Icon #4: Arnold Schwarzenegger w/ Jon Gabrus

Hello, The Internet!™, and welcome to this spinoff episode of The Daily Zeitgeist we’re calling The Iconograph: a show about icons.

In this episode, Miles and Jack are joined by comedian/podcaster Jon Gabrus to talk about the cybernetic organism (correction: body builder) sent from the future (correction: Austria) to take the world by storm:

Arnold Schwarzenegger!

They'll explore his rise to stardom, his STAGGERING horniness and why he snapped Barbara Bush's leg like a toothpick!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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.

(00:26):
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

(00:48):
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

(01:09):
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

(01:29):
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,

(01:50):
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.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
When I am on the Daily Zeitgeist is like I
am calming all night and when you are saying my name,
I am coming.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
When I am doing my plugs, I am calming.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
You believes how much I'm in Heaven? Did you hear
I'm on Daily zeit Guys? You I'm coming.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
I went to high school a Luffergnell junior WHOA And
we would always say that to him.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
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

(02:51):
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

(03:12):
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,

(03:32):
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

(03:54):
action heroes like keep bringing back like he said, I'll
be back in so many.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
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,

(04:22):
and he can cite him whatever.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
The fuck he wants.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
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

(04:47):
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.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
It's just like a Venture hotel.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
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.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
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.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah, you know, like he.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
There's no fucking.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
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

(06:06):
make like to set it up, or we changed culture
because we were like we love this, fucking save us
Ross Ubermensch.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
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

(06:34):
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

(06:55):
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.

Speaker 4 (07:17):
When my father arrived in Leningrad, he was all pumped
up on the lives of his government.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
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.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah, that's the other reason we wanted to have you
on here.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
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

(08:08):
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

(08:30):
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.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
It's not like it's not like saying I used to
be the construction worker in the village.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
People.

Speaker 4 (08:47):
Sure thanks to stick around psychologically a little bit more so.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
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

(09:13):
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

(09:33):
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.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
I could probably find a couple of people before that
before I.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
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.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
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.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Admit he was good.

Speaker 4 (10:18):
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.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
Fucking Johnny Carson.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
It's gotta be a less harmful guy to look to
for public speaking.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
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.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Arnold also an elite level poser, like he literally made
his he was a champion poser.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
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

(11:22):
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.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
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,

(11:56):
But when women are like, oh dear god, it's like,
yeah he has d cups a rock.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Heart, how you're into that his cycle?

Speaker 2 (12:05):
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.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
But Arnold himself legendary, horny freak.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
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

(12:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
They pointed out that.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
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

(13:15):
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.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
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.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
I got.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
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,

(14:14):
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.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
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

(14:56):
new that came on the market.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
He wasn't the only guy at these bodybuilding shows.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
We should bring this onto more movie sets.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
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

(15:38):
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

(15:58):
have slept with Arnold behind his back, so.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
He might be motivated to shit.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
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.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
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.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
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.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
You have living like that forever.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
I mean, it is.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
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

(17:14):
and Dave Bautista again, so everyone starry.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
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.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
It's like, maybe what doesn't need to be diced?

Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (17:40):
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

(18:01):
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

(18:22):
beautiful people who like would stop traffic.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
And when you see pictures of real fucking the crazy
spies and assassins like that are Cia and Jaysock, like
elite level guys.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
They all look like chemists.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
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.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
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

(19:05):
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

(19:25):
did it taste?

Speaker 3 (19:28):
Awesome?

Speaker 1 (19:29):
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

(19:50):
he was always good at.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
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

(20:12):
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

(20:32):
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.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
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.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
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.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
A machine guns. I was like, you.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
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

(21:32):
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.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
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.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
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

(22:38):
had noticed it.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
Or he spoke maybe yeah, that was the first time
he had actually spoken on film.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
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

(23:04):
like how frank Oz came up with her backstory was
like just writing freehand art backstory dark yea super dark
backstory for Miss Piggy.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
I believe it.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
I got to imagine based on how how powerful she's become.
She came from a lot, she came from a heart.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
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

(23:44):
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

(24:04):
just trying to picture Arnold like doing that.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
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.

Speaker 4 (24:15):
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.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yeah, like one guy who's just been like presumably like
hitting on every woman stop and.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
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.

Speaker 3 (24:45):
Terrible man.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
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

(25:08):
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.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Yeah, and that's so funny that he crushed that part
of the acting.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Damn, this guy can.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
And he's also really the best of them in the
Max bench Press portion of.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
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

(26:01):
to explore.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
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.

Speaker 4 (26:11):
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.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
And some of your most precious white female friends will
tell you that I just want to go to Vienna
for Christmas.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
I'm like really, like, I don't know anything about it.
I want to go to Mexico.

Speaker 4 (26:32):
It's it's well because my cousin just married someone who's
from Austria and he'd been.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
He's like, dude, Austria's fucking sick, and everyone I know
who's been there's like, do Vienna's sick?

Speaker 3 (26:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Gotomy?

Speaker 2 (26:44):
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.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, that like set him up financially. The syndication decides no.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
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.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
Makes me so happy.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
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.

(27:44):
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.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
That's so that makes sense, you know that.

Speaker 4 (28:03):
Like there's a clip from a couple of years ago
where he tried to make a joke about making a
million dollars.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
That fell so flat, like on a radio show.

Speaker 4 (28:11):
And now it makes sense to me because he was
he was making some landlord ass money like to start up.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
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.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
Right, uh huh? Wow? Hello, oh my god, wake up,
wake up.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
They have a breakfast show. You need to get pumped up.
Anytime the joke falls flapped up off the lines of
your government.

Speaker 4 (28:48):
Wow, okay, anyway that makes that's because that's such rich
guy humor too.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
When you're like, yes, always like a million an awful joke.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
I would say, if you're hosting Arnold on your show,
you gotta laugh at his jokes.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
I think, job, I bet you Arnold never does that
show again.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
I think they.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
Probably just couldn't connect. Like his delivery, They're like, oh, joke, yes,
thank you.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
Miles didn't pause that in the middle. That that silence
was him just looking at waiting for them.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
You're like, oh, it must the video must be over.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Then he goes, hello, oh my god, this is a
breakfast show. You got's wake up. But just overall, like

(29:40):
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

(30:01):
and learn from him. And so he is essential like
the he is a terminator, he's just just like super processing.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
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?

Speaker 1 (30:20):
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

(30:40):
those movies does he get to say that weightlifting is
like coming and then Myles would like to read.

Speaker 4 (30:49):
Oh wow, it's as satisfying to me as coming is,
you know, as having sex.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
With a woman. Then coming, I love it. So all
is up the first sentence by clarifying what it's not
even I.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
Refuse to say it's jerking off. Yeah I don't. It's
gay to jerk.

Speaker 4 (31:04):
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.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
I'm getting the feeling of coming backstage.

Speaker 4 (31:17):
When I pump up, when I pose it from the
five thousand people, I get the same feeling.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
So I'm coming day and night. I mean, it's it's terrific, right,
So you know, I'm in heaven so awesome.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
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

(31:54):
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.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
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.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
Right.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
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.

Speaker 5 (32:41):
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.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
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.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
It's like that's that's so fucking funny.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
That's like childish behavior over like and these are all
people who are like making millions.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
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.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
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.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
Right, It's like when we.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
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.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
Going on in that movie than you think.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
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.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
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.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
I don't know where they are.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
I don't know where they were pulling that from. Ye.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
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.

(34:58):
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.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
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.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
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

(35:55):
choosing his roles pretty wisely.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
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?

Speaker 3 (36:16):
He's like, how about a robo robot?

Speaker 1 (36:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (36:21):
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.

Speaker 4 (36:39):
You're like, fuck, yeah, you're from Long Island, which exit
off the l.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
I E twenty five South.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
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,

(37:08):
because yeah, why would the robot need to be shredded
and have an Austrian accent if.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
It be enormous and like yeah, he would not blend
at all he can, and like it makes no sense.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
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.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
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.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
So it's like it's good casting.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
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.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
Yea, now they're like body build.

Speaker 4 (37:54):
Rip because that juxtaposition made the T one thousand more terrifying.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
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.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
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

(38:39):
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.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah, it's like the highest, the most expensive thing in
anyone's house.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
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

(39:18):
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.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
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.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
Quick.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
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

(40:11):
the Terminator movies to happen.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
And that's such crazy.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Thank God, this guy, who I think is a homeless lunatic,
I'm gonna let him fucking finish.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
It for the world ends.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
Yeah, a cream pie saves the world, Sarah.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
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?

Speaker 3 (40:36):
No, I don't.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
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.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah. Right, it's the opposite of back to the future, right,
you have to go back and fuck my mom.

Speaker 4 (41:00):
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.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
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

(41:35):
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.

(41:55):
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,

(42:16):
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

(42:37):
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

(42:59):
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

(43:20):
waves and waves of like indiscriminate bad guys. They do.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
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.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
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

(43:57):
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.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
So let's let's get into the episode, allow me to
say I'll be back.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Rights. Hey, it wasn't. I got right.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
Shows three.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
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.

Speaker 3 (44:41):
To just tell the stop or my mom will shoot.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
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.

Speaker 4 (44:55):
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.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
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

(45:29):
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.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Right, So there's like this one thing that that Schwarzenegger
doesn't have, that Rocky had, that Stallone had.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Schwartzenegger probably doesn't give a shit about that, right.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
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.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
Of an artist than Arnold too.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
Like Stallone wants to be Robert de Niro, right, Arnold
wants to be Superman, not the actor character.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
Literally.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
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.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
Both of them, kindness, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
And so then they get to make the escape plan
and we all go and it's like it's like Heat.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
It's like dumb heat, you.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
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.

(47:07):
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.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
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.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
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.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
Yeah, you kill your boy.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Fucking yeah, Carl Weathers, that's right. It just wasn't properly
pitched to him.

Speaker 4 (47:45):
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.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
Stallone is also doing it with.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Like got a bigger guy, though he's not he doesn't
have a pistol, he has like a little.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
Exactly, are you really going for the exact same composition
of a movie poster and con.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
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.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
Up is like shooting music videos with robots. So I
wanted to.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
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

(48:44):
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,

(49:05):
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.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
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.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Red Sonya is red Sonya.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
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.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
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

(50:04):
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

(50:27):
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.

Speaker 4 (50:43):
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.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
And of course the movie went major into the toilet,
major into the toilet.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
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.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Now.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
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

(51:30):
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.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
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

(52:04):
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.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
He gets like guys that he can bully and be
in charge of and fire as.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
The initial director, and then gets like some guy who
he can just like put more or less. Yeah, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
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.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
And then you watch Sly.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
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.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
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

(53:18):
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,

(53:44):
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.

Speaker 4 (53:58):
It's a loose stool that it's a really Yeah, I
mean that's inspired me.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Jack.

Speaker 4 (54:04):
I think next week I'm gonna do we'll do the
diarrhea episodes to see if that.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
Changes my performance here on the.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
Pod Theory of diar Reativity.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
Yeah, sorry, relativity. Kindergarten Cop gave us the soundboard, which
I do think is like one of the most iconic
things about his career.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
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

(54:45):
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.

Speaker 3 (54:59):
That's impossible.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
This soundboard still exists.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
Dude, who is your daddy and what does he do?

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Who is your daddy? I want to ask you a
bunch of questions.

Speaker 4 (55:07):
Uh huh, I have to answered immediately who is your
daddy and what does he do?

Speaker 3 (55:13):
Pop?

Speaker 1 (55:13):
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

(55:36):
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

(55:59):
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.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
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.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
It's like a right right.

Speaker 4 (56:22):
My favorite one was he called the Gator Lodge was
one where he confuses this old woman.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
Dude.

Speaker 4 (56:28):
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.

Speaker 5 (56:48):
Is this and they're like, Detective John Kimball, you fucking
need it's Detective John Kimble, you idiot, you idiot.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
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.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
If you're Commando And Kindergarten Cop.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
Yeah, yeah, Kindergarten Cop is.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
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?

(57:42):
But it like really fucking does.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
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

(58:06):
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

(58:27):
a guyanic cologist and he looks like vagianas all.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
It was a time before that was actually a political
talking point that all teachers should have guns.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
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

(59:01):
the wrong idea about drugs, you know.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Yeah, I know we'll be using them wisely in our house. Exactly,
both of my kids know where the narcan is.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
You got test strips man, Exactly.

Speaker 4 (59:19):
It says we have to learn to use the Yeah,
We're gonna go get our fenyl vaccines today.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
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

(59:58):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
Yeah, you know, we kind.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
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?

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
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

(01:01:47):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
Uh, that's a.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:02:41):
Because it had like kind and yeah, he was also
listening to mini discs.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
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.

(01:03:10):
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,

(01:03:34):
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

(01:03:56):
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,

(01:04:20):
I don't know, it's kind of weird that that is
as fucking massive as he is.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
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

(01:04:45):
wait a minute, dude, you're fucking hot.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
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

(01:05:08):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Yeah, it's a fun fucking movie, but you can't believe it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
You know, they're like wild.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
It's like really kind of Oh yeah, it's fucking crazy.
I'll do anything for that. Jamie Lee Curtis, uh sequence, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
Do it sixty, do it slowly. And even there he's
doing he's kind of using a soundboard.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
Yeah, and Running Man when he's picking out his woman
sleezy like, that's a great one board line tozy athletic.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
Here.

Speaker 1 (01:06:10):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
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

(01:06:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
He's already done.

Speaker 4 (01:06:53):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
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

(01:07:39):
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

(01:07:59):
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

(01:08:20):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
Yeah, when you're a lawmaker, it hits a little different.

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:09:01):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
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

(01:09:52):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
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

(01:10:27):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:10:40):
Like, uh, pro choice but no healthcare.

Speaker 3 (01:10:43):
Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
Mean that's kind of sad, warm warmer progress.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
Would change the rules so he could run for president.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
At the time, you're going like, yeah, right, but a
celebrity winning.

Speaker 3 (01:11:13):
President, I got no man, I would kill that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
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

(01:11:41):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
And then you're like, he's in my life. He's someone
I recognized.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:12:31):
They're like, oh no, I vote for him. I know
any name.

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
He's not the law determinator.

Speaker 2 (01:12:36):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
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

(01:13:02):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
That's a little lesson that we're taking away.

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
That's amazing to take away.

Speaker 2 (01:13:44):
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,

(01:14:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:14:19):
Reporting sexual assault your coneen?

Speaker 4 (01:14:21):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:14:37):
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

(01:15:01):
you can see samba dancers who are like pushing his
hands off of is.

Speaker 4 (01:15:06):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
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,

(01:15:43):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:16:05):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
Think you're anti seat belts?

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
You know, like like that shit when you're just like,
we smoked on planes.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
This guy clearly no one's asking why he's talking like
this in the reality of the film, right, All right, guys, sure.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
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

(01:16:49):
my nihilism in those moments.

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):
God Jesus Christ, I know over a glass of water.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
Based on your day job here at TDZ, I'm assuming
you guys are a little plugged into that.

Speaker 4 (01:17:04):
Yeah, I'm always envisioning The Road by Cormick McCarthy.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
When we're doing The Road. Is gonna appreciate Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
All we have is this iPad pre loaded with last
action here. Sorry, I really wish you'd had can our
Terminator on it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
Olympia. Where can people find you, follow you, hear you,
all that good stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:17:54):
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,

(01:18:17):
and then.

Speaker 3 (01:18:17):
You come back for more.

Speaker 2 (01:18:18):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:18:33):
If that's something that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
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?

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:19:04):
Character for the next fifty years.

Speaker 1 (01:19:05):
One day we'll be doing an Icon episode about Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:13):
What's well, don't worry.

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):
His sexual assault scandals are are coming in hot. He
grew up the bagel boss guy.

Speaker 1 (01:19:24):
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

(01:19:46):
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,

(01:20:07):
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

(01:20:27):
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

(01:20:47):
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

(01:21:08):
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

(01:21:29):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:21:47):
Look like that?

Speaker 1 (01:21:48):
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

(01:22:08):
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.

(01:22:30):
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

(01:22:52):
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

(01:23:12):
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,

(01:23:34):
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,

(01:23:55):
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

(01:24:17):
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

(01:24:38):
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,

(01:24:59):
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

(01:25:21):
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,

(01:25:44):
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?

(01:26:06):
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

(01:26:30):
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

(01:26:53):
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

(01:27:14):
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

(01:27:37):
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

(01:27:58):
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,

(01:28:19):
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

(01:28:40):
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.

(01:29:00):
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

(01:29:22):
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.

(01:29:44):
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.

(01:30:07):
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,

(01:30:29):
I