(Note: This was among the funnest 10 minutes I ever spent on the phone. Nothing but love for Tyrese Gibson, who’s recently been going around saying Hollywood is a nest of pedophiles and Satanists. I didn’t see the movie.)

For the record, Tyrese Gibson is a human being, not just “a multi-entry point for consumer awareness” as his bio states. Right?

“Yeah, yeah, absolutely,” the actor says, laughing, on the phone from Toronto.

So he’s a man. Not an industry, correct?

“Listen,” he asserts, “I just think that’s some technical, sexy mojo that the team came up with. I didn’t say that about myself, for sure.”

Okay, but since we’re talking to Gibson about Transformers: Dark of the Moon—the third entry in a movie franchise that could easily invite all kinds of zingers about the ultimate marriage of film, marketing, and multi-entry points for consumer awareness—it’s something that needs to be clarified. And the truth is, Gibson actually is an industry, with modelling, music, and comic-book revenue streams to add to his blockbuster film career. And then there’s his self-help book, How to Get Out of Your Own Way, which we mention because he insists on it. “It’s a New York Times bestseller now, bro,” he thunders down the phone.

Doesn’t he ever get tired?

“You have no idea how much more stuff is going on,” he booms. “I’m trying to pace myself, ’cause I don’t wanna overwhelm the world, know what I’m saying? I’m full throttle, baby. I mean, they shoulda never let me in the door, ’cause I’m not going back to South Central L.A. It’s not going to happen.” No, it probably isn’t. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was the second-highest-grossing film of 2009, behind Avatar. It was slaughtered by the critics, with the exception of the reliably bizarro Armond White, 2010 New York Film Critics Circle chairman, who deemed director Michael Bay a “visionary”. Not that Gibson cares one way or another. He became friends with Bay when they shared a private jet to the grand opening of the Palms Casino Hotel in Vegas—“He’s really accomplished a lot. I’m really proud of him, bro,” Gibson says—and, in any event, film number two “paid for number three”, as Gibson points out.

“We’re back,” he says, “and we considered all the feelings and thoughts, and we read the reviews, we listened to the public outcry, and we also listened to all the energy. Where was our strength? Where was our weaknesses? You do your research, you get back in there, and you go at it again. You don’t walk away and go sit on the pity potty. What are we doin’, baby? Let’s get it on!” As you might have guessed from the title, the new film takes the battle into space, with the Autobots and the Decepticons both racing to retrieve a Cybertron ark that crash-landed on the moon in the ’60s (thus explaining NASA’s real agenda, natch). An early review on Ain’t It Cool News was a head-turning rave. Gibson has his own subtle take on the improvements in the new film. “I think one of the biggest hooks, other than 3-D,” he states, “is just the scope. I think it’s much more focused. The scope of the movie is on a grander scale: it’s big, big, big, big, big, big filmmaking, man.”

Georgia Straight, November 2011