Listen, there’s no need to be a snot. I’ve worked in medicine for 15 years. I’ve dealt with physicians from Canada and the US. Most of them are perfectly fine, some are lovely, some are psychotic douchbags.
You can cite employment law all you want. In the next breath I assume you’ll cite that no one ever, has had to avail themselves of that law, because no one ever acts like a douchebag at work.
No, we waited until the elevator doors closed. In our position, chewing him out right there wasn’t an option, as it was for Bale.
The point is that when an adult has willfully resisted adult means of understanding their job, and removing isn’t an option, shock treatment is what remains.
But don’t they generally have a few cheaper ones rolling just in case? Boring ass “behind the scenes video stuff” for checking?
Probably not, I’m asking.
Right back atcha. Just because your experience is different from mine doesn’t mean you are right and I am wrong. I’ve worked with doctors for 15 years myself, in an aspect of their practice where doling out rashers of shit is firmly frowned upon: risk management. And I’m telling you that if we had a doctor working for our organization that demonstrated the type of behavior you’re describing, we would fire their ass. And as a provider of medical services, my company has a lot of doctors working for it. There are douchebags in every profession – Christian Bale, anyone? – but that doesn’t mean their behavior is tolerable or tolerated. My view in this regard is not “rosey,” it is accurate, and based on dealing with medical providers, and the crap some of them pull, every day. I’m not saying some aren’t first-class assholes; I’m saying that the attitude that such behavior is okay, and the assertion that such behavior is generally tolerated or ignored – those things are IME simply not correct.
You work with doctors, so you tell me: Would you tolerate having one scream at you the way Christian Bale screamed at this guy? Would you give a pass to someone who threw a scalpel at your head? Because if you say “yes,” for any reason other than “I would have to; they outrank me,” then I’m not sure what-all you would put up with. And if you say “yes” because the doctor outranked you and there would be negative consequences if you objected or complained – that simply highlights how completely inappropriate it is for a person in a position of power to abuse a person who is without the power to meaningfully object.
I’ve never blown up at anyone like that either, and I hope never to be on the receiving end of such a rant. But I do have sympathy for Bale, because there’s no good reason why this recording should ever have been made public. Bale wasn’t endangering anyone by yelling and saying “fuck” a lot, and he didn’t actually kick the other guy’s ass. It also appears that this was not Bale’s usual way of behaving on set. So why did the world need to know about it? And why now? Someone held onto this recording quietly for over six months and Bale probably thought the whole thing was behind him. For all we know he and the Director of Photography have long since made up.
It was still bad behavior on Bale’s part, but plenty of people have done much worse and not had it put up on YouTube for all the world to hear. I guess that’s the price of fame, but it’s no wonder celebrities can be high strung.
[Hijack]Are movies still shot on film? I thought they were mostly digital/silicon these days.[/Hijack]
And while hijacking anyway
[Hijack2]I haven’t seen TERMINATOR 3 or The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Is there any continuity between them? I’m assuming T4 is going to have a continuity with the movies at least. And any word on how they’re going to make one without Ahnold?[/Hijack3]
Oh jeez, Christian Bale has been working professionally for at least 22 years. Except for these two incidents, which happened in close proximity at a time when his marriage was falling apart and not that long after he’d just shockingly lost a close friend, Bale has never, to my knowledge, been known as a prima donna, difficult to work with, or a douchebag. Condemn this particular emotional tirade, but let’s not go overboard and paint the man’s entire career and private life as being a douchebag. That’s being as over-the-top as Bale was.
Then again, if you were McG and had the command of a great dark actor mind and a pliant-collabarator-insider DP, wouldn’t you have a motive to stage this as prepress?
The Hype is where it’s at. This is Cloverfield Terminator. Pretty auspicious placement.
I never underestimate the cynicism of Guerilla Marketing.
TSCC takes place after T2. Ignore T3. TSCC changes the future about once a week, so who knows what the future in T4 will be like, but it’s more likely to be linked to TSCC than T3.
I assume you’re ignoring the irony of this statement, right?
I know this woman very well. I was among the many, 12 years ago, who were stunned when she recieved the position she did. There was outrage. There was shock. However, she pulls in millions and millions of research dollars because she’s really frikin’ smart. While a good surgeon is replaceable, a good surgeon with million dollar grants is harder.
Would I have put up with having a scalpel thrown at me? Hell no. The students and nurses didn’t either. She was written up by her Department Head all the time (she still has one of those). But it doesn’t matter. As long as she continues to bring in mega bucks, she’ll recieve a slap on the wrist.
As to having someone scream at me and putting up with it. Well, that happens with surprising regularity (it’s part of the field I work in). I walk away and don’t take it personally. If it’s really bad, or I can’t walk away I have told people to calm down. It’s not fun; however, having a really thick skin has helped me be successful. I also don’t repeatedly do shit to piss off the folks at work as the DP in the linked story appears to have done.
I mean, if you were the DP to piss off Batman. Aren’t you the Joker?
T4 follows right where T3 left off. The Sarah Connor Chronicles takes place in an alternate universe. Nothing that happens on TSCC will have any effect on T4.
This isn’t any other job. Different jobs have different standards of behavior.
Not sure why this is relevant. Bale is paid to give the best performance he possibly can regardless of the project. Apparently he takes this seriously. Maybe you think he shouldn’t invest himself so emotionally in this scene since it’s just a ACTION flick, bit Bale is paid lots of money to take this job seriously. It actually seems to me that this blowup happened because Bale was acting far more professionally than the DP.
We also are getting reports on the reputation of this particular DP. Now maybe those are all wrong, but it sure seems like this DP has a pattern for this sort of unprofessional behavior. I don’t think it’s a great leap to assume that just maybe this has been a continuing problem on the particular shoot.
Maybe if it turns out that Bale has a consistent pattern of this sort of behavior, I’ll change my mind. But as of now, I’m far more on his side than the DP’s.
For whatever little it’s worth, I was doing a scene once where I had to work myself up into a violent rage, and just at the peak I was interrupted by someone who had no business interrupting–not the director or one of the other actors in the scene, in other words–and I nearly attacked him. The rage I’d finally manage to create did not get a chance to spend itself in the scene; it was still on full-bore-spew, and this person just stepped into its stream.
I reined myself and apologized pretty quickly. Nonetheless, I too would need to see the overall context of Bale’s episode before I judged him too harshly.
Well, I don’t think it helps his reputation, does it? I don’t think his career will be affected by this either. People would have to boycott his stuff at alarming rates to make this occur, and it doesn’t sound like anyone has changed their mind about seeing the film (or not seeing it).
The point is, people who just thought Bale was a “nice guy” or “talented actor” now have a several minute-long tirade to throw in the mix. Maybe he’s not interested in commercial endorsements, or hosting shows, etc. but those aspects of his career got more complicated.
I’m sure this is the kind of thing that can blow over with some humorous interviews on Letterman, or maybe even a significant apology on someone’s talk show. But there’s this situation, and the one with him going off on his mom and sister. Personally, I think a lot of us don’t handle stress well and both incidents apparently happened at a time when he was dealing with a lot… I’d give him a pass. But I can understand why people would not.
His PR image is going to take a hit… it might not affect his marketability for films, but he’s going to repair the image of being a loose cannon. His mom and sister called the cops on him for verbal assault, for goodness sake. If anyone’s going to give you a pass, I’d think it’s your family.
According to his wiki article. McG is supposed to do the next Terminator also. Don’t know if it set in stone:
[HIJACK]Will Smith as Captain Nemo? Blah! Has McG ever even heard of Captain Nemo before… is he aware that this isn’t a live action movie about Albert Brooks’ character from FINDING NEMO? Smith’s way too young, too American, and too… too Will Smith for the role. (Race has nothing to do with it: I think Djimon Honsou would be great, or Laurence Fishburne or Don Cheadle, but Smith- while a good actor in the right part, just couldn’t be more wrong- it’d be like casting Jerry Seinfeld and Julia Louis Dreyfus in THE LION IN WINTER [“What is this thing all about? I mean, we’re the King and Queen of England, but we’re in where? France! How awful is a country when the king and queen won’t live there… well you will but it’s because you’re in prison… for trying to take away my part of France, cause you’d rather go to jail than live in England! Which is really ironic…”).
Personally I’d go with an Indian or Middle Eastern actor or at least Mediterranean (pity Giancarlo Giannini is just a tad old for it). If he goes with Smith then THIS deserves a 4.5 minute 36 F-Bomb ass chewing, and perhaps the removal of his children by a government agency.[/HIJACK]
I knew that would get a reaction. I thought the first comment would be about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I know Blade Runner wasn’t a faithful adaptation but do we need a remake by McG?
Which is exactly the point. If some slacker production assistant wanders aimlessly onto the set while taking the script doctor his coffee, that’s one thing. But — and this is the important part — just think about what it is that the photography director is supposed to do.
He’s supposed to make sure that each scene is perfectly lit and perfectly composed for filming. If he’s shooting a Western, and a jet streaks into the shot, he’s supposed to spot it. If he’s shooting the second part of a scene, and notices that the shadows are on the opposite side of the first part, he’s supposed to spot it. He’s responsible for everything that appears within the four corners of his camera’s view.
I think what got Bale’s gall was that it was this man, of all people, who fucked up the very thing that he is entrusted to preserve. And not just once. It would be like the tournament director walking up to a game and saying, “It looks to me like Nf3 check wins,” which is exactly the sort of behavior the TD is supposed to suppress.
I guess I agree with all that.
…except that I don’t think he’s been close to his mother and sister since he was an adolescent. If I remember correctly, his parents divorced when he was young and he grew up with his father in America.
[useless speculation and gossip]
I have no cite but I heard his mother and sister were sponges, constantly asking for money. What led to that blowup was (allegedly) his sister asking for $100,000, or something like that. I remember reading speculation that he refused to give it to her and a shouting match escalated when he tried to get by his mother, having to shove her out of the way. She also supposedly insulted Bale’s adored wife*. More speculation threw out the idea that they called the cops to publicly humiliate Bale, since this all happened right when The Dark Knight opened. Who the hell calls the cops for ‘verbal assault’ and one “outta my way” shove? Who knows, but it was all very fishy and I’m sure Bale was goaded.
*It’s been said many places that Bale worshiped his wife, adored his daughter, LOVED being a family man, and was utterly devastated when his wife left him, which would have made an insult about her by his estranged mother even more of an emotional blow.
By the way, since I posted last night I’ve read elsewhere that Bale has shouted at other people at other times, so I take it back that he’s never been seen as a prima donna or difficult to work with. But if it’s true, he’s not, until now, been seen that way by the general public, since it’s been kept very quiet and out of the public eye, and it certainly hasn’t stopped industry people from wanting to work with him.
[/useless speculation and gossip]
Hmmm, well, maybe everything’s ok with them. There’s a lot we don’t know regarding what happened.
I shouldn’t have sounded so dismissive about McG in my earlier post, because that’s not how I feel. I know McG is somewhat (to very) scorned because he still uses his childhood nickname, and his early projects, but I started to view him as a serious filmmaker when I saw We Are Marshall, which while wasn’t brilliant or anything, was very good, well-directed, quite affecting and, I think, very respectful toward the tragedy. I can see his doing music videos to break into the business, then using Charlie’s Angels to make money and springboard into a position with clout, then using that clout to make projects he wants to make. I’ll see his movies and I wish him well in his career. I hope he and Bale are on good terms.