Michael Bay hinted at the fact that the first trailer for Transformers: Dark of the Moon could possibly feature a scene Don Jeanes stars in, but it was still a complete shock to Jeanes when the first trailer appeared and it showcased a scene of his as Neil Armstrong on the Moon. Jeanes did a lot of research to get ready for his role in the third Michael Bay Transformers film and was well-prepared to take on the task of playing Armstrong in one of the summer of 2011's biggest action films.
In our exclusive interview, Jeanes discussed what it was like to be on a Transformers set and how it was to work with director Michael Bay.
Don Jeanes Interview:
Was being a part of a Transformers film everything you thought it would be?
Don Jeanes: "You know what? It really was. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life."
What is it like just going to the first day of the set? Where you prepared mentally?
Don Jeanes: "I’ve got to say yes. I had a lot of time, once I actually had the audition, to really figure out who my character was. I did a ton of research. There’s an interview with Josh Duhamel that says 'we earned the rights to do our role by doing all the research and you can never do too much,' so I just did as much research as I could watching footage. We got to see our space suits before, so I knew how heavy they were going to be. I actually had not only been doing research, but I'd been working out a lot to make sure the suit wasn’t heavy, doing like running in water just to see how that buoyancy works. I went to the space museum. Once I finally got there, of course as an actor you psych yourself out saying, 'I’ve earned this!' And so I got on my motorcycle and I rode down there and I felt ready to go. Nothing is going to prepare you for Transformers. Their budget is so big that the set was literally life-size. Everything was there and that was just amazing to see. I felt prepared but, yes, of course, it is the biggest movie I’ve ever done in my life and I think for a while it will be."
The research that you did, how important did that wind up being in order for you to get into character?
Don Jeanes: "I would say very important because part of our stuff is seeing what obstacles the character has to overcome; that helps me a lot in my work. Going to the space museum and looking at the space shuttle...I don’t know what it was about being right there near the Orbiter, but it’s actually a very small craft and the walls do not seem that thick at all. Just thinking about them being so far out into space with no way home. They still had to go to the moon, get back up from the moon, hook up with an Orbiter and then crash-land into our atmosphere. It brought a fear to the role, which I think he might have been feeling. Neil Armstrong, they say he’s cold as ice and never breaking and always calm. But I felt like, 'Man, that had to be on your mind.' Our story has a little bit of a different twist. I was like, 'Wow, what if not only are you in somewhere you’ve ever been before, away from all humanity, but there might be something else here?' That really helped."
Talk about putting that costume on for the first time. You prepared yourself physically, but still there is a mental adjustment to seeing yourself in a space suit.
Don Jeanes: "It was so cool. I wish I could remember the name of the costume shop that provided the costumes. We got to go to the costume shop and the guys that helped us out were just the coolest guys in the world. They worked on Space Cowboys and a few others. They provide all the moon man suits for every Hollywood production. They had all those suits lined up just sitting there."
That’s kind of freaky.
Don Jeanes: "Yeah, it was kind of freaky. They do so many costumes that you're like, 'Oh my god, oh you did that! You did that too! Awesome.' And then they were really cool telling us how to try them on. But the suit gutted weighs about 60 pounds. The actual suit I think weighs about 320 pounds. They took actual NASA suits and made those into our costumes. I was good until we put on the glass helmet and then another helmet to put on, and that was a little claustrophobic. On set they actually had to run air tubes into where the pack actually hooks up to our bodies, just to make sure we got enough air and that it was all ventilated and circulated."
That sounds a little scary.
Don Jeanes: "The weight of it was amazing. Not only the weight, but it’s a space suit and there is no ventilation. We were just sweating, sweating. All the sweat you see on us in the film is real sweat. I think there’s one scene where Cory Tucker who plays Buzz Aldrin is wiping the sand away from his face, and his face is just full of sweat. I’m thinking, 'Oh my god, are you okay, Cory?'"
Michael Bay has got a reputation as being a demanding director, but how did you find him?
Don Jeanes: "I found him to have the demeanor of a man who's dealing with a $250 million budget on a year deadline. You’re going to be pretty intense. He does talk to you in a very straightforward manner. I think that’s one, because he understands action movies so well and if you’re not on his level of thinking, he can get frustrated with you. But he was pretty cool."
"My first interaction with him was pretty neat. I got to the set the first day, and we actually started filming the first day of filming for the entire movie. I hear this guy saying, 'Come over here, come over here, I need an astronaut's hand, come over here.' I was like, 'Okay,' and that turned out to be Michael Bay. He needed a close up of a hand adjusting one of the cameras you see on our chests and the cinematographer was trying to get a close up of that. He was razzing the cinematographer, like another man razzing a man when women aren’t around. We all started to laugh and it made me kind of okay with him, that set me at ease with him."
"Of course, we weren’t there very long. We worked for about three or four weeks on the set. He seemed pretty cool to me. He seemed like a man with a lot on his mind."
When it came time to shoot, did he give you a lot of takes?
Don Jeanes: "No, actually that’s interesting too. We never got a script."
Never?
Don Jeanes: "No, he’s very guarded about the script. Now this is second hand knowledge that I have heard is that his computer is attempted to be hacked at least 70 times a day to get the script. He’s very guarded about the script. This is what I’ve heard is that he just gives actors a few pages at a time so no one really knows the whole script. He showed us one page of script one day while he held it and said, 'This is what you're doing in this scene.'"
You didn't even physically hold it?
Don Jeanes: "It was in a binder. He kind of held it up for us. He's like, 'Okay, this is what you're doing in the scene.' While we were shooting he would just feed us our lines. He was like, 'Say this. Say this,' and then as we were going through it, we would say the lines. But he actually did give us a few takes and they were mainly to get the action down and to move quick enough and to make sure the special effects were happening properly. We had to do the scene with the sand falls in the face about 10 or 11 times because the sand just wasn't falling right."
If you're only being fed your lines as you're doing them, doesn’t it make it difficult for you to figure out how to act and react?
Don Jeanes: "It was actually a little scary. But I have to say the research and I just tried to hold on to the fear and the knowledge that I had gained through my own research. I think at this level as an actor you come to set prepared and to do your job. That’s why they are paying you the money that they are paying you, so that’s kind of the frame of mind that I had. It was a little scary. At one point we were doing something, he fed me one line and he goes, 'If this ends up in the promo I’ll give you $100,' and I was like, 'Oh, okay, no pressure, no pressure at all!'"
And that first trailer was pretty much all you.
Don Jeanes: "That was pretty cool and a really pleasant surprise. I had no idea, even when he said, 'If this makes the trailer...' I thought maybe it would be a flash of that within this whole other huge trailer. But no, it's just us was pretty much the trailer - and it makes you very happy. I can tell people I’m in it! 'See, I’m in it! I’m not lying; I’m really in it!'"
You said the set was gigantic. Were you were walking on something that looked like the moon? How did that work?
Don Jeanes: "It was. They filmed it in a giant indoor hanger and the entire set was what you see us walking on is all real set. They didn’t CGI that in. The special effects guys are, I have to say, absolutely amazing. They had a dirt guy just to come and spread dirt and make sure the dirt looked right the entire time. It was really cool."
Watching that first trailer all I could think about were those people who claim we actually never went to the moon. If they saw the trailer, they were probably thinking, "See? Told you so. They did it in this movie! I’m sure that’s what it was in the first place. We never actually went!” The scenes in the trailer look real.
Don Jeanes: "That was one of the things I ran into with my research is all those conspiracy theories online. I was just trying to get the footage and I would stumble upon, like they'd get halfway through it and they'd be like, 'Oh, by the way this didn’t happen because…' So I was like, 'Oh my god, I can’t doubt that we actually did it while I’m there on set or it will show through.' I finally came to the Myth Busters who did an episode about all those conspiracy theories and they disproved all them, which was a saving grace for me."
Were you a fan of Transformers going into this?
Don Jeanes: "I have to tell you, that’s one of the craziest things. I went to see both the first two movies in the theater. The last one I remember sitting there thinking after the movie was over, 'Oh my god, if I could ever be a part of something this cool,' then I got this role. It's so cliché to say, but it really is a dream come true."
Are you an action freak? Is that really your genre?
Don Jeanes: "I love great action with CGI and special effects. Just because I think as storytellers they say there's only seven stories to tell and to get them as real as possible, and as magical as possible, we just need to improve the special effects and how we tell them. What a wonderful way to do it."
Do you ever worry about special effects overwhelming the character development?
Don Jeanes: "Sometimes, and I think I know what you’re hinting at. We can get a little carried away with special effects and trying to make it so action-packed that it just takes away from the human story. Yes, that is the struggle, just to keep up with the human story and not overwhelm the audience with too much. I’ve been in movies where there is so much going on and you just get overwhelmed by the visual aspect of it."
Sometimes when I see movies like that I tune out because I’ve seen it, I'm done with the action, and I want more story. If you don’t give me a decent story, I’m going to get bored. Bay balanced it well on the first Transformers.
Don Jeanes: [Laughing] "I’m kind of stalking this movie. I’ve been watching interviews online to see how it’s progressing. I think there is an interview with the writers online that says that the first one was the unlikely hero and the second one they tried to tell a little bit more of the backstory of the Transformers. But I think this story they are really getting back to the human side of it, so it won’t be so, so crazy. I really think they learned their lesson on the second one and they're going to try to make it more relatable to humans this time."
And you've also got The Ascension coming up? Tell me about that project.
Don Jeanes: "That’s been a long time running. That was originally two movies. My roommate Jason Drumwright was in the first one and then we all just kind of started hanging out with the director and he saw Johnny Burns, which is my character in The Ascension, in me while he was here in California just visiting. He started emailing me and just said, 'You know what? I want to do a sequel. Come on." And this one he hired Corbin Bernsen for the sequel."
"We shot that in Massachusetts; I went back twice to shoot that in Massachusetts. It’s the story of an archeologist who finds these artifacts and unknowingly while performing a ritual with the artifacts opens this portal to another world and lets out the 'dark lord'. After that, mysteriously some suicides start happening in this small little town. No one knows or puts it together that all these people have committed suicide on the same day except for our detective Carl Kowalski, played by Corbin Bernsen, who kind of starts to piece it together. I play the boyfriend of one of the girls who passed away. Yes, and this is all fitting...all these suicides are needed by the dark lord to create hell on earth. So most of the movie is us figuring it out and fighting the dark lord to keep that from happening."
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Transformers: Dark of the Moon hits theaters on June 29, 2011.
