Whatever You Say, Arnold

Let's start with the name.

In the times B.S.—before Schwarzenegger—anybody named Arnold was a royal wimp. The most famous Arnold before him was Arnold the Pig on Green Acres. Follow that up with Schwarzenegger and you have a marquee nightmare, a name to hide, to trim, to change altogether. It's a waste of letters.

But that's no problem for a guy like him. Arnold remakes the world in his own image. Before Arnold, there weren't any beefcake Austrian movie stars, either. You see, Arnold has this destiny, a destiny just like the characters in his movies. It is to prove that life is not fair—so we should always let him win.

Let me explain. You know how there's always one guy in high school who quarterbacks the football team, dates the head cheerleader, drives a Porsche and gives speeches to the Kiwanis Club on atomic energy? In 999 cases out of a thousand, we all hate this guy. We wait 40 years for the high school reunion so we can show up and see what he looks like now. Probably been through four divorces and lost all his hair, we think, hoping. And, of course, at the reunion, this man of 58 is still handsome, still married to a woman who is still beautiful, has four beautiful children and is the chairman of a hospital for crippled children in Altoona, Pennsylvania. When he tells a joke, everybody in the room laughs like hyenas. And so we really hate him now, right?

Well, Arnold is that guy. He's been that guy all his life. But here's the difference: We love him. America loves him. The world loves him. I love him.

Arnold is the first guy I've ever seen who gets everything he wants in life—money, fame, adulation, power, strength, his ideal wife—and never apologizes for it.

What's the American way? Get rich secretly. Become famous, but never say, "I wanna be famous." Exercise power, but don't let anybody know you're exercising power. Have money, but don't let on that you enjoy your money. Get in trouble? Lie your way through it. Play down the situation. Be gracious.

To all of this, Arnold replies, "I did it my vay." Or, as (text concluded on page 92) Conan the Barbarian would put it, uttering what has become the line that we, the Arnold fans of the world, love best:

"Conan, what is best in life?"

"To krosh your enemies, to see dem driven before you, and to hear de lamentations of der vomen."

The Arnold way goes like this: Tell all your friends in your homeland that you're leaving this hick town (Thal, Austria) because you want to be famous and powerful. Then become so famous and powerful that you can lunch with the President, fly everywhere in your own Gulfstream jet, smoke Cuban cigars but still get appointed as chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, marry into the Kennedy family and remain the Republican Party's favorite superstar, hang out with Henry Kissinger, own $50,000,000 worth of real estate, make an astronomical salary and still get 15 percent of the gross on all deals. You do all this, then grin that big gap-toothed grin and seem like a regular guy. That's the Arnold way.

And we buy it. We want to believe that, at any moment, Arnold could call up on the phone and say, "Hey, Joe Bob, vould you like a byeer mit me? Maybe I vill invite Henry Kissinger and ve vill have tequila shooters."

To show you how successfully he has pulled this off, the first Kitty Kelley–style unauthorized biography of Arnold came out a couple of years ago and it had all the details we love to read, as long as Nancy Reagan, Jackie Onassis or Frank Sinatra is the target. But Arnold is another story. So even though it had juicy stuff about how he used steroids when he was Mr. Universe, his father was a member of the Nazi Party, Arnold was a womanizer (a pretty strange word to use, since he was single at the time of his so-called womanizing) and other fodder for the Enquirer, nobody bought the book. It sold about 30,000 copies, putting it in a league with the best Lithuanian novelists of 1974.

OK, so he dodged that one. But last spring, it looked like the man was finally headed for his first real plunge into the toilet. The number-one box office star in the world was about to reach the point where the press and public all at once turn on him and chew him up just as fast as they created him. It happened to Burt Reynolds. It happened to Clint Eastwood. It happened to Charles Bronson. It happened to John Wayne so many times that he had more comebacks than Roberto Duran. And now it was Arnold's turn. It started with rumors on the set of Terminator 2. The movie wouldn't be finished on time. The special effects weren't working. And director James Cameron was so far over budget that the total cost might be $100,000,000—three times as expensive as Heaven's Gate. The gossip columnists sharpened their knives. The Wall Street Journal covered the story, working the spendthrift-Hollywood-types and overpaid-star angles. How bad would it be? Howard the Duck level? Or full-blown Hudson Hawk level, which scored a perfect 100 on the Pitiful Meter?

And so Terminator 2 premiered in July, and it was not only a great movie, but it did cost $100,000,000—and they didn't waste a penny. James Cameron is the first, and probably last, director in history who could truthfully say, "I spent one hundred million dollars, and every cent of it is on the screen." The movie is expected to gross $400,000,000.

Teflon the Barbarian.

Now that the man has been proved invincible in life as well as in the movies, people say Hollywood is no longer large enough to contain him. What should we do with him? He could run for President, I guess. (I know, I know, I know, he was born in a foreign country and so we'd have to pass a Constitutional amendment to make him eligible. No problemo.) The political rumors started when Arnold announced that, since he was heading the fitness council, he would travel to all 50 states, visit schools and lobby politicians to pass laws making more hours of physical education mandatory for school children. And so everyone said, "Aha! A steppingstone!"

What they didn't realize is that Arnold meant what he was saying. He has this habit of saying exactly what he means. The crowds liked this so much, sometimes greeting him with chants of "Arnold! Arnold! Arnold!" that politicians thought he had invented some new campaign technique. No one told Arnold that modern politicians never speak directly to people, and they never, ever, say what they mean.

But Arnold doesn't want to be President. Arnold wants real power, and he knows how to get it.

What men love about Arnold is that he appears to use his superior size and strength to get what he wants, but the body is almost camouflage for his real intentions. From his very first big role, in Pumping Iron, he has done this. (Well, actually, his first movie was the immortal Hercules Goes Bananas, a 1969 comedy in which Arnold, his voice dubbed by another actor, rebels against Zeus, goes to New York to live a carefree life with a pretzel vendor and drives a chariot through Times Square in pursuit of Mobsters. But no one else holds this against him. See what I mean? Teflon the Barbarian.) Anyhow, in Pumping Iron, Arnold doesn't become a seven-time Mr. Olympia by having a better body (how can you even compare bodies at that level?) or a slicker routine. He wins, Muhammad Ali–style, by making everyone—especially his opponents—believe that their goal is to beat him, instead of to do their best. With some, like Lou Ferrigno, he uses flattery to soften them up. With others, like his lifelong friend Franco Columbu, he uses the fact that he's a father figure. He'll tell inappropriate jokes in the weight room to make the other guy think about him. He's not above outright ridicule.

One time, in an interview with U.S. News & World Report, Arnold declared, "Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave."

Arnold volunteers to do it, and we line up to take his orders. We say, "Yes, Arnold, you're right, you are the king."

When we go to his movies, we say, "Now, that was one satisfying movie." Even if, in movies like Terminator 2, the message is: "I have to blow you away now because I feel strongly that it's in both of our best interests."

He's made violence and gore respectable. He's such an intimidating presence that, in the same year the M.P.A.A. Ratings Board was throwing hissy fits and giving X ratings to cartoonish films like Frankenhooker and realistic, bloodless works like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Arnold put out Total Recall, which scores a 97 on the Carnage Scale but somehow managed to get a routine R. Same deal for Terminator 2, which exploded more than a few body parts. And if I haven't made my point yet, Kindergarten Cop has an extended sequence in which a serial killer sets a grade school ablaze and riddles it with gunfire. This was released as a Christmas comedy.

And we bought it.

If Schwarzenegger is looking for a new career, he should replace Robert Bly as the official male mentor. There's something about this whole men's movement thing—banging tom-toms in the woods, slinging sweat on one another, chanting like Indians—that bothers me. It's like a bunch of weenies out there saying, "Look! I'm really not a weenie!"

Put Arnold in charge of the wild-man weekend. The first thing he'd do is issue shoulder-mounted rocket launchers and teach us something about taking responsibility, about direct action.

That, I would sign up for.

Arnold, if you're reading this, let's go get a byeer.

Whatever you want, ArnoldNew Targets for the terminator

Target: The Baltics Objective: Create prosperity Arnold's Way: Build a million gyms, teach stilted English and Arnold-style acting, promote emigration

Target: Public transportation Objective: On-time performance, public safety Arnold's Way: Replace buses with personnel carriers, use humvees and tanks in rough neighborhoods

Target: Postal Service Objective: On-time delivery Arnold's Way: Weight-train letter carriers, turbocharge mail trucks, use Stealth bombers for Express main.

Target: Network television Objective: No more sitcoms Arnold's Way: TTV—24 hours a day of testosterone, flexing, bone breaking, crashes and stony silences

Target: Sean Young Objective: The obvious Arnold's Way: Behavior modification, use dog treats and a leash

Target: National school system Objective: Reach young audience Arnold's Way: Bigger teachers, more physed. no more naps

Target: Movie studio Objective: Total control Arnold's Way: Make incredibly expensive movies with other people's money, ensuring that they take the losses while Arnold gets all the profits

Target: The men's movement Objective: Drive out girly men and poets Arnold's Way: Burn tom-toms, choose up sides and play Conan in the woods, hire ghostwriter to pen "Iron Arnold"