Why Sean Connery Cursed Out Michael Bay On The Set Of The Rock

Michael Bay's 1996 'splode-fest "The Rock," while silly and overwrought, feels downright tame when compared to some of the filmmaker's later action pictures (see: his "Transformers" movies). The film's premise alone is gloriously absurd: A rogue military general named Hummel (Ed Harris) has hijacked a handful of rockets containing containers of VX gas, a deadly poison. He takes them to the Alcatraz Island prison and points them at San Francisco, holding the entire city hostage. The ransom is $100 million, meant to go to the families of slighted veterans.

To get to Hummel and stop his wicked plot, the U.S. government recruits an elderly criminal named John Mason (Sean Connery), as he was the only person ever known to have broken out of Alcatraz, back when it was still being used as a prison. Mason is joined by a timid CIA chemical weapons expert named Stanley (Nicolas Cage) to join him on a covert raid. There are some fan theories that John Mason is actually, secretly, James Bond.

The bulk of the 136-minute film involves Mason, Stanley, and their team sneaking into Alcatraz without Hummel noticing and confronting his violent henchmen therein. "The Rock" might be an overproduced, noisy mess, but audiences adored it, resulting in the film grossing more than four times its $75 million budget at the box office.

In a 2011 GQ oral history of his filmmaking career, Bay recalled the time that Connery cursed him out during production on "The Rock." It seems that Bay had gotten one of Connery's co-workers to hold him underwater to protect him from a fiery on-set explosion. Connery, who was about 65 during the filming of "The Rock," didn't appreciate being half drowned and emerged from the water with many colorful words on his lips.

Overall, Michael Bay enjoyed working with a legendary actor like Sean Connery, and he even chuckled that he got to direct Connery to "act less charming" for one scene. Connery, however, was impatient, at least according to Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Bruckheimer recalled Connery complaining that a giant crane on set wasn't being used; the actor seemed angry that money was being wasted on a crane. And when Connery was really angry, colorful vocabulary words would fly, mostly in Bay's direction. 

Indeed, the water stunt elicited an outburst that Bay remembered:

"He kept calling me 'boy.' And one time he called me a 'c**k.' 'You c**ksucker!' It was his last day of the shoot, and he didn't like holding his breath underwater. I had United States SEALs holding him down because there was a fireball going over the water, and if he came up, he would burn his face off. So, whatever, he called me names."

It can't feel good to be on the receiving end of a Sean Connery tirade, but Bay seemingly got off light. There were reports on Connery's career-ending bomb "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" that the actor openly fought with director Steve Norrington, so much so that Norrington eventually begged Connery to punch him in the face (per Far Out Magazine).

Of course, Connery's no-nonsense aggression came in handy on the set of the 1957 movie "Another Time, Another Place," which starred Lana Turner. It seems Turner's real-life boyfriend, the gangster Joey Stompanato, came to the set with a gun, assuming Connery was trying to steal his gal. Connery punched him and took his gun. One can see why a 65-year-old Connery didn't tolerate being shoved around by a Navy SEAL.