Megan Fox, Michael Bay, Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, Ramon Rodriguez and Kevin Dunn Press Conference
When you were off the set what did you do to relax? Can you talk about staying in shape for the role?Megan Fox: "I know in New Mexico I think what all of us did to relax after a hard day of work was go drink at Chili's."
Michael Bay: "It's the only restaurant there."
Megan Fox: "We drank a lot. Then to stay in shape, I didn't find the time or I didn't have the motivation to work out after we shot a 16 hour day. So whatever happened to me at work…"
Michael Bay: "We don't shoot 16s. We shoot 12s."
Megan Fox: "Mike, no. That's not possible. Every day…"
Michael Bay: "We do 12. We shoot 12s."
Megan Fox: "Okay, we shoot 12 hour days. Well, after 12 hours I was too tired to work out so I didn't really maintain much."
Michael Bay: "Days are physical."
Megan Fox: "How do you do it, Josh Duhamel? You specimen of a human being."
Josh Duhamel: "Well, Megan. Honestly, you're out there literally sweatin' all day long and you don't have a lot of energy."
Michael Bay: "Running in the sand too."
Josh Duhamel: "Yeah, running in the sand. Tyrese and I worked out a little bit."
Megan Fox: "Together?"
Josh Duhamel: "It was more of a personal competition. Yeah, he would spot me and I would spot him. What's the big deal?"
Tyrese Gibson: "That don't sound too good."
Josh Duhamel: "Honestly, before we started the first one, I remember Michael told me, 'Come ready. Be in shape, I demand a lot of my male actors especially in these movies.' So I did. I just tried to be as strong and ready to go as I could."
Tyrese Gibson: "We worked out twice a day though. We worked out before we went to the set, and after the set we would come and get our five miles in. Have you ever done five miles? Did you do maybe three?"
Josh Duhamel: "I didn't run five miles."
Tyrese Gibson: "You used to run with us. Three? Two?"
Josh Duhamel: "I don't know. It doesn't matter."
You incorporated Shia's hand injury into the film. How did that affect everyone on the project when that happened?
Michael Bay: "Well, I actually read it on CNN online and I'm like, 'This can't be true.' I called my line producer, Ian Bryce, and he goes, 'It's true.' And I'm like, 'Oh, my god.' He goes, 'Let's shut down.' I'm like, 'We can't shut down.' Because when you've got a train going, it's so expensive to shut a picture like this down. We had an action scene in the library that day we were shooting, Monday. I said, 'Let's just go for it. Let's just not stop. Let's use Vlad, his stuntman, and we'll try to cover as much stuff as we can.'"
"Then on Tuesday we shut down and we had to mix and match everything, pulling from different scenes we could shoot without him. We didn't know how long he was going to be down. And immediately I had them find the best people in the world to make a special cast that had never been made with the Kevlar fingers, very thin so you could photograph it because the problem was if he were to jam his fingers, he could lose his fingers forever. So we had some experts of the world kind of come up with this design. We were very lucky because we had shot a lot of the beginning of the movie and so we were right at a turning point were we could kind of…"
Megan Fox: "Did it set things back?"
Michael Bay: "We were very lucky."
Megan Fox: "Everyone is also very lucky for Shia's level of commitment to this movie because he showed up with his injury and acted as though he didn't have an injury, and still went balls to the wall and completely committed and did things that were not safe for him to do. But he wanted this movie to be as real as possible. So I think that helped everyone out a lot."
Michael Bay: "Yeah, we'd have arguments. He would take his cast off and I said, 'Put your cast on.' He said, 'No. I'm fine.' I said, 'Put your cast back on.' We were just trying to protect the hand."
Josh Duhamel: "Remember when he cut his eye and he wanted to come back to work that day."
Michael Bay: "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah."
Would you want to work with the Department of Defense again?
Josh Duhamel: "I would. I love it. They were great to work with. I think that's a question, Michael has a great relationship with them. I think that's why."
Michael Bay: "I would only do it if I could control an aircraft carrier."
Kevin Dunn: "Yeah, you get so much information and they're so ready to tell you about everything that they're doing. I think I was talking to a tank commander. It's just great. You just learn so much about what goes into everything these people do."
Michael Bay: "They are a special breed. They're very impressive. They really are."
Tyrese Gibson: "The aircraft carrier stuff was one of a kind. Gettin’ there was very unsafe but yet safe and leaving was the same thing. But I mean, we had a big party on the boat, with 5,600 people in the middle of the water on this boat."
Michael Bay: "What Tyrese is saying, it's not unsafe, it's just when they brief you, like a flight attendant would say, 'Okay, these are the doors. Exit on your right…' Whatever. They go, 'Okay, if we have a water landing and I'm dead someone needs to pull this cord right here.” It's one of those briefings. It's just down to the point. 'And if you inflate your vest, you will die.'"
What are you putting on the DVD or Blu-ray?
Michael Bay: "This one is done by Ridley Scott's DVD guy who's great, so we're going to have a lot of stuff on this."
And the IMAX stuff?
Michael Bay: "We’re going to do a special IMAX skew where it'll open up for those scenes. You can see top to bottom. I'm very curious to see it because I have not seen it. I didn't want to see it during the process because I wanted to be surprised in the theater."
When will you start thinking about Transformers 3?
Michael Bay: "I told everyone that I'm definitely going to do another movie before I do this movie because it's just thinking of robots for three and a half years, it's enough right now."
