I’m as ignorant to the details of working on a film set as you. But I do know that there are unavoidable screw ups like flubbing a line or missing your marks, and that there are avoidable screw ups, like repeatedly adjusting the lighting of a scene while it takes place.
When you fuck up big at a job you get chewed out. It’s the way most jobs are. Sometimes the litany comes from your boss and sometimes by affected coworkers. And something that should be clearly understood: Bale was the DPs superior. It’s Hollywood, he’s a Hollywood star and a respected film actor, when his is the biggest name on the credits he gets to say what goes and what doesn’t on the set. It’s sucks and is unfair and would never fly in a more formal setting but those are the breaks in movieland.
Maybe he said ‘Fuck’ one too many times. So what? If the DP didn’t want his head bitten off he should’ve listened the first time he was told not to do that.
If it’s my job to build a house of cards or stack dominos and someone keeps bumping me and screwing it up I’ll say “you do that one more time I’ll break your legs, rip your head off and kill your whole family.” :mad:
Bale seems to be taking his work too seriously. If he can’t recreate that one scene that was really good, then he sucks.
If you really need to sit there until you get the right performance out of something, become a wildlife photographer.
I also agree if a scene gets screwed up it’s nothing more than “take two.” Or “take 20” or “take 50.” What else are you being paid millions of dollars for as an actor? Your shit smells better?
What you’re missing is the obvious fact that the universe of possible ways to deal with someone doing something stupid repeatedly, is not “say nothing and be a doormat” or"lose your shit and throw a tantrum." You sound like the only choices are “A” or “Z,” not “A through Z.”
He does it once, you correct him, nicely. He does it twice, you take it to the director. He does it three times, you ask that he be off set when you do your scene. He does it a fourth time, you refuse to continue until your concerns are addressed, pointing out that at this point, having done it repeatedly, he’s either intentionally messing with you, or he’s a moron. Either way, at each step, you are professional and constructive. You don’t scream profanities, insulting him and threatening him, for four solid minutes. You may well be good and pissed off by that point, but the rest of us don’t get a pass to act like total abusive horses’ asses just because we’re pissed – why should he? Because he’s OMG An Actor? Because he’s Making A Movie?
You don’t have to be an ass to make your point and insist on it.
What if you’ve devoted your life to being the best card-house builder in the world? What if someone is paying you millions of dollars to make that house of cards? What if they will be very, very pissed off with you if it’s not pretty when you’re done?
“Take two” will not be the same as “take 50”. When actors play the same material over and over in rapid succession they lose focus. It’s like if you say the same word over and over until it starts to sound like nonsense. They fall into comfortable grooves, or they try too hard to recapture a good reading and go stiff, or they get frustrated, or they lose confidence. As you do more and more takes the odds that a particular one will be useful get lower and lower. So it’s not just “Oh well, what the hell, let’s do another ten takes.”
I’d say the DP’s screw up was worse, because his screw up was preventing other people from doing their job. Bale’s rant didn’t result in another take - there was already going to be another take, because the DP screwed up again. The DP also repeated his screw up several times. Bale only exploded once, that we know of. And, lastly, Bale at least was provoked into being unprofessional. The DP was being an ass on entirely independent terms.
I’ll also add that I’m not saying that Bale’s behavior is okay, only that it’s understandable. Blowing your stack once at a guy who won’t stop fucking up doesn’t make you a dick. It could just make you someone who’s had a really bad day and lost their temper. Everyone here has been in a position where they got way too mad out of proportion to the situation. Most of us don’t have a camera pointed at us when it happens, though.
Screwing up is not the same thing as being an ass. That’s a ridiculous use of the word.
If Bale’s time is so valuable, maybe he could have cut the rant short at 30 seconds.
In my professional life, I have dealt with screw-ups that make the DP’s look as insignificant as a gnat’s ass. I have never reacted with anything that approached Bale’s actions.
On top of that, the other actor in the scene didn’t seem to agree with all the people in this thread who are going out of their way to call the DP an “ass”, a “jerk”, “unprofessional”, etc. etc. He tried to get Bale to shut the fuck up, until the rant was pointed his way.
I’ve gotta side with Bale on this one. It isn’t just that the DP can’t seem to learn to sit down and shut up during the take. I’m quite sure Bale tried to get him to stay still without all the verbal abuse, but Mr. DP seems to be the worst kind of clueless; he’s the kind of clueless that thinks he’s got it under control.
If you listen to the recording, it’s fairly obvious that he doesn’t shut up and stay still while Bale’s trying to act. Then the take gets blown. Then the recording starts, and he still doesn’t know enough to take Bale’s advice and shut the fuck UP already!! Christian’s blowing up, and Bruce is trying to explain himself, and just by not shutting the fuck up, he’s pushing Bale to totally lose his shit. Halfway through the recording, I was yelling right alongside Chris NO!! NO!! SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!
Bruce simply doesn’t know how to shut the fuck up. I mean, come on. When someone is pissed off and yelling at you, because you fucked up and messed with their work, you keep quiet, you nod, you put on a conciliatory face, and you let him blow off steam until he runs out, which he will eventually do. Then you take responsibility and promise not to do it again. Then–stay with me now–you don’t do it again! Simple, right? Is there any non-Aspy case out there who doesn’t know how this works?
What you don’t do is try to explain yourself and interrupt Mr. Blood Pressure while he’s venting, and keep putting your foot in your mouth, and sound like a total dipshit, because the only thing that’s going to accomplish is make him madder and madder, until he takes those fucking lights that you spent so many tender loving hours setting and crams them up your small intestine. And who could blame him? It’s not like Bruce didn’t screw up and mess with Bale. Multiple-fucking-times. Bruce was wayyy in the wrong.
DP seriously needs to read “Shut the Fuck Up” by Dr. Denis Leary.
Despite being a big Christian Bale fan, i think he was a total fucking douchebag in this incident. I don’t give a fuck what the DP did, it doesn’t justify that interminable rant combined with threats of physical violence.
If Bale had yelled something like…
“Jesus Fucking Christ, the DP has just ruined another scene by walking on the set while we’re shooting. You guys really need to sort this fucking shit out. I’ll be in my trailer. Call me when you’ve got things working like professionals.”
…and them stormed off, i’d completely understand.
But i’m with jjimm and the other people who think that what makes him a complete dick is that he just couldn’t let it go. Sure, get mad, blow off a little steam. But the neverending rant, and the threats to kick his ass, are just juvenile and pathetic.
Actually, now that I listen to the recording again, it seems like it’s some guy named Shane doing the actual fucking-up. Bruce isn’t helping, though.
Come to think of it, if Shane or Bruce or whoever had pulled this during a Denis Leary scene, the entire recording would consist of ten seconds of Denis ranting followed by four and a half minutes of squishy klieg-lights-meet-Shane’s-rectum sounds, and all the while, you’d hear this guy whine “I get it, I get it, Denis,” because there are black holes out there less dense than Bruce and Shane.
I agree. It was pretty clear at one point that Bale was ready to walk away. Then the DP adds something, and instead of walking away, Bale is goaded into another round of profanities. When people lose their shit like that, “WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?!” is a rhetorical question. Especially when the person asking the question is the most important guy on the set. I mean, “I was looking at the lights.”!? What the fuck is wrong with that dude? Is he mentally deficient? Christian knows he was looking at the fucking lights, that’s why he’s angry.
Was Bale justified in losing his shit? I don’t know. We don’t know what happened right before that, what the DP was doing (though obviously this wasn’t the first time it happened), and how distracting the whole thing was. But we do know that the DP is a fucking idiot. Keep your mouth shut, hum the tune of Bewitched in your head, wonder if this is what the goddamned Batman would do in a similar position, then when Bale stalks off to his trailer, go to a sympathetic ear and be like “What the fuck is that douchebag’s problem?”
Dude, he’s completely flipped out. I’ll tell you what, if someone’s completely flipped out and screaming at me because I screwed up, I wouldn’t say shit even if he did ask me for a fucking answer. I mean, if I’d screwed up. If I hadn’t actually done anything, and he was yelling at me just for the hell of it, I’d take great pleasure in seeing how far I could goad him. “Hey,” I’d think to myself, “maybe heads really can literally explode.” But I digress.
I’d say we got everything we needed to know in the recording. Shane/Bruce fucked up. This was not the first time Shane/Bruce fucked up during an intricate take. Shane/Bruce does not seem particularly broken up with remorse about the event and moreover, shows no particular desire to take responsibility. In that situation, I wouldn’t walk away, particularly if I knew I was in the right and had at least some sort of authority on the set. Why should I walk away? I didn’t screw up. Shane/Bruce is the guy who needs to take a fucking hike.
Right. Someone who could essentially have you fired is screaming “Give me a fucking answer” to your face, and you’re just going to stare at him like a mounted bass.
And the DP is the idiot for not doing so.
Right.
ETA: Why do you keep saying Shane/Bruce ? They had completely different roles in this situation. Your description of the DPs involvement bears no resemblance to reality. He did show a lot of remorse & take responsibility.
I think, in most contexts, I’d consider Bale to be acting like an asshole. However, a big part of acting is working yourself into an emotional state. Acting well isn’t easy and having someone distract you, particularly multiple times, in the middle of an emotionally charged scene would be aggravating in the extreme. I can see the intensity of the scene affecting his behavior. The guy didn’t help by continuing to explain himself.
Could Bale have handled it better? Yes, definitely. I’m sure in hindsight, listening to himself, he probably feels the same way. But it was a difficult situation and it’s conceivable he could lose his temper. He used profanity (oh no!) but other than saying “fuck” a lot, it was mostly pretty G-rated stuff. Bale could have mocked his intelligence or made personal insults, but he didn’t. He was focused on the job.
In an office, absolutely Bale would have been unprofessional, but in context, I can sympathize with both of them.
If Christian Bale could have this “I make a mounted bass look like Richard-fucking-Feynman” light-tard fired, DP would have been on the unemployment line before Christian even got to the **“NO!! NO!!” **part of his rant.
On edit: Just saw the last part of your post. No, Shane/Bruce had the exact same role in this context, and that role entailed pissing Christian off.
My point exactly. Trying to calm him down. And succeeding in pissing him off even more, because he couldn’t figure out that he was just making things worse. The third or fourth time Bruce heard “Shut the fuck up,” he should have gotten a clue as to what Chris wanted him to do. Or Shane. I don’t give a fuck, I hate them both.
