Christian Bale

by Harrison Cheung

  In spite of Christian’s rave reviews from Little Women and the growing notoriety of his Internet fame, 1995 was a dry year for Christian. He landed his last and final project for Disney, a supporting character in the animated feature Pocahontas, which starred Mel Gibson.

  Still, if Christian had not made Little Women, he would not have met Winona Ryder and he would not have met her personal assistant, Sibi Blazic, his future wife.

  “I owe a lot to her,” Christian said in an interview about Ryder.

  Christian was depressed and frustrated. What had happened to the career momentum of Little Women? David was furious and blamed Christian’s agent for not following up on Sid Ganis’s promise to build a project around his son. But according to Christian, his agent threw the blame back at him.

  Christian had only acted in period films, so he was definitely in danger of being stereotyped. His slender build and pale complexion made him look stereotypically English. Christian’s British citizenship meant that hiring him involved visas and immigration lawyers. And because Christian’s publicist was some computer geek in Toronto, none of the press coverage about his Internet fame meant anything to Hollywood producers.

  David recalled that Christian’s agent was testing Christian’s limits: “She wanted Christian to do more publicity. And if he didn’t want to do that, then the least he could do would be to show up at more red carpet events so that he could be photographed.”

  Standing 6'1", Christian was a Young Hollywood rarity because of his height. Christian could be a very popular red carpet date. And attending premieres with starlets would get Christian lots of free press coverage—yet another old Hollywood truism that celeb couples get double the photo ops than a single person. David liked that idea—free publicity, no publicist involved. Would Christian consider that?

  “His agent wants Christian to take Natasha Henstridge out!” David squealed with delight one day. Henstridge was a striking 5’10” blonde Canadian model-turned-actress who needed a tall escort for her 1995 Species premiere and all subsequent parties and functions to promote the sci-fi gorefest. Species would be a surprise hit and Henstridge was stepping out and making her debut in Hollywood.

  But no amount of David’s careful cajoling worked. Christian refused. It was the first time I heard the two of them argue so loudly. David was desperate for Christian to be seen, while Christian refused to play “The Game.”

  “Think of your career, Son!” David pleaded.

  “I’m an actor, not some bloody male escort!” Christian replied, storming up the stairs to his bedroom. David did not press the matter, lest his easily discouraged son decided to throw in the towel and return to England. No matter how things were going in America, this was a constant worry on David’s mind.

  Christian was adamant in the face of pressure from his agent and whining from David. He refused to get a Hollywood publicist and play the fame game. He much preferred my approach to publicity, which cost him nothing and was comfortably low-effort.

  “Don’t worry, Moosh,” David assured his son as they made up. “Just focus on your work.” As always, David did not want Christian to think about anything except his career.

  What Christian did not realize was that his father was at wit’s end. If Christian was a single man making indie film wages, he could have done quite nicely. But supporting the House of Bale? That was an entirely different matter. David, the self-proclaimed “financial advisor” had a rude surprise for his son. On July 27, 1995, the state of California slapped a lien against Christian for $29,614 for back taxes.

  [8]

  Golden Years

  “If the Internet is the ultimate democracy, then Christian Bale has been voted its biggest star.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “He is consistently one of the most popular topics on America Online, way ahead of better-knowns like Tom Cruise and Christian Slater.”

  —SPIN

  “For sheer volume of Internet discussion, Christian Bale is in the ranks of megastars Keanu Reeves and Brad Pitt.”

  —USA TODAY

  “Bale is more famous than Leonardo DiCaprio, Ethan Hawke and Christian Slater put together.”

  —The Globe & Mail

  “That man sitting over there in the white suit . . . is the biggest thing to come out of this country since sliced Beatles.”

  —Velvet Goldmine

  The 1990s were, I would argue, the golden era of independent film. Tarantino was the darling of the indie world with his first two films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Kevin Smith had just debuted with Clerks. And David O. Russell, the guy who would eventually direct The Fighter, explored masturbation and incest with his first feature, Spanking the Monkey.

  “The language of film is universal!” declared the trailer shown before every screening at a Landmark Theatre, a North American chain that focused on independent and foreign films.

  It was heady times for actors who wanted a meaty leading role, a labor of love outside the studio system. If the studios wanted movie stars who could guarantee box office success, the indie world was supposed to be all about the craft. This idealism—to cast the right actor for the right role, as opposed to the studio’s bean-counter approach to casting a movie star to make the movie profitable—appealed to the up-and-coming actors and the character actors who had a tough time building their careers once they got slotted into a “type” of role.

  Infamously, James Woods would find that Tarantino had wanted him to star in Reservoir Dogs but Woods’s agent turned down Tarantino repeatedly, without even showing the script or mentioning the offer to his client.

  For Christian, these indie films were great. His taste in music was eclectic; his taste in books, esoteric. But if he wanted to do an American independent film, he faced the problem of overcoming his reputation. At the time, he was considered a Disney teen star with two bombs under his belt—Newsies and Swing Kids. Or he was considered something of a Merchant Ivory English actor, a foppish, fey youth who did period films like Little Women.

  When asked how he chose his roles, Christian replied: “Number one. Did I like the script so much that I didn’t want to finish it? Does the character ‘fit,’ is it a challenge, is this something I would want to see?

  “Number two. When’s the rent due? Who’s doing the catering?”

  Christian was only half-joking about his second point. From his heyday of making six-figures with Newsies, Christian was now consistently looking at smaller parts. His agent complained that he was too picky and that he wasn’t doing enough publicity and therefore couldn’t be considered for big studio roles. But his father continued to hide the family finances from Christian so that he wouldn’t be pressured into choosing a role based strictly on the size of a paycheck. Chatting about his six-figure paydays, I was astonished to find out that I made more money at my marketing jobs than Christian did making movies!

  Concerned about criticism over his lack of publicity, I worked the phones, pitched magazines, and mobilized the Baleheads. Christian was thrilled to be featured in Entertainment Weekly, Movieline, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Detour, Blockbuster Magazine, Seventeen, and more. But David told me that it wouldn’t be enough.

  “For Christian to be crowned the king of the Internet won’t satisfy his agent,” David sighed. “Hollywood doesn’t recognize the Internet as a legitimate medium because it’s outside their control!”

  And at the time, that was true. In 1995, I had a conversation with Christian’s agent about setting up a business to create Web sites for her actors and for each movie as they were released. She dismissed the Internet as “a fad and the domain of geeks.”

  Today, of course, every movie has a Web site as part of its marketing; and central to every Web marketing campaign is the ability to build a “fan community.” The independent film world loved the Internet from its inception. It was a free medium to promote your film at film festivals or markets or on video. With a Web site, you could compete with anyone else with a W
eb site on equal footing.

  Christian, however, told me that my publicity work on his behalf was hampered by my Toronto phone number, which was considered a joke in L.A. and New York, the two global entertainment headquarters that were notoriously snobby about area codes. In meaner circles, Christian advised me, Canadians were dismissed as “lumberjacks,” bumpkins, or worse.

  “It would be better if you could move here,” Christian said to me one day at lunch at the Sidewalk Café on the Venice Beach boardwalk.

  It took me less than ten minutes to agree. I had no dependents, I loved movies, and by then, I had adopted the Bale family as my own. If my own parents could be brave enough to venture to a country where English wasn’t even their native language, I could easily move from Toronto to California. I was on one of my regular visits to L.A. Christian and I had become friends, regularly chatting on the phone or communicating by fax. The Bales were hopelessly low-tech and couldn’t even get their Mac running to send e-mails. I alternated between calls of supportive optimism with Christian and calls of sympathy with David as he would tell me of their latest financial woes.

  “Don’t tell Christian, but . . .” was how many of David’s phone calls to me would begin.

  Their ongoing financial problems also meant that I didn’t press my own questions about being paid for the publicity and marketing work I was doing on Christian’s behalf. I could see they weren’t living in a mansion, they ate crap, and Christian was hardly spending his money on clothes. When I first broached the topic of paying me, David said, “The work you are doing is worth thousands and thousands of dollars. Christian is so lucky that you are both friend and family to him. Of course, we’ll pay you once Christian starts to make some decent money. As you can see, we’re barely making ends meet as it is.”

  When I asked David about having Christian sign a contract with me, David warned me that Christian might be offended at such a formality when I was supposed to be a family friend—a relationship, he insisted, founded on loyalty and trust. Nevertheless, Christian replied to my request for a contract with a card that said, “Between true friends, words are not needed.”

  Because Christian couldn’t afford to pay me, our arrangement was on a “deferred” basis, which meant that only when he could afford to would I be paid. At the time, it made sense and I was happy to invest in Christian’s career. We made future plans for our production company, imagining the day when we could produce indie films that would suit Christian’s eclectic tastes. In the meantime, I found a day job in L.A. in Internet marketing for a software company, and managed to handle Christian’s publicity with e-mails and my ever-present Nokia cell phone.

  It was easy to move to L.A., in part because I had started to think of the Bale family as my own. I liked David and Christian for their dry British humor. David was a fascinating father character completely different from what I expected in fathers. He was always promoting unconditional dreams and worrying about Christian’s low self-esteem, while my parents—conservative Chinese academics—were always worried about the costs or consequences of bad judgments.

  Christian, a young man who had been coddled for so long by his father, was amusingly irreverent and rough around the edges. He could be undiplomatically blunt but he loved my cooking and, after he lowered his guard, laughed easily.

  The first major sign of our growing friendship happened one evening while I was sitting on the couch in Manhattan Beach, watching TV with David. Christian trotted down the stairs, saw me, then continued down and sat beside me on the couch. He was barefoot, wearing shabby corduroy pants and a white T-shirt. I couldn’t help but notice that his toenails were almost dark purple. I wondered briefly (and to myself) what that meant about his blood circulation.

  A couple hours later, he retreated upstairs to his bedroom. David summoned me to the kitchen. He was bubbling with excitement.

  “Did you see that, Harrison? Christian was barefoot in front of you! He never wanders around barefoot in front of strangers! He likes you! He likes you!”

  “You can tell from just that?”

  “Absolutely! It’s just like Mojo rolling over for you. Animals, people, we’re all the same! We’re all God’s creatures! We’re not going to expose ourselves to any stranger or predator! What a wonderful development! Christian likes you! He trusts you! This is wonderful!”

  David always knew how to make even the smallest of Christian’s gestures an sign of hope or good fortune. His optimism was contagious. My eyes lit up. “Great, I’m glad!”

  “Oh, Harrison, be more than glad! Be joyous! I want this to work so much! Christian has many people who say they are friends, but he has no one he can really count on.”

  He leaned toward me conspiratorially. “When we first came to Hollywood, we went to a party where one of Christian’s supposed friends tried to slip my son a drink laced with drugs. I intercepted the drink and thrashed the young man outside the restaurant for toying with my son’s life. Friends indeed! But you, Harrison, you and your Chinese honor and Chinese ways! You come from a culture of loyalty. I can tell you’ll take good care of my little son! You shall be Sancho to his Don Quixote! You shall be Samwise to his Frodo! I know it! I feel it! I can tell you will become great friends with Christian! Great friends! He and you will do incredible things together! Great and wonderful things! Together, you shall move mountains!”

  I could practically hear the trumpets heralding our impending adventure! It was exciting stuff. But there was more.

  The next morning, I received my first fatherly note from David slipped under my door. He wrote:

  Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.

  That was a passage from the Bible, Ruth 1:16 to be exact. At the time, I didn’t know where the quote was from, but it touched me and I felt as if David and Christian were pulling me ever closer into their orbit. David’s occasional but well-timed quotes always added to the moment. We were going to do great and wonderful things indeed.

  I looked at Christian as though he was my own needy kid brother. It was good to be needed, mind you. My real kid brother, Les, was living in Toronto; he was quiet and assuredly independent. But here was Christian, odd and awkward, and somehow even more of a stranger in a strange land than I was. I could also keenly identify with Christian’s feelings that he was without a country. He definitely did not consider himself Welsh. Being English wasn’t helpful to his career in America. And he unquestionably was not American, so he had this curious self-hatred by nationality.

  Christian was bizarrely out of synch as a foreigner who had grown up in England without a television; he simply had no point of reference for American pop culture. We would often hang out and just watch TV and I’d have to explain to him who Gilligan was, why Mr. and Mrs. Brady got married, and who that pointy-eared guy was on Star Trek.

  The other place where Christian was hopeless was the kitchen. Food is a big part of my culture, and after seeing how badly the Bales fed themselves, I decided I would make the occasional meal for Christian. The very first dinner I cooked for him was a steamed salmon steak. First, I had to clean up the mess of the kitchen and throw out foil-wrapped mystery leftovers in the fridge. Then, it was time to go shopping. I had gone across Sepulveda and picked up salmon steaks from the local Ralph’s supermarket, along with rice and asparagus. The salmon marinated in dark mushroom soy sauce for flavor, while I rolled krab sticks in spring roll wrappers for a quick way to make egg rolls. His eyes lit up and he let out a whistle when he walked into the kitchen and saw the dinner preparation. And I had to laugh at dinner when I saw how he argued with Louise over what he thought was the last spring roll. When Louise surrendered the last roll to him, I opened up the oven door to pull out another platter of rolls. Christian promptly threw back the cold one to her and dug into the hot rolls.

  I remember one evening when David, Christian, and I wen
t to see a movie at the Santa Monica Promenade. On our drive up from Manhattan Beach, I was sitting in the backseat. Suddenly, I saw one of the newly introduced Volkswagen New Beetles drive by.

  “Punch buggy!” I yelled, and I hit Christian on the shoulder. It was the Canadian version of Slug Bug, where you hit someone in the car whenever you spot a VW Beetle.

  The effect was instantly catastrophic. Christian yelped, “Dad! He hit me!”

  David, who was driving, swerved the car to pull over. He turned to yell at me, his own giant fist raised: “How dare you hit my son!”

  But then Christian broke down laughing with his infectious asthmatic Woody Woodpecker laugh as I tried to explain the rules of Punch Buggy to David, while hoping I wasn’t about to get punched myself. Christian was very amused.

  The heated temper was something that Christian shared with David. They both overreacted out of proportion to any perceived offense. Whether it was bad service at a restaurant, declined credit cards at the rent-A-car, or mix-ups in reservations, both father and son would get huffy and quickly boil into outrage. David was much more vocal about complaining, while Christian would seethe and hiss like some kind of surly snake. Once at an Enterprise Rent-a-Car just a few blocks down from their Manhattan Beach house, Christian was so loudly lecturing the woman at the desk, and he was so angry that she started trembling and pointed to the security camera overhead for protection. Initially, I found it all very entertaining and assumed the Bale huffy-puffery was all about being English. This was so different from my Asian upbringing of stoic tolerance.