It turns out that Michael Bay runs an audition a lot like he makes movies. Last year, Ramon Rodriguez visited Bay's Santa Monica offices seeking a key role in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and, instead of a sedate line reading, the young actor was basically told to run for his life.
"For 90 minutes, he had me jumping, running, diving over the furniture in his office -- that was the audition," said Rodriguez, who was adept enough to land the role of Shia LaBeouf's sidekick in what is quickly becoming the biggest movie of the year. "I was drenched in sweat. He told me, 'OK, hide behind the desk!' 'Now, run over here!' And man, I was looking in his eyes, and he was enjoying it. He's got a passion for action. It shows in the movies too."
It's dizzying to watch "Revenge of the Fallen's" success from a distance (more than $360 million in worldwide box office so far), but it's been an especially wild ride for newcomer Rodriguez, whose career is surging this summer with the "Transformers" role as well as his work in Tony Scott's "The Taking of Pelham 123," which put him side-by-side with Denzel Washington and John Travolta.
"I'm coming out of nowhere this summer," Rodriguez, 29, said on a recent bright afternoon on a basketball court in Studio City. "At least that's how it seems to people. It feels that way to me sometimes too. And it's been a major education."
For Rodriguez, this summer is the equivalent of a half-court shot that hits nothing but net. The actor, who grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side but also spent much of his youth in his family's native Puerto Rico, was a college and prep-school basketball star who didn't have the height needed to achieve his NBA dream.
After picking up a sports management degree at New York University, he was working for the New York Knicks in their community relations department -- and hating it. "You would think I would love it but working for a team that's losing is just no fun," he said. "It was so gray, so dark, there were layoffs and turmoil . . ."
A friend coaxed him to enter a Nike basketball trick competition and, with the lure of a free pair of sneakers, Rodriguez agreed. He ended up winning by spinning a ball, putting it on the tip of a pen and then gripping the pen with his teeth without interrupting the revolving ball.
It was a heck of a trick: It led to the aspiring ballplayer joining the Nike freestyle team and touring Asia and Europe as a sort of latter-day Harlem Globetrotter. At NBA games, Rodriguez performed in front of the sports stars he had hoped would be his peers.
