The "Bale"-Out

Anyone catch the news of Christian Bale's on-set tirade against the lighting director who accidentally walked into a scene while it was being filmed? Yeowtch. Both at what he actually said (calling it a "rant" would be like calling a hurricane a "rainstorm") and at the length to which he said it.

(If you want to read more about it, go here for MSNBC.com's take. Of course, TMZ has the actual audio.)

The gist of it was that Bale couldn't focus/get into the head of his character with the lighting guy walking through. While I can certainly see that it'd be annoying ('cause you'd have to re-shoot the scene, for one), I wonder what would happen to ME if I pulled that while I was sitting in my office, mid-scene, and someone walked in?

I mean, I've got the dog barking at the UPS truck or my husband asking something vitally important like, "Hey, where's the peanut butter?" about every three minutes while I'm working. And I have to be in the head of my characters, too. It's annoying to get interrupted--as an author, it could mean losing that incredibly witty bit of dialogue I just imagined--but it's life. (And just for the record, the peanut butter is where it ALWAYS is, because I am just that kind of an organized neat freak. If the peanut butter's out of place, it's because my husband put it out of place. So asking me where it is doesn't solve his problem.)

Thing is, I'm a huge fan of Christian Bale's work. One of my all-time fave movies is 1987's Empire of the Sun , which he starred in when he was only thirteen. (Grab it from Netflix if you've never seen it. It also stars John Malkovich and Joe Pantoliano. I promise you'll love it.) And I thought Bale was amazing in 3:10 To Yuma. So I was glad to see that he made a public apology today. And I think he meant it.

What do you think? Excusable? Inexcusable? What would happen if you threw a fit like that at work? Have you ever thrown a fit like that at work? (I think my husband would tell me to slowly move away from the computer while he removed all sharp objects from the room. And he'd make sure he found the peanut butter before I did.)