Eric Bana loves the Beast
- 00:01:32
- ITN
Eric Bana loves the Beast
Hulk star Eric Bana has been talking about his directorial debut, Love the Beast. The Australian actor, who is due in UK cinemas next week in the new Star Trek movie, has chosen to make a documentary about his beloved 1974 Ford Falcon coupe. But Bana, who loves all kinds of cars and has owned the coupe since he was just 15, said: "I didn't make the film for car people," adding that the "Beast" in the title is a metaphor for a passionate interest in people's lives. He continued: "The film is essentially for their partners, for their family, for their friends. I felt very passionately that that the story would resonate with anyone who has a huge interest." He and his pals spent years lovingly restoring the car and then he entered it into a gruelling and dangerous race, the Targa Tasmania Rally. Bana said: "This journey for me is from age 15 to 40 and you can't help ignore the fact that you become three different people on that journey - from an adolescent to a young adult to a parent to, you know, all these things." "We all go through these changes and the film is as much to me about, you know, the changes that we all go through and experience," he added. The film includes interviews with car fellow car enthusiast and US chatshow king Jay Leno, TV psychologist Dr Phil McGraw, who discusses his emotional attachment to the vehicle, as well as Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson. Bana said his favourite reaction so far to the film was from a woman in Australia. He said: "A lady came up to me after a screening at home and was in tears and said 'I want to thank you', and I'm like 'For what?' and she said, 'For helping me understand my brother and my father. I never fully understood them until today.'"
ITN | April 30, 2009
