Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs biopic has its lead man, and the casting couldn’t be more spot-on: Christian Bale, the very intense, very talented actor of our times. The man who gave spandex superheroism a realistic, deeply psychological turn that’s been imitated endlessly (and mostly poorly) ever since. The man who, less serendipitously, is also known for a taped 2008 tirade evincing exactly that adherence to his craft, as he cursed out a cinematographer distracting him on set. Bale’s dedication is at just the right pitch for his Silicon Valley counterpart: that is to say, frightfully off the charts.
"I do like taking stuff seriously that a lot of people look at as nonsense," he said in our 2009 followup to that infamous scuffle, and what better example of that is there than Jobs’s often hippie-dippy, utopian vision of what glossy consumer electronics could do for our world? Though he was known in his later years as more of a zen-sage tech elder, Jobs certainly didn’t change the world of technology by giving backrubs. Just look at a sampling of his more notable on-stage miscues, usually with the implicit promise of eviscerating whatever poor backstage tech done fucked up his big product reveal:
"We needed the best actor on the board in a certain age range and that’s Chris Bale," Sorkin said. "He didn’t have to audition. Well, there was a meeting." The only question left is, will Sorkin’s hyperactive nerd-banter get in the way of the silent searing passion at the heart of the actor and his subject? Because when you’re on the receiving end of a iron-willed death glare from either of these madmen, it’s not exactly ripe for cracking some Gilbert and Sullivan reference. Either way, look for Bale to knock this one out of the park: Hell, he’ll probably drop down to the requisite weight class in like, two weeks.
[via The Verge]