Vallery Jean/FilmMagicFor Michael Bay, sometimes making one of his signature blockbusters means a little pain with the gain.
The director took to his blog on Thursday to set the record straight about reports he was attacked on the Hong Kong set of Transformers 4: The Age of Extinction.
First, the 48-year-old Bay largely backed an account released by Paramount Pictures that stated he came face to face today with one man reportedly under the influence, not two people, as media outlets initially reported. He then elaborated on what went down and compared his alleged assailant to a "zombie."
"Yes, some drugged up guys were being belligerent asses to my crew for hours in the morning of our first shoot day in Hong Kong," he wrote. "One guy rolled metal carts into some of my actors trying to shake us down for thousands of dollars to not play his loud music or hit us with bricks."
After stating that every vendor at the location got paid a "fair price" for the production inconveniencing them, the dude in question "wanted four times that amount," at which point the filmmaker turned him down, not wanting to "let him extort us."
An hour later, Bay said the vendor came up to his crew as they were filming carrying a long air conditioner unit and started trouble.
"He walked right up to me and tried to smack my face, but I ducked, threw the air unit on the floor and pushed him away," he said. "That's when the security jumped on him. But it took seven big guys to subdue him. It was like a Zombie in Brad Pitt's movie World War Z—he lifted seven guys up and tried to bite them."
Bay added that the attacker even bit one of the guards' Nike Air Max shoes.
At that point, Hong Kong's finest in riot gear arrived on the scene and quelled the disturbance and arrested four other individuals for assaulting officers.
Other than that, Bay, who was unhurt in the incident, said he and his crew "had a great day of shooting."
Maybe this will spur him to make a zombie move next.