Batman Goes Bateman: Real Life Insanity Clouds the Dark Knight
I hate you mom!!!
I was trying with all my energy not to write about the new Batman move, The Dark Knight, which just had the biggest opening weekend in history ($158 million). Last spring, one its stars, Heath Ledger, who plays the Joker, overdosed on a pill combo that included OxyContin. Now Batman himself, Christian Bale, gets arrested in London for beating up his mother and sister. In effect, a movie that cost $180 million plus another $100 million for marketing, and then grossed more than any film ever, has been hijacked by its stars’ insanity. That’s a lot of precedents.
British police sources tell TMZ Christian Bale has been arrested and is still being grilled on allegations of assaulting his mom and sister Sunday, the night before the London premiere of “The Dark Knight.”
Bale went to a London police station this morning by appointment and was arrested there.
A recent stat showed the number of drug deaths in the US jumping from 800 to 2500 between 1999 and 2005. This jump is largely due to a legal painkiller, OxyContin. Ledger’s death, for all its media coverage, hasn’t spurred any talk about the fact that one opiate, which was falsely marketed by Purdue Pharma as non-addictive, is killing so many people. (Last year Purdue lost a $2 billion lawsuit for false advertising.) So many people my age know of folks who have had their lives ruined or ended by OCs. If Hollywood had any balls, they’d use Ledger’s death not just as a vehicle for Dark Knight dollars but also as a way to confront the FDA for tighter regulations on opiates.
Bale, well, he’s played a lot of “dark” dudes, most notably Patrick Bateman, maybe the best psycho in American literature. Anyone else beats his ma and sis, I’d say it would hurt him, but the Batman numbers and Bale’s “Psycho”-background make him an unprecedented franchise. Even this shouldn’t hurt him.
Now if they’d only turn Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns into a film and let Bale kill that poon Superman.
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July 22nd, 2008 at 11:34 am
Great catch Ray, there were numerous rumors that Bale lost it while filming the Machinist, and he actually was trying to starve himself to death (”I wanted to get down to 80 pounds but SAG wouldnt let me!”) then supposedly he was roiding when he got super shredded really fast immediately after. Makes sense if this is roid rage…
Ive lost 2 friends to OCs in the last year, shit sucks and needs to be regulated a heckuva lot better than it is, like why isnt Ledger’s fam spearheading a campaign against it? Is there a PSA before the screening of Batman from them warning the audience about it? If not, then thats fucked up.
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Ledger’s family seem like provincal Aussie tools.