Do You Like Phil Collins?

Panel 5 is a naked, blood soaked Joel chasing Eli through a high rise with a chainsaw. I’m sure you know how it ends.

My man-crush on one Mr. Christian Bale is well documented. I mean you can’t spell Christian Bale without “Christ.” The man can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned. So what if he gets in domestic disturbances with his money grubbing family members and publicly humiliates the D.P. on the set of “Terminator 4“? He was Batman. He was also Bateman. Those two roles alone get him a “get out of pretty much anything free forever” card in my book.

This particular “scandal” is rather interesting. You see, Mr. Bale is very serious about his craft. He chooses his roles very carefully and he takes them very… well, SERIOUSLY. He’s not fucking around. He got down to an emaciated 120 lbs for a movie that no one even saw. He’s dedicated to his art and he’s damn fine at what he does. “The Prestige“? C’mon! That movie was fucking amazing! Anyway, so he’s on the set of “Terminator 4” filming a scene and the D.P. is fiddling with his lights off camera… WHILE THEY’RE FILMING! That’s some amateur bullshit and BatBateBale wasn’t having any of it. He tore the guy a new asshole in front of everyone. You can almost hear him pissing himself on the recording.

The best part? Bale manages to stay in character for most of his rant. His English accent only starts to slip in towards the middle when he really lets lose on the guy. The second best part about the freak out? You can dance to it.

(No, this isn’t REALLY news. I’ve been looking for an excuse to do an American Psycho comic for a long time.)

Do you think Bale went too far? Did the D.P. deserve what he got? Let me know in the comments.

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53 Comments

  1. It was pretty hard to gauge the context of that rant. Was this the first time the DP screwed up? Or the 10th time? Either way, that sort of outrage doesn't make Bale look good at all. And the fact that it was made public puts him in a bad light.

    I guess they're going to have to rename the movie to "I Heart Terminator". (or "I Terminate Huckabees"?)

    • Bale DID say "This is the second time" to others.

      Plus, picture investing your soul into a scene only to have the fucking lighting guy mess with the lights on set after they yell ACTION.
      (Until CUT anyone not acting does nothing to ruin the scene, from talking to messing with the lights. The lighting guy MESSED WITH THE LIGHTS. AGAIN.)

      • Bale saying the "second time" doesn't prove that it did occur a second time. The only people who know for sure what happened is the people that stood there and witnessed the event. Thus, the only thing I can pass judgment on is that Bale sounds like a dick, whether the outrage is justified or not.

        Also, "investing your soul into a scene"?? We're talking about a Terminator movie, not the Godfather.

        • No it doesn't prove anything, yet, without seeing the film yet, how do you know it's all mindless action with no redeeming qualities?
          (Considering the guy does solid roles like Equilibrium and The Prestige, he's no "phone it in".)

          Also, Joel provided the link above to AICN's take on why they weren't beating up Bale, along with people speaking up on who screwed up, and it was Hurlbut, the DP that triggered the whole mess.

          http://www.aintitcool.com/node/39984

          "The DP on TERMINATOR SALVATION, Shane Hurlbut, is a apparently a light tweaker. He's a fairly young DP and likes to fiddle with his lights on set during action, which is a big "NO NO" on most productions unless worked out in advance with performers. But apparently Shane was a pretty unrepentant light tweaker.

          The scene in question, was a very emotional and tough scene between Christian Bale and Bryce Howard. A scene that required soul bearing and a deep level of immersive concentration. The sort of scene where everyone on set knows not to get in anyone's eye lines, and definitely not to move lights around while FILMING. You lock that shit down before the scene starts."

          The link has more.

  2. Nah. Sorry. No donut. As a fan of an actor that is also "very serious about his craft", lost and gained crazy amounts of weight for roles, (try 80 pounds) and is damn fine and dedicated at his craft, and I don't think there is any excuse for acting like that. I wouldn't put up with it from my guy (who has been in the biz WAY longer) let alone this kid. The DP was wrong, no lie, but that's not fixing the problem, it's making it worse. If you need to yell at the guy, do it in private where you are not FURTHER holding up production and making everyone else on set feel like shit for the rest of the day. (If you've ever worked on a production of any kind, stage or screen you'll know what I mean) That's not leadership, professionalism or even righteous rage, it's throwing a hissy fit like a 5 year old. It's abusive and he's wrong. Don't want to work with the guy? You're F'in Christain Bale. You can have him sacked. You don't need to freak the fuck out and dehumanize the guy.

  3. as someone who has worked on set, and yet didnt know who bale was before reading this (im not big on following actors) im with the DP on this one. no he shouldnt have been checking a light while they were filming unless there was a real good reason to (safety issue etc). but when actors think there the most important people in the world it really annoys me. as far as most crews go, 'actors' as they call themselves are just meat props

  4. Honestly it's probably the case that a lot of stars end up spasing out like this. They just have better publicists and don't get it spread all over the net. It's a pretty drastic over reaction but well, its quite a stressful thing he's doing. So if someone has been annoying him repetitvly, which is what it seems to be, it's not surprising he'd loose his top.

    Also, the song rocks 🙂

  6. Maybe he just had a bad day and the guy hit his last nerve. Who knows. They always take that celebrity stuff out of context to make them look like assholes. Granted, some of them are assholes…

    I did see the Machinist and it was great. He looked like hell but it was a fantastic movie

  8. THE MACHINIST WAS THE ISHT, TOTALLY UNEXPECTED ENDING, didnt expect such a great movie, but i watched it bc Bale was in it.

  9. Actors melt down, crew grit their teeth and roll their eyes, shows go on, why is this news? The man is not paid to have a firm grip on reality. He is very well paid, indeed, to immerse himself in make-believe situations and simulate extreme behavior and emotions, and apparently he's good at it. Sure, the blowup was unprofessional, and I'd have a lot more respect for an actor who would just walk away until he got his sphincter unclenched, but Bale drained his bile sac, finished the scene, finished the movie, and nobody got fired.
    If that clip came from someone on the set, squirting it out over the net months later ain't exactly professional behavior either.

  10. I don't get why celebrities are held to a higher standard, they are just people. Like anyone else they have bad days, they blow up on someone who may or may not deserve it. He's obviously very serious about his work and the DP was fucking that up, now did he deserve that royal ass chewing? I don't know, but the only reason this is news is because its a celeb that alone is reason enough for me to ignore it.

  11. At least you're really going to believe he's a bad-ass when you see this.

    As for unprofessional, I'd say taping said hissy-fit and releasing it on the net to ridicule him fits the definition of it as well. Funny as, though.

  12. I can imagine it would be pretty annoying to have someone walking around in your field of vision while you're trying to act a scene and for all we know that was the best take all day. I can just imagine how a band would react if they had been working on recording the perfect version of a song for the last hour and you walked in the sound studio in the middle of the best recording. Bale is probably a perfectionist and was at the end of the rope with the guy.

  14. I like how Bale credits him for being a "nice guy" and says that they're done "professionally", although I find it kind of difficult to imagine tossing a brewski back with Bale after getting humiliated like that.

  15. There's no excuse for his temper tantrum. If he can't act with someone doing their job in his peripheral vision, that's his fault for being incompetent. (And how would you know if adjusting the lights during a scene is "amateur" or not?)

    • I've worked on many sets (both behind the camera and in front of it), and I'm confident enough in my knowledge of how things work to say that if Bale got that mad at the DP for messing with the lights then the DP had not agreed with the director or the actor that he was going to do it in the first place. When the director shouts 'Action!' on a scene, the only things that happen should be the things he/she's allowing to happen (besides bloopers and such), up until a couple of seconds after 'Cut!'. Sometimes directors don't let the cast (or some of the crew) in on what exactly is going on (take Withnail and I for example; the director replaced the water in the lighter fluid can with vinegar to get a better response from Grant), but if it's something like lighting, and if Bale's '2nd time' statement is true, then I'm guessing that the director didn't know about this particular infringement on his control either.
      Actors are infamous for having hissy fits about the slightest thing and for demanding really stupid things in order to get them to ply their trade (Marlon Brando tolkd Frank Oz that he wouldn't accept direction from him unless Oz talked to him in his Miss Piggy voice), but this time I think that Bale had something of a point – though I don't agree with how he handled the situation – and the DP needed to be told!

  16. Holy crap! That's one seriously high quivering lower lid Joel's got in panel 1.

    I agree with Duder. Celebrities are just people too. They shouldn't be crucified for their actions any more than a "regular" person would be for the same thing. The fact that they're constantly in the spotlight makes them prime targets for holier-than-thou scrutiny. Leave the man alone, I say.

    And for some reason, the thought of a bloodied and naked Joel chasing Eli with a chainsaw is somewhat comedic to me–like the opening to the first "Scary Movie" or something :p

  17. To quote some random guy on the internet:
    "According to Aint It Cool News the fool was fucking with the lighting while a very emotionally charged scene was being recorded.
    If that's true than he deserved every last curse Bale threw at him. Shit, it's only a scene in a movie costing dozens of millions, being played by actors who cost more per minute than some people make in a year. And you're going to make em redo the whole scene because you can't keep you're mittens off the lighting setup, somethig which is supposed to be adjusted BEFORE shooting starts.

    And think about this. Someone from the set (maybe the DP himself) must have released this clip, because it's obviously recorded close to Bale. This isn't someone with a cameraphone a dozen meters away. Someone has a grudge."

    • I don't think anyone is saying that the DP wasn't wrong, far from it. It's just his reaction to it was even more wrong, and well plainly sort of insane and dehumanizing. Do that shit in private. There is nothing okay or professional about what he did. Didn't anyone ever teach him two wrongs don't make a right?

  18. It was unprofessional to tweak the lights during a take. It was also unprofessional to pitch a hissy like that. So let's acknowledge, forgive, and move on.

    Incidents like this are why I don't give a flying fuck about the personal lives of actors, any more than I would care about the guy who makes my shoes. Christian Bale acts well, I will see movies in which he appears, the end.

  20. I feel ashamed to say this, but I haven't seen American Psycho or the Machinist yet. I've heard great things about both of them, but just never got around to them. Sounds like there is a Christian Bale movie night in my future.

  21. I'm siding with Joel and Christian Bale on this one. Sometimes when you lose your temper that's all it is. it sucks that the media has to hype it up until you seem like an asshole. None of us were there, so who know what really happened. Plus, it happened 7 months ago! Give it a rest!

    On a side note, Joel, I really enjoyed watching you draw the comic last night, and I can't wait to see more live streaming drawings! Hopefully Ustream won't suck as much next time…

  22. The DP got off light. When I was in film school I had a teacher who tore a new asshole out of first year students for things that weren't nearly as bad as altering lights while the cameras were rolling.

  23. Killer punch line.
    Yeah I was rather disheartened when I heard the audio from his freak out cause I'm a huge fan of Christian Bale and made me sad to think he's become another Hollywood douche with a holier than thou attitude. Then I saw that the DP has a tendency of messing with the lights when scenes are going on which I could definitely understand being annoyed about. Yeah maybe Bale went a bit over the top but he was right to be upset at this guy.

  27. I googled "DP" to see what it was, and came up with lots of links to "double penetration" scenes. No wonder Bale was getting testy! (as it were)

  32. Well now I've watched American Psycho (and the Machinist) and the comic makes a lot more sense. I'm always happy to find new movies that had slipped past my movie-watching radar, especially ones as awesome as that.

    Also, is it just me, or did that Machinist's soundtrack sound eerily like Hitchcock's Psycho soundtrack?

  33. Comic = so much yay!
    My thoughts on bale = he's so *complicated*!

    I listened to some of the remix stuff and it reminded me of something else that's pretty darn danceable. Seriously – it was played in the local clubs 'round these parts for a while. Have ya ever heard The Terrible Mr. Grimshaw? it's a remix that Kurt from Information Society did of a guy I know playing counterstrike. Never were the words "Goddamnit. Goddamnit! GODDAMNIT! FUCK!" ever so funny. Have a listen (very much not work safe):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-tWid3f8Pg

  34. Comic = so much yay!
    My thoughts on Bale = he's so *complicated*!

    I listened to some of the remix stuff and it reminded me of something else that's pretty darn danceable. Seriously – it was played in the local clubs 'round these parts for a while. Have ya ever heard The Terrible Mr. Grimshaw? it's a remix that Kurt from Information Society did of a guy I know playing counterstrike. Never were the words "Goddamnit. Goddamnit! GODDAMNIT! FUCK!" ever so funny. Have a listen (very much not work safe):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-tWid3f8Pg

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