You would pass Christian Bale on the street or in the grocery these days and not recognize him with the 40 pounds he gained to play vice president Dick Cheney opposite Sam Rockwell’s W. Bale, currently on screens nationwide in the 1892 Western HOSTILES, written and directed by his OUT OF THE FURNACE helmer Scott Cooper, plays the Indian hating Captain Blocker who is forced to take Wes Studi’s Yellow Hawk, a dying Indian prisoner, back to his native burial ground. Along the way the cavalry escort which includes Jesse Plemons and Timothee Chalamet adds Rosamund Pike’s Rosalie, the sole survivor of a massacre that left her husband and children dead. Bale’s one on one interview at LA’s Four Seasons Hotel was a few weeks ago.
Q: So you’re playing Dick Cheney during his chubby years.
Christian Bale: All I can tell you this is not your average biopic. It’s Adam McKay [who directed Bale to an Oscar nomination for THE BIG SHORT] and I never would have done it except for Adam. He was crazy for asking me but thru the script he showed me how this could be made to work. You get to a place where the director analyzes it and the actor feels it.
Q: Directors are so important, and you seem to have had good, continuous relationships with several directors in your career so far. What is it about Scott Cooper? When did you know you two were clicking in terms of your perspectives and working together?
Bale: Well, I've had bad experiences, as well. Also, you have times when you have no choice. Somebody asked me the other day, What is it that I look for in a director? I said, Well, I might be in a very short moment in my career where I'm able to look for something in a director. That's not how you start. You just need work! That's it. Then you figure it out as you go. You figure out well, what works? What doesn't? It takes years to figure that out and what produces the best result, and what kind of people. I find radically different personalities with directors, all of whom I really am very satisfied in working with. Obsession is the one key ingredient that is always there.
Q: Because it matches your obsession when you take a role?
Bale: Because it's essential. Because you're going for months, you are leading people in belief in a story, and you are inviting people to come watch. Well if you don't get obsessed, why should they bother? I look at Scott or Terry Malick or Chris Nolan, David Russell, Adam McKay, many others. But those are all people who I've made two or more films with. Vastly differently personalities, but all obsessed. You see that in somebody instantly. You see, Will they go further than anybody else? Or do they enjoy calling themselves a director but don't actually want to direct? That happens quite often.
Q: Are all of those directors, including Scott, collaborative in the sense that they're totally open to your suggestions?
Bale: Yes, but all in very different ways. Terry, for instance, the last film we made together [KNIGHT OF CUPS] there was no script whatsoever. I had no idea what was going to happen each and every day when I arrived on the set. He loves that. He loves accidents, he loves to make it up on the spot. He's very experimental. He's very bold, because at this point in his career when he's such a lauded director, to decide he's going to change his methods completely? I respect him immensely. I have a great fondness for Terry. Michael Mann I want to include in that. We've only made one film together [2009’s PUBLIC ENEMIES where Bale played G-man Melvin Purvis]. We've had plans to make numerous [other films] and we plan to make another. Very, very different personalities, but obsession being the one key, always.
Q: With doing this, I was watching a Burt Lancaster Western last night based on an Elmore Leonard novel.
Bale: What was it?
Q: VALDEZ IS COMING.
Bale: 3:10 TO YUMA was based on Elmore Leonard. I have not seen that, no, VALDEZ IS COMING.
Q: It was the '70s. Burt Lancaster must have been in his 60s at this point. I really thought of the loneliness of the A-list star. He's carrying the movie, he's above the title. That's the same thing for you here. It's Christian Bale, HOSTILES. It's your reputation and your popularity that are making the movie possible. Do you ever feel the pressure of …
Bale: No. I feel like a character actor who somehow people keep on putting in a lead role. That's how I feel and therefore I don't feel any pressure from it. I have no comprehension of what people mean when they say, ‘I do it for the fans.’ I understand why they're saying it, but I think it's a lie because you don't begin with fans. Therefore, you musn't be scared of rejection. This is an incredible opportunity. I never dreamed I would be asked to make films. I found myself in this position. I'm not going to become timid at that point, and I'm not going to be scared.
I think also times have changed since the '70s and with Burt Lancaster and these wonderful movie stars. I don't put myself in the same league as those people at all. I see it as very different. That's the simplest way I can put it, really, is I've always wanted to be a character actor and then I keep finding people go, ‘Well, would you play the lead?’ And I go, ‘O.K, but can I play it like a character actor would instead of like a lead actor?’ Because I don't know how to do that. I start laughing. I find it a little bit silly. So I don't feel that. I don't feel that pressure at all, actually. You must believe in what you do. You must. The result, the success is not dependent upon everyone else agreeing with you. You have to check yourself and see, Are you being stubborn? Are you being arrogant? Are you losing perspective? If you're going with a sincere gut emotion, then that's what you're there for. You're there to put yourself out on the line and potentially humiliate yourself.
I've always been very comfortable with taking that risk and also with failing at times. And also with being humiliated at times. I go, ‘Hey, if I can't deal with that, I shouldn't be doing this.’
Q: Shooting chronologically, which is so really, really rare because I understand it's so expensive, and I just heard about another movie that I thought was pretty fantastic, the German film IN THE FADE.
Bale: I really want to see that. Diane Kruger, right? Numan Acar is in it, I believe.
Q: Yeah, and Fatih Akin is the filmmaker and they shot that all in chronological order.
Bale: This lent itself to that, since it's a journey that begins in one place and ends in another, rather than the majority of films you have to return to locations and it becomes crazily expensive to shoot chronologically. This lent itself to being shot that way. What was nice was we were in New Mexico in summertime in woolen cavalry uniforms on the horses. Because we shot chronologically we lost weight as we went along — and that would have happened.
Q: Scott’s talked about wanting to get an epic, John Ford feel for the movie and shooting at night for instance with the film, trying to be as authentic as possible to the period, to the reality. Did that make it a totally different kind of filmmaking experience? You've never done a film in chronological order before.
Bale: No. I've done ones where we've tried as much as possible but it never quite manages to work out. Yeah, because you know where you're at. You're not guessing. You're not jumping forward a hundred scenes and trying to guess what was done between and then sometimes having to bend those hundred scenes to fit what you did in that hundredth scene. You go one and you know what's happened. So number two, it's much more easily identifiable about what you need to cut, what you may need to include. It allows for the expansion of the journey a whole lot more, and allows, for instance, for inclusion of Chief Phillip’s guidance of us regarding the mindset of the Cheyenne compared to the mindset of the Captain Blocker and to incorporate that, not only to Blocker but also to Scott's direction.
Q: Rosamund Pike also happens to be English, as you were born in England.
Bale: I was born in Wales but I grew up in England.
Q: You’re really Welsh?
Bale: I don't really know what I am. My dad was just working on a dairy farm.
Q: With Rosamund Pike did you have casting approval and were you surprised that you ended up with this wonderful actor?
Bale: I step in in whatever capacity I'm able to currently, and this may not last for long, just to support a director's choice, just to make sure that he's not being bullied into casting somebody who is not correct for the role. To me it's entirely the director's decision. I ask him, Is this what he wants? If it's not, then I help him to try to extricate himself. If it is, I support it. It doesn't matter what I thought. It's his vision.
Rosamund was incredible in the film. She personifies the damage done both to herself and to Blocker, but through somebody who expresses that damage and pain, compared to Blocker who is somebody who just represses it constantly. It becomes a source of fascination for that reason and also just because he has never known comfort and he has never known a woman. Her casting — actually what it came down to was a Massive Attack video. I don't know if Scott's told you this story. He sent me a link to a Massive Attack video where Rosamund is on the Tube in London and there's a magical orb that appears in front of her, and she does this performance art piece. We watched it and we said, THAT is a performance art version of Rosalie. That is Rosalie if we said, ‘Let's do it as performance art.’ So Scott contacted her and Scott liked her a great deal and he cast her.
Q: The whole idea of this movie, which it seemed to me when it ended — and I loved the sweetness of the ending with him getting back on the train platform and going inside, it's just beautiful. But the movie seems to be making its statement at the end about the insanity of all this violence that we've been seeing and saying, This is the condition of the world and it's crazy, and somehow it's got to stop.
Bale: Yes. It's not only crazy in terms of Blocker himself and his own survival, it's crazy for humanity. And that's become more and more relevant since we filmed and after filming. The ending I do agree is beautiful, it's hopeful, but it's certainly not complete closure. You don't know what's going to happen. You know that they're going to try. You know that he's making an effort to return to humanity, to overcome the guilt he has felt from giving up hatred, and the feeling that that is betraying his brothers in arms who have died. The recognition that his entire existence has needed Yellow Hawk throughout this strange, damaged couple who may never become a couple. But also very crucially since the larger subject are people who have been involved in genocide, either enacting it, victims of it or witnesses of it, that we see well motivated individuals in Rosalie and Blocker taking care of a young child in Little Bear. But it's a much softer form of cultural genocide, because what we're seeing is Little Bear but now he's in his suit. We understand, ‘O.K., what does the future hold for him? Where is he headed to?’
Q: Just like the Canadians.
Bale: Exactly. We were just discussing that.
Q: With taking the children away. And the Aboriginal children in Australia.
Bale: And in the U.S., too, yeah.
Q: This transformation, I mentioned to somebody in the hospitality room, ‘Isn't it amazing what Christian's done?’ He said, ‘I didn't recognize him.’ Why do you do this to yourself? Will we ever see a six pack again?
Bale: I don't know, man. I'm getting older.
Q: Does anybody in your family say you're trying to kill yourself, you shouldn't be doing this?
Bale: They don't say I'm trying to kill myself. They do say I'm crazy. I don't know. Maybe we need to sit and discuss if there's a great deal of self-loathing within myself. (laughs) You know what it all comes down to? It's that I like adventure. I like obsession, and perhaps I need to start assessing that I'm getting to an age that I need to be a little bit more cautious, but I still have this sort of youthful idea that I'm invincible and even though half my body is metal through having smashed and broken bones and all of that, …
Q: You’re not limping yet.
Bale: Actually no, you watch me going upstairs. [POINTS TO HIS LEFT ARM] This is all metal already. Metal, 25 screws. Metal all over. But I had a lot of fun doing it! I had a lot of fun getting that metal in my body. I just feel like I owe it to myself and to everybody involved in making it. Also too, why come see a film if you know people haven't really exerted themselves? I saw an image as a child and it was Jimi Hendrix, and he was in ecstasy playing a guitar. I don't know if I've imagined it or if it was real, but in my head I see blood dripping from his fingers, and in my head I always said, ‘This incredible talent that he has, that he's able to overlook the pain completely in creating beautiful music.’ That I always looked at — and that's more than any film, more than anybody else — that has been my inspiration in acting throughout my career, is that image I have in my head of Jimi Hendrix.
Q: Gaining 32 pounds or 42?
Bale: Well, a solid 40.
WHO KNEW!? ‘1947’ brings it all into focus
Informative, provocative and also very personal Elisabeth Asbrink’s Swedish 1947 WHERE NOW BEGINS ($25.95, Other Press) has been translated by Fiona Graham and marks how ’47, a time of global upheaval, significantly shaped the world that we know today. The Cold War, the creation of the CIA, the birth of Israel, the USSR getting the A-bomb, Christian Dior’s New Look, war between Pakistan and India — these are among the many significant events. As the daughter of a ten year old survivor of the Nazis Asbrink weaves her personal history here as well. Her research began with reading Sweden’s two largest daily newspapers, each daily edition from January 1 to December 31.
NEW DVDs:
South Africa’s THE WOUND (Blu-ray, Kino Lorber, unrated), shortlisted for the Best Foreign Language Oscar by the Motion Picture Academy, considers homophobia and self-loathing among the Xhosa tribe as a centuries-old circumcision ritual unfolds for a group of young Xhosa males. This weeks-long process on a remote mountain marks their transition from boys to men. Onscreen as THE WOUND begins, a written panel declares that circumcision is also expected to eradicate any (youthful) homosexual yearnings. While there is no male frontal nudity, THE WOUND presents passionate intimacy between two men. These two are, it’s gradually revealed, longtime if closeted lovers. Into this mix is a privileged young Xhosa who is ‘out’ and incensed by the hypocrisy he sees. If you expect this triangle to end badly you’d be right. Bonus: writer-director John Tregove’s short film THE GOAT (2014), a prologue to THE WOUND, plus an interview with the filmmaker.
Kate Winslet and Idris Elba teamed for the ludicrously plotted THE MOUNTAIN BETWEEN US (Blu-ray plus Digital HD, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, PG-13). This survival drama/romance failed to generate much box-office heat but its charismatic actors compensate with sexual chemistry, real locations and a percolating plot that may strain credulity but never bores. As strangers whose plane crash suddenly strands them – and a scene stealing dog — in a wintry Colorado mountain range, an injured Winslet and Elba brave the frozen tundra, hungry wild life and spark with each other. Bonus: Director Hany Abu-Assad’s commentary, deleted scenes
THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG (Blu-ray, 2 discs, CBS Blu-ray, Kino Lorber, unrated) boasts first-rate talent in telling its intense true story. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Norman Mailer adapted his 1979 nonfiction bestseller for this 1982 miniseries produced and directed by Lawrence Schiller (MARILYN: THE UNTOLD STORY). EXECUTIONER is here available in two versions: The 188 minute broadcast version and a 135 minute Director’s Cut. EXECUTIONER covers the last 9 months of Gary Gilmore who as the drama begins has just been released from 12 years in prison. Volatile and dangerous and soon a convicted killer Gilmore’s demand that he be executed by firing squad rather than incarcerated for life was instrumental in reviving the death penalty. Tommy Lee Jones won a Lead Actor Emmy as Gilmore; EXECUTIONER proved to be a major career boost. Then 35, Jones had been working steadily but starry careers are based on hits – and EXECUTIONER was just that. Equally prominent the wonderful Christine Lahti as Gilmore’s cousin Brenda and Rosanna Arquette as his 19 year old lover Nicole Baker. A bonus interview with Arquette reveals she had access to Baker’s diaries and was able to channel exactly what she was feeling in this mad affair. Arquette also notes the final casting came down to her and 17 year old Diane Lane.
