Editor’s Note
The Strike Zone
Remember that episode of Friends where Joey gets fired from his cushy soap opera gig for telling a reporter he comes up with a lot of his own lines? A few episodes later the writers have their revenge when Joey’s character, Dr. Drake Ramorey, falls down an elevator shaft.
I wonder if that’s how Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman — the officially credited writers of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen — felt when, during the 2007/2008 writers’ strike, director Michael Bay told reporters, “I’ve been writing Transformers 2. We’ve got our characters all designed. I always write all my scripts, my movies anyway so at least I’ve got something to give the writers.…We had to because I want to make my date. I’m not going to let the strike take me down.”
Bay, director of such big-bang movies as Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, The Rock and Bad Boys, has never been known for subtlety — in his movies or, apparently, his interviews.
Moreover, it’s a reminder of a period that may feel like ancient history, yet is anything but. This summer, the big films most affected by those 100 days of protest hit movie screens.
Last month’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Angels & Demons, Terminator Salvation and Star Trek are all strike babies, with their conceptions, gestations or births all somehow delayed or complicated by the vacuum of guild writers during that stretch. This month, the Transformers sequel and Land of the Lost are the films coming out of that period. Later in the summer it’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
Whether the strike had much effect on the final products is something to be judged on a case-by-case basis. The reviews for Star Trek couldn’t have been better; the reaction to Wolverine on the other hand, well, maybe having a good writer on set would have helped.
In our interview with Transformers star Shia LaBeouf, the actor gives Bay major props for his maturation on set (the director is known for being as explosive in person as are some of his special effects). In fact, we got a big kick out of the 23-year-old, sometimes troubled, LaBeouf’s assessment of his 44-year-old director. “It’s wild to watch Mike grow up and to acknowledge it,” reports LaBeouf. “Every filmmaker, every movie out, something changes. You either gain something or you lose something, and I think this time Mike has gained a lot.” For more on the film’s nuanced relationship between actor, director and script, check out “We’re Blowing Everything Up”.
In “Let’s do the Time Warp Again,” we talk to Will Ferrell, star of the aforementioned Land of the Lost, about revisiting the campy 1970s TV show.
Ryan Reynolds talks about making The Proposal with his bud Sandra Bullock in “Canadian-American Relations”. It’s the first time they’ve worked together, despite being friends for years.
Read “Working Her Magic,” our interview with Emma Watson on the eve of next month’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The piece anchors Famous Teens, our section devoted to our younger, hipper readers.
Marni Weisz, editor