Hello the Internet, and welcome to this iconograph episode of Alley Zeitgeist. Oh yeah, he's horny. Also the noise you make when you're horning. Instead of instead of looking at the Zeike guys through current events once a week, we're looking at the Zeikes through the lens of the powerful pow cultural horcruxes that are our icons Einstein, Erkle, Miss Piggy. So far, we use these characters and celebrities to create meaning, to build identity, to create the greatest soundboard in the
history of mankind. Oh stop whining, I'm a comfy idiot. To learn for my face because the ram in the stomach, uh, to learn what a normal male human body is supposed to look like with an early lesson I took from our subject today. But most importantly, we learned that sometimes a Polish American small town sheriff named Mark Kaminski has a thick Austrian accent, and you don't need to worry about why. It's just how it over it. That's right.
Episode four, we're talking Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian oak, a man who took over the film industry and pop culture for two decades, became the governor of the largest state in the United States, and in the process snapped Barbara Bush's leg like a twig. Something I've learned during the course of researching this episode. Shout out to Jay McNab
who provided the research dossier on this one. Speaking of the research dossier, stick around for the end of the episode from my note book dump, where I give you my final thoughts and little information nuggets I didn't get to in this conversation. I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co host, mister Miles gram Man. It's just me, man, This just me, nothing else, nothing is me, nothing to see here in our third seat. One of
the greatest comedians, improvisers, and podcasters in the business. Yeah, he co hosts one of my favorite podcast, Action Boys, on Page Treon, which makes him one of our foremost Schwarzenegger scholars. It's John Gabra.
When I am on the Daily Zeitgeist is like I am calming all night and when you are saying my name, I am coming.
When I am doing my plugs, I am calming.
You believes how much I'm in Heaven? Did you hear I'm on Daily zeit Guys? You I'm coming.
I went to high school a Luffergnell junior WHOA And we would always say that to him.
Yeah, was it when when you were with him, were you sometimes? You know, I'd imagine it wasn't too hard for you to give him the wrong advices. Yeah, that's one of my favorite under underrated quotes. Shout out to my friend Sean, who always talked about the part where he's like, uh, yeah, sometimes on workout there, I give him advice and it's not too wrong to give him the wrong right, And he says it's so like he's
so fucking clever. What he's saying advice is I do just want to acknowledge up up top because with all these icons that are like such a part of our brains, they're burned in there. We kind of just take it for granted that they've always been there. But just with Arnold,
I want to acknowl it. Like he entered a late seventies movie landscape that was coming off of like the auteur movement and was ruled by actors like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman who are like these normal sized, two tiny men who were method actors and like disappear into their roles, and he came along and just like does the complete opposite his roles disappear into him. He's the only actor I can remember who used the same
catchphrase in multiple movies. That's actually something Gabrius I wanted to ask, like, is was did any of the other action heroes like keep bringing back like he said, I'll be back in so many.
And then they against to a point. Arnold understands where his bread is buttered. Like he'll just go on late night talk shows and say like I'll be back, and like you're terminated. He'll say, like what he knows what to do. He's not precious about what he says. And you got to imagine if you're like the writer or director of these other movies and he's like taking your iconic line, You're like, I guess it belongs to Arnold now, and he can cite him whatever.
The fuck he wants.
Yeah, the brand was strong with him. I also think it has to do with who Like obviously it's who he was. He's like this outsized, charismatic cartoon of masculinity, but also like where America was at the time. One of my favorite details of his movies that you guys underline a lot of action boys. Is that he always made the most sense in the mall, which was like the most American location of the era. But like he fights in malls in like raw Deal Commando. A terminator
to jing Wald Way is like NonStop. That Kindergarten cop opens in them all, True Eyes has a horse chase through them all.
It's just like a Venture hotel.
Yes, you know, he is such a weird, unique figure. But also like as I was researching this, I kept being reminded of the Vi Lebowski quote like sometimes there's a man, you know who's just the man for his time, And like he really was.
He was so foreign and then became like landed in America. He was so fargn in the way he looked and the way he sounded, and even like his hobbies and perspective, and then he fucking got America on board with him.
Yeah, you know, like he.
There's no fucking.
Way you would still have an accent in year fifty in America, And you're like, if you actually tried, you wouldn't need it, but no, he kept it. We adapted for Arnold. We changed movies so that Arnold had a place in them. We were like, yeah, Arnold can't play so but Coo, but he could fucking play Conan, you know what I mean, Like he he changed culture to make like to set it up, or we changed culture because we were like we love this, fucking save us Ross Ubermensch.
You know, yeah, I do. So there are definitely some like fascist vibes that people people have pointed out throughout his career, and it's coming along at a time in America where like Jimmy Carter had made the like American Malaise speech and everyone's like, fuck that that's boring, and then Ronald Reagan was the answer to that. So his career like kind of starts to make sense in that context.
But just on the subject of fascism, something I hadn't realized is that his dad was Off was a Nazi soldier during World War Two, was like part of the invasion of Leningrad, which he made it out. Yeah, And for for Miles' first time playing the role of Arnold, I just I put a quote in the Wow in the chat that I just want to have you read. This is Arnold describing his father's status as a Nazis soldier.
When my father arrived in Leningrad, he was all pumped up on the lives of his government.
He was being a Nazis being pumped up. He still get he still gets to jam his brand in there. He's talking about the dark history in which I come from. Well, I will say, like, you know me, I'm gonna always apologize for Nazis.
Yeah, that's the other reason we wanted to have you on here.
Other perspectives, But I really like Arnold talks about it. He says like and he was he was wrong, and it was awful and like all the ship and like it is that crazy thing where you're like, what can we hold the sins of the father to the child? Like and it's like he got the fuck out of there,
and he you know, and he talks about it. He brings it up, and he talks about in his book and in like recent posts during as the As the World is Falling apart, he's talked about like what the people were like before and after joining up with the movement, and they're like people are fucked up from having been part of it, you know what I mean. It's right, He's like, guys, everyone out here who's like, yes, let's fucking you know, kick Somalians out of Minnesota. It's gonna
be bad for you eventually. Like this is like this doesn't bode well for anybody.
It's not like it's not like saying I used to be the construction worker in the village.
People.
Sure thanks to stick around psychologically a little bit more so.
What one thing, like, yes, he has spoken on that there were a lot of allegations of Nazism throughout his career. Uh Dino di Laurentis didn't want to hire him for Conan, telling director John Millius, I don't like Schwartzenegger. He's a Nazi. And then US News of the World tabloid once claimed he was secretly pro Nazi. The writer of that article then admitted the source was Sylvester Stallone, which we're going to get into how heated and like childish that rivalry
was the one. The one thing is that he did say in an old interview that he admired Hitler, but then he did the thing that all people who say that did. He said, I didn't admire him for what he did with it. I admired his public speaking, which these Republican guys like can't help. But in my like, I look back and I see raging like ten or twelve good public speakers. But it before I have to get to, like, exactly the architect of the Holocaust.
I could probably find a couple of people before that before I.
See a raving lunatic and they're always like, I mean, you can't deny the guy's got fucking star, don't I don't think so.
Yact to the fucking gills with the absolute worst POV and people are like, you know, he's like, but you know, but you gotta.
Admit he was good.
I'm like, I think I would name miss teen, South Carolina from two thousand and seven as a better public speaker before I said Hitler.
Fucking Johnny Carson.
It's gotta be a less harmful guy to look to for public speaking.
Although there is like these really crazy behind the scene photos of Hitler, like hitting his poses, hitting his angles, and like he was a studied like poser essentially like and so maybe that's that's what Arnold saw in him at that early age. I will just say.
Arnold also an elite level poser, like he literally made his he was a champion poser.
Yeah, like it we're about to get into that, but I will just say in terms of like the fascist iconography, like he is like a marble statue come to life, and like he like we've talked before about how like one of the esthetic like details of fascism is like admiring the human form with like the sex removed, like in Starship Troopers, and like, I do feel like that's kind of like they had to edit out like sex scenes and stuff like that from a lot of his
movies because like he just doesn't that's not what people were there for.
I guess, Yeah, well it is that weird like bodybuilder thing where it's like it's it's four guys in a way, you know what I mean, more than it is. But I always found it really funny in all his movies when women are like, oh my god, and he's so sexy, but he looks like an insane freak, like he's got an insane body and if that's the thing you like, But when women are like, oh dear god, it's like, yeah he has d cups a rock.
Heart, how you're into that his cycle?
But it is weird because yeah, there is like that second in like that fascist like it's like he's powerful, his output is tremendous and no no connotations of sex.
But Arnold himself legendary, horny freak.
Yeah yeah, exactly, yes, yes, very probably. Video is the most any human has ever inhabited the role of Lenny from of mice and men, Like it's just like, Jesus, get that guy, get all of those people out of there. But in terms of like the fascist element of his iconography and like how he appeared two people at the time, the other main source besides Action Boys that dug into for this was the book The Last Action Heroes.
They pointed out that.
The opening to Commando with him like chopping down trees and carrying an entire tree trunk on his shoulders, like that whole sequel once was consciously pulling images from Lenny Reefenstahl's like Nazi propaganda films. Jesus. They were just like, you know, what would work really well with this guy? I mean yeah, yeah, yeah, And I don't think that
was his idea. They were just like, that makes sense that that's and that is what America, like America has inside America, it's much less appreciated, Like how much right wing American culture has in common with a lot of like, you know, fascist imagery and ideology.
Yeah, some that's I know where I'll tell you one of my theories is somehow we talked about this lot on Action Boys. I was raised pretty much exclusively on movies that are spout like extra judicial killings, the government.
I got.
Powerful people are the answer to everything. Send you, yeah, cop is the best job you do. Internal affairs or pieces of sh Send one guy with a gun into a country full of minorities, fix it, you know, Like, Yeah, to be a fifteen year old kid with an opinion on internal affairs just means like I'm watching the wrong fucking movies. Yeahs to escape with a perspective that you know,
cares about my fellow man. But I'm assuming all these people in power all grew up on the same bullshit as me, but didn't find it as entertainment and found it as like inspo and where like, actually, we do need a John Matrix to go to Valverde and clean it up with a fucking Bazuoka with a quad Bozuka.
So the way he initially appeared on the world stage was by winning nineteen bodybuilding competitions, including Mister Europe Mister Universe and then Mister Olympia, Mister Olympia being essentially the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions for Mister Universe winners. But he did and like openly admits that he built his body with the aid of steroids. He says, I have no regrets about it because at the time it was something new that came on the market.
He wasn't the only guy at these bodybuilding shows.
Yeah, exactly, it was legal, Like everybody was doing it openly. It was like cocaine, you know, in the seventies. Everyone was like, this is kind of like coffee. This is like our new coffee.
We should bring this onto more movie sets.
But this one also makes me go to the bathroom a lot too. Same deal. Yeah, he did veto. Like when he was governor there there were people who were not thrilled that he was pretty lax on the performance
enhancing stuff and called the supplements safe. And I have to like, I don't know, so I once heard from someone that like they worked with him in the nineties and swore like at the time he was like bright yellow and on dialysis like when he was with them, and like that they were just like yeah, that's how you got through the like intense steroid cycles. There's no
known reporting on that. And the guy also later told me that he thought his girlfriend at the time may have slept with Arnold behind his back, so.
He might be motivated to shit.
Yeah, but he has had like multiple open heart surgeries, which he always goes out of his way to be like it's a congenital condition. But I don't know that.
Steroids are not. And yes he has done them. But if you remove steroids from it, carrying around that much extra mass, even if it is pure muscle, is difficult on the human body, like maintaining that caloric input that he's putting a lot of miles on his body.
I mean, I knew, like big guys don't live that long, but when I saw Dave Baptista be like, dude, I have to stop and like really be like I'm done, and like watching him shrink and being like no, it's so I can live, like being fucking jacked is it's a fucking very very short timeline.
You have living like that forever.
I mean, it is.
Interesting, just like talking about the thing that like earlier saying that like he comes along with this ubermens physicality at a time that America is like maybe fascism is kind of what we do in the eighties, and then like what once we got back to that point, like in the past eight to ten years, all of a sudden, the actors started looking like John Cena and The Rock and Dave Bautista again, so everyone starry.
Oh yeah, I could go off for hours about this, but like why why why does fucking Superman even have to be jacked? He's an alien like like there's like Hulk has super strength, he could have a belly, like there's like thor some of the people, like their superpowers aren't even involved like with physicality, and they're still shredded.
It's like, maybe what doesn't need to be diced?
Yeah?
Right. Maybe the best example of that, which we'll get to in a moment, is the Terminator who went in the script was supposed to be a normal sized, normal shaped person into Yeah, it's like, yeah, to your point, Like the modern equivalent is that movie The Gray Man that nobody saw, but it costs like two hundred and fifty million dollars, so they had to pretend like everyone
saw it. But it's like, these are guys who just the literal title is you have these spies who are gray men who the whole point is like they blend in wherever they go, and it's played by like Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling and their beauty like shredded, shredded beautiful people who like would stop traffic.
And when you see pictures of real fucking the crazy spies and assassins like that are Cia and Jaysock, like elite level guys.
They all look like chemists.
They're all like five eight one sixty five with like glasses and like weird teeth, and you're like, what the fuck is this guy's like six hundred and fifty confirmed kills.
Yeah, I'm a delta operator like an airline. No one other quick Arnold anecdote and if you guys have any but somebody I know was golfing with him a couple of years ago, and as they were teeing off, he kept telling the guy he looked like too tense and too uptight, And then after the guy hit the shot, he Arnold got up to the tea and was like, when was the last time you had a blowjob? And the guy was like, I don't know, like answered and
Arnold teed off and said that's fantastic. And then as he like crushed his drive with a big stogey in his mouth and like watched the ball, he said, how did it taste?
Awesome?
Got his ass. I do think the posing, like you were saying, the hitting the angles like that is something that he studied all along, and I think that definitely like played into his being a movie Yeah. Yeah, like knowing how to appear on film with something that like he was always good at.
Like in Conan, you see it a lot because it's like it's like it's like pre verbal for him, and the movie is like written to that strength. But then he also trained with a sword master for that movie too, And because he's an athlete and like a guy who's got like that that kind of folk, that kind of focus that requires eating white rice, chicken and broccoli and steroids exclusively, he he fucking looks awesome when he's swinging the sword, when he's carrying the wheel of pan, he
fucking and it's like he knows. I refer to this once on the blank Check podcast. But my pet theory is we've heard of the male gaze, and you know, people talk about the female gaze. There's something about Arnold that is the child gaze. Like you look at him and you're like in awe, and you're like a little kid, and you're like, that's what grown ups are, you know, And then all these action movies will copy it. They'll all be these poses where you're looking up at these imposing figures and yeah.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Like I have, yeah, I have written in here somewhere that he looks like he was designed by a seven year old to be like, this is what action hero should look like.
You know, this is what I want to look like when I grow up, Like when you used to Like I would remember being a kid drawing myself as like a grown up and like I would always have like a headband and.
A machine guns. I was like, you.
Grow up, definitely grow up and be a Special Forces Probably. Yeah, I'm gonna drive a bulletproof Chevy Suburban. So he broke into the world a film with Hercules and New York, where he had to be totally dubbed by another actor
for obvious reasons. Uh, they changed his name to Arnold Strong, but the only reason he got that role in the first place was Joe Weeder, the co founder of the International Federation of Bodybuilders, told the producers that Schwartzenegger had been a Shakespearean actor in Vienna, and they're like, all right, like sure, and then he showed up and again it's like that, you know, you need to tell that lie
to get him in the door. But then he shows up and everyone's like, this guy actually like really fucking works on film. I don't know what it is.
Is not great, his dub is weird, but you're watching him and you're like, this dude's a fucking star. Time when you don't say that early on in his career, it's like it's like undeniable. His like you can't take your eyes off him. And he is really charismatic in sort of like the annoying jockway, but like he's got it like face, all taste, well you know, figured out.
Yeah.
He also appears in like I didn't realize that I was watching The longa Robert Altmans The Long Goodbye. He shows how he's like a Jack Henchman and that he's in a movie called Stay Hungry that was like an Oscar buzzy movie that earned him a Golden Globe for Best Acting Debut, even though it wasn't really his debut, but it was like the first time that awards people had noticed it.
Or he spoke maybe yeah, that was the first time he had actually spoken on film.
He also at this time worked with a very serious acting coach who in the book The Last Action Heroes talked about how he was like eventually very impressed with his work. He did like all the Stanislavskian shit, like this is the second invocation of the stuf was Lawsky method with Arkle? Yeah? No, with Miss Piggy actually be like how frank Oz came up with her backstory was like just writing freehand art backstory dark yea super dark backstory for Miss Piggy.
I believe it.
I got to imagine based on how how powerful she's become. She came from a lot, she came from a heart.
Her mom had so many pigs. What was it like her mom like her mother too many pigs that she never developed her mind was one of the things. And then she had so many pigs, she'd never developed her mind, and her dad was like fucking around and then like the only way for her to like survive was like winning beauty contests, and she was like, I'll never go back there. I think there was like a mass killing
two in there, but I don't remember. But uh, he said the guy the acting coach specifically, I called out two impressive moments in the workshop that I thought were funny. One is where he inhabits the body of a child opening a present on Christmas morning, and he said he made the other people in the acting class cry, which just trying to picture Arnold like doing that.
This is one percent alive, but it's fucking that's ot. I'm picturing it now and trying so I'm like tear up laughing.
I know, I'm even trying to imagine what would that performance look like where I'm so touched, like even without even it being Arnold with an adult doing this.
Yeah, like one guy who's just been like presumably like hitting on every woman stop and.
This guy suddenly get spaghetti string racer back tank top on with like his nipples and traps showing, and he's got like cut off golds, gym super shorts on, barefoot, just going like I don't want the.
Terrible man.
The bottle of wine he gets it. Something he would do in like Twins and like some of those movies where he like plays an innocent you know, just kind of like uh yeah, I don't know, like new to
the world. And then the other that he said was like really impressive was where he like did this non linguistic growl and utterance, like you invoke an animalistic, non linguistic growl and utterance and screams, which sounds like it's like the when I think of Arnold, I just think of you know, like all those like noises that.
Yeah, and that's so funny that he crushed that part of the acting.
Damn, this guy can.
And he's also really the best of them in the Max bench Press portion of.
But he does also like kind of become a Christmas icon. And it's interesting to note that like the only movie he ever directed, he directed an episode of The Tales from the Crypt and then also a made for TV like Hallmark Christmas remake of Christmas in Connecticut, So he's there's something with Christmas there that we'll probably never get to explore.
But I feel like Germany, Europe, Poland Eastern Europe, Vienna, like that's Austria. It's very like Chris Christmas. Yeah, it's like that.
Everyone says, like the Christmas markets in Austria specifically are like everyone models, Like whenever you see like a Christmas market, they're all referencing like Austrian German Christmas markets.
And some of your most precious white female friends will tell you that I just want to go to Vienna for Christmas.
I'm like really, like, I don't know anything about it. I want to go to Mexico.
It's it's well because my cousin just married someone who's from Austria and he'd been.
He's like, dude, Austria's fucking sick, and everyone I know who's been there's like, do Vienna's sick?
Yeah?
Gotomy?
Well yeah, I think it's because and how bad shout out twins real quick. That was the I heard in an interview on Nerdict where he was back in the day. That's the most amount of money he's ever made on a movie.
Yeah, that like set him up financially. The syndication decides no.
Because ye, they didn't want to make it because like Arnold can't carry a comedy. So Arnold, Danny DeVito and I think it's rightman. They all say they all worked for scale. If with huge amount of points and then the movie was an absolute unknown, massive hit and they all made insane money on it, which is.
Makes me so happy.
Also, Arnold was already doing very well for himself because when he arrived in America, him and Franco Colombo, another bodybuilder, they were doing masonry work and doing all this like labor. But he invested his bodybuilding winnings in like an apartment complex first, like somewhere on the West side of La American. He was a American, someone told, like an American businessman, maybe someone in his team or something like that, said
this is what you gotta do. And then he like owned a bunch of properties for a while, like buying that nineteen seventies La You know, if you held onto it till now, you're fucking like Robber Baron.
That's so that makes sense, you know that.
Like there's a clip from a couple of years ago where he tried to make a joke about making a million dollars.
That fell so flat, like on a radio show.
And now it makes sense to me because he was he was making some landlord ass money like to start up.
I don't know if you've seen this clip, but he's like the easiest why to make money. The first and most important thing is, you know, everyone tells you that the first million is the hardest to make, so started with the second million.
Right, uh huh? Wow? Hello, oh my god, wake up, wake up.
They have a breakfast show. You need to get pumped up. Anytime the joke falls flapped up off the lines of your government.
Wow, okay, anyway that makes that's because that's such rich guy humor too.
When you're like, yes, always like a million an awful joke.
I would say, if you're hosting Arnold on your show, you gotta laugh at his jokes.
I think, job, I bet you Arnold never does that show again.
I think they.
Probably just couldn't connect. Like his delivery, They're like, oh, joke, yes, thank you.
Miles didn't pause that in the middle. That that silence was him just looking at waiting for them.
You're like, oh, it must the video must be over.
Then he goes, hello, oh my god, this is a breakfast show. You got's wake up. But just overall, like the thing about him investing the money smartly, like according to everyone, he is a sponge who's like constantly focused on learning, like McTiernan in Predator, like cast Carl Weathers because he's like, that's the best action movie actor that I've seen. And he's like, I'm going to put him in Arnold's way, and Arnold will just like drink up
and learn from him. And so he is essential like the he is a terminator, he's just just like super processing.
Yeah, asshole, Dylan, you son of a bitch. What do you put your pencils down there in the CIA? And thank you for teaching me how to act?
All of that, all all his early work though from Hercules in New York, and his background work was overshadowed by the massive success of a weightlifting documentary called Pumping Iron Goddamn, which is it's easy to see why those movies weren't quite as successful, because at no point in those movies does he get to say that weightlifting is like coming and then Myles would like to read.
Oh wow, it's as satisfying to me as coming is, you know, as having sex.
With a woman. Then coming, I love it. So all is up the first sentence by clarifying what it's not even I.
Refuse to say it's jerking off. Yeah I don't. It's gay to jerk.
Off, he was a human woman, and you coming, and so can you believe how much I'm in heaven. I am like getting the feeling of coming in the gym, I'm getting the feeling of coming at home.
I'm getting the feeling of coming backstage.
When I pump up, when I pose it from the five thousand people, I get the same feeling.
So I'm coming day and night. I mean, it's it's terrific, right, So you know, I'm in heaven so awesome.
And he will later retract that and say, like I was joking, I knew I and I will. I think he maybe actually believes this, or believed it at the time, But he also does know how to get sound bites and how to fucking yeah. When you watch Pumping Iron, it's a Rosetta stone to like why anyone like why he's you just see he's so and he didn't play a villain a lot in his career, but he is fucking near evil in Pumping Iron. Like he's like mustache swirling bad guy in a way.
Like manipulating the people around him who are like his best friend, like lifelong best friends who are gonna continue working and like being his friend for the rest of his career, and he's like, yeah, it kind of fucked with his head, Yeah, right into being worse than me.
Right.
There's the famous if It Bleeds they're making up Predator. It's like an hour long featurette. You can find it on YouTube. He had some crazy ongoing prank or competition with Jesse the body Ventora, who could have bigger biceps, and he had the wardrobe department keep taking in the biceps on the sleeves on Ventory's shirt, so he thought he was getting pumped up, but he wasn't.
Oh to make him complacent, basically, yes, And then they were doing they were doing a thing where they were competing so much who could work out more and earlier that eventually like they were like secretly opening the gym that they had shipped to South America to film, like or in Mexico wherever.
They I forget where they film, and they're like fucking like going in at three thirty in the morning, three in the morning, two thirty, like racing to see who when you go to the gym, who's already there working out.
It's like that's that's so fucking funny.
That's like childish behavior over like and these are all people who are like making millions.
It's so awesome, right, that's so funny. Yeah, that set and I mean that movie is both like when I first saw it, this did not hit me, but it is like a satire of masculinity and like they're you know, shooting at this alien and like completely you know, unloading clips into the jungle and like just impotently you know.
Yeah, and they're all like they're all like dry shaving their face, taking their shirts off, knives, they're limped dickt f slurs before and then like you know, like everything everything about that movie and also arguably like sort of anti American interventionism too.
Right, It's like when we.
Arrived there, they end up like they're like hunting with an alien, but they the CIA does get them to like blow up a fucking full base full of locals. Like there's no explanation as to like what the local dynamics are or whatever, and it's like it's such a it's more, there's so much more.
Going on in that movie than you think.
And then the idea that like this is the second team that they send in and the first team just got fucking murked and none of them know about that. It's like the most fucking disposable American soldier shit ever.
Yeah. Yeah, it was almost like they're they're making a commentary that going in and intervening in a jungle could go badly for America.
Yeah.
I don't know where they are.
I don't know where they were pulling that from. Ye.
So his first truly iconic role is Conan, Like he's the titular role in Conan fucking movies and much it came about thanks to Pumping Iron. The director John Millius says that Arnold said, treat me like a trained dog, which, again going back to it, He's just like, I don't give a pot, Just tell me anything and I'll do it. He would like get cut and like there would be like he'd be bleeding, and he'd be like does it
look good? How am I posing? And then they would just like keep rolling with it, moving along with the like fascist stuff. It's about an alpha male who battles hippies. Essentially, the script was by Oliver Stone, but then it was like whittled way down and directed by Millius.
Who calls himself a zen fascist zen fascist, and Arnold said he's so far to the right that he wasn't even a Republican AKA ahead of his time, I guess.
So this becomes like one of his first roles that's so iconic that people just start calling him that. Like when you read about when Cameron's trying to cast him in Terminator, people are like, you're gonna cast Conan in Terminator, and then like after Terminator people are like, you can't put Terminator in the you know, But like he's he's choosing his roles pretty wisely.
If you zoom out, Yeah, if you zoom out and see that this guy who is this physical specimen but is not quite there english wise or acting wise, you cast him as a nearly silent tribal warrior who fucking kills a bunch of people with swords, and then you're like, okay, what else can he do?
He's like, how about a robo robot?
Yeah?
Fuck, it's great, Like just the idea of like like what what a way to like fucking make your way into the huge movies that were huge because of him too, and but he gets to just they're like okay, and this like that'd be like all right in this you're playing a fat new York podcaster gabers, this is your first job, Like, I hope you can pull it off.
You're like, fuck, yeah, you're from Long Island, which exit off the l.
I E twenty five South.
Perfect, right. I love that. It's actually two away for mine, so we're gonna need to rewrite. But so Cameron didn't originally have Arnold in mine for the Terminator, as we were saying, he wanted Lance Henry and for the role who played Bishop, which is like, it's such a profoundly different movie, but like it makes more sense on paper, because yeah, why would the robot need to be shredded and have an Austrian accent if.
It be enormous and like yeah, he would not blend at all he can, and like it makes no sense.
Yeah, but it fucking hurts. I know, Like that version probably works because James Cameron like knows what he's doing, but there's no arguing that it would have worked as well as it does with Arnold.
No, and he got his Lance Hendrickson type with the T one thousand. Uh that guy Robert Patrick. Robert Patrick and Lance Herison are constantly being confused in my head.
So it's like it's good casting.
Right, like think but also just like going back to the initial point, like think about a brand that it is, Like, think about if the T one thousand was yoked again.
Yea, now they're like body build.
Rip because that juxtaposition made the T one thousand more terrifying.
Yeah, you know what I mean.
I love in interviews it's going around again when Cameron said the reason he made a T one thousand a cop was because they kill indiscriminately, don't give a fuck about humans, and like all this stuff, and he's like, what better disguise for a person to be able to do whatever they want to whoever they want and be awful you know, like hell yeah.
Yeah, yeah, so that's what Like he in Terminator Won, he was like, he it's kind of good that he's foreign seeming because everybody's afraid of Russia, and Russia is like always the one that starts the nuclear war in both movies, they're just like fucking Russia. But he didn't want to even meet with Schwarzenegger. They made him. He was like, I'm gonna like pick a fight with him,
I guess. During lunch and before he left, he told his friend, if it doesn't go well you can have the chair and the stereo, which I think is just a funny window into how big a deal stereos were for that decoration. Of course.
Yeah, it's like the highest, the most expensive thing in anyone's house.
Yeah, I think your Macintosh amplifier. Yeah. But Linda Hamilton was like, I'm a trained Juilliard actor and this guy is Conan was like this, this is a bad idea, Like this will just be a blip on my career. And then she went and they weren't on camera a lot together, and so she went and like watched one of the scenes where Arnold was like doing his thing in a parking garage, and she was just like, oh shit, Like he just like he knows how to like his
physicality and like how he moves in that movie. She was like, this is actually gonna work really well.
Yeah, and like his like lack of mobility, he moves very well in Conan, like he's he's you know, he's leaping around wheel and stuff, but he's a little stiff because he's a giant. He's the Austrian oak oak chest and and the terminator. It totally benefits him.
Quick.
Aside about terminator, something we learned figured out on Action Boys or noticed on Action Boys, is that the entire premise of the Terminator movies require Linda ha mold In to let a time traveling dirt bag raw dogger, Like she has to let Michael Bean fuck her wrong, like Kyle Reason has to finish in her in order for the Terminator movies to happen.
And that's such crazy.
Thank God, this guy, who I think is a homeless lunatic, I'm gonna let him fucking finish.
It for the world ends.
Yeah, a cream pie saves the world, Sarah.
This guy Kyle kind of stinks. No, he's from the future and I got to bang him to save the world. He said, Does she know that? But the part where they have like is she on board at that point?
No, I don't.
She's on board with like maybe the reality of it, but she doesn't know. Like it's like they're about to make John Connor, which is such a funny specific because John Connor sent him back. Did John Connor say, like, Hey, this is my mom. You have to be my dad like the time my mom y.
Yeah. Right, it's the opposite of back to the future, right, you have to go back and fuck my mom.
I mean it's it's a romantic scene. They're making pipe bombs. I fell in love with the second I saw that shitty photo of you from our Son from the Future, and then they have sex.
But yeah, Cameron has said that for Terminator to you know, obviously, Arnold's character suddenly becomes the hero, but he was initially meeting with Cameron to play the Michael Bean role, which does make more sense because like, if it's a human, they have to be strong to set back. Yeah, you sent back a human that looks like Arnold to fight a Terminator that looks like Michael Bean. But I think Arnold just inherently understood, like this is what I would
be good at. And then at a deep animalistic level, my name will be the name of the movie character and I'll get to kill a lot of people, which we're about to get into was was important to him. I feel like there's like some part of his brain that is like the same part of the like people's brains that were like when you take a picture of someone,
you capture their soul, like ling photo photography. Like he really like placed a lot of weight on like how many people he got to kill in movies, and you know, can't beat that with regards to the Terminator. But yeah, Cameron has come out and said, like the reason a cop is a bad guy in T two is cops think all non cops are less than They are stupid, weak and evil. They dehumanize the people they are sworn to protect and desensitize themselves in order to do that job,
which fucking rules. Okay, So Schwarzenegger came away from reading the script for Terminator Too with like a worried look on his face, and Cameron's like, whoa what this is? This is fucking perfect, And he was like, I just like don't get to kill anyone in the script that was he was like bummed that he didn't get to
kill anyone. Man Like this is this was a big deal to him because I like it was one of the pieces, like one of the pieces of data that was like kept track of in his rivalry with Stallone back at Cracks. We like once made a video counting all the kills in Commando and that was by design. You know the scene where he's just like going into the uh yeah Balverde yeah, and just like yeah yeah. But then like there were there are parts where it's just like five seconds of just like him shooting like
waves and waves of like indiscriminate bad guys. They do.
They do the ultimate cut, the ultimate like eighties action movie cut where you see Arnold spray in m sixty like fifty times. Then it cuts to fifty guys just leaping out of different cover like, oh, we all got hit in that one.
It's awesome. They added that scene because I think it's one one or the other. He had just seen Rambo two, and I think that's what it was. He had seen Rambo two and was like he got like a lot of he killed a lot of people in that movie, and so they like added scene. They were literally taking extras who had just been shot and like spirit guming a mustache onto their face to like differentiate them from there and then just being like get back out there
to be killed again. Oh that's so awesome, man, for all the hating. So Stallone should have taken the role of terminator, because wasn't he offered the role? Like, didn't he didn't? Stallone turned down the terminator role. Yeah, the Stallone episode is gonna be crazy, like there their rivalry.
So let's let's get into the episode, allow me to say I'll be back.
Rights. Hey, it wasn't. I got right.
Shows three.
I assumed that, like the rivalry between the two of them was like made up in my child mind, you know, because they were like the two big, strong guys. But it was not I want to I want.
To just tell the stop or my mom will shoot.
Yes, oh yeah, yes. But this is a quote from Arnold Miles that just appeared in the Yeah yeah, yeah, this is this is from Arnold.
Yes, we were movie rivals, but we took the competitiveness to the extreme. We had to have the best body, we had to kill more people in our films, and we had to have the biggest guns.
Yeah. Wow. They were counting and like literal dick measuring guns and truly they were just keeping tabs on how many people they killed it and like stallone was on lettermans. Then after a while I started to like competition, this one upsmanship. He'd get a bigger gun, I'd shoot more people,
He'd shoot more people. And so I think probably definitively and Gabers, I want to get your official scholar's opinion on this, but I feel like Schwartzenegger won right, Like his movies did better than Stallone's and it's all there's just the nature Rocky one in Oscar, that's true.
Right, So there's like this one thing that that Schwarzenegger doesn't have, that Rocky had, that Stallone had.
Schwartzenegger probably doesn't give a shit about that, right.
It doesn't matter because he was like governor, like you know what I mean, Like he won like a million times over. Yeah, And I think his will be kinder to Schwarzenegger than Stallone to Stallone has maybe more duds in his but Stallone has always been a little bit more.
Of an artist than Arnold too.
Like Stallone wants to be Robert de Niro, right, Arnold wants to be Superman, not the actor character.
Literally.
But I think you're I think I think the competition. I also think we're talking about two guys who come across as really dumb but are probably a little more savvy than they for sure, And I think they understand k fabe and a rivalry between two big guys will benefit.
Both of them, kindness, you know what I mean.
And so then they get to make the escape plan and we all go and it's like it's like Heat.
It's like dumb heat, you.
Know, dumb heat fifteen years too late. I do like the dreamcasing in my mind, and I don't know if I would want to change a perfect film, but it does seem like if they had been able to get over the rivalry and make sure it's an egger ivan drago like that, it would have broken the world like that. That movie already did incredibly well for a movie that is like I think forty percent montage. Yeah, but you know, like that that would have fucking destroyed people's brains.
Yeah, Arnold's like and you see it with some of the big actors now, where their ego gets in their way of like interesting choices, like where it's just like I can't have Sly beat me up and it's like, but okay, it cool.
Yeah, literally everyone in the world would have seen it. But yeah, and you would have gotten one more kill than him in that movie.
Yeah, you kill your boy.
Fucking yeah, Carl Weathers, that's right. It just wasn't properly pitched to him.
Do you think there's any backstory to like, I feel like the movie posters for Cobra and Terminator are very similar, you know, like where terminators, like he's got like a gun like this cobra.
Stallone is also doing it with.
Like got a bigger guy, though he's not he doesn't have a pistol, he has like a little.
Exactly, are you really going for the exact same composition of a movie poster and con.
It's like no. It also has those weird like techno vibe like the aren't there like those music video shoots in there that kind of look like.
Up is like shooting music videos with robots. So I wanted to.
Talk about Brigitte Nielsen in a second because that she started out working with Arnold, and I feel like this is a good kind of summation of who they were. So Arnold and Brigitte Nielsen co starred in one of the Conan films, and like her quote on it is like the set lights wouldn't be out and we'd be off fucking each other like we did every single thing to each other's body is the like reads like a
romance novel. And then Stallone goes on to marry her and like tightly control her career and like she couldn't be in any thing that he wasn't involved with. And then when she was finally in Beverly Hills Cop two, he called Eddie Murphy and accused him of sleeping with her. Like it just seems like he's like fueled by insecurity and Arnold is just this like bounding, confident puppy.
Fucking yeah, he's like a giant Golden Retriever with his lipstick out. Yeah yeah, right, yeah, Oh that's actually Arnold and Brigitte hit it off in Red Sonya, which is not a Conan movie.
Red Sonya is red Sonya.
And then Arnold plays exactly a character like Conan but named like a name of different. Yeah, it's just it's just like, yes, we can't legally call him Conan, but he's a barbarian who focks a chick with a sword in this movie.
Yes, and he also they he said that they shot him from like three different angles in every shot that he was on, so like they could just like stretch the footage as much as possible. He was just like, I don't really want to do this, and they're like, yeah, no, you're just here for a couple of days, and then they're like he's actually the star or of the movie.
But yeah, So the one thing that Arnold always had the ability to do which is weird because he doesn't like seem like that funny of a person necessarily, but he could always do comedy and that drove Stallone crazy, and so in nineteen ninety two he decided to fuck with Stallone. Let's and tell him that the movie Stopper my mom will shoot. That script was going around and he said that he read the script. It was a piece of shit. Let's be honest. I say to myself,
I'm not gonna do this movie. Then they went to Sly and Sly called me, have they ever talked to you about doing this movie? And here, I'm gonna give you the quote, Miles, so you can read it.
And I said, yes, I was thinking about doing it. This is a really brilliant idea of the movie. When he heard that, because he was in the competition, he said, whatever it takes, I'll do the movie.
And of course the movie went major into the toilet, major into the toilet.
You're it's so awesome. That movie is fucking bad and weird. You guys, you don't just cover the good ones on action.
Now.
Yeah, we haven't done Oscar yet, which is all which is slies other attempt at comedy that fucking failed hard. Yeah, Arnold just has a better sense of humor even about himself, which I think is like the thing that makes him better.
The rock doesn't have that, like none of none of our modern maybe Sina does, but none of our modern people have that about themselves, like, you know, like everyone's too self serious or like worried that you know, like that nineties toxic masculinity mentality of like, well, if I made fun of myself, then everyone knows I'm a bitch, Okay.
Then what then I might become gay or something. Yeah, someone will think I'm day if Kevin Hart mocks me in a movie like no, I should rip Kevin Hart in half. In this movie Predator, I think arguably his best movie. I don't know Tato is probably my favorite of his movies, but it's a really great movie. His
muscles are used for comedy and like that. That also gets to the question of like how much is he aware of it and how much is he just willing to let himself be used by directors in the way that like he like kind of finds the right people to work with and then lets him do their job. Whereas that seems to be the exact opposite of Sylvester Stallone.
He gets like guys that he can bully and be in charge of and fire as.
The initial director, and then gets like some guy who he can just like put more or less. Yeah, Yeah.
Arnold's strong suit is like a trust in directors and like a ability to go like I don't fully understand what I'm saying in this scene, but you just tell me how to say phonetically and I'll get it out.
Yes.
And then you watch Sly.
Movies and realize, like English, what was Sylvester Sloane's first language? He sounds like that and English is the only language they spoke in his life.
The only other detail I learned about Predator in this from Jam is that there was they had a problem with their water filtration system. The cast got sick. As far as I know, this is the only Arnold Schwarzenegger movie in which he shipped his pants during the filming. And I bring that up only because I have a loose theory, because that's also true of Harrison Ford and Raiders of the Lost Arc. All the all the desert films are filmed while he's like running off to ship
his brains out because he was like incredibly sick. Also true of the most iconic moment of Michael Jordan's career. I'm just saying, when you have to, when you have to like focus your mind on not shitting your pants, you do some pretty iconic work. We don't know, Like it's not It's also not something that like Einstein would have said, Like, you know, when I came up with the equals MC squared, I was shitting my back out of my button up the pants. It wasn't just a loose theory.
It's a loose stool that it's a really Yeah, I mean that's inspired me.
Jack.
I think next week I'm gonna do we'll do the diarrhea episodes to see if that.
Changes my performance here on the.
Pod Theory of diar Reativity.
Yeah, sorry, relativity. Kindergarten Cop gave us the soundboard, which I do think is like one of the most iconic things about his career.
Reinvigorated him in a weird way and it really made him in like crystallized like a joke version of Arnold that then he got to like push against by becoming a politician. Like it was like there's like this weird thing where this is like he's a household joke with the fucking soundboard which we were all obsessed with that shout out eBaum's World for giving me like fucking six
years of fucking joy. And Howard Stern is where I first heard it too, But then he survives becoming like that much of a fucking joke somehow, which is just crazy.
That's impossible.
This soundboard still exists.
Dude, who is your daddy and what does he do?
Who is your daddy? I want to ask you a bunch of questions.
Uh huh, I have to answered immediately who is your daddy and what does he do?
Pop?
Who don't know what this is our yoga listeners? Like it was just it's like a pool string toy, but like you know, you can like hit everything and it like gives you all these different lines from Schwarzenegger. And it was used for a great like prank call effect
on many a radio show. And but I also think like something I think it was Rogers said on Action Boys that I thought was really smart is that both as a movie star and like just how we thought of him, He's just an action figure that you like dress up in different things and like make do different things.
And like that's why I think the soundboard works so well is because it's basically the pool string toy for like pre internet shit posters, where you can just like use Arnold quotes to just like do whatever, like use it as many times as you want.
And there's no scene where he's a child opening up a package making the audience cry watching the movie. Like everything he says is like weirdly ah, you know, and.
It's like a right right.
My favorite one was he called the Gator Lodge was one where he confuses this old woman.
Dude.
Those are the best videos or though I guess they were just you know, audio clips at the time, but I think, like to your point, it really was sonically, Arnold Schwarzenegger is just in your subconscious on this in this way that you also got excited at the idea that someone was just laughing in your face, playing blatantly Arnold Schwarzenegger's rights and they're like who.
Is this and they're like, Detective John Kimball, you fucking need it's Detective John Kimble, you idiot, you idiot.
Okay, Hey, Bennetts left off some steam. Yeah, remember when I told you I'd kill you last I love my friend is dead tired. Commando Commando is the most full of those, like.
If you're Commando And Kindergarten Cop.
Yeah, yeah, Kindergarten Cop is.
The one that like has so many of my favorite Kindergarten Cop like weirdly is one of the ones that kind of looms the largest in my memory other than Terminator two, Like Terminator two is the most burnt on my brain or movie of my life. But Kindergarten Cop just really like every review when you go back and look is like this really shouldn't work. Why does this work? But it like really fucking does.
The Bad Guy is like too scary for like a movie that also features children and Arnold, Like it's like also, it's like our first time we see Arnold and a beard, right, like yea and my guy and I'm a big fan of Arnold with facial hair and he has a fake beard in the beginning of that and those weird little like fucking shooter glasses. It's like very it's that is that was Jack. I kind of get what you're saying
because we were young when we saw it exactly. I was kind of like, you know, the other movies were like grown up movies, but this felt like a movie that we were like allowed to see. And so then and then all of a sudden, you feel like, wow, imagine if your fucking teacher like had a gun, not to think about it would be sick. My dad, he's a guyanic cologist and he looks like vagianas all.
It was a time before that was actually a political talking point that all teachers should have guns.
It's crazy.
But yeah, like I haven't really been able to get Arnold much in front of my kids because like, I don't want their first experience to be jingle all the way, because I don't think that's like that good of a movie. And so I was gonna show them. I was going to show them Kindergarten Cop, and then I listened back to the Action Boys. You're like, there's like a drug overdose in this. Yeah. I don't want to get on the wrong idea about drugs, you know.
Yeah, I know we'll be using them wisely in our house. Exactly, both of my kids know where the narcan is.
You got test strips man, Exactly.
It says we have to learn to use the Yeah, We're gonna go get our fenyl vaccines today.
His comedies are like on pap again, all of the ship, like he doesn't make any sense on paper, like Twins is a deeply fucked up eugenics story, Like it begins in a top secret government lab where scientists are attempting to create a physically, mentally and spiritually advanced human being, and the narrator has like a thick Austrian accent, so it's like it doesn't make it seemed like it wasn't about x Nazi doctors trying to create a master race.
And then kindergarten cop is like gun toting policeman again goes undercover the most conspicuous human being on the plant, Like if that guy was just a cop, he would be famous, right, how fucking cool he looks? And then Junior, Yeah.
Yeah, Twins is like maybe your best back to show kids, but it's like all adult themed. It's not like it's not like really fucked up, but it is like too, like I couldn't imagine kids holding their interests, like almost like if Conan wasn't so scary, that would be the one that makes the most sense. But it's a touch spooky with like snake worshippers and shit like that.
Yeah, I am very interested to see, like if his appeal still holds. You know, I'm sure it does, right, It's still like these movies are good. But then I thought that about Jaws, and my son was like, it's almost as good as the meg too, So.
Yeah, yeah, you know it's hard. You're like fucking with the modern attention span, which is just like on it. It's like modern consumption is on just a different frequency than we had growing up.
Yeah, you know, we kind.
Of had no choice but to be like, well, Jaws is what's on. I have to like set my brain to be able to sit here for this, which we'd barely ever see a shark. And then you're a kid and you just get baby Shark, and then all of a sudden you're like, who cares about Jaws when there's baby Shark?
Why is the shark singing? Why does Chief Brody not open the video by being like, hey, guys, you know, talking directly to me. We're at the kind of part where his career starts to go away a little bit, starts to go downhill for the first time. He's like kind of invincible for a long time. Two things that happened in the early nineties. One his Planet Hollywood, which was like a massive deal at the time, but it just it fell apart pretty quickly. The food suck. Schwarzenegger
pulled out in two thousand. He was notoriously bad at pulling out early enough.
Uh, that's a.
One time he put one time he pulled out, one time actually pulled out on top. And then the Last Action Hero was like the big the big one. Uh, it was everybody was like focused on it, so it got like watered down by studio notes. It doesn't like totally cohere. There's some like really good stuff in it, but like.
An inshanely good concept that they just fall a little short on. And I remember loving it as a kid, and or I loved it at least wanting to love it, and then rewatching it as a grown up, You're like, man, this could be so much better. Yeah, they also movie to remake. Everyone on these remakes movies that everyone loves. Remake a movie that kind of sucked.
Because it had like kind and yeah, he was also listening to mini discs.
I think, like in his stereo in his car. Its just like a technology. It's like a satire of action movies that like doesn't really get a lot of action movie like tropes are like there's a cartoon character walking through the police station. He's like always throwing dynamite around. It's like, what the fuck is that? He keeps calling f Murray Abraham Salieri too. He's like, that's Alma Dais. What are we talking about it. They also made a pretty confident decision by deciding to release it the same
day as Jurassic Park, which didn't go well. Oh wow, same day June ninety three, What a Time erected a gigantic inflatable Schwartzenegger in the middle of Times Square. But it was like Kaiju sized and holding a bundle of dynamite, and it was three days after the World Trade Center bombing. They had to immediately move it out. They also put the title of the movie on a NASA space shuttle, spent five hundred thousand dollars to have it on the Space Shuttle launch, and then it got delayed till like
five months after its release date. It was like that is a like it would almost be at that point like terrible luck for the nasubmission to like write that movie's name on it. But it was also just like, in terms of action heroes, this is like Diehard has come out, Batman has come out, like lethal Weapon, and you're starting to see people kind of trend towards more normal sized action heroes. It's just like people are like, I don't know, it's kind of weird that that is as fucking massive as he is.
Right because much like the Brad Pitt paradox, or you know, like if Arnold's movies were any more realistic, like every scene would just have people stopping him on the street going like what the fuck, or like picture with your arm. The Brad Pitt one is like, dude, you are fucking hot. Like every situation would just be absolutely ruined by like wait a minute, dude, you're fucking hot.
You're a carpenter. Dude, I'm wearing glasses and have a bucket hat on, so nobody's gonna even pay attention to me. But just a quick anecdote from that time, Bruce Willis says that after I heard he walked into a restaurant and Arnold was already there, and he like called across the dining room. Do you know why he'll never be an action hero. And then he flexs and he goes
tooth pick arms. True Eyes, I will say, is a incredibly islamophobic but very watchable high this like late career part of there with you Don't mess with the Sohan.
Yeah, it's a fun fucking movie, but you can't believe it.
You know, they're like wild.
It's like really kind of Oh yeah, it's fucking crazy. I'll do anything for that. Jamie Lee Curtis, uh sequence, yeah.
Do it sixty, do it slowly. And even there he's doing he's kind of using a soundboard.
Yeah, and Running Man when he's picking out his woman sleezy like, that's a great one board line tozy athletic.
His You know, we can offer all the cultural commentary we want on why we think his movie career faded down the stretch of like the nineties.
Here.
His theory is that it was when he fixed the gap in his teeth. He recently told Glenn Palell during like the Running Man movie run up that he thought it was he should have never fixed the gap in his teeth.
He might be right, but that's definitely not what it was. Some people just start making bad choices like money and team, like shit gets in the way and you just start choosing stuff like Arnold had like accidentally great taste for what he would put, you know what I mean, Like like it just made like he would he was in things that were so perfect for him and he never like stretched too far. But then he would do like Eraser and stuff, and you would be like, these are bad versions of stuff.
He's already done.
Yeah, But when you look at it, if you think like, okay, true Lies ninety four, your hairy tasker, A great next movie is yeah, you know, then Eraser then Jingle all the Way, you're like, oh, yeah, it's cresting now, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, And Jingle all the Way would be a fun like career, like aside if he kept the other ship going on, but Jingle all the Way became, then he was just like, oh this is who I am.
Yeah. And I think also like as you lose the heat, like no, you're no longer working with James Cameron. Now you're working with whoever directed like you know some of these movies, and then it's like you you don't have Danny DeVito re teaming with you in Jingle all the Way. As he was supposed to. It's like, although symbat's great, but you know, it's just like he stops having It's
hard to like sustain a thing like that. And I always remember, like Batman and Robin, him coming into that world felt like an admission of like being a failure, like he had given up, because it's just like, no, this is like the thing where they have to paint on your muscles, Like you don't. You don't have to do that. You're fucking in a suit, dude, yeaheah. So he's like, all right, my career slowed down. I'm going
to become the governor of California. He does. There's like a recall election, a bunch of celebrities, Gary Coleman runs, He runs. Everybody treats it as a joke. At first, he's doing like just terminator puns the whole time. But then he wins and becomes like an actual politician. And this is where we come to. You know, he was bad. He had like you know, he fought gay marriage, and by saying that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman, you know, the sorts of malapropisms that
you know, you can edit out of a movie. But then it beends like a thing that everybody.
Yeah, when you're a lawmaker, it hits a little different.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there was this moment where I don't know if you guys remember Barbara Bush like showed up with a cast and they said that she like slid down an icy hill on a saucer sled and that's how she broke her leg. Arnold recently told the true story, which I'm going to put in the Chat Free Month.
It was snowing of the and we had this toboggan and Bush is trying to teach me how to slide that because I was only used to sledding down with Austrian sleds, which you direct kind of with your feet, and so we went down totally out of control, and of course we crashed into.
Barbara Bush, who broke a leg. Then after that, Jesus, he just trucked poor Barbara, and of course we crashed into and of course we crashed when he says like and of course.
And of course we are crashing and like because we talk about it, like he has like these like rolling dialogue things, and of course we are. And then I
am here, I am on the delhi'side geist. I am talking to Miles and Jack, and I am here with Jack and Miles, and we are having fun and we are talking about the sled and of course I'm sledding and I'm sledding on with with Miles and Jack like like it's kind of you know, He's like, I am here on the Tonight show to talk about Collateral and its Collateral is the film I am.
Coming out of that Collateral. Yeah, it just keeps going. Yeah, that's I think the coolest thing he ever did as a politician was.
Well, it's so funny because I remember being I was not very politically minded, uh for a long time in my life, and I remember being like, oh, that's cool,
Arnold's the governor. And then like some people whose opinions I liked as a young kid were like, he's like not, he's not that like cool, like he's got he's got like bad politics, and You're like, oh okay, And now as like a grown up, I'm like, fuck, Like imagine Arnold was like what the right was like a dream come true and there just actually are only about taxes somehow and not about like policing every fucking choice every person makes He's.
Like, uh, pro choice but no healthcare.
Yeah, I.
Mean that's kind of sad, warm warmer progress.
Yeah, uh he said on nerdous Chris Hardwick asked him, uh, is there any law you would change if you could as a lawmaker, and he said it is obvious, but I would change The president has to be natural boy, like he.
Would change the rules so he could run for president.
Yeah, that's right.
At the time, you're going like, yeah, right, but a celebrity winning.
President, I got no man, I would kill that.
We that is like one of the reasons we wanted to do this show is like to like have more fun, but also like, you know, icons are powerful and like they become they take on a life of their own, and like Donald Trump was just a cartoon rich guy, and yeah, you know, like we just I think we have a tendency to like misunderstand what they become, how people get iconic, and also like the power that they have over us, and like I feel like he kind of he's been a critic of Trump, but it's hard
not to see that his political career is like a template for Trump's rise, where he's like a wealthy megastar who was just like presented himself as an outsider underdog who could fix the problems.
But for the twenty years before he was a politician with bad politics. You liked him so, like, you know, it's hard to shake that. Like Trump, no one liked Trump, but no one hated him either. He was like this rich douchebag. And then he got like a TV show and he was like kind of weird and kind of funny and gaudy, and you were like, oh, it's fucking crazy.
And then you're like, he's in my life. He's someone I recognized.
And then when he's like, oh, I'm running for office, a lot of us went like that makes no sense, and a lot of us were like I know him.
They're like, oh no, I vote for him. I know any name.
He's not the law determinator.
Yeah, he's actually he's very rich, so he doesn't he knows how to get rich for everybody, So I'm going to be rich.
I'm quoting like six of my family members in one when I say that, right, right, right, exactly, Yeah. I mean. There were lots of scandals in line with his run for governor. Shortly before the two thousand and three election, La Times published a story documenting a long history of sexual must conduct at least fifteen women claiming they were
groped or harassed by Schwartzenegger. And then in twenty eleven his marriage he married into the Kennedy family Maria Shriver, and it was revealed that he had fathered a child with their housekeeper, which came to late because the kid. No one has ever looked more like Schwartzenegger before.
It's funny because Christopher looks more like him than Patrick does. Patrick has Patrick has Kennedy jeans, which of course are beneficial. Christopher is like big, square jawed, handsome, Like it's very but I look, it's fucking you know, wear a rubber when you have affairs with employees.
That's a little lesson that we're taking away.
That's amazing to take away.
But I would also say, like it's bad, it's fucked up. But the fact that he's like, loves and accepts Christopher is so fucking real, Like it's so Joseph is that Joseph, Joseph, Joseph Joseph. Patrick is the one from White Lotus. Joseph is the Yeah, yeah, that's when we bought a jeep. Yeah, it's just so like it's funny, like it's he's just like, yes, she's I had affair with but he's my son and
yeah I was the governor. Like he's just like that's the power he like he's he has where we're just like a, come on, Arnie, what's twenty women.
Reporting sexual assault your coneen?
You're just say he's not even because he's not a person in a weird yeah idea. Yeah, Like I'm like, I don't know, I don't think Arnold was saying is a person to be honest, He's like, again, he's a fucking g I Joe toy that you just fucking pose in different things.
Allegations were not shocking to anybody who's seen that Brazil video home. There's a video from early, very early in his career where they sent him down to Brazil, and uh, it's one of the wildest things. It's like the most overtly horny anyone's ever been on camera, Like uh, and yeah, I mean he's like grabbing women's asses who are like you can see samba dancers who are like pushing his hands off of is.
They're like dancing around him, like doing like carnival dancing and he thinks it's a strip club and he's like, yeah, yeah, let's get let me grab you by the way shorty, and it was yeah, it's it's pretty just everything, even his interactions like with like that one woman, like he's like feeding her carrots and.
Shiit no no, no no. It's wild, but overall like a very weird, a very weird career that just like I do wonder how much it's going to fade over time, Like do you guys think those movies are going to make sense to people in like even like thirty more years, is it going to be like poly Shore movies, you know, where it's just like this was the thing that people were obsessed with and like studied more sociologically. Some of
the movies are just like too good and undeniable. But it does also feel like thirty years from now people will look back and be like so weird that he's like this giant fucking oh.
Right, Like is it more of a thing that people like are like oh okay, I get it, or it's like one of those things and you're like what the fuck were people back then.
Think you're anti seat belts?
You know, like like that shit when you're just like, we smoked on planes.
This guy clearly no one's asking why he's talking like this in the reality of the film, right, All right, guys, sure.
I mean, if if film still exists, I'm sure there'll be very interesting ways to discuss what the trends air and stuff. But fucking up like it is funny Jack, Like you just casually say something like in thirty years, how will we look at that? And then my brain just goes to be like, what the fuck is going to be happening in thirty years years? I mean, I'm talking to two dads, so I feel I always lessen my nihilism in those moments.
God Jesus Christ, I know over a glass of water.
Based on your day job here at TDZ, I'm assuming you guys are a little plugged into that.
Yeah, I'm always envisioning The Road by Cormick McCarthy.
When we're doing The Road. Is gonna appreciate Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
All we have is this iPad pre loaded with last action here. Sorry, I really wish you'd had can our Terminator on it.
As a big bridget Wilson fan, this is a big break in it well, John Gabris, such a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on. Always such a good time talking to YouTube.
I appreciate you having me on especially I don't have to deal with today's awful news stories and we could just talk about I know how awesome Arnold is to even throw over treat to do TDZ with you guys. But it's not about the state of the universe feels good. It's about mister Universe instead.
Olympia. Where can people find you, follow you, hear you, all that good stuff.
I'm at Gabris On social media. I got a free podcast with Adam Pally called stany Live. Wherever you get podcasts or YouTube, I got Action Boys, which is a Patreon podcast where if you remotely like what this episode's about, it's unfortunately that for three hours every week. That's at actionboys dot biz. We have some free episodes that you can get addicted, you know, we get you, get you hooked, and then.
You come back for more.
And then lastly, I made this physical media thirty episodes of the Gino Lombardo Show. It's like three ten episode seasons. I turned it into a USB drive with like original art that comes in like a cassette form and you can get that at Geno dot Gabris dot com.
If that's something that.
Appeals amazing any comedy Bang Bang fans out there, Yeah, yeah, forget that. Well, that's where I first first heard. I still remember sound Speeds. I still remember writing Gino Lombardo and then John Gabris down in my notes app I think it was like its first appearance and I was just like, who the fuck is this guy?
Yeah, that was like my second podcast appearance ever. I didn't even know what podcasts where I had moved out here and I did Geno for Gotten, and I had such a good time that I didn't know I would be doing exclusively that.
Character for the next fifty years.
One day we'll be doing an Icon episode about Yeah, yeah.
What's well, don't worry.
His sexual assault scandals are are coming in hot. He grew up the bagel boss guy.
Hessed him on the back of the neck. All right, that was a fun one. This is the notebook, dumb. You may have noticed first of all, that we didn't hit air standard question. If this person or character existed in the present tens or in our reality, would they have been on the epsteam flight logs. We didn't hit it because this is our first icon who did exist in our moment, and he wasn't on them, dinging casino
jackpots sound effect, he was not on them. I think we decided Miss Higgy wasn't probably on them also in that alternate reality, and people were pissed. People were like, yes, she definitely would have been with Arnold. I'll say the internet actually couldn't believe he wasn't on it and made a fake list of names that went viral on Twitter claiming these people were on the flight logs. I mean, it's still early. It's still early, folks. We still don't
know every We still haven't seen every file yet. One thing that's becoming a recurring theme also as we look at these icons for me is the question of I guess it's like kind of a nature nurture question, more of a was it them or was it us? Of the icons we've covered so far, like Einstein is one extreme because he's this super singular genius who is going to be famous no matter where and when he existed, and then Erkeles kind of the other side, probably doesn't
become an icon in most other moments. Historically, or places in time, but catches something peculiar about the cultural moment, and I'd say Arnold is kind of somewhere in the middle there kind of an enigma. I feel like he was going to be famous no matter what. Everyone who meets him, like even the people who go in being like, this guy seems like an idiot, like James Cameron, for instance. They come away from like a single meal with him being like, this is the face of and titular character
of my next movie. But the specifics in the level of his dominance feel very peculiar to the eighties and nineties, Like it'll be one of the weirdest sections of the Future Museum about the late twentieth century, Like people will just be like, why is this guy everywhere? And why does he.
Look like that?
I also wanted to note that you can kind of see the specificity and the suddenness and massive impact of his influence in movies he never appeared in like the same way that you can see certain cataclysmic volcanic eruptions in tree rings on like other continents. Like the example I was thinking about is the Rocky franchise. In the first Rocky movie, Stallone's trying to play by the roles of the seventies. He's a schlubby every man who isn't as ripped as his opponent. That was kind of the point.
It's an underdog tail, like all our movies are generally underdogtails, so it doesn't make sense that he'd be the superman. But then Arnold hits and by Rocky three, Stallone looks actually like too muscular to make sense as a boxer. But by that time the point was no longer to make sense. The point was suddenly to always look as
conspicuously awesome as possible, no matter the role. And then Arnold's influence fades, and you know, he and Van dam are replaced by action heroes with tooth pickoms, and Stallone goes back to playing a schlubby guy in Copland. I think. Cop Land came out the year after Eraser, I think, which was the first of Arnold's big swing action movies that like doesn't really exist. It's not like a flop or a bomb like last actor hero is just like people are like I don't even remember what that movie
was about. On the subject of bodybuilding's relationship to acting, there's this mystery at the heart of filmmaking I've always found interesting, which is why do actors like Robert de Niro and like John Turtrurou, who are these great actors, You know, they're actors actors, but then when they direct movies, nobody really like they're not great directors. And then the actors who do make great directors are people like Ben Affleck and Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford, who are kind
of one dimensional. I mean, they're movie stars, like you'd never want to go see them in a stage play, but they end up making great directors. And I think one of the reasons is that they understand a very simple thing, which is how to look on camera, like how to show up, you know, without the interiority of the acting process to rely on, they focus on everything outside of them, their relationship to the camera, what angles
make them look best. If you're not a great actor, but you're good at looking awesome on camera, you have to be sort of directing while you act, and like sort of bending the movie around your face, which requires a much broader understanding of how filmmaking works. Because they don't have the tools inside, so they figure out how to work within the machine around them. To look awesome, and that sets them up to be better directors than somebody who just like shows up and is like, I'm
the Jordan of this shit. I don't I don't need to pay attention to these idiots with cameras. Obviously, Arnold didn't become a great director, but I was thinking about that when researching how his bodybuilding led into his acting career, because from a very early age, he's thinking about how to pose and like hit his angles and how to
appear to people. He's just like pure exteriority. He's studying how to show up at the right angle to portray the right things, which for him, the right thing is always to just look awesome and strong, and that was the right thing for America in the eighties and nineties. I mentioned how he tried the Stanislovsky method. I talked about how his teacher thought it got great results. Arnold disagreed. Arnold eventually was like, I don't want to be that
kind of actor. I want to be an action hero, and he quit the Stanislovsky method and committed to weapons training, and he won all sorts of awards from gun nut magazines and shit like that for being the best shooter of guns in movies. I don't know. I don't subscribe to them. Next up, I think the question we kind of talked about this, but the question of like is Arnold hot is interesting and like why is he not?
You know? Gabrius mentioned that the women characters in his movies are often like ooh ho a hoba, look at this guy, but he kind of gives off the same vibes as the Rock. He's sort of like too invulnerable to make sense in that way. He's sort of a marble statue come to Laye, which I think does tie
back into fascism. There's a really good article called Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny on the website blood Knife that talks about the sort of sexless, bloodless nature of our movies while everybody has suddenly become completely shredded like the Rock and the Marvel movies. And in
that article, the writer Rs. Benedict connects it back to Paul Verhoven's satire of fascism and American action movie Starship Troopers and describes the co ed shower scene as quote, a room full of beautiful, bare bodies and everyone is only horny for war. And I feel like that's a
perfect summation of Arnold movies. Like they had to cut a sex scene from Commando because the actress and the director were like, this doesn't make sense and like it feels weird, but they were willing to add an extra like one hundred and fifty people being killed in the final scene. In terms of Arnold's relationship to other action stars, as I was reading that book The Last Action Heroes, I feel like John Claude Van Dam and Arnold Schwartzenegger
are sort of spiritually linked. They're just these unquestioningly confident like puppies who've never been told no. And then Stallone and Segal are these massively insecure, sort of sad boys who refuse to let their guard down. Their careers are like scar tissue that's like grown over their wounded ego. And then Schwartzenegger and Van Dam are like these IDs that just sort of shed their super ego like needless shirts and are just running around flexing and waving their
dicks in our faces. And finally, I talked in a past episode about this theory I was working on of like icons have to have like a contradiction at their core, Like there's too many famous people. We don't want to learn about another famous person. We're already holding all this shit. We don't want to have to pick up another famous person. But our brains are intrigued by contradiction, and so you have,
like Einstein is not just a super genius. He's a super genius who can't remember to put his shoes on before walking out the door. Erkele's a dork, but he's a dork who's extremely confident. This Piggy a career motivated diva primarily driven by a romantic love of Kermit. And if I had to jam Arnold into the contradiction theory, I'd highlight some of the stuff we touched on. He's an American hero who spoke with a thick Austrian axe.
He's constantly going undercover while being the most wildly conspicuous character in any movie. And it's interesting that he thinks that the thing that killed his career was fixing the gap in his teeth. You know, he's a subscriber to the contradiction theory apparently. And you know, Stallone also had an imperfection with the way he talked and kind of slurred his words because like one side of his face was lightly crushed by a fourceps accident when he was
being born. But I'm going to shoot you guys straight, I don't think there's a lot of contradiction here. I think Arnold is a pretty straightforward like cartoon of a jock. He makes locker room blowjob jokes, he smokes massive cigars. He's just like the toxic masculinity of the seventies, pumped up to the extreme to just like the physical embodiment of what a seven year old would design an action hero to look like. Yeah, so, I'm not sure where
we're at with this contradiction theory. I feel like I might need to place it with our new theory that people do their most iconic work while shaitting their pants. All right, that's going to do it for Arnold. We're back next Monday with possibly the most famous and recognizable figure on the face of the planet, who, depending on the tradition that you follow, may have done their most iconic work while shaitting their pants. I'm talking, of course,
about our icon number five, Santa Claus. Talk to you then, I