This all-Christian Bale set project had been proposed several years ago by someone and it was brought up periodically, thus allowing me to keep an eye out for any of Mr. Bale’s endeavors. And boy, that man had been BUSY. He’s about the same age as me which meant I’d basically grew up watching his movies but I hadn’t really appreciate the vast body of work he had amassed throughout the years, which is makes me question my own existence. Yes, I’ve painted over 1000 set of dolls, but it hadn’t been my life’s work, you know? I’ve actually squandered quite a few decades of my life away on all sorts of nonsense. But I will like to point out that I have always known I’d be doing arty things and had grimly accepted the fact that I will never live a life of luxury because of that decision. Still, we basically all do this for the love of art, although Christian Bale tends to get a bit extreme by drastically changing his body for his craft whereas I get unreasonably annoyed if I get a bit of glue on my hand that I can’t distinguish from my already peeling skin.
The hardest part about this set is narrowing all the roles Christian Bale has played down to 6 dolls. After some back and fourth we decided on:
Patrick Bateman (American Psycho), Batman (The Dark Knight), Arthur Stuart (Velvet Goldmine), Melvin Purvis (Public Enemies), Dan Evans (3:10 to Yuma), and Irving Rosenfeld (American Hustle)
I was a bit upset and relieved that The Machinist was left out of the roster. It would’ve been a bit of challenge to paint an emaciated man on a roly poly nesting doll but I’d probably find a way around it and have a great time figuring it all out!