On long, involved movie rants.

[demiurgent]

So, I finally got around to listening to the Christian Bale rantfest that's... um... 'news.' For those who haven't, essentially Bale and his costar were playing an intensely emotional scene, and the director of production -- who'd been warned to not cross onto the set and make light adjustments while rolling before -- walked into Bale's field of vision and broke his concentration. Bale went apeshit on the guy. Many examples of 'fuck' and 'amateur' were thrown around.

This is now... apparently... some kind of controversy.

I dunno, man. I've been in a lot of theater. In the middle of rehearsals -- much less when it goes up -- what you're doing becomes disproportionately important to you. I've heard probably forty explosive rants of that kind over the last twenty five years. There is, to use the theater aphorism, a reason they call it drama.

People are coming down on Bale for 'taking it out on a coworker.' Only this isn't the office. This is a creative endeavor. Actors are napalm at the best of times -- get them worked up for a highly emotional scene and you're lucky no one gets knifed. This is just how it goes. This is how it goes in penny-ante community theater productions that less than a hundred people will ever see -- are you telling me it's going to be way more mellow when you're shooting a movie that's expected to make hundreds of millions of dollars?

It's just theater. Everyone's embarrassed for about two hours and there's whispering for a day and then you move on. Being a prima donna is walking off the set and not coming back. Blowing up at a DP is news?

Oh, wait. He's a big star. That makes it news, because we can 'tsk' at his potty mouth. Fucking cultural puritanism.

Comments

[cythraul.livejournal.com]

I was with you up until "cultural puritanism". Concern about the potty mouth would be puritanism, yes, but the blowing up on a coworker angle would be potentially objectionable even without the profanity.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

See above, ad nauseum. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but this isn't an office setting.

[cythraul.livejournal.com]

Never mind office setting. There were threats of violence in there, and at one point he sounds like he rushes at the guy for a second. In a public place he'd have had cops on him.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

Oh, and remember -- this story broke very very briefly back in July. It was a very standard "there was a blowup on the set of Terminator Salvation ha ha" puff piece in the gossip journalism circles, and it went away just as fast.

It's a major story now that there's audio and they can count how many times he said "fuck." That's cultural puritanism.