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Arena: Hulk Smash
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Interview by: Paul Croughton
Typed & Provided By Mona
United Kingdom: August 2003
In just four years, Eric Bana has gone from Aussie stand-up to duking it out with Brad Pitt in next year’s main event, Troy. But first there’s the small matter of the biggest role in comic book history to deal with…
It would be somewhat fitting if we could begin a profile of the guy who’s going to be playing the most famous hulking mass of pent-up aggression in comic history with the words, “You wouldn’t like him
when he’s angry.” But wouldn’t you know it, Eric Bana isn’t angry. Considering that he’s having breakfast not with his wife and young family in the luxury apartment where he’s been staying for the last few weeks, but round the corner in a particularly just-so Mayfair tea house, while Arena fires questions between mouthfuls, he’s remarkably chipper. But he’s also pretty confused. Looking down the options on the menu, he gives his newly grown half-inch of beard a scratch and asks a question. “Mate,” he says, “What the hell is a haddock?”
So he’s not up on our quaint breakfast customs, but we can let that slide. In the last three years Eric Bana’s rise from Australian TV stand-up to Hollywood leading man has been so swift, so dramatic – imagine Ross Noble landing the lead alongside Tom Cruise in next year’s biggest blockbuster – that it has left him with little time to get himself au fait with the peculiarities of early morning British dining.
Coming late to acting after six years as a stand-up comedian in his homeland of Australia, Bana’s thespian resume is relatively small for someone pushing 35.
You first saw him in 2000 as Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read, a murderer, Aussie legend and – wouldn’t you know it? – best-selling author.
Chopper became a cult film in pockets around the world, and after witnessing Bana’s transformation into the tattooed psychopath, Ridley Scott cast him as a granite-hard member of the US elite Delta
Force in Black Hawk Down, alongside Ewan McGregor and Josh Hartnett. Bana pretty much stole the show, despite minimal screen time. He certainly had the coolest hand signals and never looked like getting shot.
The sum of those two roles is a man of power, charisma and strength coupled with intelligence, a little sensitivity and bravery who looks good with a crew cut. Which adds up not only to “Hollywood Leading Man” territory, but, in the eyes of Ang Lee, the visionary director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to the only person who could depict the inner turmoil of a troubled scientist with a hell of a schizophrenia problem. Which is how a relative unknown from the south coast of Australia has landed the plum gig of Bruce Banner, the Dr Jekyll to the Hulk’s ferocious Mr Hyde. The icing on that already rich cake came with the news that Wolfgang Petersen had paired him opposite Brad Pitt in the what already looks like being the most expensive and large-scale historical epic of all time, Troy.
So you can see why Bana is far from angry, and once he’s sorted his breakfast dilemma – no to the haddock, yes to scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and orange juice – he’s remarkably at ease and convivial. Not like a Hollywood leading man at all, then, and certainly at odds with his image on screen. Those that matter in the film industry – the directors, agents, and significantly the punters – don’t need to see what happens when he gets riddled through with gamma rays to know that when Eric Bana gets angry, he does a good impression of a mean bastard.
“Yeah,” he says. “It depends who I’m angry with, but I tend to go a bit quiet, and I’ve been told that there’s a certain look around the eyes that I get. That’s what I hear. People get out of my way when I’m
pissed off without me throwing a tantrum so there’s obviously something physical that occurs that I’m not aware of.”
Well over six foot and, though not green, Bana is wide enough to worry bouncers – he’s a former amateur boxer who still looks pretty handy mugging a few uppercuts for the Arena camera. Behind the elongated stubble he’s cultivating for Troy, he’s a curious mix of friendly, down-to-earth Aussie and a Hollywood pro who can spin a yarn to entertain a crowd, yet keeps people at a distance. He’s not someone who strikes you as desperate for a new friend.
“I’m very comfortable in people’s company and I’m very adaptable,” he says, “but I’ve always felt a little different. Compared to my friends, I tend to think outside the circle. I like to think for myself.” That much is evident from his experiences on the set of Hulk.
Bana’s journey to green and mean began with a meeting with Avi Arad, the head of Marvel Studios, some years ago. Arad mentioned a number of projects that were in development and Bana expressed his interest. Not so much in Ghost Rider, a part that has now gone to Nicolas Cage, or even Daredevil, but in Hulk. Ang Lee was already penciled in at the helm, and as a kid, Bana was mad keen on the TV show staring Lou Ferrigno as the pea-coloured mutant.
“We were looking for someone who was a great dramatic actor,” says Arad. “and after seeing Chopper and a bit of Black Hawk Down, it was clear that Eric had the very strong screen presence.
He also has these soulful eyes and an intelligence – and Banner happens to be a very intelligent and soulful guy.”
Fair enough, but right now the considerable chatter in the industry about Hulk doesn’t focus on Bana. Think back to the bluster and bombast that typified the lead up to Spider-Man, and factor in the double-barrels of propaganda and speculation that come with Ang Lee’s name on the back of the director’s chair, and George Lucas’s Industrial Light + Magic (ILM) taking control of the monster.
“I’m quite happy that 99 percent of the hype at this point is about how the Hulk is going to look and about Ang Lee and the CGI,” says Bana. “I’m playing some kind of supporting role. I’m quite happy for the fuss not to be about me.”
While Bana will no doubt look back on this role as being the moment that his status in Hollywood, and his standing among the female population, sky-rocketed, he will also remember Hulk in part as a chore. He’ll tell you readily enough that filming wasn’t a barrel of laughs, which is not something, as a rule, actors admit.
“It was challenging and the people involved were fantastic and all that stuff,” Bana says, “but essentially it was an incredibly serious set. Whether it needed to be I guess is a moot point because that’s what Ang wanted, and that’s what he got. He likes to work in silence and that’s not always a help to
everybody. The days were incredibly long and in terms of what it was like to go to work, if it wasn’t for the sense of humour of a few crew members I would have gone absolutely insane. But I got what the cost was, what he was trying to achieve and what process was necessary for him to do what he was doing, and you have to respect that.”
It sounds rather as if he and Ang will not be sending each other Christmas cards this year. “No, we’re still on the list,” he says. “We get along very well, there was always a mutual respect and we never fought. We had differences of opinion. But I’ve always had that with directors, I think it’s healthy. But if you’re asking someone to play an emotionally traumatized person, you can’t expect that person to cheerily break into smiles and raptures at the end of each take. I realized very early on what the tone of the set was. I’m probably making it sound more depressing than it was, but yeah, it was definitely not what most people would expect.”
Certainly Ang Lee ran his stars hard. At one point, Lee asked Bana to launch himself at full tilt on to a mark the size of a 50 pence piece with less than an inch leeway to remain in focus and nail his dialogue just so. After many attempts, when Bana finally found the right spot, Lee would berate his delivery, saying it was strained. It was the filmic equivalent of running in from the edge of the box to meet a corner with a flying header. With your eyes closed. Bana never complained and we’re confident he’ll be in focus.
At the time of writing, the film is unfinished. Bana was booked in to see it at the end of May, the day before he starts international promotional duties.
“I hope I’m alright with it, you know?” he says. But as well as a certain anxiety there’s genuine excitement and pride. “I can’t wait for the people to see there’s more to it than just a CGI character –
that there’s hopefully some really great acting by all of us, and that’s something we spent a long time, and a lot of heartache, on.”
Bana’s first glimpse of his performance was watching an early teaser in a half-empty cinema in San Francisco. It showed Bana in his bathroom, staring into the mirror in fear and disbelief as his body started to shake and the whites of his eyes turned a shade of green.
“I knew the trailer was going to be on, and suddenly the Universal logo came up and I heard my voice,” he says. “They’d had about six trailers before that and no one had stopped talking and then everyone stopped. There was a great reaction; they were talking really fast all through the next trailer, discussing it. Because there were hardly any effects in it, it’s a more indicative trailer than the others they did. You get a sense of what it’s about – the stuff after that is just about special effects.”
That may be true, but for most, the film will stand or fall on those effects. From the admittedly limited CGI footage we’ve been privy to, the Hulk is a tight knot of muscle and sinew in knee-length blue britches (the first time Bana had to put on the shredded blue shorts was, he says, “very surreal”).
Sometimes the monster looks magnificent, almost noble; at other times he looks more like a computer game character, like Super Mario’s neighbour rammed with steroids.
“I’ve seen some shots which are amazing,” says Bana. “The times when he’s still and they’re able to really light the skin and do all that stuff, you go ‘Oh, wow!’ But I think the good thing is people know how crazy the notion of a 12ft green guy is,” he says, smiling. “So they can get away with quite a bit. The most important element is the fun factor. It’s not like we’re re-creating the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima…”
Arena suggests that perhaps the media can get a little too excited and judgmental about things that are essentially not real. Bana takes a sip of orange juice and keeps smiling. “Mmm,” he says.
Bana was born Eric Banadinovich in Melbourne, Australia, in 1968, to a Croatian father and German mother. As a kid he had two ambitions for his future; he wanted to be an actor and a racing driver. He was close to becoming a mechanic and was only swayed from the oil and overalls when his dad advised him:
“Let hat be your hobby; don’t let your hobby be your life.”
“I was so fucking stubborn and had no interest in studying drama. It just didn’t make sense,” says Bana. “I felt like I could become characters and to me that’s what acting was and I didn’t want to shroud it in some kind of mystery.” As he was always cracking jokes, somebody suggested he should try his luck on stage. But this was the late Eighties when Eddie Murphy and Richard Prior were on fire
and Bana reasonably assumed that anyone who called themselves a professional comedian was just as good. “A friend took me to a comedy venue and they were all fucking shithouse except for one guy,” he recalls. “I said, ‘How many of these people are getting paid?’ And they all were. I was disgusted.”
So he worked his way up the bill until, after a few years, he secured a role in an Australian precursor to The Fast Show, doing sketches and impressions. His own eponymous programme followed and Bana was soon hugely popular Down Under for his dry, sarcastic humour and his own versions of Colombo,
Schwarzenegger and a rogue character Peter (or “Poida” in Australian), who once reasonably asked John Wayne Bobbit, “When you woke up and realized your dick had been chopped off, did you chuck a bit of a spaz?”
His new incarnation as a major-league film star began when he heard about a proposed film loosely based on the life and legend of Chopper Read. It’s a violent, shocking, disturbing work, but it’s
brilliantly funny in ways it has no right to be. In one scene, watching as he gets stabbed by his best mate in prison, Bana is all incredulity and disbelief.
“What are you doing?” he asks, as the makeshift spike goes in and out of his belly. “Jimmy, if you keep stabbing me, you’re going to kill me.” It’s a perfectly delivered line and while Chopper is essentially a true story, it nods its head to the myth, as much as the reality, of Chopper Read.
The tag line on the film poster reads: “The Truth, the Half Truth and nothing like the Truth”, but the real truth of it was that it was a tremendous leap of faith for a guy who had carved himself out a comfortable career on TV. He quit his show to take the role, but it was two years before they began filming. A
number of times it seemed that the dream was up, forcing Bana to dip back into the stand-up circuit to remain solvent. But he plugged away at his research, at one point spending the weekend with the real Chopper, who has become something of an urban legend in Australia, releasing albums recorded in his prison cell on a smuggled-in tape recorder.
“He’s exhausting to be around,” Bana says, “He’s a really big character with a big presence and he just sucks the life out of a room.” Bana had to put on three-and-a-half stone for the role and did so eating six doughnuts before breakfast. His ability to use his body – to change his shape for each part – has earned him a reputation for going that extra mile.
“It’s a pain in the arse, there’s no doubt about it,” he says. “I enjoy the fact that there’s another tool you can use, rather than having to rely on prosthetics and make-up. It can be rally subtle but it can make a difference, not just externally but internally as well.”
Like many people, Bana often uses the phrase “I don’t know” to begin a sentence, but the truth is he does know. In fact, he strikes you as someone who’s got it all worked out. He never accepts back-to-back projects and after every film he takes a few months off. Burnout is not part of the story. He still lives in Melbourne and refuses to move to LA, treating Hollywood as something to endure rather than relish. When he does do over, he instructs his agents – he has two; one in Australia and one, John Engelman, in LA, who also reps Courteney Cox Arquette, Whoopi Goldberg and a host of up-and-comers – to ram his diary with appointments. For three days he hardly has time to pick up a latte as he goes from meeting to meeting and then he’s gone, back to his home and his family. His wife, Rebecca, is a former publicist who reads every script with him and they have two young children, a boy of four and a younger daughter. And even though his management/publicist team is clearly working him in high places (do you know of any other stars who, after two character roles, land a pair of the most high profile parts going in Hollywood?) Bana refuses
to swap his easy-going Aussie nature for a “Do you know who I am?” LA demeanour. This is exemplified by the voice on the end of my mobile, a few days after the Arena shoot, that sounds for all the world like Jason Donovan rather than the hardcore publicist I expected. “Is Paul there at all?” it goes. “Hello mate, it’s Eric Bana. Do you fancy breakfast?”
Breakfast with Bana is a happy affair and what’s fuelling his bonbomie is an unrestrained enthusiasm for Troy, which he’s just started filming.
“I haven’t been around forever,” he says, “but if I was ever glad that I am in my thirties and not my late teens, it’s now, because it would be a crime to do this film and not be fully aware of what it is.” Bana is
playing Hector in the adaptation of Homer’s Illiad by Arena contributing editor David Benioff, who also wrote Spike Lee’s 25th Hour. And Bana’s already become a firm favourite on set for whipping out his arsenal of impressions.
“It didn’t happen on Hulk because it was so bloody serious, but it’s starting to happen already [on Troy] – word’s out,” he says.
Arena requests a private performance and is treated to Brad Pitt (who, from what we’re hearing, sounds much like the stoned West coast bum he played in True Romance), arguing with director Wolfgang Petersen (think Sven Goran Eriksson, with more Teutonic clip) about location sites, and Peter O’Toole (very Sean Connery, weirdly enough) eulogizing over the script during takes.
In Troy’s climactic scene, he and Brad Pitt, who plays Achilles, have a four-and-a-half minute fight where they go at each other with enough spears, swords and fury to make Gladiator look like school play. If portraying the man inside the Hulk doesn’t push Bana into major league territory, then hacking at Pitt with a sharp stick certainly will. But you almost get the feeling Eric Bana isn’t looking forward to that. He’d prefer to remain a little anonymous. He’s got his own theory.
“I think it takes quite a long time for people to get to know you,” he says, “so I’m not too concerned. I might be completely naïve in that but I don’t think that just because I’m in Hulk, there’s going to be this overnight superstar thing. People would still probably have to look at you two or three times to work out who you are.” There’s a pause and for the first time, Bana looks a little uncertain. “I hope I’m right,” he says.
Things you need to know about the Hulk
There’s more to the lean, green, fighting machine than meets the eye.
In the first two issues of The Incredible Hulk Marvel comic, Bruce Banner’s transformation into the Hulk was triggered by the sun going down.
- In the first two issues of The Incredible Hulk Marvel comic, Bruce Banner’s transformation into the Hulk was triggered by the sun going down.
- The Hulk’s powers include the ability to leap long distances, heal quickly, super-strength, resist extreme temperatures, see ghosts and drink alcohol without getting drunk.
- In the first six issues of The Incredible Hulk, the Hulk possessed adult intelligence.
- There have bee three different Hulks: Savage Hulk (green and dumb); the Professor (grey and bright) and Grey Hulk (Banner’s first incarnation, slightly more intelligent than Savage and sporadically brought back over the years).
- The Hulk’s origins, conceived by Stan Lee in the early Sixties, bear a similarity to the plot of the 1957 B-movie The Amazing Colossal Man. When the film’s protagonist bids to save another man’s life, he’s caught in a bomb blast and transformed into a marauding 70ft madman.
- The Savage Hulk is six inches taller and 140lbs heavier than the Grey Hulk.
- The transformation from a man to a monster can take between 25 seconds and five minutes.
- In the comics, Banner’s father murdered his mother.
- In The Incredible Hulk #372, writer Peter David weaved a Freudian storyline suggesting that Grey Hulk was Bruce’s abusive father (played by Nick Nolte in the film) and that Savage Hulk was his child-like subconscious. Recently, scriptwriter James Schamus expanded on this in The New York Times, the result? Rumours stating that the film’s twist would see Bana’s Savage Hulk battle the Grey Hulk in the ultimate Freudian father versus son showdown. We’ll see…
- Rumours that the Hulk will battle the Absorbing Man – one of his main opponents in the comics (who some believe will be played by Nolte) were lent credibility when comic scribe Rick Bruce admitted that he’s penning a similar five-issue storyline to coincide with the film.
- In an early draft of the script, the Hulk comes to terms with his super-strength after being attacked by three “Hulk dogs” (a pit bull, a mastiff and a poodle).
- Producers of the TV show originally hired Richard Kiel (“Jaws” from the Bond films) for the title role, but decided he was too puny. Similarly, Lou Ferrigno’s Pumping Iron co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered, but at 6ft-2in was too much of a peewee.
- Ang Lee turned down Terminator 3 to direct Hulk. Consequently, he has become the third Oscar-nominated director after Bryan Singer [X-Men] and Sam Mendes [Road to Perdition] to helm a comic-to-screen adaptation.
- In the film, Banner’s father is called David, a reference to the late Bruce Bixby’s Hulk alter-ego in the TV series.
- Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno cameo in Hulk as security guards where Dr Banner works.
- According to animation director Colin Brady, the Hulk’s CGI image was inspired by the director’s movements. “There’s a lot of Ang in the Hulk,” says Brady. “He would get up and act out what he was looking for. Next thing you know he’s biting my arm or getting me in a headlock.”
- According to sources, Marvel gave Lee two prerequisites: that the Hulk wasn’t allowed to be too intelligent and that he saves a child at the beginning of the film.
- The Hulk may not be able to string full sentences together, as the Grey Hulk was able to do in the comics. Although producer Avi Arad has promised that: “You’re in the neighbourhood with ‘Hulk smash!’”
- The madder the Hulk gets, the bigger he becomes.
- Eric Bana’s contract ties him into two more Hulk films.
- In 1997, Jonathan Hensleigh (currently directing The Punisher) was commissioned to write and direct “The Hulk project”. But after some expensive SFX, Universal put the film in turnaround for fears that the budget would exceed $120m, considered a fortune then.
- Bruce Banner – in both his human and Hulk incarnation – has had more female tail that any other superhero in the galaxy. And that includes air-gliding show-boaters Superman and The Silver Surfer.
Herald Sun
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Author Unknown
Provided By Mona
Australia: September 3, 2003
Noble Intent: Eric Bana likens his role as Prince Hector to playing a Chuck Norris warrior in a history-driven drama.
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