Tribeca '09: Eric Bana Teaches Mr. Beaks To LOVE THE BEAST!

That human beings can develop a strange, yet potent emotional attachment to their cars is hardly a revelatory notion; there are hundreds of pop songs dedicated to the glory of automobiles, there's Herbie, and there's this guy. But has there ever been a full-on, unapologetic love story centered solely on a man and his conveyance? A tale that dares to acknowledge our capacity to form a bond - and even mourn - an inanimate object that gets us from Point A to B? This is what Eric Bana has attempted to celebrate with his directorial debut, LOVE THE BEAST. It's a documentary that examines Bana's twenty-five-year relationship with his Ford GT Falcon Coupe, a vehicle he acquired as a teenager because, well, that's what fucking Mad Max drove. For Bana, "The Beast" was more than just a first car; it was also the "campfire" around which he gathered with his best friends on weekends. The Beast was the excuse to hang out. And it sparked in the actor-director a passion for cars that has endured to this day. So when Bana thought about making a classic "car movie" of his own, he decided against going the LE MANS/DAYS OF THUNDER route, opting instead for a more personal approach that might not alienate viewers who lack the know-how to change a tire. Initially, the idea was to film his - and The Beast's - participation in the Targa Tasmania Rally, an insanely challenging road race held annually in Australia. Then he had to go and slam The Beast into a tree. It was at this point that LOVE THE BEAST turned into an angst-filled drama in which Bana debates whether he should rebuild or completely junk his first (mechanical) love. Before making his decision, Bana sought out advice from the likes of Jay Leno (a noted car collector), Jeremy Clarkson (the host of TOP GEAR) and Dr. Phil. These interviews are complemented by some invigorating racing footage and Bana musing about how he came to fall in love with automobiles. I've been a huge fan of Bana's since his mind-blowingly brilliant performance in CHOPPER, so I was more than happy to get on the phone with him to talk about LOVE THE BEAST - which is making its North American premiere this week at the Tribeca Film Festival. In the below interview, we talk about car movies, the soullessness of leasing, and some science-fiction movie that's coming out in May.

Mr. Beaks: I'm excited that you've decided to make a real car movie. We don't get enough of those.

Eric Bana: (Laughs) No, we don't.

Beaks: Which is strange because America - and, obviously, Australia - has such a love affair with its automobiles.

Bana: I guess we sometimes confuse ourselves as to what we think is a "car movie". Part of my frustration over the years has been that fast-paced, quick-edited action movies with cars have kind of been considered "car movies" when, to me, in most cases they essentially weren't. And as a car person, I would sort of watch them and not really relate to them at all.

Beaks: Up until now, I've always felt that the ultimate car movie was VANISHING POINT.

Bana: I agree. VANISHING POINT is, next to MAD MAX, the one that most quintessentially captures the spirit of that kind of soulful connection between one man and one machine, and the journey they go on together, and the fate that is bestowed upon them. To me, VANISHING POINT is the pinnacle.

Beaks: So have you sort of cast yourself as Kowalski here?

Bana: (Laughs) To the extent that I have captured that spirit, that was most definitely unintentional.

Beaks: Now, I don't know at what point in the film you wreck the car, but this was not the documentary you set out to make, correct?

Bana: Exactly.

Beaks: So what kind of film did you think you were making?

Bana: At the beginning, the idea was largely an emotional thing. The film had emanated from an emotional idea rather than a plot idea. What I was trying to capture was the potential importance of a physical object in our life, and the extent to which a hobby can become way more important than we think it is. So I was trying to capture the spirit of what that emotion was - the role my car had played in my life and the people around me.

Beaks: But then the car gets wrecked, and it becomes a story of friendship?

Bana: Yeah, it kind of does. The reason the crash works so well is that people who don't care for cars at all - and that's predominantly who I made the film for, believe it or not - they find themselves suddenly caring. And the beauty of that is that it tends to creep up on them. They don't really care much about the car in the beginning, but by the time the car is crashed and we're questioning the obligation of repairing it: do you repair it just because you can, or do you realistically look at it and go "It's had its day, and the right thing to do is pull it apart and transfer those bits to another project down the line"? And the non-car people are sitting there screaming at me going, "What the hell? No! You've got to fix the car!" Which is kind of cool. So the crash, and the third act, ended up being a lot stronger than the original skeleton draft - which, of course, I will not reveal. It was genius!

Beaks: (Laughs) So you're not going to post that for us to read?

Bana: (Laughs) No.

Beaks: Because we'd happily premiere it! But it's cool that you're trying to show the connection that we often don't realize we have to these automobiles. When I moved to L.A., I drove out in my old Isuzu Trooper, which had been my car in high school. But it had suffered through too many Ohio winters, was really rusting apart, and, finally, within a couple of years of being out here, it was time for it to go. But once it was gone, I had this traumatic experience where I remembered all of the memories I'd associated with that car, and realized that I actually missed it.

Bana: It's no different from a friendship. The older the friend, the more special they are because of what you've been through together. I think cars are the same. In this day and age - especially in Los Angeles, where there's this unbelievable attitude geared toward the fact that you turn them over every four years like they're a time bomb. I've had conversations with people saying, "Oh, I've got to get out of my Lexus. It's done." And I'm like, "What do you mean 'It's done'?" And they're like, "It's three years. The lease is up. It's done. I have to get out of it." And I say, "What do mean you 'have to get out of it'? What happens if you stay in it. What happens if you keep it for another four years? What happens if you, in fact, buy the car?" "Well, um... oh, no, no, it's done." (Laughs) It's this hilarious notion. I'm actually very proud that I talked a close friend here into buying his car that he'd owned for three or four years. He bought it, and he's had it now for seven, and he's developed this bond with his car that's very interesting. He's quite proud of the fact, now. He's sort of become cool, because he's in an industry where you turn them over every two or three years. He's coming up on six years now.

Beaks: It's okay to buy!

Bana: (Laughs) It's okay to own. It's okay to keep.

Beaks: I want to talk about "The Beast", which is a Ford GT Falcon Coupe. I think most people know it as the car from MAD MAX. Is this the most fetishized car in Australia?

Bana: I think for Ford lovers, it's a quintessential Australian muscle car. For American audiences, it's very similar to a Mach 1 Mustang - that would be its closest relative. Ford and General Motors have their own outfits in Australia, so all of our cars are locally designed and made with American components. So this was the car that was the best example of that maverick Ford Australia design.

Beaks: And you chose to race it in the [Targa Tasmania] Rally. How does that race work?

Bana: That particular rally is a five-day road race event where they shut the island of Tasmania down, and we literally race around it. The roads are closed off to the general public. It's kind of like saying "You start at the beginning of the PCH, and... you stop every twenty miles so we can let the public through and back into their homes." Basically, it's a race conducted on public roads - which is unbelievably exhilarating, but at the same time unbelievably dangerous. In Australia, when you fall off the road, you hit gum trees. You don't hit a cactus bush or a wooden fence; it's usually with a catastrophic result

Beaks: Judging from the footage I've seen, it looks like you got to film quite a few gnarly wrecks.

Bana: Yeah, we do have a little bit of a montage in there of crashes. We tried to catch the essence of what it feels like to go out and race. One of the reasons was because my producing partner, Peter Hill... he and his bothers own a company called Globe [International], which makes skate- and surf-wear. They've made a lot of surfing documentaries, too, and every time I would watch one, I'd say, "I don't know how to surf, but whenever I watch a good surf doco, I feel like I know what it feels like to surf." I was trying to capture the essence of that in this film. We try to put the viewer in the cockpit as much as possible, and just when they're starting to have a really good time with it, we show them what happens when you make a tiny mistake. So we do have a sequence where we show pretty spectacular footage of people totaling their cars.

Beaks: What's the top speed you hit in "The Beast"?

Bana: Uh... that's a good question. Probably about 150 miles per hour. Something like that.

Beaks: That's not bad.

Bana: It just gets there very fast. (Laughs) It's not usually the top speed that's exhilarating; it's the manner in which you get there.

Beaks: I love the little bit where you're talking to Jeremy Clarkson, and he seems to think you're mad. He says, "All muscle cars are crap." Is that a thing in car culture? Is there a snobbery about muscle cars?

Bana: Well, he's kind of stating the realistic fact that when you start to pretend they're race cars, you're really in for quite a bit of trouble. One of the problems I had was that I evolved as a driver from someone who liked to tinker with cars and take his Falcon out to the occasional rally for fun. I then became a pretty serious driver who decided it would be a great idea to take this old car that I had and put it in one of those races. That is a recipe for disaster. The most dangerous person in a rally is a competitive driver who's used to driving great model machinery. You put him in an old muscle car, and he tries to apply the same laws of physics and competitiveness, it ends like it did for me.

Beaks: As a car person, getting to walk around Jay Leno's garage must've been great. He's known for having this incredible vintage car collection.

Bana: It was like dying and going to heaven. If I had the same collection, it might be slightly different - as anyone's individual collection would be. But Jay's collection is unbelievably impressive. He's as hardcore a car person as you can get. He's not just someone who's got this amazing collection and a ton of cash; he really lives and breathes that culture. It was just great to see. It's great to see someone so devoted to preservation and restoration of really important vehicles. He's just mad for it.

Beaks: Was there a particular car in that collection that blew your mind?

Bana: Yeah. My favorite car ever made is the McLaren F1, which is a road car that was built back in the '90s. He's got one. You just see a glimpse of it [in the movie]. It's a black, essentially single-seater race car that's closed-in. It's a pretty special car. They didn't make that many of them.

Beaks: Do you think you'd try to make a car action movie one day?

Bana: When I was developing the idea for this, I did think that the worst way to execute this would've been to try to make this a narrative. Its best chance was always going to be as a documentary - even if it failed. I felt like if we tried to turn this idea into a guy from the suburbs, and he and his mates have sort of clambered around this car for twenty-five years, and its helped keep their friendship alive... that, in a narrative form, could've been pretty cheesy and, potentially, pretty bad. So I was determined to try and let it live as a documentary. But, yeah, I'd like to direct a narrative one day. It probably wouldn't be a car film, though. I think this is my car film. We'll see if I come up with another idea. It took me about thirty-eight years to come up with this one.

Beaks: So I guess the Enterprise sort of qualifies as James T. Kirk's "Beast"?

Bana: (Laughs) Absolutely.

Beaks: Do you see any comparisons there between the relationship he has with the Enterprise and the way you feel about "The Beast"?

Bana: I think Nero's spaceship, "The Narada", is the "Beast" of the film. There's no doubt about that. I think the makes a starship look pretty pedestrian. I think the Narada is definitely the most bitching vehicle in the film.

Eric Bana's LOVE THE BEAST will have its North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on Wednesday, April 29th. Here's the full screening schedule: Premiere:   April 29th, 2009:  7:00 PM Location:  School of Visual Arts (Theater 1) 333 West 23rd Street (between 8th & 9th Avenue ) New York, NY   10011 Capacity: 480   Screenings:   April 30th, 2009:  4:30 PM Location: AMC Village 7 (Theater 5) 66 Third Avenue (@ 11th Street ) New York, NY   10003 Capacity:  160   May 1st, 2009:  6:15 PM Location: AMC Village 7 (Theater 7) 66 Third Avenue (@ 11th Street ) New York, NY   10003 Capacity:  163   May 2nd, 2009:  7:00 PM Location:  Tribeca Cinemas 54 Varick Street (@ Laight Street/below Canal Street ) New York, NY   10013 Capacity:  100 Can't wait to check it out myself. Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks