'Bad Boys', which Bay made when he was just twenty-eight, having never made a movie before, having done a string of commercials and music videos with artists ranging from Donny Osmond to Meat Loaf, grossed more than $140 million worldwide.
I have never made money selling records. I have never really made money touring, either, or with merchandise, surprisingly. But I do make money by just having my songs in the background of television shows or in commercials or movie trailers. That's been really good.
As seemingly impossible as it may seem of having zero regrets, when I look at my life now and all the mistakes I've made, all the bad decisions I've made, all the things I could have done differently or done more in, I don't think I would have changed anything.
Every bad decision I've made has been based on money. I grew up in the projects and you don't turn down money there. You take it, because you never know when it's all going to end. I made Cop III because they offered me $15 million. That $15 million was worth having Roger Ebert's thumb up my ass.
A lot of the stuff in 'Speed Racer' has never been done before, from it having a multi-tone, to it having a retro-cool family movie, to having the photo-realism with the CG-backgrounds and infinite focus the way they worked with these digital cameras, to even the color experimentation.
[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
I made 'Super' for $3 million, and that was filmed in 24 days. And that $3 million dollars went to a lot of things other than what shows up on screen. Once you get done with the unions and everything else, that's just, like, the basic cost of what you can make a movie for.
The last I checked, 'Titanic' worldwide has grossed $1.3 billion. Imagine how much more it would have grossed if I had gotten the sky correct.
Most artists are making as much money now as they could have made... in the heyday of Def Jam [when the] Beastie Boys would sell 10 million records or DMX would sell 6 or 7 million records. Those records are one thing, but then all the other ways to exploit the emotional relationship between artist and community is so much greater that I would guess that they're making as much or more money than they could have ever made.
I made a movie in Morocco. I made a movie in Brazil. I've made commercials all over the world. Every set looks like another set.
I felt like a fake the whole time and it made me very, very nervous - which is why I have such great respect for actors, because I can't do what they do. I really can't do it. I'm always uncomfortable. And I'm just grateful that I recognized that this uncomfortable-ness was a sign that I shouldn't be doing it. More than not having any talent - which is clearly obvious - more than not having any talent, it was so uncomfortable and I was so insecure. And I was so frightened. And the thought of being somebody other than myself was impossible for me.
I've said I won't eat meat until the whole world can eat it responsibly, which is going to be hard. It's becoming more and more fashionable to eat more and more meat and they've just made it fashionable to eat meat in the east in China, which is a massive population.
I accept that appearance is a big thing in this business. But being around Hollywood and having actor friends and doing music videos, it does make you more aware of how you look. With music videos they send you rough cuts, and in certain frames of me, I just see a nose advert.
With 'The Replacements,' it was insane. I'd never done a movie that opened up and made, like, seven million dollars. I'd never been part of, like, a four-day press junket for a movie that was international and domestic.
You know, people think I named myself Meat Loaf, even though I didn't. And they think anyone who would name himself Meat Loaf couldn't have an IQ higher than four.
I want to encourage the artists that haven't made it that social media is the truth. I made it from Instagram to having a most-added song to radio.
It's hard to know which made me more aware of the impossibility of protecting children - having a child die or having had two live.