mbulance’ Interview: A Chat With Michael Bay, Jake Gyllenhaal, & Yahya Abdul-Mateen II
Ambulance Interview Boss Hunting
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Published on 10th April 2022
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GARRY LU
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Everyone knows a Michael Bay movie when they see one, and there’s certainly no mistaking Ambulance starring Jake Gyllenhall and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II for an entry in any other director’s filmography.
In desperate need of money to cover his wife’s medical bills, decorated veteran Will Sharp (portrayed by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) teams up with his adoptive brother Danny Sharp (portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal) to steal $32 million from a Los Angeles bank.
RELATED: Jake Gyllenhaal To Star In Speedboat Heist Movie ‘Cut & Run’
But when their getaway goes horribly wrong, they hijack an ambulance that’s carrying a police officer the duo have severely wounded and EMT worker Cam Thompson (portrayed by Eiza Gonzalez). Caught in a high-speed chase, the fugitive siblings must figure out a way to outrun the law while keeping their hostages alive.
We recently spoke to the man himself, Michael Bay, in addition to the cast of Ambulance about the high-octane action – check it out below.
Ambulance Interview
Ambulance Michael Bay
Safe to say, Ambulance is probably the most Michael Bay thing ever filmed.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: I’ll give you my stamp of approval, boom.
Jake Gyllenhaal: Same. Maybe and then some. It does not stop this movie. There’s no time for – what was it – a toy car tracing over somebody’s face, or whatever happens in Armageddon. There’s no time for that in this movie. It just doesn’t stop.
Michael Bay: You know what it is? I set out to do a movie about tension, and I liked how it was very immediately fast. You are on a robbery that goes so south, which is bad. You’re either a hostage or being chased by the cops or you were the noble guy who robbed a bank just to save his wife, and what would you feel like? Because it’s all going down and the adrenaline doesn’t stop. What kind of emotions would you feel in that ambulance, the claustrophobia. Is it the “most Michael Bay movie ever”? I don’t know. I hear Brad Pitt saw it last night and he thought it was one of my best movies. To each their own.
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At some point, I lost track of how many cars were totalled. But for the record, do you have an official kill count for us?
YA II: Jake has a number he likes to throw out… and that number is a lot. He’s officially created a number for this movie, for the car kill count.
JG: A definite pile. It’s a pile’s worth. I think it’s gotta be up there in the Guinness Book of World Records, like at least Top 10 in a movie. Because, you know, we had a parking lot where he would put all the destroyed cars. That’s where our base camp was, where we were shooting, where we were getting ready in the morning. And over the course of 39 days of shooting, it would just pile more and more and more cars. Until there was no space left for the cars that had been destroyed. I never counted… unfortunately. Should’ve thought ahead to this interview.
MB: I’m very good at destroying cars. I’m so good at it. I might have destroyed more cars than anybody. It would be really fun to find out. Somebody could figure it out. And there were a lot that didn’t even make it into the movie, so I would add on that. I was in China and they took me to a car factory and they showed me the crash test dummy area. And I said, “I’m not impressed, I’ve crashed more cars than you have, sir.”
The helicopter chase scene in the Los Angeles River was improvised at the 11th hour. How does that happen and is it the logistical nightmare that it sounds like?
JG: I don’t really know how it happened, either. We were on our way home, at least I was on my way home, I was about five minutes away from set, and then Michael called me, “You gotta come back, you gotta come back. Just drive directly to the LA River. I’ll send you a pin.” And we drove there, and it was so strange. There was this ramp, and I drove the car straight down into water. And I was like, “What is this? What’s going on?” He’s like, “Just don’t get out of costume, this is what’s going to happen.” And I think he just got access to the LA River somehow, and he had two helicopters that had been hired for the day, and he came up with this idea.
What’s so cool about Michael is like, people talk so often about improvisation in terms of a scene and with acting, coming up with an idea that was inspired, changing camera angles. But with Michael, he’s so used to working with big set pieces and such big pieces of his movies, that his mind thinks, “Well – I could move that bridge.” And in an instant, you know? So that’s what happened.
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YA II: That was basically my experience as well. I remember driving down, because as you get to LA River, you need to drive down on this hill, ramp. I have no idea where the LA River is, I’m not from Los Angeles. I don’t know what this is. And [Michael Bay’s] saying, “Just drive, just keep going, just stick to the left.” So we’re filming, we’re trying not to lose the light. And he says, “Say something like: ‘Here we go.'” I say, “Here we go.” He says, “Turn left.” I turn left. I am just driving, I have no idea what’s going on. I’m just doing what the voice of a walkie-talkie is telling me. And then we use it, we put it in the movie, because Michael has the pieces of the puzzle in his head. But it’s a good way to work.
MB: We shot that in two and a half hours. I said, “Get approval to fly under the LA River.” I work with the best helicopter pilots in the world. Jake had never worked around helicopters. Yahya had never worked around helicopters. I’m putting Yayha in the car basically straight away. He said, “This is crazy shit. This is the most crazy shit I’ve ever done.” Because they were right behind them. They were right behind the ambulance going 55 miles per hour, 65 miles per hour. Kinda dogging with that ambulance. It puts actors in that moment. It’s real. It’s happening.
It sounded like everything was shot exactly as the story unfolded.
JG: It was, [Michael] was playing the cops, and he was also playing the people being chased. So he was trying to figure it out from both sides and say, “How can I make this more difficult for them?” And after he decided, he would figure out how we could get out of it.
Ambulance Michael Bay 2
What I like about Michael Bay movies such as this and Pain & Gain is that – at its heart, the story is about economic desperation, ambition, climbing the socio-economic hierarchy. But they can also be interpreted as a twisted pursuit of the American dream, and to an extent, how America has failed a subset of its people.
JG: No, I think that’s at the heart of this film, all those systemic issues that many Americans face, that I think are real problems. It’s just put in a very, very heightened context. Sometimes in a bit of an absurdist context. But every character’s intention is based on exactly what you just said.
YA II: There’s a certain amount of frustration that it would take for a person like Will Sharpe to go and decide to rob a bank. There’s a certain amount of frustration and helplessness and angst and love, and those are the things I think people can relate to when they look at those parts of this story.
MB: You’re so right. You’re so right. I was just in Paris and in England, and they’re like, “Mr Bay… you used to do all these American rah-rah movies. You know, Armageddon and whatnot.” And I really feel that our country, our political class on both sides, have failed this country. And it’s been corrupted. It’s always about money. Pain & Gain was weirdly about the Instagram obsession and narcissism and striving for the American dream. 13 Hours shows you where America will leave you behind enemy lines. They don’t care. My movies now are… “America better turn it around somehow.” Don’t get me started on this subject. That’s very astute, what you’re saying.
Despite the pretty serious themes and this being a pretty serious action affair, there were also unexpected moments of comedy. That fight scene at the front of the ambulance between Danny and Will, for example, had major sibling energy. How much did you – Jake and Yahya – draw upon your experiences as the youngest child of the family for that sequence?
JG: I’ve personally never been in that position before, but Yahya and I said, “There’s gotta be a place where these two are driven to their end with each other.” They’re not just trying to get away with each other, they’re both pissed at each other, the way siblings would be in the back of a car. We took it to the extreme in the action movie sense. But we definitely had conversations about being kids in the back of a car. That was part of it.
RELATED: Jake Gyllenhaal Locked & Loaded For Guy Ritchie’s War Movie ‘The Interpreter’
Jake, between this and The Guilty, you’re two for two on remakes of Danish films. Is there another on your hit list? I hear they’re producing a remake of Another Round.
JG: I would love to remake that movie. It’s being done by Appian Way, which I’m really excited to see. But actually, it’s the third one after Brothers with Tobey Macguire. So I got my three. This is the last one. Hopefully not, though. The Danish make such incredible films and I’m somehow very drawn to them. Speaking of The Guilty with [original director] Gustav Moller, I have a movie in development with him, because I think he’s so talented. It might not be a remake, but I’ll definitely be working with more Danes.
And Yahya, is there any bit of international cinema that you’d like to remake?
YA II: I have some ideas. I think I’ll keep those a little closer to my chest right now. I’m very excited to put my stamp onto some films. I have a production company, I just started a partnership with Netflix. So I’m excited to research and find out what’s out there, but then also to put a lot of new ideas out there. And then hopefully someone can remake those.
Michael Bay’s Ambulance starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is now in cinemas.
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Written by
GARRY LU
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TikTok Revealed As The Biggest Money Maker For Influencers In Australia
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Updated on 7th June 2022
by
CHRIS SINGH
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The creator economy can often be a smoke & mirrors show that’s hard to quantify beyond generic fire emojis and engagement-baiting thirst traps, but it’s hard to deny just how disruptive the scene has been for the way marketing works in the modern age. Some call it a “booming entrepreneurial landscape” while others demand more transparency from social media content creators. Whatever your opinion, these (mostly) young entrepreneurs are cashing in and turning their side hustles into actual businesses, earning nice entry-level salaries for a lifestyle that typically involves copious amounts of free products, travel and food. How much are they earning for the privilege? Well, a new study commissioned by Vista has lifted the curtain and revealed the average salary for an influencer in Australia.
The survey of more than 500 content creators in Australia found that those earning the most from social media content are young, male and on TikTok.
Given TikTok has skyrocketed in popularity over the past few years, especially when compared with former numero uno Instagram and Facebook, that’s of no little surprise. What is a surprise, though, is just how much these people are earning for making short videos on the app.
While the Vista survey of Australian influencers found that these content creators are earning, on average, just $53,000 per year, the higher-ups were all on TikTok with an app-specific average of $71,000.
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Let’s give a quick breakdown of the average salary for an influencer in Australia based on social media platform.
TikTok – $71,000
YouTube – $67,000
Snapchat – $65,000
Twitter – $65,000
Instagram – $61,000
Facebook – $59,000
WhatsApp – $59,000
Reddit – $58,000
That little confected hierarchy is a bit of a surprise, especially when we get into the middle of the list. While it was expected TikTok would outpace the rest, and that YouTube would certainly be up there, I don’t think many would have expected Snapchat and Twitter influencers to earn, on average, slightly more than Instagram influencers. Arguably it was the photo-sharing platform that really ramped up the influencer scene in the past few years, and Twitter seems to have become a cesspool of almost exclusively moral purity, outrage and debates about cancel culture.
While $53,000 isn’t much of a salary for any more conventional job, the figure is more impressive when you consider that not only are these social media influencers much younger in age but the lifestyle and perks are numerous. From the outside, it also seems like just focusing on social media content alone is much less of an effort than many other similarly paying jobs.
And while that’s fairly impressive for something that could be a nice, reasonably effortless side-hustle, it’s got nothing on some of the biggest TikTok stars in the world. Dancer Charlie Damelio, for example, is said to earn over $73,000 per post to her 46 million-plus followers.
The Vista survey also found that young Australian influencers face a few obstacles that should be lifted before the market can really grow in pace with similar scenes over in the USA and across Asia. These pain points include a lack of marketing, design and branding expertise, as well as a lack of awareness from brands who don’t quite understand how best to work with these content creators.
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As per the findings, Australian content creators earned an average of $52,744 over the past 12 months, with males managing to earn more than females by a substantial margin – $57,000 to $49,000. Averages are further split distinctly by generation. Millennials earned $58,000 on average, leading the pack ahead of Gen X at $56,000, Gen Z at $37,000 and Baby Boomers at $11,000.
Geography also seems to play a meaningful part. Australian influencers based out of capital cities earned those in other parts of Australia by an average of more than $11,000.
40% of the Australian influencers surveyed plan to turn their content creation side hustle into their main income source over the next five years.
And look, I completely understand a lot of the ill will towards a market that is still becoming asphyxiated by just how accessible it is. But as these figures show, the Australian influencer scene is growing reasonably fast and turning anyone with a magnetic personality into a brand with the ability to create jobs for others (like photographers and stylists) and get a slice of the marketing pie, both from brands who understand the potential of these platforms and the savvy kids who use them.
Will the average salary of an influencer in Australia push you to quit your day job and start pushing product? While that’s unlikely, at least you know it can be a fairly lucrative side-hustle if you’ve got the time, patience and the right niche.
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Written by
CHRIS SINGH
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