The Christian Bale temper tantrum has already been a blast. The clip wasn't out for 24 hours before Letterman and Colbert were doing bits, and a disco remix blew up on YouTube. What's remarkable about the story, though, isn't that Christian Bale has a temper, but the intensity of the public's reaction to it.Sure, some people are defending Bale; claiming he's just very intense and was "blowing off steam." That's the movie studio's story, anyway, and they're sticking to it. Yesterday, an assistant director on "T4" was dispatched to assure that public that Bale is "not usually" such a colossal blowhard. High praise indeed.
But most people are reveling in Bale's meltdown and it's easy to see why. First, there is the unenlightened, but undeniable gut-level reaction that Bale deserves a public chiding simply because he is more handsome and talented than any man ought to be. It seems unfair, somehow, for one guy to have all that going for him. Even more annoying is that he doesn't seem all that grateful for all his looks and talent. People who have everything in life like he does are much more tolerable when they exhibit at least some sense of knowing how privileged they truly are. Bale, as Ann Richards once said of the elder George Bush, acts like a man born on third-base who thinks he hit a triple.
That's why no one was too surprised by his preening on-the-set outburst. (By comparison, imagine the shock of hearing the same kind of tirade from Steve Carell or Tom Hanks.) The incident on the set of "T4," plus last summer's alleged shouting match with his mother, only confirms what the public already suspected; Bale is kind of a douchebag. In fact, from "American Psycho" onward, and especially since getting to play Batman, Bale seems to have deliberately cultivated an air of distance, if not outright disdain for the press and public. Have you ever seen Christian Bale smile when he wasn't being paid for it? Neither have we.
The problem isn't that Bale, like so many douchebags before him, thinks that being an artist means he has license to be an asshole. It's that Bale seems to fundamentally misunderstand the role he is trying to play in life. Which, you know, is kind of ironic for an actor.
Bale might like to think of himself as purely a thespian, but the film stardom he chased and won demands more than merely wearing costumes and emoting on cue. Part of the bargain that celebrities make is that the public gets to vicariously experience the ups and downs of their exaggerated lives. That what makes the guys on "Entourage" more interesting than any of Mark Wahlberg's film roles, and why Angelina Jolie is a star despite having made precisely one watchable movie in her entire career. No one cares what she does in front of a camera, so long as she keeps us entertained in the tabloids. Bale has made it pretty clear that he doesn't want fans anywhere near his real self; whatever sort of "real self" a child star and scion of circus performers might have.
Fans will forgive movie stars for almost anything. Ask Robert Downey Jr.. Ask Jack Nicholson about the night Roman Polanski stopped by. But fans won't forgive an actor who disdains his public.
No one expects movie stars to be nice all the time. The job requires a vast ego and an almost unlimited capacity for self-indulgence. But the public does demand that movie stars go to the trouble of pretending to be nice; of at least paying lip-service to fans "who make it all possible." Just like ballplayers have to spout boilerplate about "doing what's best for the team" you don’t have to mean it, but you do have to say it aloud. Bale has to understand that his job doesn't stop just because a director days "cut."
As a form of karmic justice, the actor will now have to spend the next several years answering questions about his temper, which you know is going to piss him off. If he can survive and reinvent himself, he will end up like Sean Penn; the former brat who's beloved. If he can't hack it, he will either "quit" show business, ala' Joaquin Phoenix, or will watch his career slide into ignominy like Val Kilmer; the other Batman who got a rep for being a jerk. Whatever happens, it sure looks like it will be fun to watch.
