In Love The Beast, which premieres tomorrow at the Tribeca Film Festival, audiences get to see the 25-year-long relationship Eric Bana has maintained with his pride and joy, “The Beast”—much more than just a car. With his directorial debut, Bana (best known for big studio pictures like Munich, The Hulk and the upcoming Star Trek and Funny People) decided to tell the deeply personal story about what roles hobbies and obsessions play in our lives by pointing the camera at himself and documenting the trials and tribulations of his own personal obsession—which just happens to be the first car he ever owned, a 1974 Ford GT Falcon Coupe,.
“The most difficult part of making this film was trying to explain to people that I was making a film about a car, that wasn’t a ‘car’ film,” says Bana. “As much as I am obsessed with all things mechanical, not even I found the story of someone owning the same car for 25 years that interesting. The thing that I was interested in was that objects, in this case a car, can transcend their materialness.”
The movie follows Bana from Hollywood’s red carpets to the starting line of the Targa Tasmania rally in Australia, one of the most dangerous motor races in existence, and the place to which he’s spent three years of grueling restoration work to get. The unforeseen drama that results encourages Bana to seek the guidance and expertise of life-long car enthusiast Jay Leno, world-famous motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson and even Dr. Phil, who shares insight about the psychological aspect behind the connections people make to material objects.
“We go through a lot of twists and turns as people, and very few things have the ability to stay constant in our lives,” says Bana. “The fact that my car had survived this most tumultuous period of a man growing up told me that the story would need to be as much about how we as humans relate to the world around us, and its changes, as it would about anything.”
For more information, visit http://www.lovethebeast.com.
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