VanVeen - I think I said this a year ago but I'll say it again. You should post more. Please. You are perhaps the only 2+2'er who I would actually consider paying to post more often. Thanks for your consideration.

there was an interesting study on this (can't find a convincing link right now). Subjects were asked to hold a pen in their teeth (left to right) or between their lips (as if sucking on it) and shown a variety of "happy" and "sad" images. Holding the pen between your teeth forces your face into a smiling position, the other way is more like a frowning position. The subjects who had the happy faces felt better than the others after both the happy and depressing sets of pictures.

Just wanted to say 'thank you' for owning this thread.


I have managed people who I tried to lead, coach, cajole and beg who will still make the same damn mistakes over and over again. Then finally I would tear a strip off of them as the final option in my strategy and BAM!!! They get their **** together.


Coddling people who do their job in a haze of mediocrity sells everyone short and this includes the person you coddled.

I'm guessing nobody here has had anybody go off on them in a public workplace.

Just wait till it happens to you and then try and justify Bale's management strategy. I think you'll have a different take.

Trying to intellectualize from a pros. vs. cons standpoint is silly because my take on it hinges on whether the reaction elicited was likely to be emotional. In this case, very likely.

Simply, it's all dependent on whether Bale's outburst generated a fear flight/fight response in the DP. If not, then whatever, neither side ought to care.

But to deliberately put a person into a biological state of fear with all its childhood associations and memories is a shock too big to the person getting berated. This can never be justified behaviour in a society that expects to remain civil.

LOL at trying to compare this to a boss yelling at an employee. Yeah, sometimes you have to yell at people to get the point across. I think the point was across and the guy was completely humiliated at about the 20 second mark. Four minutes later I don't think there is any rational explanation other than Bale is a complete prick. There is no worthwhile objective for continuing to berate the guy for four minutes in front of the whole set.

Complete dick move, I can't believe anyone is defending this. He just acts like a Prima Donna, it doesn't sound like this guy was further antagonizing him in any way.

Whenever I get to the threshold of being angry/mad like that, I always ask myself: "will this get me what I want?" Sometimes, in fact, it does - when you're dealing with customer service that you won't interact in a regular manner with, it's cool to blow your top so they can try to take care of you as quickly as possible. But this guy isn't someone you blow off, he's going to be interacting with Bale every day, and it's just terrible to excuse Bale of his behavior, especially when it could financial repercussions.

As it was noted earlier in the thread, the Hollywood scuttlebutt is that the DP is a notorious a-hole of epic proportions who routinely told his crew to stab themselves in the head, blow themselves up, etc.

I still think Bale was over the top going off like that but here's a link to a story at AICN that provides a little more context than just "zomg bale losted his mindz!"

AICN Story

"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....

...Bale had indeed warned the DP on multiple occasions about messing with lights while the cameras were rolling, and Bale was in the midst of a painful scene with Bryce, what was described to me as being the emotional center of the film and his character for the film."


If the DP had already been warned multiple times this probably explains why you don't hear the director or anyone else jumping to his defense.

This just in: Christian Bale feels like an ass.

And I'm sure Michael Phelps is truly disappointed in his very poor decision to partake in the smoking of a harmless drug and will strive to be a better role model.

Of course he's going to apologize, it doesn't mean he didn't think the DP deserved it a little. Maybe he didn't, but public admission to repair an image doesn't mean a whole lot. Sorry he got taped more than sorry he ripped into the guy is probably more likely imo.

how you can claim to know why he apologized?

edit: if he apologizes some will say he just did it to look better. if he doesn't he is dbag for not apologizing. not really much he can do after having blown up already. give the guy a break

Reading comprehension? I'm making a guess, and I didn't claim with certainty to know why he apologized. All I'm saying is a public apology while his reputation is being hammered and future roles/ticket sales are at stake probably isn't the best indication of how he really feels about the matter. I mean the apology ended with a drawn-out and repeated plea to see his multi-million dollar movie despite his lapse in judgment. I'm not even on his case, I'm on his side and think it's ****ty he's forced to apologize whether he feels he was in the wrong or not for an incident that has very little context.

This is what his actual accent sounds like.

lolzzz awesome: Recap of thread:

Christian Bale did something
Omg he's so awesome, don't take any **** man!
What are you saying, that's awful!
No, its justified
No he comes off like an ******* punk!
Christian Bale: I'm an ******* punk
See?
HE'S JUST SAYING THAT - YOU HAVE NO PROOF THAT HE MEANS IT

i think part of being a professional is realizing that you are on the set of Terminator ****ing FOUR directed by Mc ****ing G before going on a 4-5 minute tirade about the shortcomings of one of the crewmembers. did he really expect to be working with an award winning cinematographer when he signed on for this project?

whether or not the DP was deserving of getting chewed out doesn't really change how obvious it is that bale suffers from whatever disease that occasionally turns hollywood movie stars into pretentious, self-important, self-absorbed, egomaniacal douchebags.

Yeah, I guess going from being in TDK and working with Nolan and that wonderful cast to McG and T4 while being signed for 2 more before finishing the first might have made him realize "what the **** am I doing here? Please, get me back in a mother****in batsuit!"

Yeah, that, or maybe he is just more of a professional and takes his work more seriously than some half-green that has a reputation for being self absorbed enough to be sticking his dumb ass in sight lines after the cameras are rolling.

yes, this is one of my main points, he is clearly taking his work much more seriously than is appropriate for a "film" of this nature. I would expect someone who has been in this business as long as he has to have a better idea what he was getting into when he signed the deal with the movie studio.

It's not like he would have had to do months of research, really all he would need is an hour or so and dvds of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle to get a good feel for the kind of environment he would probably be working in.

i really think it's laughable that you homosexuals think there was anything remotely "professional" about the way bale conducted himself during this incident

If you listen to the radio clip linked itt, he specifically states he was drawing back to T2, and asks 'was that a wonderful movie?', and goes onto explain he was thinking of Sarah Connor in that film when she was locked up, and trying to draw off that feeling she must have had being marked as nuts. (paraphrased)

I mean, you can throw out h.omo terms and yap about not being professional, but I'm just gonna make a wild guess and say that you've never been in the top 1% of whatever work you've chosen before where things happen to get intense sometimes?

I'm unremarkable in every way possible. Christian Bale realizes that most people find unacceptable his 4 minute dressing down of a crew member and threats about bringing production to a halt unless that person is fired, despite the genesis being the failure of the crew member. Further, most people realize that having your worst moments hit youtube would be unfun. I celebrate you for seeing much deeper into it.

Serious misinterpretation here. At about the one min mark, he calmly stops and says 'ok lets go again' and seems to be done with it.

Someone we can't hear says something which sends him off again, and then he goes on and makes multiple references that this isn't the first time that this guy has done this.

But the huge point here is that he never makes the point of saying he is done unless the guy is fired, that is simply everyone misinterpreting his comment at the end that they are done professionally, which he has since rescinded and said is no big deal and that he lost his cool.

Again: One minute mark, 'lets go again', he gets a response, then goes off again, and it pisses him off enough that he then goes on to fully explain why he is so pissed off, and that is because this dumbass has done this multiple times. That was the source of the anger.

At no point was he about to bring production to a halt unless this guy is fired. He was ready to go again seemingly before anyone else on the set was, and that probably is because he is more professional and capable than anyone else that was on the set at that time.

I'm not misinterpreting his comment.

1) The threat is regarding his future action: "You do it one more ****ing time and I'm not walking on this set if you're still hired." His initial demand that he leave the set is ambiguous, too.

2) I don't think we know how long he'd been going off before the audio starts.

3) At the two minute mark he pauses and then starts to go off again because someone suggests they take a minute before re-starting. I speculate because "Tom" needed to be there, but was away after the rant extended. Calling that an instance of him pulling it together only to be goaded into continuing is pretty generous.

this. christ. Bale is MAYBE top 20. just b/c you're zomg a method actor doesn't automatically make you great.

this is one of the worst posts i've ever read on 2+2. amazingly dumb? did you look at the guy's resume? there is certainly a chance that this DP is better at his job that Bale is at his, comparatively.

+1

ok, this is officially the worst post in the history of 2+2. you are a fool and almost certainly horrible to be around irl. please, for everyone's sake, don't reproduce

fwiw I'm kinda biased...Bale's awful work in TDK almost ruined the film for me.

I hear you, but I think that is different than what I was saying in response to the statement he was going to halt production to somehow appease his own ego and/or anger. He's saying 'you're ****ing this **** up over and over and it can't work like this you f'n moron', and in the heat of the moment he is saying f this, I'm not working with ****ing amateurs. But he's not at all threatening to halt production, he is saying the level needs to be raised (ie: no dip****s walking around the set during filming), or that that moron needs to gtfo for the sake of quality.

I concede this technically, but I'd guess we're getting the full scoop here. Whoever let this leak would have no reason to clip the first 30 sec or min out or w/e. But I don't know, so I concede. But I'd bet this is the full clip.

At the two minute mark he very calmy says 'can I have time to put this on please?'. Maybe bc some people walked off is because he was so pissed, which kept him going on losing his cool because everyone wasn't ready to go and had probably walked off to avoid the confrontation: a la what we saw in the huckabees clip.

Interesting all around. But I think Bale is by no means out of order here.

Greenie who has a rep continuously ****ing up and walking around during taping and strokes his ego by playing with his lights.

Bale mentions multiple times this isn't the first time he has done this. Finally loses his cool in what has been repeatedly mentioned itt, where as I just stated he was trying to bring himself back to Sarah Connor's mentality because I'm pretty sure we can all agree T2 was awesome and she was badass in her lockup scenes.