Another year. Another Transformers movie.

I’ve seen all the Michael Bay films, so I don’t know anything about the Transformers other than what I have picked up from Phelous’ review of Transformers (G1), a top 20 list of the funniest/dumbest moments from G1, and a top 20 list of the funniest/dumbest moments from Headmasters.

That means I know that the Transformers movie that this song was used in had kids crying in the theater because it killed off a lot of the characters they loved from the series, which is funny since IMDb tells me Optimus Prime is gone in the latest one.

I know that there is a fictional Middle Eastern country in the Transformers universe called Carbombya. Why?

Also, Sea Spray falls in love with a mermaid, and jumps into a magic pool to transform into a merman.

The song is amazing and has been used in a lot of other places. Probably because it wasn’t written for Transformers. It was based off a line from Iron Eagle (1986) where Louis Gosset Jr. says, “Kid, you’ve got the touch.” He planned for it to be used in the film Cobra (1986), but it ended up in Transformers instead. I’ve seen it used at the end of a review of the religious propaganda show Deception Of A Generation. It was also used in Boogie Nights (1997) where it was performed by Mark Wahlberg. Amazing.

As for the video, there are some ties to Michael Bay. One of the directors, John Beug, who was the senior vice president of video production for Warner Bros. Records said the following about Bay in the book I Want My MTV:

John Beug: Michael Bay did a couple of videos for me. I don’t think I was particularly encouraging to his career, shall we say. He did a Chicago video, and I told him I wasn’t blown away by his talent, which he reminded me of at the Pearl Harbor premiere ten years later.

There’s a sad tie between Beug and that particular movie, but you can look that up yourself.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from I Want My MTV about Michael Bay thanks to Juliana Roberts, Joni Sighvatsson, and Jeff Ayeroff:

Juliana Roberts [A music-video, film, and TV producer. She was a producer for Propaganda Film’s hard rock division, The Foundry]: Michael kind of worshipped David Fincher. We’d always crack up, because Michael would follow David around the Propaganda offices.

Joni Sighvatsson [A movie producer and a cofounder of Propaganda Films]: Fincher and Bay became adversaries. It wasn’t spoken, but it created a great deal of tension. Fincher was sophisticated. He was inspired by great photographers such as Robert Frank and Horst P. Horst. Bay was a technical genius like Fincher, but he had the mind of a teenager. His sensibility was juvenile.

Jeff Ayeroff [Was a creative director of Warner Bros. Records and the cochairman of Virgin Records America]: Michael Bay was known as “the little Fincher.” They said, “He’s not as artistic, but he’s got drive. He’s gonna chew through everything.” He did the Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself” for me at Virgin. He was an ego-fucking-maniac.

There are some kinder ones in there too. But I figured that if I didn’t know about his relationship with Fincher before this section of the book, then there had to be others out there that don’t either.

Personally, I can’t stand Michael Bay because he clearly has a lot of talent, but for some reason has decided not to use it…most of the time.

The video was also directed by Reynaldo Villalobos who is an accomplished cinematographer.

The video was produced by both John Beug and Kim Dempster. Dempster produced at least nine music videos, including four of them for David Fincher. She also directed the movie Marmalade (2004).

Enjoy!