By Mathieu Poulin and translated by Aleshia Jensen. From Explosions. Published by QC Fiction in 2019.

In February 1993, following the release of the album Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell, Virgin Records contacted Michael Bay, at the request of Meat Loaf himself, to ask if he would meet with the musician in private to discuss a possible collaboration. Michael was enthusiastic about the idea, having played the role of Eddie in a theatrical homage to The Rocky Horror Picture Show and supervised its mise en scène in his freshman year at Wesleyan University. He accepted at once, if only out of curiosity. A meeting was set for cocktail hour in a trendy university bookstore-cafe where both men were regular customers. The cuisine was refined but not pretentious, and the decor understated and tasteful—particularly on the back patio, where thin slivers of light filtered through an elegant vine-covered trellis—and that same evening, the bookstore was set to host a round table discussion on destiny and metaphysics featuring Paul Auster, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Michael arrived early, hoping to leaf through the newly published translation of Lyotard’s Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime. He found a table and ordered a pastis, a carafe of water, and some marinated olives. He observed his surroundings listlessly and began to think—something he always found to provide a satisfying degree of suffering.

Michael was contemplating the possibility of dedicating his spare time to the structural analysis of Dasein when he heard, from far away at first, then growing more and more insistent, the virile growl of a Harley Davidson, its vibrations causing the surroundings to resonate as if by symbiosis, dragging the other customers out of their reverent concentration one by one. Fear and anticipation loomed in the air, interlacing like a couple of teenagers embracing for the first time to the sound of rock ’n’ roll. As the noise reached an almost unbearable crescendo—the vibrations underfoot suggesting unusual seismic activity along the San Andreas Fault—the restaurant’s side wall smashed open, revealing amid the rubble and severed and swaying electrical wires the glorious silhouette of Meat Loaf on his motorcycle, riding through a cloud of smoke and carbon monoxide toward Michael’s table as the customers looked on in admiration.

After cocktails, roused by the rich vapours escaping the kitchen, the two men ordered something to eat. Michael went with the rosemary-and orange-crusted rack of lamb served with an exquisite ratatouille and baby pickled onions sprinkled with coarse sea salt, while Meat Loaf opted for the Mediterranean slow-braised osso buco with oven-roasted potatoes and ouzo-glazed carrots. As they quaffed a 1989 Beringer Third Century Syrah, they got past the pleasantries and down to business. Meat Loaf had always admired Michael’s work and was eager for him to direct a music video for the first track off his new album, a Wagnerian rock anthem entitled “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That).” Bay knew the material well and welcomed the request. Firstly, the piece, which was eleven minutes and fifty-eight seconds long, would allow him to direct his longest work to date (the video would, however, in the end be based on the shorter version of the song, lasting seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds). Secondly, the theme of the work and its overall feel would enable him to pay cinematic homage to two works that marked his formative years, The Phantom of the Opera and Beauty and the Beast. Lastly, he would have the chance to ask the rock star about the meaning of the mysterious “that” punctuating his refrains, since a syntactic analysis, despite pointing to a few tentative conclusions, shed no definitive light on the word’s ambiguity.

“So I’ve been wondering,” said Michael, “what you’re referring to when you say ‘but I won’t do that’…? Are you simply leaving it up to individual interpretation, or are you looking to cultivate a certain confusion with the same baroque logic that seems to define the piece?”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t expecting a question like that from you,” Meat Loaf shot back with a mischievous smile. “The idea is definitely to create a certain level of confusion—nothing rubs me the wrong way like accessible art—but the real meaning of ‘that’ is far from abstract.”

Michael looked at him, his mind a blank canvas.

“I usually avoid talking about it so directly when people ask me that question,” continued Meat Loaf, ‘‘but I get the feeling your ability to grasp concepts far supersedes that of the average person. So here it is: the song is inspired by my relationship with Nell Campbell. We met on the set of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and clicked almost right away. We dated for a few months and shared everything; we’d often stay up till dawn discussing the meaning of love. For the first time, I felt complete. But then I started noticing subtle changes in her behaviour. As if she were becoming more and more distant, or rather, as if she were holding something back that she wasn’t ready to admit, to me at least. I asked her about it gently, letting her know that I realized something was different but that I wouldn’t judge her, no matter what was on her mind. She finally told me, ‘I no longer believe in the idea of systems. I think we should embrace the philosophical trend of anti-systems that’s been around for the past half-century. Follow me on this path, Meat Loaf.’ It was as if a stranger were standing in front of me. I would never abandon systems thinking. Embracing the opposite would be more than a sacrifice; it would make absolutely no sense. So we went our separate ways. Even for love, I’d never do that.”

Enlightened, Michael asked, “So if the lyrics are that personal, why are they attributed to Jim Steinman?”

“Jim Steinman doesn’t exist. I wanted to imbue the piece with an element of mystery, to move it away from the concrete so that it could come into its own in the absolute of art. Using my own name would have directly implicated Nell, which is in fact the truth but lacking any sort of magic. The pseudonym allowed me to be more detached, transforming my overall banal individual experience into something epic.”

They shared a brief silence.

“I believe I can do your work justice,” said Michael.

“And I, yours.”

After that encounter, and following numerous other conversations with Meat Loaf, Michael was able to lay the groundwork for what would become his art. Thus began a fruitful collaboration between the two men; the music videos “Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are” and “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” would soon lead to Michael filming his first big explosions and developing a framework that he could use in the future.

But for the moment, Michael Bay and Meat Loaf finished their meal, attended the round table event and, being avid readers of Husserl, refuted Gadamer’s arguments during the Q&A period.