HARSH TIMES
An Interview with Christian Bale
By Fred Topel

How long does this character stay with you?

Christian Bale: The intensity as well as the speed of filmmaking meant that he was pretty much there the whole time. I remember Dave getting very freaked out. We were up in the desert on my last day of filming. We went right through the night. We finished at about eight o’clock in the morning. We decided to break open a bottle of tequila and just kind of celebrate. I was suddenly being me again and he was sitting there and he looked at me and he was going, ‘Who the fuck are you? Who is this?’ and I could see there was a certain amount of ‘Well, we’ve all been played here.’ Because we’d become fast friends and that was all completely sincere. But it was all done as Jim. I still am, I do still consider myself to be a great friend with Dave but the fact is, he was freaked out at that point because with that speed of filmmaking, you kind of can’t let go of it. But then afterwards actually he was gone pretty quick. I had other things going on in my life which demanded my attention very quickly which I wanted and needed to give my attention to, and so Jim was gone pretty fast.

Good year for you, is it hard to come up with these good characters?

Christian Bale: Listen, it can be but I’ve definitely had periods of absolutely nothing going on. I have made bad choices as well. I’ve done things which I’m glad I did because I wanted to experiment with certain styles of filmmaking and just see how I worked out. Usually those ones ended up with just one attempt. It tended to be like okay, I’ve tried it now. I wanted to try it. I’m done with that. Other than that, I just stick with what gets its hooks into me, what do I keep thinking about. And I just like to figure that as long as you keep that mentality, don’t try to be my own kind of marketing man whatsoever, then- - well, personally, any writer, any musician, whatever, I want to see that they’re doing it for themselves and hey, hopefully other people are going to get it as well. So man, it’s so nice when people do get it. I’m so happy that The Prestige has done so well. So far I’m so pleased with the way that people seem to be getting Harsh Times because in no way was this ever a thing where we wanted to bang people over the head with the layers that there are actually within this movie. And there was always the concern that you could potentially get people just thinking it was some kind of love of violence, a bunch of kind of teenagers making a movie about some cool guys just causing havoc and getting into a whole lot of trouble and causing mayhem in LA. And it ain’t that. It ain’t that by a long shot. And it’s very nice to at least be hearing from the people who have seen it that they seem to be seeing much more into it which is the reason that I did it.

Since you’ve had these opportunities, are you looking forward to returning to Batman?

Christian Bale: I’m looking forward now. I’m getting kind of trickled down information from Chris. I’ve been seeing bits and pieces of it. I’m aware of the whole basic outline now. I am working on something else currently though. I’m back working tomorrow morning in New Mexico on something so I’m kind of just focused on that completely now. But Chris will be contacting me when he knows it’s the right time and when he wants a bit of input.

Is that 3:10 to Yuma? How’s that going?

Christian Bale: That’s going great. I’m just three days in right now but it’s going really well. That’s a western. It’s directed by James Mangold and it’s with Russell Crowe. It’s based on an Elmore Leonard short story and it was also a movie made I believe in the ‘50s with Glen Ford and Van Hefflin.

Did you have any military or police training?

Christian Bale: Absolutely, we did all that. I was going down to the firing range with Army Rangers. We were opening up with M-16s, M4s. You have the kind of families down there shooting their pistols who were staring up and going, ‘Holy crap, what’s going on there.’ As we were just tearing up the whole building. Yes, I got very handy with a lot of different weapons for it and kind of overlearned. I learned how to use many of the different weapons or peces that I didn’t even need to end up using for the movie. My original intention was actually to see if I could attend that Rangers school. That’s what I wanted to do. But it was about eight weeks so I didn’t have the time for it. And I have no idea if they would have even allowed me in or not. It just ended up being look, there’s no time. But I really wanted to see, because there’s a high drop-out rate from that. I really kind of wanted to test and see all right, would I even be able to manage to get through that training.

How much a fan were you of Training Day?

Christian Bale: I had met David regarding Training Day many years back. I am a fan of it. However, I do like- - this feels more personal to me. This is- - you can tell, this is just more his real piece. This is something he started before Training Day. This is something that he just, like he says himself, kind of owns a part of his own soul and personally I feel that with this one. I also love that it’s just the kind of grittier, more kind of low income version.

Were you up for the Ethan Hawke role?

Christian Bale: That would have been the part that ultimately I would have been up for. But I just feel, to me Harsh Times is similar and obviously Dave’s attachment and obviously the locale, the locations. But to me, it goes that much further than Training Day did. I think that was why David kind of wanted to keep it in his pocket. He felt like this was his piece. He didn’t want anyone else messing with it. Training Day he kind of let out to the studio and he got great results. But this one really felt like it meant too much, it meant more to him than that one.

How did you get into the Latino area when you’re British?

Christian Bale: I’m a shape shifter, man. I’m just like Jim in that respect. He can look at the Chicano culture, he can’t ever be a part of it completely, but he knows it. He can walk it. He can belong there but he’s a [pinchiheuro??] ultimately and he’s never going to be completely embraced. He can go to the military. You see him in the scenes in the offices with the bureaucrats. He knows how to behave. And I had to do that too. I know how to sit in a room and kid people into thinking that I’m one of them, and then I’ll walk out the room and I’ll be somebody else completely. That doesn’t mean I’ve got multiple personalities. I think yourself, you were probably a little bit different this morning than you are right now. When you go back home with your kids if you have them or family or whatever, tonight you’re going to be a slightly different person again. Everybody’s a shape shifter to a certain degree. But some people can actually really bring it on when they know they need to, and I have that in common with Jim.

Did that begin when you were a kid?

Christian Bale: I think it begins for everybody at that age absolutely. I don't think there’s anybody who doesn’t do that at some point. When they first understand manipulation of some sort. And get some enjoyment of it. But certainly that obviously played a huge part with acting.

Can you talk about the scene with you, Freddy and Terry Crews?

Christian Bale: Yeah, that was a hilarious scene. Terry’s great. He’s a great guy. We just rapped. We just kept going because that was one of the few days where due to locations, we kind of had that house and we were a little bit too far away from any other location. We kind of had a lot of time to be shooting that scene. We ended up with something like a 15-20 minute scene because everybody just kept on going. We went completely off script and it just kept going and we were pissing ourselves laughing. We’d have to stop because we’d just gone way too far off of the script. And eventually just time constraints condensed it to whatever it is, a three minute scene or something, but that was a good day. That was definitely one of the funnier days. But also one of the more memorable days on the movie was actually early on in Mexico when we were filming in this little town down south in Encinata and we just invited the whole town down for a fiesta. There was food, pig was actually slaughtered right there so there was great eating for everybody that night. There was a band playing. Everybody was dancing. We were handing out drinks for everybody. It was just a genuine party and we just filmed in the middle of it. We just tried to get our scenes done in the middle with hopefully not too many people walking past looking in camera or stumbling past. That was a very memorable evening. That was a real good beginning to the movie. You also had Dave’s wife and her dad doing the catering for everybody. It was a real family affair.

And the scene in the car, is it easy to do with that intensity threatening your costar?

Christian Bale: It’s obviously a very uncomfortable scene. That’s one where you’re squirming in your seat. He thinks he’s in control. He thinks that he’s kind of just showing a side of himself that would make her never want to have anything to do with him again. He’s not had the courage to actually talk to her about the decision that he’s had to make but he does know exactly how to scare her physically. However, at that point, the trauma starts kicking in and he kind of starts really losing it. So no, that was not an easy scene to shoot whatsoever. There’s nothing easy whenever you’re dealing with guns and behaving with them in that fashion. It was cut a great deal as well because in my mind it was just this is as extreme as Jim gets and we actually decided you know what, we’ve got to take it back some here. But no, scenes like that [can’t hear over coughing], they are. You don’t leave that feeling good about yourself. You do kind of feel like you’ve got to go have a good shower, clean up. And the thing that I like so much about this movie is I begin it, it’s a joyride, I want to be in the car with the guys, I want to be doing what they’re doing and then suddenly I go whew, I want to be nowhere near them anymore. This is hideous, this is ugly. You’re certainly witnessing the ugliness of war in the inner cities, of war in the individual, of just the ugliness of life. There’s such potential for beauty but it’s just getting completely raped. And I ended up you just feel almost physically uncomfortable towards the end of the movie and I finished it, and all I could think was, ‘I don't know what I’m going to do, but I have to go perform some really good act for somebody. I’ve got to go and do something to try and make this world a slightly better place.’ That was how I ended up. I feel like my hope is that a lot of people are going to donate to charities or something or help that homeless person on the street or whatever because I tell you, that’s what I felt like doing. It was kind of the moral equivalent of needing to take a shower.

Did you find a good deed to do?

Christian Bale: I kind of forgot it fairly quick. I got back, had a nice drink and settled into the night, but thanks for reminding me. I’ll find something nice to do.

Michael Caine said he wanted to dress up as the decoy Batman.

Christian Bale: You think that’s actually going to end up in the movie?

No, but are you able to give input?

Christian Bale: Absolutely. Listen, Chris is totally open to ideas no matter how insane. But open to ideas is a different thing from putting them in the movie.

Page 1 | Page 2