Christian Bale (8 page)

So for those producers looking for an Ethan Hawke type, David and agent were pleased to offer Christian Bale! Christian met the Disney producers in London to read for
Hard Promises
, a David vs. Goliath drama about a real-life 1899 newsboys strike in New York. The main challenge at the time would be to speak convincingly with a nineteenth-century New York accent. Christian, a gifted mimic, easily won the part.

In 1991, when David moved to Los Angeles, interesting projects were developing at Disney. Under studio chief Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg was in charge of Disney's motion pictures division. With Katzenberg at the helm, Disney had entered a critical and commercial renaissance in the late '80s and early '90s, with box office hits like
Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid
, and
Beauty and the Beast
. And the sound of that success was soundtrack composer Alan Menken, who would win best score and best song Oscars for
The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin
, and
Pocahontas
. Obviously, Disney had the golden touch when it came to family-friendly animation—and they were all musicals.

Disney decided to turn
Hard Promises
into a big-budget musical called
Newsies
. For a nice dusting of Disney box office magic,
Newsies
would be powered by their Oscar-winning composer Alan Menken. The lyrics to the
Ragtime
-like song-and-dance numbers would be written by Jack Feldman, best known for writing Barry Manilow's 1978 hit “Copacabana (At the Copa).” And Disney chose a young Kenny Ortega to direct. This would be Ortega's first time directing, but he was an apt choice to update the live-action musical as a genre for a new generation since he
was the influential choreographer of hit movies like
Dirty Dancing
and major music videos for Madonna and Michael Jackson.

Christian's dad was faced with a dilemma. If he told Christian that he was relocating to Hollywood to star in a musical, Christian would probably stay in England. And though Christian had a three-picture deal with Disney, who knew how much longer they'd have to wait for the next “right” project to come along? And the more time Christian spent in England, the more time he was exposed to the influences of his mother and his girlfriend, Natalie, who were both pushing the “stay in England and go to university” option. So David had many obstacles to convince Christian to sign on with
Newsies
. He and Kenny Ortega prepared carefully for their first
Newsies
meeting with Christian.

In an interview with
Seventeen
, Christian recalls that meeting: “I read for the film in England and then Disney flew me to Los Angeles for a screen test. But before I signed a contract, I met the director [Kenny Ortega] and told him I wasn't comfortable with the dancing and singing and I didn't want to be a bloody Artful Dodger in a remake of
Oliver
!, jumping down the street with a big smile on my face. But he told me it wouldn't be like that and he lied to me about all of these different actors who had done musicals, like Al Pacino.”

But Christian was still very reluctant: “I didn't want to do a musical specifically. It came my way. I read the script first when it was a drama. By the time I auditioned for it though, it had already become a musical. For the first few auditions, I refused to sing or dance. That didn't last long.”

Christian was worried about ending up like Mark Lester, the star of
Oliver
!, the giant 1968 hit musical adaptation of
Oliver Twist
. That movie didn't do much for the career of its young Disney star; Lester gave up acting at the age of nineteen.

But David knew better than to tell Christian that he “should” or “must” take this Disney picture. Skillfully, he persuaded Christian
to think of
Newsies
as an actor's challenge on many levels. There was the New York accent and the athleticism of the dance. David also echoed Kenny Ortega's fib that Al Pacino had also started with musicals. In the years before handy Internet resources like the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), there was no easy way for Christian to check if his dad and Ortega were lying to him.

And there was every expectation that this big-budget production, like every other Disney movie in the past ten years, would become a worldwide hit, like Ethan Hawke's
White Fang
. What more could Christian ask for to relaunch his movie career?

Faced with his father's logical arguments and charmed by Kenny Ortega's earnestness, Christian reluctantly agreed. He told
Movieline
: “Eventually I said: ‘Fuck it, let's just do it.' But I had a lot of doubts about it—I never liked musicals, and even then I knew I'd never do anything like that again.”

Newsies
was transformed into a musical, based loosely
—very
loosely—on a real-life 1899 newsboys' strike in New York City. Christian would star as street kid Jack Kelly, who would take a couple brothers, Davy and Les, under his wing to teach them how to hawk papers on the street. Jack eventually falls in love with their older sister, Sarah, and then rallies all the newsboys into a big musical number, a strike against the evil Joseph Pulitzer and his newspaper,
The World
.

Though Christian was not a big enough star to have final casting approval, Ortega generously invited Christian to participate in the auditioning of his character's love interest, Sarah. One actress who did not make the cut was Milla Jovovich, who would go on to star in
Resident Evil
. Though Jovovich could sing, her readings with Christian were abrasive. Christian dismissed any actress he felt was too modern-looking since
Newsies
was set in 1899.

The actress who won the part was nineteen-year-old Ele Keats. Oddly enough, poor Keats could not sing at all, as she later revealed: “I didn't know it was going to be a musical. I am not a
singer at all. A vocal teacher spent some time with me to teach me to sing properly. I am totally tone deaf. There was a song in
Newsies
that Sarah was supposed to sing but after trying it a few times with the vocal teacher, Kenny Ortega decided to cut it.”

Working with Christian was a little intimidating for Keats. She recalled: “I felt really bad for him when he had to do a scene with me because I freeze up a lot and he always seems cool and natural in front of the camera. I think, at first, we were a little uncomfortable around each other but after a while, we became friends.”

In the large cast were two other young actors working on making the transition to grown-up roles. David Moscow had played the younger version of Tom Hanks in
Big
. And Gabriel Damon was the veteran of many TV shows, including
Star Trek: The Next Generation
. Many of the other kids were Disney veterans like Aaron Lohr (
The Mighty Ducks
).

Rounding out the cast in the adult roles were a couple of impressive names: Robert Duvall played Joseph Pulitzer, Ann-Margret would be Medda, a local townhall owner, and Bill Pullman would be the newspaper reporter, Bryan Denton.

Christian tried to get his dog, Mojo, an appearance on
Newsies
, but alas, Mojo—not a little dog that was good with commands or crowds—didn't work out. However, Christian's girlfriend, Natalie, was an extra who appears at the beginning—the schoolgirl wearing a hat who walks by the ogling gang of newsboys. And Christian's sister Louise was also an extra, playing Ann-Margret's maid.

“Working as an extra on
Newsies
was a blast!” Louise remembered. “I had so much fun all summer long. I got to dress in a different period costume every day I worked, and I got to hang out with all the cast, who were so much fun. Being an extra is not easy however. The day usually begins at 6 am, you sit around for 90 percent of the day, and then you're the last to leave the set at around 9 pm.”

Though she didn't have any lines as an extra, Louise was thrilled to be very visible in a scene with Ann-Margret.

She recalled: “I was absolutely terrified when I found out that I was in a scene with her, and then even more terrified when I found out how close the camera would be. She made me feel very comfortable, and she was extremely professional. Before we shot the scene where she is trying to get to the Newsie who is getting beaten by the police, she pulled me aside and told me that she was really going to go for it, and that I had better hold her back. Well, I didn't have to act at all! She is a strong lady! I really had to work hard to hold her back, and then dragging her away was a real workout. In the chaos of it all, Ann-Margret accidentally kicked me in the same place in the knee take after take. By the end of the day I had a huge bruise on the side of my knee, and I took a photograph of it. I'm very proud to have a battle wound from Ann-Margret!”

Kenny Ortega had trained under Hollywood legend Gene Kelly (
Singin' in the Rain
), and he believed in being prepared. He set up a two-month
Newsies
camp for the cast to train and rehearse. As many of the cast members were not trained dancers, they had to learn the basics, including jumps and turns. During training camp, Gene Kelly made a set visit and complimented the boys on their work.

Said Christian: “I don't know what kind of dance you would call the
Newsies'
training but we got very fit, jumped around a lot and I got very dizzy.”

Ortega was thrilled with the comprehensive regimen: “This was very different for most of them, and obviously very hard work. They had to be in dance class every day, then have voice lessons, dialect and scene studies, gymnastics, and martial arts classes. All this in addition to their regular school studies!”

By all accounts, the
Newsies
set was very boisterous. Managing a large cast of teenage boys would be a challenge. Ever the worrywart, David visited the set daily with a large bag of vitamins
and nutritional supplements to keep Christian's energy up. He was always concerned about Christian's health.

It was that insurability issue again. Christian had told me, “Bloody Hollywood. If they think you're sick all the time, you'll never get work! The production companies won't insure you! American actors dripping with syphilis and gonorrhea and they work. But let one English actor cough or wheeze and the producers will send you packing back to England!”

Ele Keats recalled: “I have never worked with a cast that size before, so it was a challenge, but fun. I didn't get too close to a lot of people because most of the boys had worked with each other for weeks already when I came in. But we all became friends. The crowd scenes were fun, but exhausting. Because there were thousands of kids all over the place, it could sometimes take an hour to get everyone in the right spot.”

To help the main cast of newsboys bond, the producers arranged frequent social events like softball games or pizza parties. Robert Duvall came out one evening for a bowling party with the young cast. When David asked the Oscar-winning actor for career advice for Christian, Duvall recommended that Christian go to university. Duvall himself had graduated with a degree in drama and had a strong New York theater background when he was roommates in the 1950s with another struggling actor by the name of Dustin Hoffman. “School is a strong foundation for technique and there is nothing like the live theater to train an actor's instincts,” David recalled Duvall saying.

“Good advice,” David said, “but that wouldn't work for Christian as he's already committed to moving to L.A.” And even if David would have allowed Christian to entertain the thought of university, there was the practical matter of where. If Christian remained in England, he would have paid regular tuition fees. In America, he would have had to pay the much higher foreign student rates.

During the making of
Newsies
, cast member Michael Goorjian made a twenty-five-minute home-movie horror spoof called
Blood Drips Heavily on Newsies Square
, where “Don Knotts” systematically kills off the newsboys one by one. The short became a cult hit on YouTube and offers a peek at the high spirits on set. Goorjian went on to a successful film and TV career, winning an Emmy and a number of film festival awards for his short films. (
Blood Drips Heavily on Newsies Square
would eventually be surpassed on YouTube by
F*cking Newsies
, the spoof trailer mashup of
Newsies
and Christian's foul-mouthed tirade on the set of
Terminator Salvation
.)

Christian told a reporter that the teeming masses on
Newsies
were also hormonally charged: “It was a massive production, with hundreds of extras. Apparently there were a few extra kids who were offering their services to anybody who paid, all during the time we shot there. There was even a
Newsies
pimp ring. They used the sets, wherever. They were using my dressing room on my days off, I heard later.”

All Disney movies have a happy ending—an unwritten law from the early days of founder Walt Disney when he was creating American interpretations of beloved fairy tales and parables. It was part of Disney's feeling that American optimism meant that you could wish upon a star and your dreams would come true.

So for
Newsies
, the happy ending meant the newsboys' strike against Pulitzer would be successful and that street kid Jack Kelly would give up his dreams of moving to Santa Fe and stay in New York with his love interest, Sarah. That did not sit well with
Newsies
fans, who openly detested Sarah as the “Destroyer of Dreams.” For a time, Ele Keats was called the most hated woman in the Balehead World—especially thanks to the “inappropriate for the time period” tonsil-tickling kiss she has with Christian at the end of the movie, his first on-screen smooch.