I'm surprised to learn this Christian Bale fellow is so intense.

(This is the first post I've entirely tucked below the fold.  I feel . . . dirty?)

Equilibrium (2002):

The Machinist (2004):

Batman Begins (2005):

Just so I have this straight: a method actor exploded at a director of photography for twice interrupting his sight line while fiddling with the lights after the director had yelled "SETTLE!" and "ACTION!" and this is newsworthy?  No.

But since I discussed method acting with my class yesterday I thought I might point out that he almost remains in character throughout the tongue-lashing.  (His anglicized Welsh accent briefly appears.)  The class angle, for those interested, comes from my "situating the rhetorical performance in its historical context" exercise.  To understand the significance of a thing, you have to understand the culture it comes from.  I leave the larger question of why I teach popular culture to my undergraduate mentor, Pat McGee, from whom I learned by example:

James Cameron's Titanic may be called by some a work of genius and by others an assemblage of cheap thrills and romance, but in either case it is a pure product of mass culture—in fact, it is what I would call, with some degree of irony, the masterpiece of mass culture. Several reviewers have commented that, despite the visual power of the movie, the dialogue is often trite and cliché-ridden; and one could add to these criticisms the obvious fact that the plot consists of two central components that are cinematic clichés: the disaster formula (of which the sinking of the Titanic is the classic example, for the great ship has sunk on movie and television screens over and over again throughout this century) and the romance between rich girl and poor boy. In this age of gender studies and queer theory, there are no surprises in this movie, no challenges to the dominance of heterosexuality; and any gestures toward feminism are of the safe variety that have become commonplace in popular movies, including several of Cameron's earlier action dramas . . . Titanic is not strictly Cameron's masterpiece, in the auteurist sense, because its power derives from mass culture and from a history of images that can be discovered only in retrospect . . . The first image in Titanic may lead the spectator to expect a nostalgia film, which, as Fredric Jameson suggests, transforms the past into a commodity that becomes a simulacrum of historical understanding in a present that has lost the sense of history per se (Jameson, Postmodernism 1-51). I refer to the shots of the R.M.S. Titanic pulling away from the wharf while the passengers wave as the initial credits appear on the screen. These images are captured on slow-speed film and convey the hazy quality of old photographs to create the image of the "dream ship" that the central female character, Rose Dewitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), refers to later in the movie. This nostalgic image corresponds to what I will call, improvising on Benjamin, the historical image, i.e., an image of the pastness of the past that enters the present as a reification of time, something we can consume without disrupting the present, without disturbing our historical understanding, so to speak.

Comments

[Jake]

Bale is a competent actor but I don't find him extraordinarily talented or even brave. This outburst--where he proves what an egotistical bully he can be--should be a sign that he takes his job and possibly himself way too seriously. Lighten up Batman. This is Terminator 4, not brain surgery.

I noticed his accent does shift a lot throughout the clip. I think he has been forced to use different accents so many times that now he has come up with some new kind of accent unique only to him.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

I don't think he's being an egotistical bully so much as a method actor responding to someone who repeatedly makes the same character-breaking mistake. In other words, I take it as a given that he takes his job way too seriously---that's the method way. As for his accent, I think it's sort of charming that he's so flustered he drops his accent. After all, he does his damnedest to keep it throughout the months of shooting---press junkets included---but this guy has him so flustered he starts speaking like himself. (And the bit at the end, where he says, "Seriously, you're a nice guy, and I like you, but help me out here and be a fucking professional" strikes me as the kind of thing a decent person says at wit's end.)

[Adam Roberts]

I have only one thing to say to you, Scott. Am I going to walk around and tuck your tucking post down below the fold, in the middle of a scene? Then why the tuck are you tucking the whole post down there? Ah-da-da-dah, like this below the fold. What the tuck is it with you? What don't you tucking understand? You got any tucking idea about, hey, it's tucking distracting having the whole post below the fold like that? What don't you get about it?

[Adam Roberts]

You'll have to imagine me slipping from my 'American' accent into the intonation of the land of my fathers, and back again.

I call this: 'method blogging'.

[Jake]

I don't think he's being an egotistical bully so much as a method actor responding to someone who repeatedly makes the same character-breaking mistake. In other words, I take it as a given that he takes his job way too seriously---that's the method way.

This almost makes me think Bale was having an identity crisis similar to the one Robert Downey Jr. and Ben Stiller had near the end of Tropic Thunder. Heh! I don't know much about method acting other than what is popularly said about it, but Bale still should have shown some professionalism, especially when the DP apologized to him several times and even explained himself at Bale's request. I also like how Bale refused to listen to McG and even told him what to do. You go, Bale! I still fear for his sanity... maybe he should take some time off from playing pretend and get in touch with himself for a few years.

After all, he does his damnedest to keep it throughout the months of shooting---press junkets included---but this guy has him so flustered he starts speaking like himself.

I noticed that when he was doing press stuff for Batman Begins, but he quit doing that when doing press for The Dark Knight. I think he's getting fed up with it. I don't blame him.

[Pete Skomoroch]

Well done.