Transformers - Lorenzo di Bonaventura interview

WITH just a week to go before Transformers opens in UK cinemas – following its record-breaking debut in the US – IndieLondon catches up with producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura to hear how the film got made. In addition to revealing why he thinks Michael Bay was the perfect director for the job, Lorenzo also reveals why he gets a kick out of dealing with passionate fans – no matter what they have to say!

Q. Who came up with doing a Transformers movie and how did you start working on the project?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: There were two sets of producers. Myself, I went to Paramount Pictures and said: “Let’s do Transformers.” And Tom DeSanto and Don Murphy went to DreamWorks and said the same. So the two studios realised they were going to start bidding against each other and decided to partner. I think people in the past have probably tried to but it was just that moment in time when it came to work.

The surprising thing about Transformers is that if you don’t know about it you sort of have this view that it’s a toy or a cartoon. But then when you actually find out what it’s about the mythology is very rich. When you get into the mythology you realise there are plenty of opportunities for good storytelling.

Q. Were you always a robot kind of person?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: I was definitely a sci-fi kind of person. I’m a bit older than the Transformers generation! I worked on a great movie that was a total failure called Iron Giant, so I’d been part of a process with metal men. I interpreted one of the failures of that movie from a financial point of view as being the lumbering quality of the robot. Aesthetically, it’s not something that people relate to.

So, that was one of the first tasks we did on this; it was one of the first things I said to Michael Bay. I said: “Whatever we do, these things can’t be lumbering. We have to find a way to make them fluid.” So we took a kung-fu movie and put it in the computer to watch how a metal man would move like a kung-fu artist. When you see the movie, sub-consciously you’re having a different experience with a metal man. It’s still metal but there’s a fluid quality to it that makes them very relatable.

Q. What’s the star quality of Shia LaBoeuf?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: I produced Constantine, so I’d worked with Shia before. You could tell that he had a wealth of ability that had not really been tapped into yet. He’d had a lot of interesting sidekick roles but not enough to propel him. When we wrote Sam [his character] we needed somebody that had a real sense of humour, a sense of vulnerability, a sense of neurosis and a charm. At that age, there’s not many choices of people who could handle a lot of rigorous stuff. He does a lot of acting in this and he has a great quality – there’s something unbelievably likeable about him. We came to Shia very fast.

Q. He also has more of an everyman quality looks-wise, rather than being the next Keanu Reeves. Is that a marketing tool for you?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: I think it may prove to be a marketing tool. It wasn’t thought of that way. It was really about the character. We wrote Sam and asked who could play him? It was always the intention to make the character a guy who was an underdog.

Q. What was the most difficult part of your work on this movie?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: Convincing the studio they wanted to buy it was probably the hardest thing. They sort of went: “Transformers?” The decision makers are older than I am, so they were really looking at it like: “Come on, you’re kidding me!” To be fair to them, you still have to work out a real story and it takes a long time. When you pitch it, you sort of describe it as the story of an underdog who becomes friends with good robots and they sort of look at you funny. They passed on it three or four times. It took over a year and a half.

From the point of view of making the film, Michael’s an unbelievable general. So, as a producer the really big challenge is to get the machinery of the studio working and find all the partnerships. Michael is a force of nature when he’s on the set so the idea that any producer could help him a lot when he’s at work is not the truth.

Q. Was Hasbro at all nervous about the way you changed the robots?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: Well, it’s interesting because Hasbro had a group of guys that have been with the property since the very beginning, so they could care less about Hasbro and they loved Transformers. They’d fight their bosses because they’re true believers. So they were really an unbelievable resource to us because they knew the DNA of it so thoroughly that we’d say: “We want to do this, what do you think?” And they’d say: “Sure, sure.” Or: “Really?” I think with some of the design things they had to get their head around for a while. But they made some real contributions in saying what the fanbase would really be upset about. We had some guys at Hasbro and some other Transformer true believers that were our jury.

Q. Were you prepared for quite how defensive the fans became when it first got announced?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: Well, I’d been through Harry Potter so I understand. It’s actually one of the great rewards of tackling something that has true believers – you get a lot of attention really quickly. So, it wasn’t a lot different from some of the projects I’ve done before.

I guess the biggest difference is that those guys were 28 to 30, so it was in their childhood DNA. With Potter, it was adults who read it with their kids and it was a new phenomenon. With Harry Potter 1 it was like touching the Bible. We got more attention than anyone who’d tried to do one of the stories of Christ. It was wild. But I actually find it sort of fun. You take a lot of crap initially. But I think the truth is that if we did it the way they remembered it, they’d be bored. If you don’t move it forward, it’s boring. But as soon as you do, everyone’s like: “Oh my God! You’re going to ruin it!” A lot of things have been ruined because they haven’t been executed properly and you can’t guarantee execution. All you can do is promise your best effort.

Q. Has the internet been a help or a hindrance?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: I think there’s a real threat going on to filmmaking from the internet because it’s coming at you so early in the process. Some drawings leaked and they were literally like: “What do you think?” They probably went through 100 evolutions from that point. But they were judging the first germination of an idea once they were leaked. And what’s dangerous about that is that you can throw a director off of their centre. If that happens, you’ll get exactly what you fear. Michael has a very strong centre so he didn’t get thrown that way. That said, the internet becomes very valuable later on in the process. You can get feedback and gain a sense of where you are. It’s something we’re all going to be struggling with forever now with properties that are very familiar.

Q. Was Michael Bay always first choice?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: I’m sure we could have made it without Michael Bay but I don’t know that we could have found anyone better. Michael understands scale in a way that very few directors do. He’s got a great eye. But there’s a challenge in this movie that’s very difficult – and that is having very simple ideas become powerful. So you can’t be afraid of simple ideas. Michael isn’t. The other challenge is a physical one as well as an emotional one – you have these 32ft tall stories going on, which makes it very hard to keep a 6ft tall story going. How do you do it in the same frame where you’re going to pay as much attention to the humans as you are to these pretty staggering looking robots? Michael has the ability to keep perspective in place visually in that he communicates that both are equally important. That’s a very rare skill set. He’s very unique in that respect.

Q. What was Steven Spielberg’s input?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: Steven’s idea was a boy and his car. It seems really simplistic at first but then you realise the sort of resonance of that idea. I’ve worked with him for 18 or 19 years. I was lucky to be running the Amblin account when I was at Warner Bros. But actually seeing the impact of the idea all the way through the process was very valuable. He’s also one of the very few who can find in simplicity a profound resonance. I think his idea had a dramatic effect on the movies. He was very easy to work with as a producer.

Q. How did you get the support of the Pentagon? Did you have to make it pro-military to get their support and access?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: They wouldn’t get involved if it was negative to them. I understand why some people think this is a pro-military movie. I’m not a pro-war person. But we weren’t looking at it that way. To make this movie be a real experience, we had to treat the invasion as a real thing. So, if you do that you have to treat the military as a real instrument. Our belief was to avoid it being too soft as a movie, because we wanted it to be a lot of fun, that part had to be razor sharp and as realistic as an alien invasion can be.