As many of you know, the great author J.G. Ballard is near death. Soon, he will probably be departing from life.
When this happens, I think they should make a movie about his life. And Christian Bale should play him. It would be perfect because Bale played the younger version of him in the semi-autobiographical Empire Of The Sun.
I had this idea while I was watching The Dark Knight. I kept thinking how great it would be if Bale reprised the role of Ballard, this time as a young, and then middle-aged man. He would have to gain 50 or so pounds to look a little more heavyset as he got older, but if there’s any actor who’s good at changing his weight around, it’d be Bale.
The structure of the movie came to me in a fictional preview for the movie that I was envisioning in my head. First, you see little Christian Bale in footage from Empire Of The Sun, staring at the remains of the crashed fighter plane, fascinated by the destroyed instrument panel, then sitting in the cockpit and imagining himself flying. That Welsh song Suo Gan would be playing during these scenes. The audience would be thinking “why are they showing this? Are they releasing Empire of the Sun again or something?”
Then - the music stops - scene transitions - you see Christian Bale as an adult, in an RAF uniform, saluting his officer during training, and then inside the cockpit of a Spitfire taking off from the runway: J.G. Ballard as a young man in the RAF in 1955. (He would have been 25, but I think Bale could definitely play 25 right now convincingly.) Then, Ballard in his free time reading a science-fiction magazine.
And then it would show some kind of psychedelic hallucinatory state, displaying Ballard’s vivid imagination - not sure what that would be, but it would indicate how powerful his creative powers were.
The next shot would be of Ballard 15 years later, heavier, wearing a tweed suit and smoking a cigarette, responding to a reporter’s questions about his controversial writing, and Ballard would respond with something like, “I’m only showing people what’s already there,” and then there would be a freakish montage of horrific and bizarre scenes of crashed cars, naked women, pathologist’s photos of bodies cut open, etc…
And then it would just go black and then say “BALLARD” on the screen in huge white letters.
Maybe this is a stupid idea, I don’t know, but I’m writing it exactly as I envisioned it while I was sitting there in the theater. I just thought it would be the best thing ever if Bale got to play this role. Of course, it will never happen, but at least I can dream.