“Cheese, no onion”: the movie that paid Michael Bay in burgers
Over the course of his illustriously explosive career, Michael Bay’s 17 directorial efforts have made a whopping $6.5 billion at the worldwide box office. With eye-watering numbers like these, it’s no wonder he’s also one of the richest directors in Hollywood, with a personal net worth he estimated to be around half a billion. In short, Bay isn’t a guy who struggles to know where his next meal is coming from. Amusingly, though, he recently cameoed in a movie and made sure he knew exactly what was for dinner on the day of the shoot – because he had the directors pay him in burgers.
When Belgian directors Adil and Bilall resurrected Bay’s iconic Bad Boys franchise for a third instalment in 2020, expectations were low. Bad Boys II had seemingly left the series with nowhere to go. After all, how would anyone top the orgy of action and excess of bad taste that Bay put on-screen in that film? Incredibly, though, the directors pulled off a magic trick, creating Bad Boys for Life, a film that put a smile on both critics and fans’ faces. Oh, and it also romped to $426.5 million in ticket sales.
That film featured a tongue-in-cheek cameo from Bay as Megan and Reggie’s wedding emcee. Martin Lawrence’s Marcus Burnett and Will Smith’s Mike Lowry interacted with their former director in the scene, and it felt fitting to have Bay be a fixture at Marcus’ daughter’s wedding. OK, it was a lot of rich Hollywood types patting themselves on the back – but it’s hard not to enjoy it.
When the time came to make the inevitable sequel, though, Adil and Bilall wanted to go back to the same well. They shot a scene for Bad Boys: Ride or Die in which Bay cameoed yet again at a wedding. This time, it was the nuptials of Mike and his lady love, Christine, but the cameo wound up being cut. This never quite sat right with the directors, though, and when they came up with the idea to bring Bay back along with a classic vehicle from the first movie, he was all too happy to oblige.
Adil told Collider: “At the last second, we found an idea to put him back in, and that was in the Porsche scene. It shows the Porsche of the first Bad Boys, actually. That scene we’d like to be a nice homage.” Executing the scene would require a day trip away from the film’s set, though. Adil chuckled, “We had to go to his house and shoot his scene in the Porsche. He was directing himself.”
Naturally, Bay is so wealthy that he didn’t need the production to cross his palm with silver for agreeing to shoot the scene at his humble abode. He was hungry, though, so he simply requested sustenance from the directors controlling his billion-dollar franchise.
Bilall laughed, “On the way, he said, ‘Guys, can you get me a Fatburger, cheese, no onion?'”
The young superstar directors were already on the way to Bay’s home with all their equipment, so they swung by the nearest Fatburger and picked up a couple of tasty burgers for the man. Adil smiled, “He was really happy with his Fatburgers, so he really did a great scene for us.”
Ultimately, paying a multi-millionaire in the form of fast-food was a small price to pay for Adil, Bilall, and the Bad Boys operation as a whole. As Bilall said, “He’s the godfather of Bad Boys, and for us, it was extremely important that his blessing and our honour to him is in every Bad Boys movie we make.”
