Christian Bale Goes Apeshit

God love him, he's apologized for it, but this very NSFW rant is worth revisiting, even after all the remixes, mash-ups and laughs at his expense, because I think he almost broke his brain:



Bear with me for a sec... what do you notice about the way he is speaking? His accent... what kind of accent is that? Did he drop character and speak with his normal accent? Nope. Bale is from Wales. Then was it the American accent of his character John Connor? I've heard Bale do a much better American accent than that. Remember, he played Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, and his accent was flawless in that film.

My jokey theory is that the reason he is speaking in a half-British/half-American accent is that in his rage, he somehow got lost halfway between Welsh actor Christian Bale and American resistance leader and Terminator-slayer John Connor. In other words, he was for several scary moments both Bale and Connor! This is frightening.

In all seriousness though, you hear about these so-called “method” guys all the time: like how Daniel Day Lewis walks around in character 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on those rare occasions when he takes a part, or how De Niro put on seventy pounds of weight to play a fat, old Jake Lamotta in the final scene of Raging bull. These stories are the stuff of legend. Thing is, contrary to popular belief, the “method” isn’t really about “becoming” a character temporarily… it is about drawing on your own real emotions or experiences to “interpret” a character.

The way it has been explained to me is that whereas an instinctive actor will, in the context of their performance, determine the emotion their character needs to display (i.e. “sadness”) at a particular moment, given the plot and circumstances, and will attempt to approximate a reasonable facsimile of the emotion (“look sad”) through expressions and behaviour, an actor trained in Konstantin Stanislavski’s method goes a whole different route.

The "method actor" will use things like sense and memory, tapping into their own very real emotions (“feel sad”) to achieve a greater degree of realism. When you hear a rant like this, you can't help but wonder if guys like Bale may be taking things a step too far in their desire to really inhabit a part and do justice to whatever role they take on. Anyone who has read about the pre-conditions that Bale laid out for Joe McGinty Nichol (I refuse to call him "McG") in order for him to take the role of John Connor will understand the degree to which Bale takes his work seriously.

Does that mean that the crew need to be on tenterhooks around someone like Christian Bale when he is doing his thing in a scene that calls for him to “feel angry”… I think his angry tirade is proof that you do.

***

Update: I made some edits put up a spoiler warning for the link to the Wired blog because it is SPOILERTASTIC... seriously, don't go there unless you are willing to have major plot points of Terminator Salvation revealed to you. One of the posters in the comments section calls the Wired editor who posted the article a "Clownshoe" for not providing a spoiler warning. I'm just not sure I can deal with being called a Clownshoe, so you've been warned.

Despair is a Sin

But when you look at the state of the Holy Land as it really is, not as we would have it, it is often hard to see the situation as anything but hopeless...

It is worth checking out Michael Totten's blog. Scroll down a bit on Totten's site and you can read some very bitter commentary from Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab journalist whose matter-of-fact explanations, many contrary to conventional wisdom (i.e. the relative merit of Fatah vis-a-vis Hamas),illustrate the yawning gap between reality and rhetoric in the Middle East and neatly encapsulate the pessimism people have about the whole sorry mess. No pie-in-the-sky platitudes about the "peace process" to be found here!
Some of the more jarring excerpts:

You gave Yasser Arafat money to open a TV and radio station. And on this TV and radio station Arafat said “Jihad, jihad, kill the crusaders, kill the Jews, kill the infidels, kill everyone but me.” Now you may ask yourself why Arafat was inciting against his peace partners in Israel, why was he inciting against the Americans and Europeans who were feeding him? It doesn't make sense.

Well, to us it does make sense. This is how our Arab dictators survive. They constantly blame the miseries of our people on the Jews and the West and the Crusaders and the infidels and the Zionist lobby and the imperialists. They use all these slogans. Arab leaders always need to make sure that their people are busy hating somebody else, preferably the Jews and the Americans. Otherwise their people might rebel, and God forbid they might demand reforms and democracy.

This is exactly what Arafat did, but he did it in Arabic. The international community – and even Israelis – did not want to listen to what Arafat was saying in Arabic. They only cared what he said in English. They said that what he said in English was good.

I said “Excuse me, folks, but in Arabic Arafat is telling people to kill you.” But they did not want to listen to the incitement. They underestimated it. They said “you Arabs are all corrupt and don't know anything about democracy so you deserve a dictatorship.”

This incitement drove people into the open arms of Hamas. Arafat was telling people how evil the Jews are, and people then said “Hamas is right, Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs. Why should we make peace with them?”

(...) Israelis brought the PLO into the Palestinian areas, armed the PLO, helped create all these security militias and gangsters and mafias, and then said they needed to protect themselves from their peace partners. And how did they protect themselves? By imposing restrictions and curfews, by surrounding Palestinian communities with checkpoints. Why? Because they needed to protect themselves from the militias and mafias that they brought into the West Bank and Gaza. So Palestinians lost faith in the peace process.

All this radicalized Palestinian society to the point that when Hamas decided to run in free and democratic elections under the banner of “change” and “reform” they won. It was all very obvious. The writing was clear on the wall that anyone who challenged Arafat back then....believe me that if even Ehud Olmert had run in the Palestinian elections promising change and reform and democracy he would have won. Because in January of 2006, the parliamentary elections that were held in the Palestinian Authority were largely about internal reforms in the Palestinian areas. Hamas was ready to deliver. What did they do? They came to the Palestinians and said “Listen, folks. You've tried all these PLO people. They're corrupt. They're bad. Arafat was a thief. Abu Mazen is also a total failure. These guys stole your money. These guys are US agents, they are CIA. Why don't you try us now? We will show you that we can establish good government. And, by the way, look at what we've done for you since 1988. We've established a vast network of educational, social, health, and economic services. Arafat built a casino, and we built two universities. Arafat gave his wife 100,000 dollars a month so she can do her shopping while we gave poor people money. Arafat built bars and restaurants in Ramallah while we built orphanages and charities.” So the Palestinians said “Let's try Hamas. If they come to power there is nothing left to steal. They can't be more corrupt than the PLO.”

That was the basic line. I'm not saying all those who voted for Hamas in 2006 were registering a vote of protest. We have to be very careful. Hamas does have a lot of supporters. What I'm saying is that had it not been also a vote of protest against the PLO , Hamas would not have won. Why? Because I know Christians who voted for Hamas. I know centrist Palestinians who voted for Hamas. I even know PLO people who voted for Hamas because the name of the game back then was “Let's punish the PLO.” And how do you do it? By voting for Hamas, their main rivals. And it worked. And Hamas came to power.

What has been happening since then is also very interesting. The U.S. government, with the help of some Europeans and some Israelis, after Hamas won the election, they went to the guys who lost the election and said “folks, here are guns and here is some money. Go bring down this democratically elected government.” And what was the result of this U.S. meddling in Palestinian affairs? It backfired. It played into the hands of Hamas and even boosted Hamas' popularity on the street.

Reading this kind of stuff, one must really begin to wonder if there is any way out of this godawful mess. Will our great-grandkids be reading about the Arabs and Jews , still slugging it out in the Middle East?