Christian Bale is a jerk... but that isn't the whole story.

So Christian Bale unloaded on the director of photography on his latest film:

Bale flips out

Could that have gone any worse for everyone? I mean... everyone screwed that up.

Apparently Hurlbut is a bit of a jackass and loves to fiddle around with lighting DURING a shot (could that ever end well?). And Bale apparently had told him before on that film to cut it out. And no one is debating that he screwed up that shoot. So he probably deserved to be dressed down.

But what Bale did was beyond dressing down. He wasn't getting it out of his system, he was making himself more and more angry. There was no way things were getting better for anyone during his rant, including himself.

Where was the director in all this? He should have stepped in long before Bale tried to go after Hurlbut physically and said, 'Enough.' Or sent them both off set to get themselves sorted out emotionally.

Think about this: you have the right to vent your feelings at someone. But the moment you start to make other around you who are just observers and not the object of your ire uneasy or prevent them from during their job, then you're wrong. And when you're the guy in charge, you have an obligation to step in and stop that sort of behavior. Otherwise, you're part of the problem.