n 1968, during an era of free love and a period of shirking materialism, The Love Bug became a symbol of hope that someday your car could have feelings, too. The guys who collaborated for Disney on Mary Poppins, Flubber and That Darn Cat! came up with the screenplay about a little VW with a mind of its own that brings couples together in forced matchmaking situations. The unexplained "life" in the car became an explainable hit and spawned a TV show and four movie sequels.
Now, Herbie the car is being rescued from a junkyard, and the franchise is being revived by Disney remake-darling Lindsay Lohan (Freaky Friday, Parent Trap). He's riding again on June 24 with D.E.B.S. director Angela Robinson at the helm and a familiar cast that includes a former Batman (Michael Keaton), a Drugstore Cowboy (Matt Dillon), the guy who personified Jon in Garfield (Breckin Meyer) and Jeepers Creepers dude Justin Long. It's also an excuse for a movie to dive into the recent NASCAR craze, and drivers Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jamie McMurray and many others have cameos.
Lohan's character wants to join the family tradition of race-car driving, but her dad (Keaton) wants her to go off to college. First, he's going to buy her a car, and they find Herbie. The cute little car helps get her into NASCAR racing when she beats a famous driver (Dillon) in an impromptu street race, and the meddlesome car nudges her into a relationship with an auto mechanic buddy of hers (Long).
Lohan, Keaton, Dillon, Meyer, Long and director Robinson were all revved up about Herbie: Fully Loaded during interviews with Science Fiction Weekly and other reporters.
Angela Robinson, does it surprise you that you're directing a movie about a female NASCAR driver when at the same time Danica Patrick is making such a splash at the Indy 500? Will that give your movie a boost?
Robinson: I hope so. It's so fantastic. We couldn't have planned it better if we tried. It was funny because, yes, it's a movie about a magic car, but everybody was saying you're going to have to work hard to make people believe that a girl could race in NASCAR. We were really concerned and then, here [Danica] is. It's fantastic.
How was the shoot with the NASCAR crowd?
Robinson: That was fantastic but definitely the most challenging part of making the movie. We shot during an actual NASCAR race at the California Speedway. There were 180,000 people and all the drivers, the race cars. They gave us a pit, so we were there when all the cars were coming by and they let Herbie out on the track.
Did you develop a bond with the car, Herbie?
Robinson: I remember being in our preproduction offices and the first Herbie came in. I went down to the garage by myself, and they said, "Herbie's here." There was the Herbie car, and we had a little conversation. "We're going to be working together for a while." It was pretty neat. I have dibs on one. He's on tour right now.
How did you keep the paparazzi away from Lindsay Lohan?
Robinson: We had a few incidents. It was so bizarre. I never encountered anything like that. She has a tremendous eye for them. She'd be like, "Who's that guy?" I'm like, "Who is that guy?" and he'd whip out a camera and start flashing pictures. A lot of the scenes had hundreds of extras, so they'd kind of slip in and mill about as extras, I suppose. We had to chase them down and go after them and stuff.
Lindsay Lohan, how has it been this past year with the public scrutiny that has occurred during this movie?
Lohan: It's been a really big learning experience, the whole year, and I feel like I've grown a lot as a person, just in terms of my acting and everything, and the roles that I want to choose now and what I'm aware of and what I know what to do and what not to do. I just don't want people to think that I'm not focused and I'm not in this for the right reason—I'm in this for the right reasons. I don't want them to be misunderstood.
What is the biggest misconception about you?
Lohan: That I'm some girl that goes out all the time and doesn't take my job and my responsibility seriously, and that I'm late to set all the time and I'm a diva, 'cause I'm so not that. Everyone has their moments, everyone has a bad day, and I do pretty freaking good considering the things that get said about me and how much they tap into my personal life, how much they lie about it. So I just want people to know that I want to be in this for the long run, and I don't want people to always have this misconception about the type of person that the tabloids say I am.
This is the third Disney remake you've done. What kind of reaction have you gotten from grownups who remember the earlier ones?
Lohan: I feel Disney gave me my opportunities to kind of follow what I wanted to do in life. I owe a lot to them, and they've been really good to me, so I felt—coming in to doing another remake, I felt kind of, I guess you could say safe with them. And it's always nerve-wracking, because you don't know what the people are going to think from the generation that saw the movie originally, and you feel like you want to lead up to the expectations that they'll have of the new one. So I trust Disney in the sense that they keep the elements from the original movie, and then they just update it to how the times are now, which is great. And they keep it young and fun for kids, and they make it appealing to all ages.
How did you enjoy driving school for this movie?
Lohan: I had fun doing that. I went to the Richard Petty Experience for the driving school, and I was going to drive, and our director Angela Robinson, she got in the car and she drove on the track and I was too scared. And I wanted to go faster, and I got in the car with the guy, and we went 190 to 195 miles an hour. And you get so close to the wall I was screaming. I almost started crying; I thought I was going to die.
If you had magical powers, is there anything you'd want to be able to do?
Lohan: A fly on the wall so I could hear what everyone is really saying.
Matt Dillon, what is it like playing a Disney villain? Is it different from any other kind of villain?
Dillon: He's a kinder, gentler villain, or at least he's all audience-friendly, right? When my agent called me to say, "Hey, they would like you to play in Herbie?", all right, well, Herbie, I remembered it when I was a kid. And I read the script and I said, "I don't think so" right away. Because the story, I could see where it was commercial, and that it would find an audience, probably. It was a little bit of a crowd pleaser. Obviously it appealed to kids, but the character was not at all—he had not really been thoroughly fleshed out.
But I spoke with Angela, and they had a lot of interesting ideas. One of the models was thinking like Apollo Creed in Rocky. This is a guy whose own ego, his own scheming is what is his final undoing, not the actual Herbie. But I thought, I'll believe it when I see it, but then they delivered the script and I was laughing out loud. I figured if I'm laughing out loud, I've got to do it.
Was driving school fun? Were you a NASCAR fan?
Dillon: Let me just say, I wasn't a big NASCAR fan, although I've met Jeff Gordon before, and in a funny way this character Trip Murphy is like Jeff Gordon, but not conceited, arrogant, narcissistic—he's really a nice guy. I was looking forward to driving, but when I got there, they're like, "You've got to sit in the passenger seat," and then they strap you in and you feel like you're entombed in this car. And I'm a little claustrophobic, I don't like a small elevator, and I don't get carsick, but I said, "Put me in the driver seat," and then that was a lot of fun.
Breckin Meyer, did you go to race-car driving school for this movie?
Meyer: I went to driving school at the Irwindale speedway. I can't drive stick, so they gave me an automatic, which is really sad. I was mocked by Jeff Gordon, but to be mocked by a NASCAR great is still pretty cool. How loud and hot it was really blew my mind.
The other drivers said they lose something like 15 pounds of sweat. I'd be a puddle and a helmet.
Your daughter Keaton is named after Michael Keaton?
Meyer: Not to freak him out, I told him that it was 33 percent after him.
Michael Keaton is one of the reasons I got into acting. Beetlejuice is one of my favorite movies. Love his Batman. Justin [Long] outed me, and told him that I was such a huge fan, and I named my daughter after him, and I said, "What?!" I was trying to be cool in front of him. I was Fonzie and now I'm Chachi!
Michael Keaton, you've had a range of movie roles, Batman, Beetlejuice and more. Do you have a favorite?
Keaton: Beetlejuice is one of my favorites. That's because it's totally original and truly artistic. Also it's where they said, "Just have at it," and I did.
I would actually do [a sequel] if it were right. I would seriously think about that, and maybe you don't duplicate it. Maybe you just do another ... I don't know. I would like to if it were done right.
Did you have fun on the track?
Keaton: Yeah, I liked it a lot, actually. I'm kind of a fan. I'm a curious person, so I find a lot of things interesting.
Your son is 22 now, and he saw you through some of the fantastic roles you've been in. What does he think of your roles?
Keaton: During Beetlejuice he was really young. Batman he thought was quite cool. He's always had a really normal life, so it's not like it was that big of a deal.
I mean, take Jack Frost. Is it a great movie? Probably not. Is it a bad movie? It just is what it is. The thing is, I always wanted to be in a Christmas movie where people would see it played every year.
The thing about a movie like Herbie, especially a studio like Disney, is that it's so classic and it's so ingrained in our culture. And since the business is driven by DVD sales now anyway, you become not only a part of movie culture history, but you kind of become part of American culture.
What made you want to become an actor?
Keaton: I had such a rich fantasy life. I had a great imagination as a
kid. I loved to read. I used to get lost in books, and I had to do something creative because I liked to draw and paint.
Were you surprised by how well White Noise did?
Keaton: Well, here's the thing about White Noise. It's smarter than most of the scripts like that. Maybe not by much, but it is. I liked it, actually, and I liked the director, and I liked the potential. I liked the script. I didn't love it, but I liked it, and I thought, "Well if you get the right guy, and you shoot this well, this is good." And, frankly, I knew the genre was strong. I don't think that genre's ever going to die.
Justin Long, did you know anything about being a car mechanic?
Long: I didn't know a lot. I could do your basics. I knew what tires were. I remember my first car was a Nissan 200SX, and it was a scrapper, and I got it for free. I called it The DeLorean because I was obsessed with Back to the Future and I thought it kind of resembled the DeLorean.
What about working with Lindsay?
Long: We met a couple of weeks before we started. I had never played, like, a romantic leading man.
Did you go to driving school for the film?
Long: I didn't go to driving school. I went to pit school. It was like a whole day of this intense pit training where we had to jack up cars in a pit, and they wanted us to spend a day doing it. In my own arrogance, I was like, "I can fake it. I can change a tire and fill up a car with gas," because that is basically what they do. And I found out that not in a million years would I be able to do what these guys do; the precision and the timing that's involved is pretty unbelievable. I had no idea. They change these four tires and fill up the tank, and they do it all in like 15 seconds. For me, just watching was kind of fascinating. I learned that lesson the hard way. We got it down to maybe 30 seconds.
Did you rehearse the kissing scene with Lindsay before you got in front of the cameras?
Long: No. There's always this weird moment that happens when you are rehearsing any kind of make-out scene; any scene where you have to have any sort of intimate contact with a person. This is a G-rated Disney movie, so it's not Basic Instinct or 9 1/2 Weeks. There was that moment where we are rehearsing, doing the lines, and "Oh I want to kiss you, too," "I want to kiss you," and they're like "That's when the kiss would happen. You don't have to do it now." And I'm leaning in [he puckers up his lips to demonstrate]. It was easy because she's so hot.
What kind of car do you really drive?
Long: I drive a Toyota Prius. My friends all make fun of me. They do bits like "Save your scrambled eggs, because it can be some fuel for your car," like a DeLorean at the end of Back to the Future. "Oh, we need a beer can to drop in there." I had a Mercedes SLK and felt like such a jackass. It got to the point where I was "that guy" driving it around with the top down. I love driving, and it was like a stick shift. I loved taking it out on road trips. I just felt like if I can help the environmental thing ... Now it's a completely different driving experience.
Breckin Meyer, do you remember your first car?
Meyer: I had a 1988 Jeep Cherokee. It was black because it was spray-painted black. The big claim to fame about the car was a big chunk of paint off the passenger side of the door because Corey Haim had thrown keys at the car. I don't have that car. I have a Ferrari in the garage, and a Bentley.
Matt Dillon, what do you drive?
Dillon: Right now I don't own a car, I live in New York. I drive in the back of cabs. But I used to own a '67 GTL. But I got tired of guys asking me what I had under the hood. I'd pull up in front of the pizzeria, and nine guys come up to me with grease on their shirts and their hands, and they want to have a dialogue with you about the car. I'm going to get a Volvo now.
And Lindsay, did you ever play Punch Buggy?
Lohan: Yes I did, Punch Buggy. I especially remember during a long trip to Florida on the way down there. My brother won. He has a stronger punch.
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Also in this issue:
The cast and crew of Batman Begins
and
William Forsythe
