I saw this over at Failblog and I thought it was worth sharing. Bay is not good at “winging it.”
I wish people would give the poor guy a break and stop passing this video around.
The next time I hear someone poo-pooing someone’s fears about speaking in public, I’ll remind them of what’s happened to Mr. Bay.
You’d think he could say one or two things about his decades-long career without the benefit of a Teleprompter. He should be able to say a couple of things besides “Guh guh, I can’t… uh… F-It, Bay out.”
I know that feeling, so I can’t hold his stage fright against him.
Making racist, infantile movies, that I hold against him.
I’m torn.
I’ve felt that wave of panic myself while standing in front of an audience. It’s irrational, uncontrollable, and can be debilitating. So I can empathize.
At the same time, he wasn’t giving a speech in front of his high school forensics class. He was talking about his life’s work, about which he is presumably both knowledgeable and passionate. Seems odd that he couldn’t speak off the cuff about that for a minute.
Ouch. If ever a moment needed a giant fireball explosion…
Wow, someone who is not a public speaker shows fear and confusion when asked to speak publicly.
Maybe he shouldn’t have accepted an invitation to speak public ally if he isn’t a public speaker.
Is that even true? Is he, a director of hundred-million dollar films, unable to speak in front of crowds?
Really, if you get paid for giving a speech and realise that you suffer from stage fright, then invest $100 and get it sorted!
It is utterly ridiculous that people in this day and age still suffer from easily curable hiccups like stage fright and don’t do anything about it!
Use NLP, EFT, Energy Medicine, EMDR, CBT, Hypnosis, etc, etc, etc!
Actually, he was on stage to talk about the new Samsung curved TV, not about himself or any of his life’s work.
I don’t think that’s true. He may have been up there to help promote Samsung, but he was clearly talking about his life’s work.
That wasn’t funny, it was painful. I have no respect for his movies, but I don’t want to see some poor schmuck have a panic attack.
How do you know he hasn’t received treatment? His problem could be so severe that we saw represents vast improvement relative to his baseline.
Or maybe he just had a real bad day and flubbing the line was the last straw.
Compassion is a wonderful thing.
No, Morbo has it right. When the prompter went down the MC tried to pitch some softball questions at him to kill time until the prompter was working again and Bay just fell into a full-on freak out and left the stage.
I was in a ballroom right below the CES Keynote where this took place, btw.
Yes, and those softball questions were about his work.
Oh, well I guess that makes you an expert, then.
In this case, yes, I am the expert. When you talk to some people who were there, you let us know.
Why is that–because you did not witness his behavior before any other posters did not witness his behavior?
I am also not a Michael Bay fan, but I do kind of feel him (just a bit). He just handled it so poorly, that it is hard to give him a whole lot of sympathy. Given his record of creating huge blockbusters, he must be used to talking with groups of people either while shooting or at junkets and conventions, and whatnot. Even if the presentation was for some brand of TV, you cannot say that he was outside of element.
hahahahaha
To me it doesn’t look like he has a problem with public speaking, just being prepared. He was probably told to go up on stage and just read the prompter. When that failed, he realized he had no idea what they were supposed to be talking about. Someone didn’t read the script beforehand.