Michael Bay’s Movie Career Started With A Job At Lucasfilm

Born in Los Angeles, Bay seemed destined to the big screen from an early age. As he recalled in 2009, he used to make his own home movies as a boy, and in one particular instance where he set off “little firecrackers on the train set” he set his bedroom on fire, an accident for which he was grounded by his parents for two weeks.

Given that the bar of spectacle was already raised for young Bay, the budding filmmaker was eager to get a gig at Lucasfilm upon seeing “Star Wars,” a movie that Bay recalled being “awestruck” by. At the age of 15, Bay was living every teenage boy’s dream, “filing ‘Star Wars’ photos and spaceship drawings” and seeing “how the magic was created,” as he recalled this past April.

Yet the snot-nosed teen found himself unimpressed when the materials for a new film to be directed by Steven Spielberg crossed his path. “I filed the ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ storyboards,” he explained. “They were big, beautiful, like a cartoon. I’m looking at them and saying, ‘Steven’s doing this movie called ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ and it’s going to suck.”

Yet a year later, when the film opened, the teenage Bay had his mind blown by the final product. Seeing “Raiders” at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre with his parents, he remembers thinking, “Oh my God, this movie is awesome. This is what I want to do.”