<

1995

·

1

·

1997

>

1996 Scans

Top

	Newspaper (Australia: 9/30/1996) Scan Provided By: Mona

Cleo Magazine: Bachelor of the Year: Interview

Top

Written By: Unknown
Typed & Provided By Mona
Australia: 1996

Eric Bana. Full Frontal comedian, magazine junkie and Cleo's Bachelor of the year, talks to Paula McFadden about sexy women, sports cars, and swimming pools.

Have you always wanted to be a comedian?
"Not at all. I desperately wanted to be a racing car driver or an actor. But somehow, I became a stand-up comedian instead. I was working as a barman in South Melbourne when one night, at the end of my shift, I decided to get up and try out a comedy routine. It was as simple as that. That's quite a big leap."

How did you get to that point?
"It was pure curiosity. I'd always mucked around at school with impersonations: people would always say, "Do him!", "Do her!" etcetera. But I wanted to see if I could make strangers laugh. So I decided to give it a go. Getting up on stage in front of a pub full of drunken hecklers would be most people's idea of hell."

Weren't you a little nervous?
"You can't allow yourself to be nervous when you perform a stand-up comedy routine. You have to have arrogance. Otherwise you'll fall flat on your face. Luckily, I was in a possession of some of that arrogance."

You've been with Full Frontal for three years now. What's next?
"I'd like to do some straight stuff, some drama. I'd like to become an actor who easily slips between comic and dramatic roles. I'd like Paul Newman's life. Not only has he made it as a great actor but he gets to race cars after work."

So you'd still like to race cars?
"Yeah, I love motor sports. One of my most sacred possessions is a 1974 Falcon coupe, like the one Mel Gibson drove in Mad Max. I've had it for 12 ears and although I ride my bike most of the time, nothing beats my car."

What else are you interested in?
"Exercise. I love working out and being active. I jog, I go to the gym and I walk my dog. I'm also a magazine junkie. I love reading home- type magazines that feature really nice swimming pools."

Why swimming pools?
"I could sit all day and look at photos of houses with beautiful swimming pools. Great pools aren't necessarily big, just special. When I build my own pool it will have little rock ledges, overhanging ferns and dark blue tiles that make it look 12-feet deep."

Is a swimming pool plus a house, marriage and kids on the agenda?
"One day. I'm not in nearly as much of a hurry as I thought I would be. I'm fatalistic. I'm not overtly religious but I'm into karma and aura. When I was young, I was convinced that I would be married and have babies by the time I was 20. But I'm 27, still single and I think it's still a long way off."

Do you believe in everlasting love?
" I believe in love at first sight but I don't believe that love on its own is enough to sustain a relationship. Couples can be madly in love but still at odds with each other. I think fidelity is a good thing and it's important. But I also believe that men and women are fundamentally very different and society spends too much time making out that we're the same. If a person gets married at a young age and manages to stay faithful to that one person for 40 or 50 years, it's highly commendable. Commendable because I believe that humans are serial monogamists and, while staying with one person forever can be wonderful, it's not necessarily natural."

Describe the perfect date.
"The daggier the situation the better. I would much rather take her to breakfast than do the whole dinner/movie/coffee thing. There is too much expectation when you date at night. Not only is alcohol involved but there's the whole "walk to the door, go in for a nightcap, will- this-end-in-sex?" thing. I'd like to start with breakfast and let the rest come naturally. People tend to be more themselves in the daylight hours."

What is the greatest myth about men?
"That all men prefer skinny women. It frustrates the hell out of me. I don't know who started the rumor but it's wrong. Women who are hippy, shapely and healthy are far sexier than starved girls with attitude. Perhaps it stems from media images. In women's magazines, models are generally skinny and pouty whereas in men's magazines the models are softer, curvier and rounder. They're not called men's magazines for nothing."

So, apart from curves, what qualities attract you to a woman?
"Compatibility. That's the most important thing. We have to be a team. Secondly, I like a woman who understands and supports my performing but has her own high level of motivation and ambition. It also helps if she's sexy, athletic and spontaneous."

Humor is a very attractive quality. Do you think it's won you a few hearts?
"I don't like to use humor as a weapon and I don't like people who expect or demand me to be humorous. But at the same time I know I can be piss-funny and work a room if, and when, I need to."

Do you listen to music when you make love?
"I can't. I lost my virginity to Dragon and that kind of ruined the whole making-love-to-music gig for me. Now, I prefer silence."

What's the biggest misconception about you?
"That I'm different because I'm on television. That I'm not a regular bloke. Recently, a prop girl from work spread a nasty story about me around the station. She said I was a wanker because she saw me talking on my mobile phone in public. Does that make every plumber or electrician a wanker too? That sort of narrow-minded, unfounded stuff bugs me. I don't like injustice."

When we bump into each other in 10 years, where would you like to be?
"In Australia, working on another film, tinkering with my car, still enjoying making people laugh and..."

Putting in a really great swimming pool?
"Now, that would be genuinely cool."

Woman's Day: Eric Goes Solo

Top

Written By: Patrice Fidgeon and Celia Barnes
Typed & Provided By Mona
Australia: October 28, 1996

Australian TV’s man of a thousand faces, Full Frontal hunk Eric Bana, is branching out – with his very own show. His impersonations of stars such as Ray Martin, Tim Webster, Glenn Ridge, Shane Warne, Billy Ray Cyrus and Arnold Schwarzenegger have already made Eric a household name.Now he’s landed his own one-hour comedy show, The Eric Bana Show, due to go to air on the Seven network on Thursday, November 14.

“This isn’t a spin-off from Full Frontal. It’s a completely separate idea,” stresses Eric, who is creating, writing and co-producing the special.

“I suppose this is something I’ve always aspired to but it was a huge surprise when the network came to me about it. There will be a lot more variety in the material.”

The show, which Eric hopes will become a weekly program next year, will feature plenty of side-splitting impersonations, plus lots of his own style of stand-up comedy and surprise celebrity guests. So far he’s recorded interviews – both himself and as one of his zany characters – with Aussie Boomer Andrew Gaze and Bathurst 1,000 motor racing king Craig Lowndes. He says his TV publicist girlfriend might even see herself up on the screen “in one form or another” too.

“I haven’t done much relationship-style humour in the past about what goes on between a guy and a girl, but I may have to,” says Eric, 28, who is this year’s Cleo Bachelor of the Year.

“I have an hour to fill, so some ‘couply’ stuff might be in there…all those annoying habits and arguments.”

“We’re like any other couple who don’t live together. We sort of do: we spend most nights together, but we have different addresses.” Eric says his sudden rise to stardom has left him unchanged, even though fans often come up to him on the street telling him he’s a funny guy. It’s something he says he enjoys, although fame also means he loses his anonymity.

“That’s something a comedian really needs to have – to be able to stand back and observe people,” Eric explains.

But he still drives the 1974 Ford Falcon coupe he bought when he was 15 and lovingly restored. And rather than big celebrity parties, he prefers spending time with his family and friends and having a laugh around the dinner table. Eric believes comedy is in his genes. Even as a kid with bruised knees from falling off his BMX bike around his home in Melbourne’s Tullamarine, he was doing impersonations. First it was of his ageing grandfather and then his parents – his German-born mum, Ellenore, and Croation-born dad, Ivan. It only got worse at high school where his passion for mimicking teachers and friends distracted him from his studies and forced him to repeat Year 11.

On Full Frontal, it’s TV celebrities who have been victims of his observant eye. But Eric says he doesn’t spend hours watching videos of his “targets”, preferring to go on instinct instead.

“I pretty much fly by the seat of my pants. I usually find I can impersonate someone straight away or not at all.”

“Tim Webster’s hard to do physically because his character needs a lot of make-up and prosthetics around the eyes and chin. I have to hunch my shoulders, pull my neck in and hold my head at a certain angle. It can be a bit painful.”

For Ray Martin, it’s the “hair” hair that makes the character work. It’s been custom-made for Eric from polystyrene.

“it’s a bit like a bicycle helmet. I could whack on a chin strap and out I’d go,” he laughs.

Jake, his muscle-bound exercise guru, came from watching too much late-night TV where “infomercials” abound.

As for rough ‘n’ ready Poita, Eric says he’s “a conglomeration of all the people I used to hang round with as a kid – all those petrolheads. He’s a suburban bloke you know means you no harm,” says Eric, who races go-karts and motorbikes in his spare time. While he says most people he mimics laugh at his impersonations, such as Sale of the Century’s Glenn Ridge who always has a good giggle with Eric when they cross paths, one man who won’t be laughing at his alter-self in Eric’s special is game show king Larry Emdur. Eric says the host of The Price Is Right just cannot be impersonated.

“That’s right. He’s an original. He just can’t be copied. There were four of us at Full Frontal who tried and couldn’t. Everyone sort of had him, but the director wasn’t happy.”

“I’m not sure if it was his voice or mannerisms that had us all stumped.”

“It was pretty funny,” says Eric, who’s notorious for cracking up while filming. “It almost got to the point where we thought of running our hopeless attempts at doing Larry as a sketch in itself.”

Street Machine: No Road Rules or Speed Limits

Top

Author Unknown
Typed & Provided By Mona
Australia: June 1996

No Road Rules or Speed Limits Driving by the Raw Laws of Physics. Eric Bana Bloody Brilliant to the Targa in a 351 XB coupe.

Eric Bana is the sort of bloke who’d be funny in his sleep.

You know the guy: The bloke who turns up on telly in Full Frontal taking the piss out of everything from politicians to beer commercials. Just talking to Eric and swapping yarns about bikie heroics (he often throws a leg over a 900 Ducati) is enough to break him out in a big grin. But nothing makes his eyes twinkle more than when the subject turns to his XB Hardtop – a car he’s owned for nearly half his life.

As a teenager living in Melbourne’s petrol-scented northern suburbs, his first car had to be a fat Ford Hardtop. Unfortunately, the car Eric bought was, to hear him tell it, “The worst coupe in Australia. But what did I know at the time?” It’s a story most of us can relate to, right?

Aside from being a six cylinder, the coupe body was full of rust and hits.

“Just about everything has been replaced now, doors, guards, you name it. But I’ll be chasing my tail with rust while ever I own this shell,” says Eric.

By the time Eric had left school in the mid 80s, the coupe had been straightened, painted and was sporting a mild 351 and the original single rail four-speed. But by early this year, the lure of doing something along the lines of organized motorsport had hold of Eric. And that explains the latest transformation of the coupe. Basically, it’s been specially built to take on Targa Tasmania – a week-long thrash around the Apple Isle with winner take all.

Sure, there’ll be plenty of exotic machines dragging wheels across apexes all over the Island, but there’s a spiritual entrant for all us street machiners, it’ll be Eric Bana, his trusty navigator and long-time mate Andrew Templeton, and a snarling XB coupe.

To take on what is one of the toughest races around these days, the coupe has undergone a major rebuild starting with new panels and a tidy up of the shell. The work was done by good buddy Ron Goodman at Bradley’s Smash Repairs in Sydney and apart from smoothing everything and adding a set of GT bonnet latches, the bod is stock.

The interior reflects the car’s new role in life with little more than an eight-point alloy roll cage, a pair of Velo race seats, Willans harnesses and a full range of white-faced AutoMeter gauges in a custom-fabbed dash panel.

A Sport Line steering wheel gives Eric something to hang on to and a small navigation computer gives Andrew something to look at, besides the trees rushing past. There’s no back seat – just carpeted shelf, and the pedals are sexy alloy jobs.

The battery has been moved to the boot and lives inside a marine-spec box. The huge washer bottle necessary for the windscreen washers also hangs out in the boot with the standard 80-litre petrol tank.

An event like Targa requires as much stopping and turning as it does actually going, so the coupe’s had plenty of attention paid to suspension tuning and brakes. At the rear, the leaves have been re-set lower and firmer, and lower coils do the same thing at the front. Shocks are Konis at every corner but Eric’s not entirely happy with the setup. Yet.

“We did the suspension a while back thinking we might have a go at the Targa. If we’d been more fair dinkum at the time, we’d have gone for something a bit different.”

Brakes are a different story. The rears are GT discs while the real hardware is bolted to the front. Big, cross-drilled 12-inch discs owe more to Bathurst than Broadmeadows. The calipers are Volvo four-pots.

Mechanically, Eric has stuck with good reliable horsepower rather than go for outright grunt. It’s a long walk around Tasmania, after all.

The 351 is the one he bought second hand all those years ago. It runs a 4MA crank in a fairly standard environment. Bored 30 thou, it’s stuffed full of carefully assembled stock rods and pistons. The cam is roughly GTHO spec and works on Crane roller rockers.

The real power comes from a set of 2V closed chamber heads that have been relieved and flowed, and result in a compression ratio of around 10:1. Pacemaker headers and a 2 3/4–inch single sewer drain the donk. Eric recons there’s some horsepower still lurking in the drain pipes somewhere.

A Holley 650 double pumper replaces the 850 Holley Eric persisted with for years and the fire is lit by an Ignition Developments breakerless dizzy.

Keeping the lid on the whole shebang is a formidable looking four-core radiator that looks like it could keep a road train cool.

A Tremec five-speed gearbox replaced the old four slot “after 10 years of thrashing.” The Tremec’s top cog drops revs by a full 1000rpm at freeway speeds without compromising the lower ratios when Eric’s getting stuck into it. A Center Force 11-inch clutch is the friction link.

A Ford nine-inch diff carries stock 28-spline axles and a 3.5:1 limited slip centre. It completes a driveline that Eric reckons makes about 350 neddies and gets it to the ground pretty damn well.Wheels are 16x8 and 16x9 Simmons (the rears just have to be fat to fill those big guards) shod with 50-series Sumitomo rubber.

Eric reckons the whole car has come together much to his relief and that, like any project this involved with a rigid timetable, there have been problems. None of it would have happened at all without the help and guidance of Tony Rummana who was the brains behind the build and crew chief for the Tassie event.

Sure, a 20-year old Australian muscle car may not cut it against the modern techno-tangle turbo-terrors. But it was a thrill for everyone watching the event when Eric and the coupe surged into view over a greasy crest on full opposite

lock, tyres smoking and the Clevo bellowing like a pissed-off bull.

And your money would have been safe if you bet Eric was laughing like a drain the whole time

 

 

 

 

 

<

1995

·

1

·

1997

>