"Ben Took The Brunt Of Michael's Unhappiness": Pearl Harbor Star Reflects On Working With Director Michael Bay

Summary Josh Hartnett reflects positively on working with Michael Bay in Pearl Harbor.

Bay has a reputation of being difficult to work with.

Even though Hartnett's experience on Pearl Harbor was positive, the actor admitted that Bay may have taken it easy on him.

Pearl Harbor star Josh Hartnett reflects on his experience working with Michael Bay. Hartnett played Danny Walker in the epic period drama, which also starred a supporting cast including Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale, William Lee Scott, Ewen Bremner, Michael Shannon, Jaime King, Jennifer Garner, Jon Voight, and Cuba Gooding Jr. Pearl Harbor was one of Bay's early directorial efforts, before he took on the Transformers series.

Speaking with Vanity Fair, Hartnett details his experience working with Bay on Pearl Harbor.

According to the actor, he was "trepidatious" about working on a film as big as Pearl Harbor, and people were warning him about how difficult a director Bay was to work with. Contrary to this belief, however, Hartnett maintained that he "got along with Mciahel [Bay] really well." and he "didn't have that experience" of Bay's intensity. While Hartnett said that Bay might have "[taken] it easy on him," the actor asserted his positive experience. Check out the full quote from Hartnett below:

Pearl Harbor is by far the biggest film that I've worked on. And I was trepedatious about it. Because I was very happy with the amount of work I was getting and the type of directors I was working with. You read the script, and you know it's not going to be a direct historical film. It is a romance. And you know, a few years after Titanic had come out, and they wanted to capitalize on a similar type of audience. And that Michael Bay makes big, spectacle films. He's interested in large aspects of filmmaking and it's not necessarily about the intimate moments. That said, I got along with Michael really well. I think a lot of people at that time were saying he's a very difficult director to work with, and like blah blah blah blah blah and watch out. And I didn't have that experience at all. I think Ben took some of the brunt of Michael's unhappiness at times when things would go wrong, but they already had a relationship. But I didn't have that experience, I think maybe because I was so green, that he just took it easy on me.

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Looking at Hartnett's career up to that point, it is no surprise that Pearl Harbor would have come with a lot of associated pressure. While he had had a couple of film roles already in The Virgin Suicides and The Faculty, Hartnett was only 23 years old and still in the very early stages of his career by the time Pearl Harbor came out. The budget for Pearl Harbor was a hefty $140 million, making it, as Hartnett characterizes, the "biggest film" he had worked on to date. As a rising star, the pressure he would feel as a result makes sense.

Bay, on the other hand, had already developed a reputation for "spectacle" in the grandiose films that populated his early career. This included large-scale projects such as Bad Boys and Armageddon. With these films, he had also gained a reputation for being "a very difficult director to work with." While conversations about Bay mostly revolved around the poor critical reception of many of his projects, Bay's reputation as hot-tempered and challenging remain somewhat in place today.

Related Every Michael Bay Movie, Ranked from Worst To Best With the release of Ambulance on Netflix, it’s time to look back at the work of the infamous Michael Bay, ranked from worst to best.

Hartnett's statement about Bay does not completely dispel the rumors about the director. Rather, Hartnett says that co-star Affleck "took the brunt" of the director's "unhappiness" on the set. While Hartnett did not specify what that unhappiness looked like, the phrase can nonetheless be taken to mean that Bay occasionally acted out on the set of Pearl Harbor. Even though Hartnett's personal experience with the director was positive, the quote overall does not bode well for Bay's behavior on film sets.

Source: VF / YouTube