‘The Donn of Tiki’ documentary tells tale of tiki’s ‘founding father’ at Florida Film Festival

Visiting a tiki bar, sipping a strong drink from a pineapple and donning a colorful Hawaiian shirt are all ingredients for instilling mental images of Hawaiian beaches or remote islands in Polynesia. But casual tiki enthusiasts may not know that the culture was largely founded by one man from Texas: Donn Beach.

This was the name and persona chosen by tiki’s “founding father,” who was born Ernest Gantt and then created a whole new lifestyle and business for himself revolving around powerful drinks and tropical decor. A new documentary, “The Donn of Tiki,” makes its world premiere at this year’s Florida Film Festival, delving into the mythology surrounding the man and the legacy he left behind.

Max Well and Alex Lamb of Surf Monkey Films co-directed the film, working closely on the cinematography and editing, plus the direction of outsourced animation that helps illustrate a story set decades in the past. Through archival images, interviews with tiki enthusiasts and animated sequences, the documentary weaves a tale that is part fact and part folklore, letting audiences decide which of Beach’s stories are entirely true and which are exaggerated.

“We decided that in the early part of the film, we had to explain that Donn is unreliable as a source of information,” Lamb said. “Once we did that, it kind of gave us the freedom throughout the documentary to tell these stories and let the audience decide what’s true and what’s not true.”

A notorious “spinner of tales,” Beach claimed to have traveled the world as a young man using his father’s money earned in oil drilling. After he returned to the United States, he opened “Don’s Beachcomber” in Hollywood as Prohibition ended and left his bootlegging days behind.

In his tropical-themed establishment with Filipino staff, Beach developed the rum-imbued, potent Zombie cocktail and many other tiki drinks that are still imitated today. Around that time, he also hosted Hollywood stars, including Marlene Dietrich, who Beach recalled in an interview referenced in the documentary.

“We were fortunate, early on, to get access to this audio interview that he gave in the late 80s close to the end of his life,” Well said. “He’s so charming and has so much charisma that we knew we wanted to use a lot of that. Letting Donn tell his stories was a decision we made early on.”

Animation is used heavily in the film to help retell stories of the past, including a stop-motion 3D “interview” with a puppet representation of Beach.

“Juan, the animation director, had this great idea to do different animation styles for every decade of Donn’s life. And he worked within our budget,” Lamb said, noting that he and Well had the same idea first. “Juan wanted the animation to feel like ‘found footage,’ like animation that was made in the 30s, 40s or 60s.”

The documentary walks through phases of Beach’s life, from serving in WWII to opening a Polynesian Village in Hawaii before it became part of the United States. Until the end of his life, Beach continued testing business ventures, sometimes failing but always dreaming big.

“There’s this very American idea of inventing yourself and reinventing yourself. He created this persona that was this hugely successful thing and he lived that for a very long time,” Well said. “He continued to have these big ideas, an attention to detail and a commitment to doing things authentically.”

Find me @PConnPie on Instagram or send me an email: pconnolly@orlandosentinel.com.

If you go

“The Donn of Tiki” is screening at the Florida Film Festival at 3:30 p.m. April 13 (sold out, on standby at Enzian) and at 6:30 p.m. April 16 at Regal Winter Park Village. Tickets are $13 before fees. The festival runs from April 12 to 21 at Enzian Theater (1300 Orlando Ave. in Maitland) and Regal Winter Park Village (510 N. Orlando Ave. in Winter Park). For more information and a full schedule, visit floridafilmfestival.com.