Sorry if this has been posted already - did a search and didn’t see that anyone had mentioned it.
Apparently Christian Bale lost his temper on the set of Terminator 4 and went off on a staff member.
Linky with audio. Definately NSFW.
Talk about someone who thinks too highly of himself…
Well, this certainly sheds some light on that incident last year where he was arrested for yelling at his mom or whatever.
The Batman doth protest too much, methinks.
That’s a mighty temper.
It would be a lot funnier if he was doing his gravelly Batman voice.
Christian Bale seems like a Grade A dick cheese…
I think he overreacted, but I hardly think his concerns were those of a prima donna.
I mean we don’t really know that. The guy walked into the shot, yes, but could it have been that bad to deserve that reaction?
Christ, what an unprofessional tantrum. There are actors who manage to turn in excellent performances without acting like that.
I don’t know enough about the industry to say whether or not the critique is uncalled for.
That’s the word on the street anyhow, but his reaction here, I get. I’ve been on enough sets to know not to mess with an actor during an emotional scene. It NEVER ends well, no matter how nice the actor normally is.
Yeah, I can understand this one. If an actor has been working himself into a particular emotional state for a scene and someone stupidly steps in and ruins the scene, and now the actor has to go back to square one, well, the actor has a right to be pissed.
You can tell he’s catching himself and trying to moderate his tantrum a bit by saying that the recipient is “a nice guy” a couple of times.
I sort of get it, actually. It sounds like it wasn’t the first time that idiot DP had wandered into a scene while they were shooting. That’s really aggravating for an actor trying to do an intense scene, and it really is amateurish. I think it’s comparable to when when somebody fucks with pro golfers during their backswings. It’s extremely annoying and disruptive, and even Tiger Woods is known to blow a gasket when that happens. It’s an aggravating thing for an actor to have crew members ambling cluelessly into the shots, especially when they keep doing it. A DP working at that level of the business should know when the hell he’s in a shot, or when he’s disrupting a scene.
The article quotes the dirctor as saying this was a momentary thing for Bale, though, that he doesn’t go around the set all time like that. Anyone who’s ever been prevented from being able to do their own job correctly because of the incompetence of a coworker understands what a test that is.
I don’t think it’s just some guy on the set that Bale is yelling at. Isn’t it the Director of Photography?
If he does it repeatedly, as the audio seems to suggest, then a blow up is understandable.
Really? I’m not an actor, and I understand how a distraction can cause trouble for an actor…but, is it really an excuse to act like a dick? I can think of very few things that excuse this kind of behavior, and none of them involve an activity that exists purely for entertainment’s sake.
When it gets to you it’s “purely for entertainment’s sake”. For them it’s a job, a business project with a lot of money tied up in it, and a high stress environment. Could he have been nicer? Absolutely. On the other hand I can understand how someone who is a bit high strung who has someone else screw up their rather intense work repeatedly would snap like that.
It’s still unprofessional and risky. Personally, If I had been that DP and someone started to cuss me out like that I would have floored him. You want to kick my ass? Dude you’re only batman cause some CGI guys in a PC room made you look cool when you kicked and punched the air. I’ll show you what an ass kicking looks like.
I hate people who think they can belittle and curse out people who aren’t as high as them on the employee totem pole.
It hasn’t happened to me, but I have seen it happen to others. And if it ever did happen to me, I’d make sure who ever dished it out won’t ever make that same mistake again.
If the guy is truly incompetent. Fire him. Simple as that.
Bale’s reaction makes sense to me. This is a big budget motion picture. You’ve got dozens of highly paid professionals working their asses off to get a good take, and then some dip blows it by making a stupid beginners’ mistake. Which he apparently has made multiple times before.
Then he simply should have stopped, talked to whomever he had to talk to and get the guy canned. Maybe he should of also spoken to the guy and his superior before (when this first happened) in a rational, professional and respectful way.
Fucking up, specially when done repeatedly is a reason to fire someone, not to cross professional boundaries and explode into a tirade of insults.
Everyone fucks up. Doctors, engineers, programmers, fucking saints, fuck up form time to time. Repeated fuckups should get you canned. It doesn’t give anyone else the right to belittle you in such a way.
Like I said, would that have been me, instead of losing the time to film that scene it would have been a few days of a hospital stay for Mr. Bale which would have been a lot more costly to the production.