Why The Rundown Doesn't Cover Christian Bale Rants

As all the world well knows, Christian Bale went-off on the Terminator set when the director of photography walked into his "eye-line." Bale has since apologized, saying he "acted like a punk" and called his tirade "inexcusable," and that's highly commendable. But this is right up our alley and we spoke nary a word of it!

The reason is simple: it was everywhere and it really wasn't that big of a deal.

Making movies is hard work and people in Hollow-wood are buttholes; none of this is news. Actors like Christian Bale take what they do far too seriously on the one hand; OTOH, they're paid millions of dollars and if they do a bad job, they're the ones who look stupid in front of the entire world. Movies cost tens of millions of dollars to make, so they're pretty Big Deals.

This would have been interesting had Bale been making a teen drama and I'll tell you why: there's no need for any actor in a teen drama to have an "eye-line" - maybe eyeliner... In a sci-fi movie, where a whole lot of the elements which will eventually be onscreen are actually nowhere in sight, it's a pretty big deal. Bale's entire job is to pretend he is interacting with something that isn't there, and to do that, he has to establish an "eye-line": a point to focus on, as though whatever he is supposed to be interacting with is actually at that place. If he loses that spot, it can ruin an entire sequence which may have to be reshot, and that costs millions and interrupts everyone's schedules. Things like that can actually shitcan a film.

Let's say Bale screwed it up - or, better yet, let's say the guy who walked into his "eye-line" screwed it up for him:

While in post(-production), animators adding the robots (or gargoyles or whatever) notice that even though he is supposed to be talking to a specifc robot, it looks like he is talking to one of them one minute and another the next. They send word to a producer, who looks at the sequence and decides it's unusable. They can either spend millions changing the animation - which was planned months, even years, before and could push the whole project back by months - even years; or spend millions rebuilding the set, and adjusting the lighting and sound conditions to match the rest of the footage, and calling all the players in the scene (who may already be working on other projects) back to the location (which may no longer be available) to reshoot the sequence; or they can drop the entire sequence... which could mean changing the entire story and spending millions in editing to salvage the film.

In other words, it really is a pretty big deal.

So he had a bad day? Big deal; the entertainment world had a slow news week, and so they made it a big deal. I tend to give people - even overpaid people - the benefit of the doubt. Besides, Christian Bale actually works for his money, so why not?

The truth is that people blow-up on movie sets all the time; THEY'RE ALL BUTTHOLES! They blow-up over weather conditions, lighting conditions, wardrobe, not enough blueberries in their bagel, and all sorts of pointless stuff no one can control. I don't blame the guy for being hacked at Bale - even Bale said he was in the wrong - and I don't blame him for leaking it to the Web (because if he didn't - and the person who did leak it didn't do so on his behalf - then that person should be shot), because that's a fairly "professional" way of handling the matter these days.

After all, we all do things we regret, but sometimes we do unfeeling things and later justify them to ourselves; however Bale felt about the matter beforehand, he certainly felt bad once he saw his behavior from a detached perspective. The guy didn't go all Entourage and crack-up his car with a golf club; he simply let Bale's celebrity do the damage for him. Pretty slick, if you ask me.

Personally, I see Bale's point of view. He took it a little too far, but it is what it is: he lost his cool. He had every right to, and he was right about most of the things he said, but he got caught-up in the moment. It happens. And the moron behind the camera would do well to remember it.

Anyway, The Rundown doesn't dwell on human beings' mistakes, and I really don't see this as much of a mistake; if you ask me, the guy had it coming. We don't dismantle celebrities who deserve their fame and we don't dwell on their missteps when they fall. I find it offensive to see repeated video of Christian Bale wailing on an inept cameraman or David Hasselhoff drunkenly peeling a hamburger off his kitchen tile; these people have made worthwhile contributions in their fields and they are only human. I'd hope others would show me the same respect, though I have no faith in society or human beings, in general.

Not only is this sort of thing lurid, it plays into this whole "everybody's a winner" movement that's been underway for years - especially in this country. I don't need to tear someone else down or "knock them down a peg" or "bring them down to my level" to feel better about myself; I take pride in my work and derive my sense of superiority from its success. Everybody is not a winner - most people are real fucking losers - and just because someone who is does something they shouldn't doesn't mean we need to dwell on it just to show the losers how "everybody's basically the same." We really aren't.

Christian Bale is a winner - winner, winner, chicken dinner - (American Psycho notwithstanding) and most of us are not as successful as Christian Bale. I, for one, don't envy him his success - nor anything else, for that matter - and find no pleasure in disparaging him.

And if I sound self-righteous, so be it. I save my venom for overprivileged people and cops - because they deserve it.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009