5 Feb 2009

Christian Bale: rude, yes, but -- right or wrong?

Further to the "Bale Out" stories yesterday ... got a good one for you here. Christain Bale must be wondering where it's all going to end!

Now, Steve Martin's gotten hold of it, and -- well, see this for yourself! You're not going to hear the F word at all, but good golly, the guy doing the beep noises must've drawn overtime pay on this one:

Very kewl, that!

Turns out, CB said the F word 35 times in his four minute audio romp. Yep -- somebody with way too much time on ehis hands actually sat down and counted them. CB himself doesn't see to have made a response (yet), but this is interesting: Web goes psycho over Christian Bale going psycho ... it's interesting because not only does it show how everyone in earshot or web-shot has been chewing large chunks out of CB, but there's also at least one pro voice in Hollywood racing to his defence:

"I know the guy who pissed him off"

Butch Kaplan has worked as a Hollywood producer for over twenty years. His most recent films are "Babylon A.D.", "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" and "The Patriot".

This was nothing that we haven't seen before, and in this case, the actor was completely right, and I'm not surprised to hear what happened. He's what we call in the industry a 'tweeker'. It's people who are very insecure about what they're doing that they constantly need to 'tweek' things.

A lot of actors have a hard time getting into the place of the character. You're trying to make it real, you're having a really deep moment, and then there's this guy, tweeking the lights. It's as if he's saying 'what I'm doing is more important than what you're doing - it's all about the lighting'. What Bale said was rude, but what Hurlbut did was so disrespectful. And the funny thing about this, is that Bale was more right than 95% of actors who pull this stuff. Not only actors, but producers, directors. Sometimes they even get into punch-ups, and most of the time they at least storm off set and refuse to come out of their trailer. The people who act up the most actually have the most power; a little tantrum earns you respect here.

However in this case it wasn't a power trip, it was a true explosion of frustration. A case of 'I'm trying to do my job and you're totally screwing me over'."



So there you go -- the jury will now retire to deliberate the evidence!