, I’m not doing that stupid, silly toy movie, but I thought about it, the hook was great because that’s such a launching ground from a young adult into manhood or womanhood. I liked the simplicity of it, okay, it just made it somewhat more accessible. If you notice, I shot this movie kind of generic, I’ve never in my life shot at a Burger King, or a guy riding on a pink bicycle, or a house that’s kind of very suburbia. But it just makes it more acceptable and accessible to the ultra-slick uber-action around it. The charm of the movie is to me in thinking about it was – I kept having this image of this kid trying to hide robots from his parents by his house, and that just suck in my head as we were writing the script, so to me that was the whole charm of it. I don’t think I even answered your question.

With the mixed reaction to The Island does that effect how you made this film?

You know, I liked The Island and – the thing is the reaction to The Island, it worked really well overseas. I knew it would never be a smash, because it’s not that type of movie, and I continually have so many people that come up to me and say, ‘God that movie is so good.’ But no one knew about it in America. I mean, I asked 500 people before it came out, they didn’t even know when it was coming out. You saw our poster campaign, we had a muddled campaign, I knew we were in trouble with that movie domestically like four months out, and I kept saying, ‘You should go with the Warner’s campaign,’ which did foreign, so it was a whole kind of microcosm study of studio marketing.

Did you change your attitude?

No, the thing is you get right back on the horse again. There are so many directors, ‘Oh, it didn’t open. Oh my God, I’m over.’  And it’s like, you know what? Screw it. Get back on the horse, let’s go. So I finished The Island, three weeks later I was doing Transformers.

Can you talk a little about the casting of Shia and also what you see is the underlying theme or message, if there is one, in this movie?

Well, the underlying theme to me is really no sacrifice, no victory. That was something I wanted to nail. My movies often deal with the hero arch-type and the boy becoming a man, kind of like Nic Cage becoming a hero in The Rock. Shia, the same thing, when he got to carry that cube and sacrifice his life. Your first question was, casting Shia. It’s very scary when you’re trying to hinge a whole movie on a kid. I had seen him in – I had only seen one of his movies, Constantine, and I thought he’s interesting, but he looks so old. And someone said, Ian Bryce, one of my producers, said, ‘You should look at this kid, Shia.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay.’ And he was coming in, I saw some of his other movies and I really liked him, and then I talked to Steven, I said, ‘I’m seeing Shia,’ and he goes, ‘Oh yeah, he’s great. I love Shia.’ And he came in for the audition and he nailed it, and I liked his improv skill, I liked how he was very able to take direction and mold, and he was kind of – I didn’t want the geek, what I like about Shia when – I think every guy’s been in that circumstance by the pond or the lake, where the stud comes up to you and gives you shit, and instead of doing – he comes right back with wit and humor, and every guy likes him right then and there I think. Do you guys think so? I don’t think there’s a kid today that could have done a better job. He’s a pain in the ass to work with, let me tell you. Let me tell you a funny story. I always like to put my actors in real circumstances, and we had him – there was a 17 story building downtown by the statue and my producer said, ‘How do you want to shoot that?’ He goes, ‘We’re going to do a blue screen, right?’ I said, ‘Nah, fuck, we’re going to put him up there.’ (he laughs) And we put him on wires and we rigged it very safe, but there was only four inches to stand on and Shia is like, ‘Yeah, I think I can do it, I’m gonna go up there, I’m gonna go up there.’ So we’re ready to go and he goes, and mind you I would never go out there on my own, I would never do this, but he goes, ‘Oh man, I can’t get up there, I can’t get up there.’ I said, ‘Dude, you’re going to embarrass yourself in front of the whole crew. You get paid way more than those kids on Fear Factor, get the fuck up there.’ (everyone laughs) So he did it, and it was really scary, but he was on cloud nine when he did it.

Do you ever foresee a time where you might want to do an intimate low budget character study?

No, I’ve got this one I keep trying to do it, called Pain and Gain. It’s a really funny character story, I keep talking about it, we’re going to be here next year and we’ll talk about it again, I just keep getting gas to do these big movies. Sometimes it’s a fear of like are big movies going to go away? You know what I’m saying? Hollywood is kind of tough right now, so I don’t know.

What’s it about?

It’s about – it’s very Pulp Fiction-y, true story, it’s about these knuckleheads that kidnap and murder, searching for the American dream in all the wrong ways. It’s very funny. All true.

We’ve seen how James Cameron went from huge physical action movies to 3D films – can you ever see yourself moving in that direction?

Honestly, I think I’d want to shoot myself working on a blue screen stage. I did maybe one, two days of blue screen on this movie, I just hate it. It’s just I like doing things real and it’s just – it’s really hard to go there, you know?

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