I’m not trying to be rude, but it’s fairly obvious that you are confused about what actually transpired during the tirade. Shane fucked up. Bruce interrupted one time (early on) to try and calm Bale down, not three or four. There is a fourth person involved, the assistant director. He is brought into the conversation by Bale & does his absolute best to say very little and let Bale finish. The DP (Shane) started by apologizing, then clammed up until Bale started screaming “give me a fucking answer”.
The very fact that the DP didn’t tell the screaming lunatic to go fuck himself speaks volumes about where the power was in this exchange. When someone in a position of power very specifically asks you for an answer, you provide one.
I’ll just note that in the article linked to in the other thread on this, it said that the recording was from last June and took place a few days before he had the big shout out with his mom. So this really isn’t the “second” incidence of him going ballistic. More likely something was going on in his private life that week that made him a bit ornery.
I dunno, if Christian Bale is right, I don’t see it as that big of a deal. Actors are paid to bring up their emotions in a scene, that’s their craft. The lighting guy should not be walking around on the set while there’s a take.
So what, he lost his temper. This isn’t like Russell Crowe shit.
You clearly don’t understand how this works. You think that it’s better to put production on hold while they have someone fly out from LA to Albuquerque so they can start shooting again? At a cost of maybe like $ 100,000 dollars in lost time that they have to pay people for who are now sitting around doing nothing waiting for a DP to be replaced.
Sure he acted like a dick, but your posts show an incredible ignorance of how a film is put together.
Maybe too much from Bale, but I have to side with him after being in similar situations.
On more than one project, my co-workers and I have had days or weeks of work flushed down the drain because someone made an idiotic mistake*. Again. And again. We can’t fire the person because he works for a different company, and going to his boss gets a reaction of “Yeah, he’s an idiot. No, I won’t fire him. You have to work with him, so deal with it.” So after the third time he fucks up our work in exactly the same way he gets verbally ripped a new asshole in front of everyone, which usually lasts a lot longer and gets a lot more personal than Bale’s little speech.
The point of us humiliating someone like that is that by the time you’re 40, you should have already encountered and understood all the calm, rational, productive reasons for doing your job the right way. If it hasn’t sunk in by that time, and we can’t fire your useless ass, the only left is to shock the stupid out of you. If that still doesn’t get you to shape up, at least we can hope to leave enough emotional scarring that you sit down, shut up and stay out of the way.
*Example 1: 15 people working for three weeks to put together an ad that finally gets shown to the client’s top guy and approved. Right in front of the client, idiot says “wow, I’m surprised you said yes.”, causing the client to reconsider and sending everyone back to square one. Example 2: before filming a TV ad (involving dozens of workers and several hundred thousand dollars), the same idiot had just one job: check with the models’ agency that none of them have done ads for competing products. 90% through the shooting, we learn that one model had just had a lead role in an ad for the client’s #1 competitor forcing re-shoots or heavy edits of nearly every scene. The man is on a roll to waste more man-hours than he has been alive.
Come on. It’s what he spends his professional life doing, just as a cardiac surgeon spends his life doing open heart surgery. It’s the most important thing in the world to him at the moment.
I think it’s pretty low to mike him for the entire outburst and then release it to the Internet.
Thus it would make sense if the producer or director was going ballistic, but I seriously doubt it costs Christian Bale tens of thousands of dollars whether it takes one take or fifteen. This is clearly not about the money it takes.
I’m irked at the people in this thread and the many other boards who seem to think that those who believe Bale’s a dick deny that he had a right to be pissed- no question, I can totally understand why he’s pissed. (Again, a real actor is going to be able to get it again- if Beatrice Lilly can give three comedy performances within 24 hours of learning her only child had been mortally wounded by the Nazis or Henry Fonda can deliver an Oscar winning performance while on oxygen between takes or Jerry Lewis can complete a scene in spite of chest pains from a massive heart attack that happened as soon as he yelled cut [Cinderfella] then I’m pretty sure Bale can get his groove back.)
It’s the degree and amount of his being pissed off that makes him a dick- 30 seconds of turning the air blue, even threatening to have the guy fired- all that’s fine and excusable, but the “I’m gonna fucking kick your fucking ass” threats and the fact that he’s still going 4 minutes later just makes him seem like a coked up nutball. Dude, you’ve got a wife and a kid and you’re a multimillionaire, life should be pretty good- chill.
I thought it was hilarious. Now, I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that, but I think I’d be laughing my ass off a few days later. I think the context matters, 100 percent. I’ve had guys cuss me out like crazy playing sports, but it’s a context where emotions are high and you let some stuff go.
To Bale’s credit he does seem to back off a bit… it’s probably registering in his head that there’s a tape rolling of this somewhere.
Amazing how his voice changes accent during the tirade. And seeing how the project is well underway, isn’t it likely that the director of photography will stay on the project unless he’s truly bad at his job, rather than get shitcanned because a primadonna actor goes off on him?
Judging from the folks that I know work in theater and in Hollywood, I think stuff like this happens all the time. We just got to hear it. Chances are, I expect, they’ll patch up and at least manage to finish the project… Maybe it’s a guy thing, but I didn’t hear anything in there that I thought was anything more than male bluster. “Fuck you, be a professional, I’ll kick your ass” is pretty much run of the mill shit-talking from agitated guys. Now if he started talking about his wife, or said his mom was a slut I’d say Bale went way too far and photo guy was justified in whupping his ass.
I figure the photo guy will get a lot of sympathy for this, and Bale will pay a price for it, even if it’s just having his rep sullied. Which is one good reason to keep your shit together if you’re in the public eye, besides being a decent human being.
Labrador, having been on both sides of that exchange in my life, I stand by my take on it. It seems to me that Bale is yelling at the fuck-up and the guy who just won’t let it slide, and whatever they’re saying is just making things worse. They’re talking back, hence the problem.
He probably will have his rep sullied. I agree with you on that.
I myself, on the other hand, actually like Bale more now, and this makes me want to see more of his movies. How many times have I wanted to go off on some asshole in the workplace who doesn’t get it and doesn’t seem interested in learning how. Man, if I could get away with it, I would do and say exactly what he did–without the threats of physical violence, of course. WWCBD?
Yeah, right about now, I want to see a Christian Bale movie. Any Christian Bale movie, just to support the guy.
I have not read any of the explainations but are we sure the guy made a mistake? I know Bale thinks so but would a reasonable person? This guy isn’t new. I looked him up in IMDB. He has been working in the film industry for twenty years. He is listed as a cinematographer for the last ten. I think it might be safe to say he was doing things the way he has for years, on many different projects. He just never had to deal with such a prima donna. Given the timing I think it is likely that things from Bale’s personal life were intruding into his work. It happens to the best of us. Doesn’t change the fact that he was being a dick. I’ll still watch his movies.
