Why Bale Should Have a Twitter Account

Twitter is sometimes amusing.  This might be the best you can say for it.  It’s rarely informative, regularly frustrating, and the “trending topics” reveal its ability to be a cesspool for intolerance, ignorance, and misinformation.

However, as I said, it’s amusing.  Entertaining.  Especially when you “follow” the right people.  Yes, you have to be certain that you follow a “verified account” when following a celebrity, and yes, most of them have nothing interesting to say. But some of them do have things to say… and what they have to say is completely bonkers.

Now, I realize that there is almost no chance that Christian Bale will ever get a twitter account – the man loves his privacy and rarely even does interviews.  And when he does, he says things like “The interesting thing about a movie is the movie.”

Which is exactly why a Bale twitter account would be awesome. The thing is, twitter accounts don’t have to be detailed descriptions of where you are and what you’re doing.  They can be many different things.  Here are a few of my favorite celebrity Twitter accounts out there:

1. Russell Crowe

Russel’s Crowe’s Twitter account is fantastic because it allows him to rant without anyone being able to stop him.  It’s clear that nothing he tweets about is filtered through anyone else, and that usually he hasn’t given it much thought before he says it.  I mean this in a very positive way – most actors are very guarded in what they say, or trying very hard to be clever or seem cool.  He just lets it rip.  A great example of this is when he recently went on a huge anti-circumcision rant, which escalated so intensely that hack journalists on TheAtlantic.com and Huffington Post exploited tongue-in-cheek tweets between Crowe and actor/director Eli Roth.  Crowe later apologized, saying  “My personal beliefs aside I realize that some will interpret this debate as me mocking the rituals and traditions of others. I am very sorry”.

He quickly followed this up with tweeting to Eli Roth “There should be more songs about Coatzacoalcos”

He also gets in really wild dialogue with people, such as tweeting at one woman “…but I do have asian friends…”  and then quickly telling someone else, who had criticized his anti-circumcision statements: “It was a woman who brought the subject up carol”

2. Eli Roth

I’m not really an Eli Roth fan.  I’ve never seen any of his movies – I only know him because he was The Bear Jew in Inglourious Basterds.   But I have been following him on Twitter, and really started admiring him after he defended Russell Crowe in the midst of Huffington Post, The Atlantic, and other websites.  These fake news blogs discovered that Roth and Crowe had exchanged jokes about circumcision, and instead of asking for a statement from Eli Roth, Jeffrey Goldberg  from The Atlantic (just one example) published a story with statements such as “The horror director Eli Roth… takes on Russell Crowe for attacking circumcision.”  When Roth responded to this story with attacking them back, Goldberg’s feelings got hurt so he recommended that Roth should take his concerns to the Human Rights Watch.  Which was all very bizarre, but what makes it entertaining to follow both Russell Crowe and Eli Roth is that they engage in active dialogue with their fans and with one another, and go after shoddy journalists with statements like:

“- why are NONE OF YOU doing ANY FACT CHECKING? We’re on twitter – you can ask EITHER OF US. You POISON his name”

3. Michael Caine

Michael Caine is at the other end of the spectrum.  While Crowe and Roth are constantly tweeting about everything, Caine almost never uses Twitter.  While you can tell that Crowe and Roth are actually the ones behind their accounts because no publicist would allow them to be so unfiltered, you can tell that Caine is behind his account because a) his tweets are incredibly rare, and b) they’re borderline nonsense.

On June 9, he set a record for tweeting three times in a day.  This is what he had to say (in order):

“Will be doing Chris Evans Radio 2 show tomorrow morning”

“What are your favourite music”

“Thank you for your soundtracks”

Other than those baffling, grammatically-incorrect, borderline-incoherent tweets about music, almost every other tweet from Caine includes the word “chill,” both as a verb and an adjective.

Such as:  “I am a chilled Knight on a warm night”  or  “A chilled week to all of you”.  Or: “Today is my total chill out day. Hope you are all enjoying the Sunshine”

Why Bale Should Get It

Now, I don’t really think Bale would get a twitter.  And if he did, it would probably be someone else tweeting for him about when his next movie came out.  But can you imagine if he did have an unfiltered twitter?  If after the Terminator meltdown, he had returned to his trailer and let it all go on the internet?  Or even if he just offered us occasional nuggets of wisdom, as Michael Caine does.

I’m going to prove my point with a few quotes from his Esquire interview.  If only we could have an unlimited supply of these, on twitter:

“I’m still singing and dancing and happy. I just don’t like musicals, that’s all.”

Also, “I’ll be fucked if I’m ever gonna pick up Dickens.”