Christian Bale by Harrison Cheung

theater and prep it for the next audience.
    Another theory why Newsies bombed: Because the movie’s story line was about the newsboys’ strike, this was an unusuallypro-union labor movie from Disney. Disney movies were typically nonpolitical in theme, comfortably about fairy tales or the environment or the colors of the wind. As a Disney-fied version of Norma Rae , parents were probably looking at the scathing reviews, noticing the lengthy running time, and realizing that this was not a Disney cartoon. Pass. What else is playing at the megaplex?
    So 1992 shaped up as a tough year for Christian. After the disastrous opening of Newsies in April, David went ahead and saddled Christian with the mortgage on the Manhattan Beach house. Christian went with his mother on that fateful trip to Morocco and fell ill—the case of the fecal matter in the food. The release date for his next film, Swing Kids , was being continually pushed back. Originally planned as a Christmas 1992 movie, it was now looking like a 1993 release. The retreating release date was not a good sign.
    However, there were a couple people who had seen Newsies on the big screen who would have a profound effect on Christian’s life. Winona Ryder caught a screening of Newsies and fell in love with the movie. Ryder would go on to cast Christian in the movie Little Women . And by meeting and befriending Winona, Christian would meet her personal assistant, his future wife, Sibi Blazic. And 2,200 miles away from Los Angeles, I caught the movie at the Kingsway Theater on Bloor Avenue in Toronto, Canada, and began to make a connection with the young actor from Empire of the Sun .
    As fate would have it, Newsies ended up being important to the movie universe. In a couple years following its theatrical release, Newsies would thrive as a huge hit on video thanks to an army of Baleheads and Christian’s well-orchestrated Internet marketing campaigns. It was the beginning of Christian’s rule over the Internet.
    Director Kenny Ortega, bitterly disappointed by Newsies’ original box office failure, would begin to get fan mail from peoplewho loved Newsies . One young fan in San Francisco even changed his name to Jack Kelly and started a very popular fan site. In fact, Christian and Ortega received letters from fans around the world who had gotten their high school theater departments or glee clubs to perform numbers from Newsies . In 2006, Kenny Ortega would return to the genre and direct all three High School Musical TV movies for Disney, launching the careers of a new generation of Disney stars, including Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron.
    The success of the High School Musical movies was one of the influences of the hit 2009 TV series Glee . In 2010, Disney quietly registered a bunch of Internet domain names, subtly revealing that they were about to adapt Newsies into a Broadway musical. On March 3, 2010, Disney registered newsiesbroadway.com, newsiesmusical.com, newsiesontour.com, newsiesthemusical.com, and newsiestickets.com. Then, on September 15, 2011, Newsies opened onstage at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey—a key theater to beta test Broadway-bound productions—to rave reviews. Newsies opened on Broadway on March 15, 2012, at the Nederlander Theatre. Amazingly, one of Disney’s biggest bombs is still popular twenty years later. Not bad for a movie that is OFR!
    By the way, Zac Efron’s first major pre- High School Musical role was in the 2004 TV series Summerland , in which his character’s name was . . . Cameron Bale.

    Christian and I sitting around the pool, making plans for world domination!

[5]
Christian Fail
    â€œNow, before I was a movie star, I had other jobs, you know, low-paying, menial jobs. And I can tell you the best job I ever had was being a professional movie star. Because, as a movie star, I get paid a ridiculous amount of money and I don’t have to work that hard. So, to sum it all up, being a movie