Let's hope that "Terminator" DP doesn't end up taking a trip to the video store anytime soon!
After all of this "Christian Bale" freakout stuff broke this week, I remembered the one time I got to speak with him. He was in town shooting "The Dark Knight" and we had a harmless interview about "3:10 to Yuma." He was a great sport when I made that reference to "American Psycho," but there was one strange exchange when I first walked in the room.
At that time I was reading the last Harry Potter novel. Because you often end up spending some time waiting at these junkets, I had the book with me. When I entered the room to talk with Mr. Bale, he looked down at what I was holding.
"Harry Potter," he said slyly, no doubt taking a playful little jab at me.
I joked about how I thought about replacing the book's jacket cover with something more "manly," like a Stephen King book or something. Looking for some sort of smile back, Christian instead gave me a blank stare.
"There's nothing wrong with Harry Potter," he replied as serious as ever.
From there we moved on. I wasn't surprised to hear the tapes that surfaced this week - not because I think Christian Bale is a jerk, but because he's extremely serious about what he does. And when Mr. Bale thought there was nothing wrong with Harry Potter, there was nothing wrong with Harry Potter.
Looking back at his career thus far, why shouldn't he be serious? The man has made great choices and even better films ("American Psycho," "Batman Begins"/"The Dark Knight," "3:10 to Yuma," "Rescue Dawn," "The Prestige," "The Machinist").
I'm bet if Mr. Bale listened back to those tapes, which feature minutes of him screaming at a crew member in his line of sight, he would wish he had handled it a little better. I would hope otherwise. Sometimes life's brightest moments comes out of its worst. Just think of all the comedy we've seen since!
Do you remember the Bill O'Reilly "Inside Edition" freakout? What if Christian Bale would have been the man behind the camera? (WARNING!!! HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE, ABSOLUTELY NOT SAFE FOR WORK LANGUAGE!!!!!)
And who can forget Lily Tomlin's famous freakout? (WARNING!!! HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE, ABSOLUTELY NOT SAFE FOR WORK LANGUAGE!!!!!)
And soon....you might be hearing Christian's rant in a dance club near you! (WARNING!!! HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE, ABSOLUTELY NOT SAFE FOR WORK LANGUAGE!!!!!)
Wow, I've had enough "Die Hard" language to last me a year. Let's hope Christian Bale has a sense of humor about this, or we can hope he doesn't spend ANY time on the internet.
Sorry to cut this short, but I have to go return some videotapes. Plus, I'll be renting "Newsies" to get this nasty image out of my head.
