Although he has called off his manhood contest with Transformers director Michael Bay, finally confessing to reporters that he was being ironic, Terminator Salvation director McG tells the Los Angeles Times, "I have a lot to prove." He believes that his difficulties with getting respect start with his name, which sounds perhaps a little too Mickey Mouse for a big time director. And the backhanded praise of an Esquire headline announcing "McG is not a douche bag" isn't helping much either.
Still struggling to fully overcome the setback of losing the director's chair for what eventually became Superman Returns due to his own intense fear of flying, McG says he is going all out to make sure things go right in Terminator Salvation. He has, according to one Warner Bros. executive, become "a world-class scholar of all things Terminator." But McG says he isn't content to leave it at that. He wants Terminator Salvation to be more than just a hardware film -- he's drawing on Philip K. Dick's work, George Miller's Mad Max movies, and Cormac McCarthy's The Road for additional post-apocalyptic inspiration.
Another big challenge he's coming to grips with is more personal. He has a real tendency to get a bit too carried away with things, and sometimes crosses the line. And it's not just the manhood contest. According to the Times profile, at a comic book convention in San Francisco the director
got so pumped up in front of an audience of 3,000 hooting fans that he climbed atop a table to praise the breasts of one of his actresses (as she sat there on the dais next to him, mortified) and to pledge to the crowd that Salvation would send their testicles flying out of their rear ends.
Perhaps not the best way of enhancing his reputation.
The real test though will come at the theaters on May 21st when his movie hits theaters and he faces his own personal judgment day.