The pressures of being a celebrity are enormous—we understand that. Take Christian Bale for instance.

How can any thespian be expected to respond in a reasonable way when faced with the choking, all-consuming pressure that comes from having to play characters that either dress up as bats or battle evil futuristic robots?

Christ, it’s pressure like that that makes a guy want to:

a) wear a diving bell

b) allegedly assault his own mother, or

c) go absolutely apeshit over a DP’s unacceptable, um, walking.

That’s why, having now heard the infamous rant in which Bale reamed out Terminator Salvation’s Director of Photography Shane Hurlbut for walking into the shot, we all need to first pause and reflect on the truly horrible conditions that Christian Bale has to suffer through every stinking day of his life. That poor, poor bastard.

That understood, we do admit that the on-set blow up aimed at Hurlbut was indeed regrettable, and now it seems Christian Bale thinks so too. Taking to the airwaves on L.A.’s KROQ on Feb. 7, Bale apologised for his behaviour:

“The thing that disturbs me so much is that I’ve heard a lot of people saying that I seem to think that I’m better than anyone else. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m a lucky SOB. I never forget that and that is why I put so much into what I do I was out of order beyond belief. I was way out of order. I acted like a punk. I regret that. And there is nobody that has heard that tape that is hit harder by it than me.”

Christian Bale, you complete us.

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Christian Bale’s Terminator rant is easily the best thing to happen to the world in about five years – fact.

But what’s also fact is it’s not universally loved. The sad truth is that some saps can’t take pleasure from a recording of a prick being a prick to a prick. And, inevitably, most of those people are famous.

So far, Whoopi Goldberg and Terry Crews have stood up for Christian Bale, building hopes that there’ll soon be an all-star charity concert to raise awareness of the rights of unbearably dickish actors with indeterminate accents so. Fingers crossed it’s called AH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH-Aid.

Look, we know it might cause unimaginable harm to his career as an actor, but we never want this Christian Bale rant stuff to end. Really, we don’t.

It’s so perfect that we want it to follow him everywhere for the rest of his life. We want Batman 3 to be about Christian Bale being driven into geographically nonspecific madness when an Alfred The Butler keeps trashing his scene and walking about ah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah like this even though he’s a nice guy.

When Christian Bale dies, we want his Oscars ‘In Memorium’ photo to be accompanied by the sound of him shrieking “DO NOT SHUT ME UP! NO! NO!” In short, we are in love with Christian Bale’s Terminator rant and we want to marry it.

But that’s going to be an uphill struggle, not only because getting married to a recording of Christian Bale’s abusive voice is both unlawful and probably a sign of a deep psychiatric disorder, but also because several people are doing their best to brush Christian Bale’s obviously dickish behaviour under the carpet. Yesterday a Terminator Salvation assistant director called Christian Bale’s rant a ‘non-event’, and now other celebrities are leaping on the bandwagon as well.

First came Whoopi Goldberg. Whoopi can totally relate to Christian Bale’s predicament, partly because of the time she got so angry on the set of Star Trek that she ended up biting Worf on the forehead, and secondly because her day-job involves sitting on a table with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, a job which would leave anyone teetering on the edge of a violent meltdown. On The View, Whoopi said:

“We don’t know if this (incident happened) at the end of the day, we don’t know how many hours (he had) been working. It’s tough. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I too have gone off on people, because if you’re a professional, you know what you’re not supposed to do.”

And then Terry Crews, who is apparently an actor, decided to step in for Christian Bale as well, saying:

“I’d get mad too if I was the number one star in the world and people started to mess with me. He is a class act. He is one of the greatest actors ever. You can catch anyone on a bad day.”

Where we go from here is anybody’s guess. Although it looks like the movie world is already starting to rally around Christian Bale, there are also murmurs that his career could be badly affected by his outburst.

All we do know is that Christian Bale and Shane Hurlbut – the man on the receiving end of his tantrum – are through, professionally. Which is a real shame – as well as Terminator Salvation, Bale and Hurlbut had previously worked together on the Samuel L Jackson Shaft movie, meaning that Hurlbut’s career in the spectacularly badly thought-out remake/sequel business is all but over.

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The thing about Christian Bale is that he’s a nice guy. HE’S A NICE GUY! NO! NO! DO NOT SHUT ME UP! NO!

But you probably didn’t realise that. And that’s all thanks to yesterday’s glorious tape of Christian Bale unloading both barrels of his sweary idiot-gun at a director of photography on the Terminator Salvation set.

But, according to a Terminator Salvation assistant director, Christian Bale’s tantrum was a “non-event”. Rumours that he said this while whimpering on his knees while Christian Bale held a knife to his throat and cackled like a maniac are unconfirmed, but probably true.

Now, we’re not saying that Christian Bale is an angry man as such, but we wouldn’t really like to be in the same room as him today. Remember that Christian Bale is the sort of person who, if you tell him that he’s the above-the-title star of the second-biggest movie in cinema history, will get arrested for assaulting his own mother.

And that’s Christian Bale on a good day. So just imagine what sort of prick he’s being today, now that the infamous tape of Christian Bale ranting at a Terminator underling has hit the internet.

You’ve no doubt heard the tape already, so you’re fully aware of the majesty contained within. The swearing. The egomania. The deployment of at least 36 different regional accents. The immortal line “Why the fuck are you walking right through? AH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH like this?” The inescapable sensation that Christian Bale is the world champion of being a swaggering, self-important prick to almost everyone he meets. It is golden, and we’re not even slightly exaggerating there.

However, that hasn’t stopped any number of party-poopers from rushing up and widdling all over our strawberries by bleating that “oh, but the tape was taken out of context,” and “but Christian Bale is a professional,” and “you don’t understand what it’s like to be an actor.” And to those people we say this: “DO NOT SHUT US UP! Do not… NO! NO!”

Sadly, one of those people is Bruce Franklin – an associate producer and assistant director on Terminator Salvation – who has come scampering to Christian Bale’s defence, probably because he’s terrified that he’ll end up with a screwdriver poking out the top of his skull if he doesn’t. E! Online reports:

“If you are working in a very intense scene and someone takes you out of your groove…It was the most emotional scene in the movie. And for him to get stopped in the middle of it. He is very intensely involved in his character. He didn’t walk around like that all day long. It was just a moment and it passed. He is so dedicated to the craft. I think someone is begging to make some noise about this, but I don’t think it’s fair.”

Actually, we do see Bruce Franklin’s point here. Christian Bale was working on a very emotional scene. The most emotional scene in a movie full of emotional scenes, in fact. Wait, did we just say ‘emotional scenes’? We meant ‘utterly clueless scenes of Christian Bale running away from a load of angry robots’. Our mistake.

Whether Bruce’s defence of Christian Bale helps is another question, though. Some are already saying that Bale’s career might be affected by this tape, with producers being reticent to hire such a notorious hothead for their movies. But even if that’s the case, we’re sure that Christian Bale will still find work. True, that work will be limited to being the holiday cover for Bill O’Reilly, but a job’s a job.

But anyway, if the Christian Bale rant tape and all its reprecussions have taught us anything, it’s that we really need to build a time machine and travel back to see what the set of 3:10 To Yuma was like. Seriously, you can’t employ two actors as obviously mental as Christian Bale and Russell Crowe without someone having their jaw ripped out.

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