Michael Bay is in Miami, which seems right. He also doesn’t exactly love strictly scheduled interviews, and instead just calls when he’s ready to chat, which also seems right. Today, the director of tentpole blockbusters like The Rock and the Transformers franchise is calling to talk about his new parkour documentary, We Are Storror, which is debuting at the 2025 South by Southwest Film Festival this weekend.
Interviewing Bay feels like watching one of his summer tentpole hits. He’s energetic, upbeat and full of boyish humor (and plenty of f-bombs). He’s now 60, but thankfully still sounds like how you expect Michael Bay to sound — like a guy who is still ready to blow some shit up (“Oh, you live in Austin?” he asks, “I burned down a house there once!”).
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Interestingly, this idea — can we maintain our playfulness as we age? — is a major theme in We Are Storror. The film follows a seven-man elite UK parkour squad who have been documenting their adventures around the globe for 18 years. The film uses new and archival sweaty palms footage to tell the story of a rooftop-hopping band of brothers who are now edging into their 30s and beginning to realize their bodies can no longer perform at the same reckless level. Extreme sports documentary fans will be reminded of Free Solo and Fly. The result is both what you expect from Bay — thrilling and action packed — but also very character-driven and emotional. It’s one of his best films and — as he’ll explain below — was almost as scary for him to make as it was for the parkour team to leap off ledges.
Ahead of the festival, Bay takes The Hollywood Reporter through the making of We Are Storror and also gamely takes questions about the state of Hollywood, that “Directed by Michael Bay” TikTok meme and making grown men cry for the last 27 years with the ending of Armageddon. He admits that even Michael Bay struggles to get a movie greenlit in today’s environment. So he made an “illegal” project instead. “Literally,” Bay says, “I could not be involved.”
So how did you end up making a parkour documentary?
This has taken five years to get to the screen. This goes back to when I saw a 60 Minutes of these wingsuit guys and said “Get them in my office.” I asked them, ‘Would you like to fly through Chicago in Transformers … 3?” Or 4? I think it was 4. [Ed. note: It was 3]. Then we were making [his 2019 action thriller] 6 Underground and I said, “Find the best parkour team in the world.” And we found Storror.
I met them and it was the same thing as with the wingsuit guys. People don’t understand. These are elite athletes. They might look like YouTube fuck-arounds. But what I saw when I worked with them for four months was practice, practice, practice because if they make one mistake they could die. Imagine you are an NFL wide receiver and can only drop one ball in your entire career. Imagine you’re a baseball player and have to hit every single ball.
Then during COVID, [Storror spokesperson] Drew Taylor came to me and goes, “Mike, we want to come up with a movie, would you be interested?” And I’m like, “Yeah, but we have to figure out how to make it.” Most people don’t know what parkour is. And I always look at things from an audience perspective — we have to show the characters. What I kept getting at was their brotherhood and the why — Why do they do this? That’s what people are going to want to know because they’re playing with mortality.
You’re used to every stunt being done safely with protection. What was it like for you as a director during this? They don’t wear safety harnesses.
I could not shoot it. Do you understand? Because everything they’re doing is illegal. I had to license the footage. Literally, I could not be involved. I talked to Jimmy Chin [the co-director of Free Solo] about the camera work, asking him, “How did you not have the drone bother [free climber Alex Honnold]? How did you make sure you didn’t push him an extra inch where he could have died?”
You weren’t able to be on set?
No. I could not condone what they were doing. The legal hurdles were immense. That’s why it took five years. My whole thing was to come up with overarching vision and go through their massive library to hone it down and try to get to who the characters were. They didn’t know how make an all-encompassing story about themselves.
Was there anything they wanted to do that you weren’t down for? That you disagreed on?
They showed me some locations and I said, “Listen, I don’t want to see anything more. I’m not going to give you one suggestion. You better try to do it as safely as fucking possible. You’re on your own.” I even wrote a letter: “I do not as a DGA director condone anything you are doing.” [Laughs]
An example of the popular Storror videos on YouTube:
You know as much as anyone about how to film action for cinema, these guys probably know as much as anyone about filming stunts for YouTube. Was there anything from watching how they film things —
They learned a ton from me when they did 6 Underground, and they’re pretty clever shooters. They saw how I would use GoPros in different places. The would put GoPros in their mouth with a breathing tube.
Actually, I was going to ask if there was anything you learned from them?
Well, I totally learned about the precision of how they land. They’ve got so many techniques. They would get things down to an inch, and that’s what I was trying to show. It was all about mortality. It was an uncomfortable thing. I said, “Listen, you guys are aging out.” It’s hard to tell an athlete that.
That they are “aging out” adds so much extra depth to the film.
Right. I’m a crier at movies. When I saw the ending, I was in my screen room here in Miami and I started crying. I said to myself, “I love these guys.” There’s something lovable about the film.
I was glad to get a chance to see the film on a big screen because its very cinematic. How important is it to you for this to get this some play in theaters?
Whoever buys this, I think there has to be an Imax component or something. Storror has so many fans around the world. I know this will work on the big screen. It’s still a documentary, but we’re trying to make it like a movie.
So I wanted to ask some other Michael Bay-related questions. You’re a guy who built a career hits that were both really big tentpole style movies, but — aside from Transformers — they were also original ideas and not from existing IP. Is it tough to get that kind of movie made today?
I just had a conference call with Jim Cameron and we were both commiserating about Hollywood. No one can greenlight anything anymore. It’s just so slow. It’s a very different business. During Armageddon, those were the days. We had Jonathan Hensleigh, the writer. We sat down for two or three weeks. We had the NASA guy come into my office. We worked out this 20-minute pitch. We go into [former Walt Disney Chairman] Joe Roth’s office. This would be my third movie. And Joe, he’s like a real old time, cool studio executive. He goes, “That’s going to be my July 4th movie. I want to name it Armageddon.” We walk out and we’re looking at each other. “Did he just greenlight that movie?” That doesn’t happen now. But that’s how it used to happen.
I never realized how many music videos that you directed. Which is the one you’re the most proud of, and which is the one you like the least?
Oh God, I totally forget. Remember, I started directing when I was 23. I’m two weeks out of film school, a guy takes me to Capitol Records and the head of music videos is like, “Donnie Osmond has a song that’s number one on the charts, ‘Sacred Emotion.’ If you think you can [make the music video] for $160,000, we can wrap this up.” The most I had ever spent was $5,000. He walks out of the room and we’re like, “Yeah!” And I was off. Second video: Ridley Scott calls me for for Black Rain, and I’m like, “Oh my God, my idol.” People threw money at me. But whole point of videos was that I wanted to be a movie director. After the Meatloaf video [“I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)”] I started getting around town. [Bad Boys producer Jerry] Bruckheimer saw it.
Then I was told I needed to meet “Steven.” I’m like, “Steven who?” Steven Spielberg. This is a true story. I’m like, “Oh my God, what the fuck am I gonna say!?” I walk in. I’m terrified. I said, “I worked at Lucasfilm when I was saving up to buy a car and I filed your storyboards for Raiders of the Lost Ark and I told all my 15-year-old friends that Raiders was going to suck. Then I saw it at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater with my parents, loved it, and decided that [making movies] is what I wanted to do.” He burst out laughing and offered me my first movie. But it didn’t take.
Two of your biggest and most beloved 1990s hits have, a bit surprisingly, never had sequels, The Rock and Armageddon. Do you have any urge to revisit either? Have studios asked you to?
Potentially. There’s a [project] called Black Five [which has been described as ensemble thriller that centers on an elite military team with an advanced technology]. It’s an original idea that I came up with when I was doing Armageddon [after talking to a] physics person from NASA. That’s something I would love to do. As a director, I like to just do fun things to keep me interested, and I love shooting. That’s why I wanted to try the documentary experiment. I liked using different muscles.
Speaking of Armageddon, the scene at the end when Ben Affleck says goodby to Bruce Willis has developed a reputation online for making grown men cry. It’s such an effective and highly emotive scene in a movie where the characters otherwise put up such tough fronts. When filming that, did either of the actors question whether it was going too over the top? Or did you ever consider doing it different way than what you settled on?
That movie was such a blast. It was like a summer camp and I was the counselor. Everyone was so misbehaved and so funny. I’ll tell you the truth. There was a three-gallon painting bucket next to Ben Affleck. He had the stomach flu. He felt like shit. He looked like shit, too. And he had to do that scene between him throwing up. We kept shooting him. And he’s great in that. And he’s great in that partially because he had the stomach flu.
What’s next for you?
There’s so much. I don’t know. There’s this Netflix thing with Will Smith [Fast and Loose, about a crime boss who loses his memory]. But until it’s going, it’s not going. As Jerry Bruckheimer says, “It’s like you got to roll the rock up the hill, and then you got to roll another rock up the hill, and then you got to will it into production.”
By the way, are you familiar with that “Directed by Michael Bay” meme?
Why do people do that?
It’s a funny to take a video that’s an everyday bit of drama and then smash cut to “Directed by Michael Bay.” The stinger suddenly makes real life more heightened and dramatic.
I’m not on TikTok, but there’s like millions of them. It’s hysterical. You can always have naysayers, or whatever. But I just love entertaining people.
An example of the “Directed by Michael Bay” meme:
