Turturro, LaBeouf, Fox Talk Transformers

In a new article on Examiner.com, John Turturro, Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox talk about Transformers, "trickiness of fame" and more while at the London premiere of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Snippets below, full interview here. Thanks to Hanna for the link.

John, did you actually climb one of the pyramids in Egypt?
Turturro: Yes, that’s why they hired me after the professional stuntmen. I kept climbing and I went a little too high one day, and I heard all this screaming in Arabic. I thought they were worried about me, but they were worried I was going too high and I was going to injure the pyramid. It was interesting.

Shia, your hand injury was written into the "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" script. How did you deal with that injury while filming the movie?
LaBeouf: When you break your hand, it’s hard to button your pants, but you’ve got to do it. You just buck up and get through it. There’s only so much you can fake. We had three cameras going at once. It takes a long time to rig some of these stunts. You’ve got to do it. I also had fantastic stuntmen. Vladmir [Tevlovski] took the brunt of the abuse.

Shia, Megan and John what was it like working with Michael Bay again?
Turturro: [He says jokingly] Dreadful.

LaBeouf: It’s not dreadful at all. Me and [Michael Bay] have a big brother/little brother type of thing. We get into it sometimes, and John [Turturro] becomes the liaison between us. He [Michael Bay] is like a football coach. He just doesn’t coddle you. That takes getting used to. Actors are used to being coddled. You get that in a sense. There’s a real masculine energy on these movies. I enjoy the hell out of it. It’s like skydiving for five months.

Fox: It’s like constant chaos. The crew named it Bay-os [as in chaos] and there’s also the term Bay-hem, which is an everyday thing working with him. It is exciting. He is rough on his actors on purpose. I think he likes the legend of being a tyrant.
Turturro: I just based my character on Michael. The key to making any movie is that you have to key into the sensibility of the guy [the director] who’s going to be there every day and who’s going to be working on the film after you’re long gone. And it took me a while to understand that when I first started out. But you really do have to look at that person and connect with their sensibility.

I had a lot of fun. He [Michael Bay] lets me try things. He has a lot of energy and he works very hard. You know the shots are going to be interesting, so you just have to be open to moments in working with him. I had a good time the first time, and I had a better time this time.

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