Last April, I chatted with Eric Bana prior to the Tribeca premiere of LOVE THE BEAST, his feature documentary about the Ford GT Falcon Coupe that's been with him, in one souped-up incarnation or another, since he was a teenager. It's an entertaining look at Australian car culture (which, save for the obsession with road rallies, differs very little from American car culture), as well as an earnest depiction of the lasting friendships that can be forged around the rebuilding (or tearing apart) of one's first automobile.

Interestingly, I've received a number of emails from car folk over the last few months asking me when LOVE THE BEAST might hit theaters or DVD. Well, get ready to set your DVRs, because the documentary will be airing on the Speed Channel this Friday (December 18th) at 8 PM. Obviously, it's a must-watch for gearheads, but I think it's also worth checking out if you don't know the first thing about crankshafts or spark plugs. The film follows Bana as he prepares to race his beloved "Beast" in the Targa Tasmania Rally (a legendary open-road competition that's as treacherous as it is exhilarating), and works in amusing/insightful interviews with Jay Leno, Dr. Phil and Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson.

Having finally seen the film for myself (and just generally being a fan of the man's work), I was eager to talk with Bana again. In the below back-and-forth, we discuss the current state of "The Beast", the future of road rallies in Australia, and, since its ten-year anniversary is just around the corner, his iconic performance in Andrew Dominik's CHOPPER. We do touch on something that might be considered a spoiler (if you've never watched the trailer), so if you're sensitive to such things, maybe you should wait to read this until after you've checked out the movie.

Here goes...




Mr. Beaks: Given how obsessed you were with cars as a kid, when did you have time to fall in love with movies?

Eric Bana: (Laughs) That's a pretty good question. I guess it was all part of being a young kid out in the suburbs and being exposed to a lot of really great movies younger than I should've been. My uncle used to sneak me off to the drive-in. Up the road from my house was this drive-in theater, so we would get on our BMX bikes and park ourselves outside and watch the seminal movies of the '70s through a chain-link fence. I just always loved movies... almost as much as cars. (Laughs)

Beaks: That was a real boom period for Australian movies, too. Were you watching a balance of Australian and American films? Did it tilt one way more than the other?

Bana: That's a very good point. When I was a kid, I felt like it was far more balanced; I wasn't so aware of our cinema being overrun with American films. Back when I was growing up, there were a lot of great Australian films. There were a lot of really cheesy ones, too, but they seemed to occupy a fair bit of real estate at the theater - whereas these days, it's really hard for us to compete with the American films. Our films just tend to get swamped by larger-budgeted films. It's very hard. A lot of Australians will be aware of Australian-made films, but that awareness will be much lower than the other three big films that are out. It's just a constant battle for us. In terms of market awareness, we just have no hope.

Beaks: That's so unfortunate. When I was a little kid back in the '80s, we were getting a lot of great Australian films on cable - which was interesting in that it made me aware of this other world where people had strange accents. Did you find yourself learning about the world outside of Australia through American movies?

Bana: Definitely. America seemed like this monstrously large country far away where a lot of magic happened. I was definitely aware that there was a difference between the two.

Beaks: Of course, when we got MAD MAX, he had an American accent.

Bana: Oh, I was mortified. The first time I saw MAD MAX in America, I was at a friend's house in South Carolina, and, when it came on, I was just bewildered. I was like, "What in the world is this?" And he said, "Dude, it's THE ROAD WARRIOR!" (Laughs) He had this crazy accent, and I was just disgusted.

Beaks: So I've got to ask what might literally be the $1 million question: have you fixed The Beast yet.

Bana: I have started, yes. It's getting there.

Beaks: Have there been hiccups? Has it been smooth going?

Bana: Eh, the biggest hassle has just been physically getting the bits and pieces that we need to fix the car. That has been a pain in the ass. They didn't make a lot of them, and most of them have sort of rusted out. A lot of people are holding onto them tightly, and I probably haven't helped myself by, to a small degree, increasing the value of the car here in Australia. (Laughs) I probably should've got all of my parts together before I shot the film.

Beaks: One of your friends states near the end of the film that it would be difficult to rebuild if only because you've customized the car to such an extreme degree. Did I understand this correctly?

Bana: What happens when you prepare a race car is that you try to make it as stiff as humanly possible, with roll cages being tagged to the chassis and all that sort of stuff - which is totally fine until you have an accident. It does its job to protect the occupants, but it sacrifices itself and sends loads through parts of the car that it otherwise wouldn't if it was just a normal road car. You do make it harder on yourself the more work you do on it; to make it a safe race car makes it harder to repair.

Beaks: That must be an difficult push-pull when you're working on it. You must be thinking, "Wow, I'm really in for it if I wreck this thing!"

Bana: Yeah, but I was stupid. I never thought I would crash that car in a million years. Not that one. I'd be more than happy to crash others, but I just never, ever thought I'd put that car off the road. So it was that thing where you're building it for safety, but you don't really think you're going to need it.

Beaks: I've seen rallies like the one in which you participated in other documentaries, and it always blows my mind to see cars tearing ass up and down residential streets. How often do these cars end up in someone's front yard or, worse, their house?

Bana: It happens all the time. Unfortunately, we just had a really bad accident a few weeks ago. A driver that I knew, and his navigator, had a really bad accident in the Adelaide Classic Car Rally. Both of them were killed. It happens very regularly, and that's why that particular [rally in LOVE THE BEAST] is going to be my last. I just got more and more into circuit racing, and racing against top-level drivers. It's a different thrill. (Pause) Yeah, the novelty has worn off. I've seen enough carnage. I race a lot more than I used to now, but I just don't do rallies.

Beaks: Is there a sense that rallies are beginning to pass out of fashion?

Bana: I think it's amazing that they're still going. I think there are a lot of us that feels there's a bit of a shelf life there. That was one of the reasons I decided to make the film: I thought there was a unique opportunity to capture an event that, maybe ten years from now, won't exist.

Beaks: How do you feel you're progressing skill-wise as a race car driver?

Bana: I'm doing alright. I just raced the last two weekends, and... I go okay. I go pretty good for someone whose primary vocation is something else. I love doing it, and plan on doing it more and more, and continue to improve, hopefully. I'm definitely not in the rear of field. I go okay.

Beaks: Did it take a while for other drivers to accept you as a driver?

Bana: I don't know. I know that there's no question when I turn up for a race, they don't look at me as an actor; they look at me as someone who's going to take some points off of them this weekend. They look at me like they would any other driver. There's a hell of a lot of camaraderie, and they appreciate the extra exposure that I can bring to a particular category. They know how important that is, so I get treated very well by other competitors and have a lot of close friends who are fellow drivers.

Beaks: There's a lot of beautiful aerial photography in LOVE THE BEAST. It makes it feel like a really big film. When you started this project, did you think you were going to make a movie on that scale?

Bana: It was really important to me. On the one hand, I love a small documentary; but I also love the camera and cinematography and music. It's a tiny story, but there's no reason for it to be tiny visually. There will be fly-on-the-wall moments, but there's no reason I can't use a helicopter shot if we can pull it off. I really wanted to try to have a combination of being way outside the car and way inside the car, and just try to give the event a sense of scale. At the same time, I think it subconsciously adds to the feeling that the individual himself is rather insignificant in the scheme of it all. We're racing through nature, and, at any point, we can lose that conversation. (Laughs)

Beaks: How many cameras did you have in the car when you were racing?

Bana: I could only afford to have two or three at one time, but, at the end, I had fourteen mounts. I couldn't use them all because, obviously, I crashed the car before lunchtime on Day Four, so I still had seven or eight angles that I missed out on - and I was really upset about that. They were fantastic, and really hadn't been used before. But that was sort of my fault. (Laughs) I couldn't blame anyone else.

Beaks: (Laughing) This is a pretty big undertaking. Did you turn down any roles because you were working on the documentary?

Bana: Um... I guess it was more a case of that I wasn't available anyway. I tried to shape the postproduction around my work; you know, I wasn't about to not do THE TIME TRAVELERS WIFE just because I had six weeks of editing left. One way I protected myself was that we didn't sign on a distributor until I was finished, so I didn't have a hard release date. We couldn't do it any other way really. I had to go to work and stop editing, and then come back three months later and continue editing. I edited over a very long period of time, and I guess TIME TRAVELERS WIFE, and maybe even STAR TREK, was done through that period. It was a project I had to pick up and drop off, but I think I benefited from that. I think time is the best friend of someone editing - and I worked with a great editor. We had a really good working relationship.

Beaks: And it must've been great to have your lifelong friends around as part of the production team.

Bana: (Laughs) They wouldn't consider themselves part of the production team. They wouldn't know what you're talking about.

Beaks: Maybe not part of the "production team", but they certainly add a lot to the story.

Bana: No, it's a great little postcard for our friendship, for sure.

Beaks: One nice little glimpse we get into your life as an actor is shooting from your perspective as you walk down the red carpet. Obviously, this process can get wearying - even what we're doing now. Does it ever just get incredibly tedious? How do you cope?

Bana: It depends. Something like this is no problem at all: you're talking to a person and having an intelligent conversation. I've never had a problem with that sort of thing. But the bigger the film, and the more hoopla, the less you end up talking about the work. That's the part I don't like: the part where you have to be ridiculously guarded in the way you speak to people because they're looking for a quote about someone... who just died that you don't even know. Crazy, crazy stuff. Having to watch every single word you say. That's the only bit I find draining. I don't mind it. I try to enjoy it, but, obviously, I far more enjoy the work than talking about the work.

Beaks: How many cars do you own right now?

Bana: Um... less than Jay [Leno].

Beaks: (Laughs) Define "less"?

Bana: Less than ten. Let's put it that way.

Beaks: That's reasonable. You haven't had to build a warehouse yet.

Bana: I have a pretty big garage. I haven't had to build a warehouse yet, but I have a notion with about a half-dozen of my friends that that's exactly what we should do. I'm working on that.

Beaks: We're getting close to the end of the decade, and I've been foolishly compiling this list of my 100 favorite movies of the last ten years. In doing this, I've been talking about the greatest performances of the decade, and most of my friends agree that your work in CHOPPER belongs in the conversation. When you look back on this performance, and it's probably been over ten years since you shot it, what's your perspective on it?

Bana: I look at it very fondly. It was an incredibly challenging project, a really challenging role, and I think I was probably just old enough at the time to realize that it might never happen again - that I might never find something remotely close to it again. In saying I had that kind of perspective on it, I didn't have any expectation of it being seen outside of Melbourne and Victoria, let alone Australia. So, yeah, it ended up doing a lot more for me than I thought it would. But at the same time... it's a mixture. A lot of the film was a joy to make, and a lot of it wasn't. It's just a very, very unique character, and a very, very rare opportunity. So I guess as an actor who's always trying to find interesting work, even back then I looked at it and said, "It's going to be hard to find another one of these."

Beaks: Andrew Dominik has only gone on to make one other film this decade. Has there ever been a discussion about you two making another one together?

Bana: No, we haven't had that discussion.

Beaks: Since that film, it seems like you've gone out of your way to take some everyman roles to offset the crazier characters. How do you decide what you're going to do next?

Bana: It's really selfish and really simiple: I have a pile [of scripts], and I always choose the best thing in my pile. I have no control of other things being in other people's piles, and it's just really that simple. Every time I've done something, it's just been the best thing on my desk at the time. It's just a constant [process] of trying to find something challenging, that might be a little different, that might get my juices flowing. It may not be the best thing in town, but it's the best thing in my pile. So, to an extent, like a lot of other people, you're choosing from what's made available to you.

Beaks: And do you now have a pile for yourself as a director?

Bana: (Laughs) Only if I was to write something myself. I don't read other people's scripts with an eye to direct. I really don't. I'd love to direct something again, but it would probably be something self-generated.<,/h3>

Again, LOVE THE BEAST premieres Friday, December 18th on the Speed Channel. Check it out!

Faithfully submitted,

Mr. Beaks