Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to this iconograph episode of
Speaker 1: Alley Zeitgeist. Oh yeah, he's horny. Also the noise you
Speaker 1: make when you're horning. Instead of instead of looking at
Speaker 1: the Zeike guys through current events once a week, we're
Speaker 1: looking at the Zeikes through the lens of the powerful
Speaker 1: pow cultural horcruxes that are our icons Einstein, Erkle, Miss Piggy.
Speaker 1: So far, we use these characters and celebrities to create meaning,
Speaker 1: to build identity, to create the greatest soundboard in the
Speaker 1: history of mankind. Oh stop whining, I'm a comfy idiot.
Speaker 1: To learn for my face because the ram in the stomach, uh,
Speaker 1: to learn what a normal male human body is supposed
Speaker 1: to look like with an early lesson I took from
Speaker 1: our subject today. But most importantly, we learned that sometimes
Speaker 1: a Polish American small town sheriff named Mark Kaminski has
Speaker 1: a thick Austrian accent, and you don't need to worry
Speaker 1: about why. It's just how it over it. That's right.
Speaker 1: Episode four, we're talking Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian oak, a
Speaker 1: man who took over the film industry and pop culture
Speaker 1: for two decades, became the governor of the largest state
Speaker 1: in the United States, and in the process snapped Barbara
Speaker 1: Bush's leg like a twig. Something I've learned during the
Speaker 1: course of researching this episode. Shout out to Jay McNab
Speaker 1: who provided the research dossier on this one. Speaking of
Speaker 1: the research dossier, stick around for the end of the
Speaker 1: episode from my note book dump, where I give you
Speaker 1: my final thoughts and little information nuggets I didn't get
Speaker 1: to in this conversation. I'm thrilled to be joined as
Speaker 1: always by my co host, mister Miles gram Man. It's
Speaker 1: just me, man, This just me, nothing else, nothing is me,
Speaker 1: nothing to see here in our third seat. One of
Speaker 1: the greatest comedians, improvisers, and podcasters in the business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he co hosts one of my favorite podcast, Action Boys,
Speaker 1: on Page Treon, which makes him one of our foremost
Speaker 1: Schwarzenegger scholars. It's John Gabra.
Speaker 2: When I am on the Daily Zeitgeist is like I
Speaker 2: am calming all night and when you are saying my name,
Speaker 2: I am coming.
Speaker 3: When I am doing my plugs, I am calming.
Speaker 1: You believes how much I'm in Heaven? Did you hear
Speaker 1: I'm on Daily zeit Guys? You I'm coming.
Speaker 4: I went to high school a Luffergnell junior WHOA And
Speaker 4: we would always say that to him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, was it when when you were with him, were
Speaker 1: you sometimes? You know, I'd imagine it wasn't too hard
Speaker 1: for you to give him the wrong advices. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite under underrated quotes. Shout out to
Speaker 1: my friend Sean, who always talked about the part where
Speaker 1: he's like, uh, yeah, sometimes on workout there, I give
Speaker 1: him advice and it's not too wrong to give him
Speaker 1: the wrong right, And he says it's so like he's
Speaker 1: so fucking clever. What he's saying advice is I do
Speaker 1: just want to acknowledge up up top because with all
Speaker 1: these icons that are like such a part of our brains,
Speaker 1: they're burned in there. We kind of just take it
Speaker 1: for granted that they've always been there. But just with Arnold,
Speaker 1: I want to acknowl it. Like he entered a late
Speaker 1: seventies movie landscape that was coming off of like the
Speaker 1: auteur movement and was ruled by actors like Robert De Niro,
Speaker 1: Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman who are like these normal sized,
Speaker 1: two tiny men who were method actors and like disappear
Speaker 1: into their roles, and he came along and just like
Speaker 1: does the complete opposite his roles disappear into him. He's
Speaker 1: the only actor I can remember who used the same
Speaker 1: catchphrase in multiple movies. That's actually something Gabrius I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask, like, is was did any of the other
Speaker 1: action heroes like keep bringing back like he said, I'll
Speaker 1: be back in so many.
Speaker 2: And then they against to a point. Arnold understands where
Speaker 2: his bread is buttered. Like he'll just go on late
Speaker 2: night talk shows and say like I'll be back, and
Speaker 2: like you're terminated. He'll say, like what he knows what
Speaker 2: to do. He's not precious about what he says. And
Speaker 2: you got to imagine if you're like the writer or
Speaker 2: director of these other movies and he's like taking your
Speaker 2: iconic line, You're like, I guess it belongs to Arnold now,
Speaker 2: and he can cite him whatever.
Speaker 3: The fuck he wants.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the brand was strong with him. I also think
Speaker 1: it has to do with who Like obviously it's who
Speaker 1: he was. He's like this outsized, charismatic cartoon of masculinity,
Speaker 1: but also like where America was at the time. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite details of his movies that you guys
Speaker 1: underline a lot of action boys. Is that he always
Speaker 1: made the most sense in the mall, which was like
Speaker 1: the most American location of the era. But like he
Speaker 1: fights in malls in like raw Deal Commando. A terminator
Speaker 1: to jing Wald Way is like NonStop. That Kindergarten cop
Speaker 1: opens in them all, True Eyes has a horse chase
Speaker 1: through them all.
Speaker 3: It's just like a Venture hotel.
Speaker 1: Yes, you know, he is such a weird, unique figure.
Speaker 1: But also like as I was researching this, I kept
Speaker 1: being reminded of the Vi Lebowski quote like sometimes there's
Speaker 1: a man, you know who's just the man for his time,
Speaker 1: And like he really was.
Speaker 2: He was so foreign and then became like landed in America.
Speaker 2: He was so fargn in the way he looked and
Speaker 2: the way he sounded, and even like his hobbies and perspective,
Speaker 2: and then he fucking got America on board with him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, like he.
Speaker 3: There's no fucking.
Speaker 2: Way you would still have an accent in year fifty
Speaker 2: in America, And you're like, if you actually tried, you
Speaker 2: wouldn't need it, but no, he kept it. We adapted
Speaker 2: for Arnold. We changed movies so that Arnold had a
Speaker 2: place in them. We were like, yeah, Arnold can't play
Speaker 2: so but Coo, but he could fucking play Conan, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, Like he he changed culture to
Speaker 2: make like to set it up, or we changed culture
Speaker 2: because we were like we love this, fucking save us
Speaker 2: Ross Ubermensch.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I do. So there are definitely some
Speaker 1: like fascist vibes that people people have pointed out throughout
Speaker 1: his career, and it's coming along at a time in
Speaker 1: America where like Jimmy Carter had made the like American
Speaker 1: Malaise speech and everyone's like, fuck that that's boring, and
Speaker 1: then Ronald Reagan was the answer to that. So his
Speaker 1: career like kind of starts to make sense in that context.
Speaker 1: But just on the subject of fascism, something I hadn't
Speaker 1: realized is that his dad was Off was a Nazi
Speaker 1: soldier during World War Two, was like part of the
Speaker 1: invasion of Leningrad, which he made it out. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: for for Miles' first time playing the role of Arnold,
Speaker 1: I just I put a quote in the Wow in
Speaker 1: the chat that I just want to have you read.
Speaker 1: This is Arnold describing his father's status as a Nazis soldier.
Speaker 4: When my father arrived in Leningrad, he was all pumped
Speaker 4: up on the lives of his government.
Speaker 2: He was being a Nazis being pumped up. He still
Speaker 2: get he still gets to jam his brand in there.
Speaker 2: He's talking about the dark history in which I come from. Well,
Speaker 2: I will say, like, you know me, I'm gonna always
Speaker 2: apologize for Nazis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the other reason we wanted to have you
Speaker 1: on here.
Speaker 2: Other perspectives, But I really like Arnold talks about it.
Speaker 2: He says like and he was he was wrong, and
Speaker 2: it was awful and like all the ship and like
Speaker 2: it is that crazy thing where you're like, what can
Speaker 2: we hold the sins of the father to the child?
Speaker 2: Like and it's like he got the fuck out of there,
Speaker 2: and he you know, and he talks about it. He
Speaker 2: brings it up, and he talks about in his book
Speaker 2: and in like recent posts during as the As the
Speaker 2: World is Falling apart, he's talked about like what the
Speaker 2: people were like before and after joining up with the movement,
Speaker 2: and they're like people are fucked up from having been
Speaker 2: part of it, you know what I mean. It's right,
Speaker 2: He's like, guys, everyone out here who's like, yes, let's
Speaker 2: fucking you know, kick Somalians out of Minnesota. It's gonna
Speaker 2: be bad for you eventually. Like this is like this
Speaker 2: doesn't bode well for anybody.
Speaker 4: It's not like it's not like saying I used to
Speaker 4: be the construction worker in the village.
Speaker 1: People.
Speaker 4: Sure thanks to stick around psychologically a little bit more so.
Speaker 1: What one thing, like, yes, he has spoken on that
Speaker 1: there were a lot of allegations of Nazism throughout his career.
Speaker 1: Uh Dino di Laurentis didn't want to hire him for Conan,
Speaker 1: telling director John Millius, I don't like Schwartzenegger. He's a Nazi.
Speaker 1: And then US News of the World tabloid once claimed
Speaker 1: he was secretly pro Nazi. The writer of that article
Speaker 1: then admitted the source was Sylvester Stallone, which we're going
Speaker 1: to get into how heated and like childish that rivalry
Speaker 1: was the one. The one thing is that he did
Speaker 1: say in an old interview that he admired Hitler, but
Speaker 1: then he did the thing that all people who say
Speaker 1: that did. He said, I didn't admire him for what
Speaker 1: he did with it. I admired his public speaking, which
Speaker 1: these Republican guys like can't help. But in my like,
Speaker 1: I look back and I see raging like ten or
Speaker 1: twelve good public speakers. But it before I have to
Speaker 1: get to, like, exactly the architect of the Holocaust.
Speaker 2: I could probably find a couple of people before that
Speaker 2: before I.
Speaker 1: See a raving lunatic and they're always like, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't deny the guy's got fucking star, don't I
Speaker 1: don't think so.
Speaker 2: Yact to the fucking gills with the absolute worst POV
Speaker 2: and people are like, you know, he's like, but you know,
Speaker 2: but you gotta.
Speaker 1: Admit he was good.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I think I would name miss teen, South
Speaker 4: Carolina from two thousand and seven as a better public
Speaker 4: speaker before I said Hitler.
Speaker 3: Fucking Johnny Carson.
Speaker 2: It's gotta be a less harmful guy to look to
Speaker 2: for public speaking.
Speaker 1: Although there is like these really crazy behind the scene
Speaker 1: photos of Hitler, like hitting his poses, hitting his angles,
Speaker 1: and like he was a studied like poser essentially like
Speaker 1: and so maybe that's that's what Arnold saw in him
Speaker 1: at that early age. I will just say.
Speaker 2: Arnold also an elite level poser, like he literally made
Speaker 2: his he was a champion poser.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it we're about to get into that, but
Speaker 1: I will just say in terms of like the fascist iconography,
Speaker 1: like he is like a marble statue come to life,
Speaker 1: and like he like we've talked before about how like
Speaker 1: one of the esthetic like details of fascism is like
Speaker 1: admiring the human form with like the sex removed, like
Speaker 1: in Starship Troopers, and like, I do feel like that's
Speaker 1: kind of like they had to edit out like sex
Speaker 1: scenes and stuff like that from a lot of his
Speaker 1: movies because like he just doesn't that's not what people
Speaker 1: were there for.
Speaker 2: I guess, Yeah, well it is that weird like bodybuilder
Speaker 2: thing where it's like it's it's four guys in a way,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, more than it is. But
Speaker 2: I always found it really funny in all his movies
Speaker 2: when women are like, oh my god, and he's so sexy,
Speaker 2: but he looks like an insane freak, like he's got
Speaker 2: an insane body and if that's the thing you like,
Speaker 2: But when women are like, oh dear god, it's like,
Speaker 2: yeah he has d cups a rock.
Speaker 1: Heart, how you're into that his cycle?
Speaker 2: But it is weird because yeah, there is like that
Speaker 2: second in like that fascist like it's like he's powerful,
Speaker 2: his output is tremendous and no no connotations of sex.
Speaker 3: But Arnold himself legendary, horny freak.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, exactly, yes, yes, very probably. Video is the
Speaker 1: most any human has ever inhabited the role of Lenny
Speaker 1: from of mice and men, Like it's just like, Jesus,
Speaker 1: get that guy, get all of those people out of there.
Speaker 1: But in terms of like the fascist element of his
Speaker 1: iconography and like how he appeared two people at the time,
Speaker 1: the other main source besides Action Boys that dug into
Speaker 1: for this was the book The Last Action Heroes.
Speaker 3: They pointed out that.
Speaker 1: The opening to Commando with him like chopping down trees
Speaker 1: and carrying an entire tree trunk on his shoulders, like
Speaker 1: that whole sequel once was consciously pulling images from Lenny
Speaker 1: Reefenstahl's like Nazi propaganda films. Jesus. They were just like,
Speaker 1: you know, what would work really well with this guy?
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, yeah, yeah, And I don't think that
Speaker 1: was his idea. They were just like, that makes sense
Speaker 1: that that's and that is what America, like America has
Speaker 1: inside America, it's much less appreciated, Like how much right
Speaker 1: wing American culture has in common with a lot of like,
Speaker 1: you know, fascist imagery and ideology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some that's I know where I'll tell you one
Speaker 2: of my theories is somehow we talked about this lot
Speaker 2: on Action Boys. I was raised pretty much exclusively on
Speaker 2: movies that are spout like extra judicial killings, the government.
Speaker 3: I got.
Speaker 2: Powerful people are the answer to everything. Send you, yeah,
Speaker 2: cop is the best job you do. Internal affairs or
Speaker 2: pieces of sh Send one guy with a gun into
Speaker 2: a country full of minorities, fix it, you know, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: to be a fifteen year old kid with an opinion
Speaker 2: on internal affairs just means like I'm watching the wrong
Speaker 2: fucking movies. Yeahs to escape with a perspective that you know,
Speaker 2: cares about my fellow man. But I'm assuming all these
Speaker 2: people in power all grew up on the same bullshit
Speaker 2: as me, but didn't find it as entertainment and found
Speaker 2: it as like inspo and where like, actually, we do
Speaker 2: need a John Matrix to go to Valverde and clean
Speaker 2: it up with a fucking Bazuoka with a quad Bozuka.
Speaker 1: So the way he initially appeared on the world stage
Speaker 1: was by winning nineteen bodybuilding competitions, including Mister Europe Mister
Speaker 1: Universe and then Mister Olympia, Mister Olympia being essentially the
Speaker 1: Jeopardy Tournament of Champions for Mister Universe winners. But he
Speaker 1: did and like openly admits that he built his body
Speaker 1: with the aid of steroids. He says, I have no
Speaker 1: regrets about it because at the time it was something
Speaker 1: new that came on the market.
Speaker 3: He wasn't the only guy at these bodybuilding shows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, it was legal, Like everybody was doing it openly.
Speaker 1: It was like cocaine, you know, in the seventies. Everyone
Speaker 1: was like, this is kind of like coffee. This is
Speaker 1: like our new coffee.
Speaker 3: We should bring this onto more movie sets.
Speaker 1: But this one also makes me go to the bathroom
Speaker 1: a lot too. Same deal. Yeah, he did veto. Like
Speaker 1: when he was governor there there were people who were
Speaker 1: not thrilled that he was pretty lax on the performance
Speaker 1: enhancing stuff and called the supplements safe. And I have
Speaker 1: to like, I don't know, so I once heard from
Speaker 1: someone that like they worked with him in the nineties
Speaker 1: and swore like at the time he was like bright
Speaker 1: yellow and on dialysis like when he was with them,
Speaker 1: and like that they were just like yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: you got through the like intense steroid cycles. There's no
Speaker 1: known reporting on that. And the guy also later told
Speaker 1: me that he thought his girlfriend at the time may
Speaker 1: have slept with Arnold behind his back, so.
Speaker 3: He might be motivated to shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he has had like multiple open heart surgeries,
Speaker 1: which he always goes out of his way to be
Speaker 1: like it's a congenital condition. But I don't know that.
Speaker 2: Steroids are not. And yes he has done them. But
Speaker 2: if you remove steroids from it, carrying around that much
Speaker 2: extra mass, even if it is pure muscle, is difficult
Speaker 2: on the human body, like maintaining that caloric input that
Speaker 2: he's putting a lot of miles on his body.
Speaker 4: I mean, I knew, like big guys don't live that long,
Speaker 4: but when I saw Dave Baptista be like, dude, I
Speaker 4: have to stop and like really be like I'm done,
Speaker 4: and like watching him shrink and being like no, it's
Speaker 4: so I can live, like being fucking jacked is it's
Speaker 4: a fucking very very short timeline.
Speaker 1: You have living like that forever.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is.
Speaker 1: Interesting, just like talking about the thing that like earlier
Speaker 1: saying that like he comes along with this ubermens physicality
Speaker 1: at a time that America is like maybe fascism is
Speaker 1: kind of what we do in the eighties, and then
Speaker 1: like what once we got back to that point, like
Speaker 1: in the past eight to ten years, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the actors started looking like John Cena and The Rock
Speaker 1: and Dave Bautista again, so everyone starry.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I could go off for hours about this,
Speaker 2: but like why why why does fucking Superman even have
Speaker 2: to be jacked? He's an alien like like there's like
Speaker 2: Hulk has super strength, he could have a belly, like
Speaker 2: there's like thor some of the people, like their superpowers
Speaker 2: aren't even involved like with physicality, and they're still shredded.
Speaker 1: It's like, maybe what doesn't need to be diced?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right. Maybe the best example of that, which we'll get
Speaker 1: to in a moment, is the Terminator who went in
Speaker 1: the script was supposed to be a normal sized, normal
Speaker 1: shaped person into Yeah, it's like, yeah, to your point,
Speaker 1: Like the modern equivalent is that movie The Gray Man
Speaker 1: that nobody saw, but it costs like two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars, so they had to pretend like everyone
Speaker 1: saw it. But it's like, these are guys who just
Speaker 1: the literal title is you have these spies who are
Speaker 1: gray men who the whole point is like they blend
Speaker 1: in wherever they go, and it's played by like Chris
Speaker 1: Evans and Ryan Gosling and their beauty like shredded, shredded
Speaker 1: beautiful people who like would stop traffic.
Speaker 2: And when you see pictures of real fucking the crazy
Speaker 2: spies and assassins like that are Cia and Jaysock, like
Speaker 2: elite level guys.
Speaker 1: They all look like chemists.
Speaker 2: They're all like five eight one sixty five with like
Speaker 2: glasses and like weird teeth, and you're like, what the
Speaker 2: fuck is this guy's like six hundred and fifty confirmed kills.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a delta operator like an airline. No one
Speaker 1: other quick Arnold anecdote and if you guys have any
Speaker 1: but somebody I know was golfing with him a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, and as they were teeing off, he
Speaker 1: kept telling the guy he looked like too tense and
Speaker 1: too uptight, And then after the guy hit the shot,
Speaker 1: he Arnold got up to the tea and was like,
Speaker 1: when was the last time you had a blowjob? And
Speaker 1: the guy was like, I don't know, like answered and
Speaker 1: Arnold teed off and said that's fantastic. And then as
Speaker 1: he like crushed his drive with a big stogey in
Speaker 1: his mouth and like watched the ball, he said, how
Speaker 1: did it taste?
Speaker 3: Awesome?
Speaker 1: Got his ass. I do think the posing, like you
Speaker 1: were saying, the hitting the angles like that is something
Speaker 1: that he studied all along, and I think that definitely
Speaker 1: like played into his being a movie Yeah. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: knowing how to appear on film with something that like
Speaker 1: he was always good at.
Speaker 2: Like in Conan, you see it a lot because it's
Speaker 2: like it's like it's like pre verbal for him, and
Speaker 2: the movie is like written to that strength. But then
Speaker 2: he also trained with a sword master for that movie too,
Speaker 2: And because he's an athlete and like a guy who's
Speaker 2: got like that that kind of folk, that kind of
Speaker 2: focus that requires eating white rice, chicken and broccoli and
Speaker 2: steroids exclusively, he he fucking looks awesome when he's swinging
Speaker 2: the sword, when he's carrying the wheel of pan, he
Speaker 2: fucking and it's like he knows. I refer to this
Speaker 2: once on the blank Check podcast. But my pet theory
Speaker 2: is we've heard of the male gaze, and you know,
Speaker 2: people talk about the female gaze. There's something about Arnold
Speaker 2: that is the child gaze. Like you look at him
Speaker 2: and you're like in awe, and you're like a little kid,
Speaker 2: and you're like, that's what grown ups are, you know,
Speaker 2: And then all these action movies will copy it. They'll
Speaker 2: all be these poses where you're looking up at these
Speaker 2: imposing figures and yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Like I have, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have written in here somewhere that he looks like
Speaker 1: he was designed by a seven year old to be like,
Speaker 1: this is what action hero should look like.
Speaker 2: You know, this is what I want to look like
Speaker 2: when I grow up, Like when you used to Like
Speaker 2: I would remember being a kid drawing myself as like
Speaker 2: a grown up and like I would always have like
Speaker 2: a headband and.
Speaker 3: A machine guns. I was like, you.
Speaker 1: Grow up, definitely grow up and be a Special Forces Probably. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna drive a bulletproof Chevy Suburban. So he broke
Speaker 1: into the world a film with Hercules and New York,
Speaker 1: where he had to be totally dubbed by another actor
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons. Uh, they changed his name to Arnold Strong,
Speaker 1: but the only reason he got that role in the
Speaker 1: first place was Joe Weeder, the co founder of the
Speaker 1: International Federation of Bodybuilders, told the producers that Schwartzenegger had
Speaker 1: been a Shakespearean actor in Vienna, and they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: like sure, and then he showed up and again it's
Speaker 1: like that, you know, you need to tell that lie
Speaker 1: to get him in the door. But then he shows
Speaker 1: up and everyone's like, this guy actually like really fucking
Speaker 1: works on film. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2: Is not great, his dub is weird, but you're watching
Speaker 2: him and you're like, this dude's a fucking star. Time
Speaker 2: when you don't say that early on in his career,
Speaker 2: it's like it's like undeniable. His like you can't take
Speaker 2: your eyes off him. And he is really charismatic in
Speaker 2: sort of like the annoying jockway, but like he's got
Speaker 2: it like face, all taste, well you know, figured out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also appears in like I didn't realize that I
Speaker 1: was watching The longa Robert Altmans The Long Goodbye. He
Speaker 1: shows how he's like a Jack Henchman and that he's
Speaker 1: in a movie called Stay Hungry that was like an
Speaker 1: Oscar buzzy movie that earned him a Golden Globe for
Speaker 1: Best Acting Debut, even though it wasn't really his debut,
Speaker 1: but it was like the first time that awards people
Speaker 1: had noticed it.
Speaker 2: Or he spoke maybe yeah, that was the first time
Speaker 2: he had actually spoken on film.
Speaker 1: He also at this time worked with a very serious
Speaker 1: acting coach who in the book The Last Action Heroes
Speaker 1: talked about how he was like eventually very impressed with
Speaker 1: his work. He did like all the Stanislavskian shit, like
Speaker 1: this is the second invocation of the stuf was Lawsky
Speaker 1: method with Arkle? Yeah? No, with Miss Piggy actually be
Speaker 1: like how frank Oz came up with her backstory was
Speaker 1: like just writing freehand art backstory dark yea super dark
Speaker 1: backstory for Miss Piggy.
Speaker 3: I believe it.
Speaker 2: I got to imagine based on how how powerful she's become.
Speaker 2: She came from a lot, she came from a heart.
Speaker 1: Her mom had so many pigs. What was it like
Speaker 1: her mom like her mother too many pigs that she
Speaker 1: never developed her mind was one of the things. And
Speaker 1: then she had so many pigs, she'd never developed her mind,
Speaker 1: and her dad was like fucking around and then like
Speaker 1: the only way for her to like survive was like
Speaker 1: winning beauty contests, and she was like, I'll never go
Speaker 1: back there. I think there was like a mass killing
Speaker 1: two in there, but I don't remember. But uh, he
Speaker 1: said the guy the acting coach specifically, I called out
Speaker 1: two impressive moments in the workshop that I thought were funny.
Speaker 1: One is where he inhabits the body of a child
Speaker 1: opening a present on Christmas morning, and he said he
Speaker 1: made the other people in the acting class cry, which
Speaker 1: just trying to picture Arnold like doing that.
Speaker 2: This is one percent alive, but it's fucking that's ot.
Speaker 2: I'm picturing it now and trying so I'm like tear
Speaker 2: up laughing.
Speaker 4: I know, I'm even trying to imagine what would that
Speaker 4: performance look like where I'm so touched, like even without
Speaker 4: even it being Arnold with an adult doing this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like one guy who's just been like presumably like
Speaker 1: hitting on every woman stop and.
Speaker 2: This guy suddenly get spaghetti string racer back tank top
Speaker 2: on with like his nipples and traps showing, and he's
Speaker 2: got like cut off golds, gym super shorts on, barefoot,
Speaker 2: just going like I don't want the.
Speaker 3: Terrible man.
Speaker 1: The bottle of wine he gets it. Something he would
Speaker 1: do in like Twins and like some of those movies
Speaker 1: where he like plays an innocent you know, just kind
Speaker 1: of like uh yeah, I don't know, like new to
Speaker 1: the world. And then the other that he said was
Speaker 1: like really impressive was where he like did this non
Speaker 1: linguistic growl and utterance, like you invoke an animalistic, non
Speaker 1: linguistic growl and utterance and screams, which sounds like it's
Speaker 1: like the when I think of Arnold, I just think
Speaker 1: of you know, like all those like noises that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's so funny that he crushed that part
Speaker 2: of the acting.
Speaker 1: Damn, this guy can.
Speaker 2: And he's also really the best of them in the
Speaker 2: Max bench Press portion of.
Speaker 1: But he does also like kind of become a Christmas icon.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to note that like the only movie
Speaker 1: he ever directed, he directed an episode of The Tales
Speaker 1: from the Crypt and then also a made for TV
Speaker 1: like Hallmark Christmas remake of Christmas in Connecticut, So he's
Speaker 1: there's something with Christmas there that we'll probably never get
Speaker 1: to explore.
Speaker 2: But I feel like Germany, Europe, Poland Eastern Europe, Vienna,
Speaker 2: like that's Austria. It's very like Chris Christmas. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 4: Everyone says, like the Christmas markets in Austria specifically are
Speaker 4: like everyone models, Like whenever you see like a Christmas market,
Speaker 4: they're all referencing like Austrian German Christmas markets.
Speaker 2: And some of your most precious white female friends will
Speaker 2: tell you that I just want to go to Vienna
Speaker 2: for Christmas.
Speaker 3: I'm like really, like, I don't know anything about it.
Speaker 3: I want to go to Mexico.
Speaker 4: It's it's well because my cousin just married someone who's
Speaker 4: from Austria and he'd been.
Speaker 1: He's like, dude, Austria's fucking sick, and everyone I know
Speaker 1: who's been there's like, do Vienna's sick?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Gotomy?
Speaker 2: Well yeah, I think it's because and how bad shout
Speaker 2: out twins real quick. That was the I heard in
Speaker 2: an interview on Nerdict where he was back in the day.
Speaker 2: That's the most amount of money he's ever made on
Speaker 2: a movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that like set him up financially. The syndication decides no.
Speaker 2: Because ye, they didn't want to make it because like
Speaker 2: Arnold can't carry a comedy. So Arnold, Danny DeVito and
Speaker 2: I think it's rightman. They all say they all worked
Speaker 2: for scale. If with huge amount of points and then
Speaker 2: the movie was an absolute unknown, massive hit and they
Speaker 2: all made insane money on it, which is.
Speaker 3: Makes me so happy.
Speaker 2: Also, Arnold was already doing very well for himself because
Speaker 2: when he arrived in America, him and Franco Colombo, another bodybuilder,
Speaker 2: they were doing masonry work and doing all this like labor.
Speaker 2: But he invested his bodybuilding winnings in like an apartment
Speaker 2: complex first, like somewhere on the West side of La American.
Speaker 2: He was a American, someone told, like an American businessman,
Speaker 2: maybe someone in his team or something like that, said
Speaker 2: this is what you gotta do. And then he like
Speaker 2: owned a bunch of properties for a while, like buying
Speaker 2: that nineteen seventies La You know, if you held onto
Speaker 2: it till now, you're fucking like Robber Baron.
Speaker 1: That's so that makes sense, you know that.
Speaker 4: Like there's a clip from a couple of years ago
Speaker 4: where he tried to make a joke about making a
Speaker 4: million dollars.
Speaker 1: That fell so flat, like on a radio show.
Speaker 4: And now it makes sense to me because he was
Speaker 4: he was making some landlord ass money like to start up.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've seen this clip, but he's
Speaker 1: like the easiest why to make money. The first and
Speaker 1: most important thing is, you know, everyone tells you that
Speaker 1: the first million is the hardest to make, so started
Speaker 1: with the second million.
Speaker 3: Right, uh huh? Wow? Hello, oh my god, wake up,
Speaker 3: wake up.
Speaker 1: They have a breakfast show. You need to get pumped up.
Speaker 1: Anytime the joke falls flapped up off the lines of
Speaker 1: your government.
Speaker 4: Wow, okay, anyway that makes that's because that's such rich
Speaker 4: guy humor too.
Speaker 3: When you're like, yes, always like a million an awful joke.
Speaker 2: I would say, if you're hosting Arnold on your show,
Speaker 2: you gotta laugh at his jokes.
Speaker 3: I think, job, I bet you Arnold never does that
Speaker 3: show again.
Speaker 1: I think they.
Speaker 4: Probably just couldn't connect. Like his delivery, They're like, oh, joke, yes,
Speaker 4: thank you.
Speaker 1: Miles didn't pause that in the middle. That that silence
Speaker 1: was him just looking at waiting for them.
Speaker 3: You're like, oh, it must the video must be over.
Speaker 1: Then he goes, hello, oh my god, this is a
Speaker 1: breakfast show. You got's wake up. But just overall, like
Speaker 1: the thing about him investing the money smartly, like according
Speaker 1: to everyone, he is a sponge who's like constantly focused
Speaker 1: on learning, like McTiernan in Predator, like cast Carl Weathers
Speaker 1: because he's like, that's the best action movie actor that
Speaker 1: I've seen. And he's like, I'm going to put him
Speaker 1: in Arnold's way, and Arnold will just like drink up
Speaker 1: and learn from him. And so he is essential like
Speaker 1: the he is a terminator, he's just just like super processing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, asshole, Dylan, you son of a bitch. What do
Speaker 3: you put your pencils down there in the CIA? And
Speaker 3: thank you for teaching me how to act?
Speaker 1: All of that, all all his early work though from
Speaker 1: Hercules in New York, and his background work was overshadowed
Speaker 1: by the massive success of a weightlifting documentary called Pumping
Speaker 1: Iron Goddamn, which is it's easy to see why those
Speaker 1: movies weren't quite as successful, because at no point in
Speaker 1: those movies does he get to say that weightlifting is
Speaker 1: like coming and then Myles would like to read.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, it's as satisfying to me as coming is,
Speaker 4: you know, as having sex.
Speaker 1: With a woman. Then coming, I love it. So all
Speaker 1: is up the first sentence by clarifying what it's not
Speaker 1: even I.
Speaker 2: Refuse to say it's jerking off. Yeah I don't. It's
Speaker 2: gay to jerk.
Speaker 4: Off, he was a human woman, and you coming, and
Speaker 4: so can you believe how much I'm in heaven. I
Speaker 4: am like getting the feeling of coming in the gym,
Speaker 4: I'm getting the feeling of coming at home.
Speaker 1: I'm getting the feeling of coming backstage.
Speaker 4: When I pump up, when I pose it from the
Speaker 4: five thousand people, I get the same feeling.
Speaker 1: So I'm coming day and night. I mean, it's it's terrific, right,
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm in heaven so awesome.
Speaker 2: And he will later retract that and say, like I
Speaker 2: was joking, I knew I and I will. I think
Speaker 2: he maybe actually believes this, or believed it at the time,
Speaker 2: But he also does know how to get sound bites
Speaker 2: and how to fucking yeah. When you watch Pumping Iron,
Speaker 2: it's a Rosetta stone to like why anyone like why
Speaker 2: he's you just see he's so and he didn't play
Speaker 2: a villain a lot in his career, but he is
Speaker 2: fucking near evil in Pumping Iron. Like he's like mustache
Speaker 2: swirling bad guy in a way.
Speaker 1: Like manipulating the people around him who are like his
Speaker 1: best friend, like lifelong best friends who are gonna continue
Speaker 1: working and like being his friend for the rest of
Speaker 1: his career, and he's like, yeah, it kind of fucked
Speaker 1: with his head, Yeah, right into being worse than me.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: There's the famous if It Bleeds they're making up Predator.
Speaker 2: It's like an hour long featurette. You can find it
Speaker 2: on YouTube. He had some crazy ongoing prank or competition
Speaker 2: with Jesse the body Ventora, who could have bigger biceps,
Speaker 2: and he had the wardrobe department keep taking in the
Speaker 2: biceps on the sleeves on Ventory's shirt, so he thought
Speaker 2: he was getting pumped up, but he wasn't.
Speaker 5: Oh to make him complacent, basically, yes, And then they
Speaker 5: were doing they were doing a thing where they were
Speaker 5: competing so much who could work out more and earlier
Speaker 5: that eventually like they were like secretly opening the gym
Speaker 5: that they had shipped to South America to film, like
Speaker 5: or in Mexico wherever.
Speaker 2: They I forget where they film, and they're like fucking
Speaker 2: like going in at three thirty in the morning, three
Speaker 2: in the morning, two thirty, like racing to see who
Speaker 2: when you go to the gym, who's already there working out.
Speaker 1: It's like that's that's so fucking funny.
Speaker 2: That's like childish behavior over like and these are all
Speaker 2: people who are like making millions.
Speaker 1: It's so awesome, right, that's so funny. Yeah, that set
Speaker 1: and I mean that movie is both like when I
Speaker 1: first saw it, this did not hit me, but it
Speaker 1: is like a satire of masculinity and like they're you know,
Speaker 1: shooting at this alien and like completely you know, unloading
Speaker 1: clips into the jungle and like just impotently you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're all like they're all like dry shaving
Speaker 2: their face, taking their shirts off, knives, they're limped dickt
Speaker 2: f slurs before and then like you know, like everything
Speaker 2: everything about that movie and also arguably like sort of
Speaker 2: anti American interventionism too.
Speaker 3: Right, It's like when we.
Speaker 2: Arrived there, they end up like they're like hunting with
Speaker 2: an alien, but they the CIA does get them to
Speaker 2: like blow up a fucking full base full of locals.
Speaker 2: Like there's no explanation as to like what the local
Speaker 2: dynamics are or whatever, and it's like it's such a
Speaker 2: it's more, there's so much more.
Speaker 3: Going on in that movie than you think.
Speaker 2: And then the idea that like this is the second
Speaker 2: team that they send in and the first team just
Speaker 2: got fucking murked and none of them know about that.
Speaker 2: It's like the most fucking disposable American soldier shit ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it was almost like they're they're making a
Speaker 1: commentary that going in and intervening in a jungle could
Speaker 1: go badly for America.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know where they are.
Speaker 3: I don't know where they were pulling that from. Ye.
Speaker 1: So his first truly iconic role is Conan, Like he's
Speaker 1: the titular role in Conan fucking movies and much it
Speaker 1: came about thanks to Pumping Iron. The director John Millius
Speaker 1: says that Arnold said, treat me like a trained dog, which,
Speaker 1: again going back to it, He's just like, I don't
Speaker 1: give a pot, Just tell me anything and I'll do it.
Speaker 1: He would like get cut and like there would be
Speaker 1: like he'd be bleeding, and he'd be like does it
Speaker 1: look good? How am I posing? And then they would
Speaker 1: just like keep rolling with it, moving along with the
Speaker 1: like fascist stuff. It's about an alpha male who battles hippies. Essentially,
Speaker 1: the script was by Oliver Stone, but then it was
Speaker 1: like whittled way down and directed by Millius.
Speaker 2: Who calls himself a zen fascist zen fascist, and Arnold
Speaker 2: said he's so far to the right that he wasn't
Speaker 2: even a Republican AKA ahead of his time, I guess.
Speaker 1: So this becomes like one of his first roles that's
Speaker 1: so iconic that people just start calling him that. Like
Speaker 1: when you read about when Cameron's trying to cast him
Speaker 1: in Terminator, people are like, you're gonna cast Conan in Terminator,
Speaker 1: and then like after Terminator people are like, you can't
Speaker 1: put Terminator in the you know, But like he's he's
Speaker 1: choosing his roles pretty wisely.
Speaker 2: If you zoom out, Yeah, if you zoom out and
Speaker 2: see that this guy who is this physical specimen but
Speaker 2: is not quite there english wise or acting wise, you
Speaker 2: cast him as a nearly silent tribal warrior who fucking
Speaker 2: kills a bunch of people with swords, and then you're like, okay,
Speaker 2: what else can he do?
Speaker 3: He's like, how about a robo robot?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Fuck, it's great, Like just the idea of like like
Speaker 2: what what a way to like fucking make your way
Speaker 2: into the huge movies that were huge because of him too,
Speaker 2: and but he gets to just they're like okay, and
Speaker 2: this like that'd be like all right in this you're
Speaker 2: playing a fat new York podcaster gabers, this is your
Speaker 2: first job, Like, I hope you can pull it off.
Speaker 4: You're like, fuck, yeah, you're from Long Island, which exit
Speaker 4: off the l.
Speaker 3: I E twenty five South.
Speaker 1: Perfect, right. I love that. It's actually two away for mine,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna need to rewrite. But so Cameron didn't
Speaker 1: originally have Arnold in mine for the Terminator, as we
Speaker 1: were saying, he wanted Lance Henry and for the role
Speaker 1: who played Bishop, which is like, it's such a profoundly
Speaker 1: different movie, but like it makes more sense on paper,
Speaker 1: because yeah, why would the robot need to be shredded
Speaker 1: and have an Austrian accent if.
Speaker 2: It be enormous and like yeah, he would not blend
Speaker 2: at all he can, and like it makes no sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it fucking hurts. I know, Like that version
Speaker 1: probably works because James Cameron like knows what he's doing,
Speaker 1: but there's no arguing that it would have worked as
Speaker 1: well as it does with Arnold.
Speaker 2: No, and he got his Lance Hendrickson type with the
Speaker 2: T one thousand. Uh that guy Robert Patrick. Robert Patrick
Speaker 2: and Lance Herison are constantly being confused in my head.
Speaker 3: So it's like it's good casting.
Speaker 1: Right, like think but also just like going back to
Speaker 1: the initial point, like think about a brand that it is, Like,
Speaker 1: think about if the T one thousand was yoked again.
Speaker 3: Yea, now they're like body build.
Speaker 4: Rip because that juxtaposition made the T one thousand more terrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I love in interviews it's going around again when Cameron
Speaker 2: said the reason he made a T one thousand a
Speaker 2: cop was because they kill indiscriminately, don't give a fuck
Speaker 2: about humans, and like all this stuff, and he's like,
Speaker 2: what better disguise for a person to be able to
Speaker 2: do whatever they want to whoever they want and be
Speaker 2: awful you know, like hell yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so that's what Like he in Terminator Won,
Speaker 1: he was like, he it's kind of good that he's
Speaker 1: foreign seeming because everybody's afraid of Russia, and Russia is
Speaker 1: like always the one that starts the nuclear war in
Speaker 1: both movies, they're just like fucking Russia. But he didn't
Speaker 1: want to even meet with Schwarzenegger. They made him. He
Speaker 1: was like, I'm gonna like pick a fight with him,
Speaker 1: I guess. During lunch and before he left, he told
Speaker 1: his friend, if it doesn't go well you can have
Speaker 1: the chair and the stereo, which I think is just
Speaker 1: a funny window into how big a deal stereos were
Speaker 1: for that decoration. Of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the highest, the most expensive thing in
Speaker 2: anyone's house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think your Macintosh amplifier. Yeah. But Linda Hamilton
Speaker 1: was like, I'm a trained Juilliard actor and this guy
Speaker 1: is Conan was like this, this is a bad idea,
Speaker 1: Like this will just be a blip on my career.
Speaker 1: And then she went and they weren't on camera a
Speaker 1: lot together, and so she went and like watched one
Speaker 1: of the scenes where Arnold was like doing his thing
Speaker 1: in a parking garage, and she was just like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: Like he just like he knows how to like his
Speaker 1: physicality and like how he moves in that movie. She
Speaker 1: was like, this is actually gonna work really well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like his like lack of mobility, he moves
Speaker 2: very well in Conan, like he's he's you know, he's
Speaker 2: leaping around wheel and stuff, but he's a little stiff
Speaker 2: because he's a giant. He's the Austrian oak oak chest
Speaker 2: and and the terminator. It totally benefits him.
Speaker 3: Quick.
Speaker 2: Aside about terminator, something we learned figured out on Action
Speaker 2: Boys or noticed on Action Boys, is that the entire
Speaker 2: premise of the Terminator movies require Linda ha mold In
Speaker 2: to let a time traveling dirt bag raw dogger, Like
Speaker 2: she has to let Michael Bean fuck her wrong, like
Speaker 2: Kyle Reason has to finish in her in order for
Speaker 2: the Terminator movies to happen.
Speaker 3: And that's such crazy.
Speaker 2: Thank God, this guy, who I think is a homeless lunatic,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna let him fucking finish.
Speaker 1: It for the world ends.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a cream pie saves the world, Sarah.
Speaker 1: This guy Kyle kind of stinks. No, he's from the
Speaker 1: future and I got to bang him to save the world.
Speaker 1: He said, Does she know that? But the part where
Speaker 1: they have like is she on board at that point?
Speaker 3: No, I don't.
Speaker 2: She's on board with like maybe the reality of it,
Speaker 2: but she doesn't know. Like it's like they're about to
Speaker 2: make John Connor, which is such a funny specific because
Speaker 2: John Connor sent him back. Did John Connor say, like, Hey,
Speaker 2: this is my mom. You have to be my dad
Speaker 2: like the time my mom y.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Right, it's the opposite of back to the future, right,
Speaker 1: you have to go back and fuck my mom.
Speaker 4: I mean it's it's a romantic scene. They're making pipe bombs.
Speaker 4: I fell in love with the second I saw that
Speaker 4: shitty photo of you from our Son from the Future,
Speaker 4: and then they have sex.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Cameron has said that for Terminator to you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: Arnold's character suddenly becomes the hero, but he was initially
Speaker 1: meeting with Cameron to play the Michael Bean role, which
Speaker 1: does make more sense because like, if it's a human,
Speaker 1: they have to be strong to set back. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: sent back a human that looks like Arnold to fight
Speaker 1: a Terminator that looks like Michael Bean. But I think
Speaker 1: Arnold just inherently understood, like this is what I would
Speaker 1: be good at. And then at a deep animalistic level,
Speaker 1: my name will be the name of the movie character
Speaker 1: and I'll get to kill a lot of people, which
Speaker 1: we're about to get into was was important to him.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's like some part of his brain
Speaker 1: that is like the same part of the like people's
Speaker 1: brains that were like when you take a picture of someone,
Speaker 1: you capture their soul, like ling photo photography. Like he
Speaker 1: really like placed a lot of weight on like how
Speaker 1: many people he got to kill in movies, and you know,
Speaker 1: can't beat that with regards to the Terminator. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Cameron has come out and said, like the reason a
Speaker 1: cop is a bad guy in T two is cops
Speaker 1: think all non cops are less than They are stupid,
Speaker 1: weak and evil. They dehumanize the people they are sworn
Speaker 1: to protect and desensitize themselves in order to do that job,
Speaker 1: which fucking rules. Okay, So Schwarzenegger came away from reading
Speaker 1: the script for Terminator Too with like a worried look
Speaker 1: on his face, and Cameron's like, whoa what this is?
Speaker 1: This is fucking perfect, And he was like, I just
Speaker 1: like don't get to kill anyone in the script that
Speaker 1: was he was like bummed that he didn't get to
Speaker 1: kill anyone. Man Like this is this was a big
Speaker 1: deal to him because I like it was one of
Speaker 1: the pieces, like one of the pieces of data that
Speaker 1: was like kept track of in his rivalry with Stallone
Speaker 1: back at Cracks. We like once made a video counting
Speaker 1: all the kills in Commando and that was by design.
Speaker 1: You know the scene where he's just like going into
Speaker 1: the uh yeah Balverde yeah, and just like yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: But then like there were there are parts where it's
Speaker 1: just like five seconds of just like him shooting like
Speaker 1: waves and waves of like indiscriminate bad guys. They do.
Speaker 2: They do the ultimate cut, the ultimate like eighties action
Speaker 2: movie cut where you see Arnold spray in m sixty
Speaker 2: like fifty times. Then it cuts to fifty guys just
Speaker 2: leaping out of different cover like, oh, we all got
Speaker 2: hit in that one.
Speaker 1: It's awesome. They added that scene because I think it's
Speaker 1: one one or the other. He had just seen Rambo two,
Speaker 1: and I think that's what it was. He had seen
Speaker 1: Rambo two and was like he got like a lot
Speaker 1: of he killed a lot of people in that movie,
Speaker 1: and so they like added scene. They were literally taking
Speaker 1: extras who had just been shot and like spirit guming
Speaker 1: a mustache onto their face to like differentiate them from
Speaker 1: there and then just being like get back out there
Speaker 1: to be killed again. Oh that's so awesome, man, for
Speaker 1: all the hating. So Stallone should have taken the role
Speaker 1: of terminator, because wasn't he offered the role? Like, didn't
Speaker 1: he didn't? Stallone turned down the terminator role. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Stallone episode is gonna be crazy, like there their rivalry.
Speaker 2: So let's let's get into the episode, allow me to
Speaker 2: say I'll be back.
Speaker 1: Rights. Hey, it wasn't. I got right.
Speaker 3: Shows three.
Speaker 1: I assumed that, like the rivalry between the two of
Speaker 1: them was like made up in my child mind, you know,
Speaker 1: because they were like the two big, strong guys. But
Speaker 1: it was not I want to I want.
Speaker 3: To just tell the stop or my mom will shoot.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh yeah, yes. But this is a quote from
Speaker 1: Arnold Miles that just appeared in the Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is from Arnold.
Speaker 4: Yes, we were movie rivals, but we took the competitiveness
Speaker 4: to the extreme. We had to have the best body,
Speaker 4: we had to kill more people in our films, and
Speaker 4: we had to have the biggest guns.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow. They were counting and like literal dick measuring
Speaker 1: guns and truly they were just keeping tabs on how
Speaker 1: many people they killed it and like stallone was on lettermans.
Speaker 1: Then after a while I started to like competition, this
Speaker 1: one upsmanship. He'd get a bigger gun, I'd shoot more people,
Speaker 1: He'd shoot more people. And so I think probably definitively
Speaker 1: and Gabers, I want to get your official scholar's opinion
Speaker 1: on this, but I feel like Schwartzenegger won right, Like
Speaker 1: his movies did better than Stallone's and it's all there's
Speaker 1: just the nature Rocky one in Oscar, that's true.
Speaker 2: Right, So there's like this one thing that that Schwarzenegger
Speaker 2: doesn't have, that Rocky had, that Stallone had.
Speaker 1: Schwartzenegger probably doesn't give a shit about that, right.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter because he was like governor, like you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, Like he won like a million
Speaker 2: times over. Yeah, And I think his will be kinder
Speaker 2: to Schwarzenegger than Stallone to Stallone has maybe more duds
Speaker 2: in his but Stallone has always been a little bit more.
Speaker 3: Of an artist than Arnold too.
Speaker 2: Like Stallone wants to be Robert de Niro, right, Arnold
Speaker 2: wants to be Superman, not the actor character.
Speaker 1: Literally.
Speaker 2: But I think you're I think I think the competition.
Speaker 2: I also think we're talking about two guys who come
Speaker 2: across as really dumb but are probably a little more
Speaker 2: savvy than they for sure, And I think they understand
Speaker 2: k fabe and a rivalry between two big guys will benefit.
Speaker 1: Both of them, kindness, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And so then they get to make the escape plan
Speaker 2: and we all go and it's like it's like Heat.
Speaker 3: It's like dumb heat, you.
Speaker 1: Know, dumb heat fifteen years too late. I do like
Speaker 1: the dreamcasing in my mind, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: I would want to change a perfect film, but it
Speaker 1: does seem like if they had been able to get
Speaker 1: over the rivalry and make sure it's an egger ivan
Speaker 1: drago like that, it would have broken the world like that.
Speaker 1: That movie already did incredibly well for a movie that
Speaker 1: is like I think forty percent montage. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: like that that would have fucking destroyed people's brains.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Arnold's like and you see it with some of
Speaker 2: the big actors now, where their ego gets in their
Speaker 2: way of like interesting choices, like where it's just like
Speaker 2: I can't have Sly beat me up and it's like,
Speaker 2: but okay, it cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, literally everyone in the world would have seen it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and you would have gotten one more kill
Speaker 1: than him in that movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you kill your boy.
Speaker 1: Fucking yeah, Carl Weathers, that's right. It just wasn't properly
Speaker 1: pitched to him.
Speaker 4: Do you think there's any backstory to like, I feel
Speaker 4: like the movie posters for Cobra and Terminator are very similar,
Speaker 4: you know, like where terminators, like he's got like a
Speaker 4: gun like this cobra.
Speaker 1: Stallone is also doing it with.
Speaker 2: Like got a bigger guy, though he's not he doesn't
Speaker 2: have a pistol, he has like a little.
Speaker 4: Exactly, are you really going for the exact same composition
Speaker 4: of a movie poster and con.
Speaker 1: It's like no. It also has those weird like techno
Speaker 1: vibe like the aren't there like those music video shoots
Speaker 1: in there that kind of look like.
Speaker 3: Up is like shooting music videos with robots. So I
Speaker 3: wanted to.
Speaker 1: Talk about Brigitte Nielsen in a second because that she
Speaker 1: started out working with Arnold, and I feel like this
Speaker 1: is a good kind of summation of who they were.
Speaker 1: So Arnold and Brigitte Nielsen co starred in one of
Speaker 1: the Conan films, and like her quote on it is
Speaker 1: like the set lights wouldn't be out and we'd be
Speaker 1: off fucking each other like we did every single thing
Speaker 1: to each other's body is the like reads like a
Speaker 1: romance novel. And then Stallone goes on to marry her
Speaker 1: and like tightly control her career and like she couldn't
Speaker 1: be in any thing that he wasn't involved with. And
Speaker 1: then when she was finally in Beverly Hills Cop two,
Speaker 1: he called Eddie Murphy and accused him of sleeping with her.
Speaker 1: Like it just seems like he's like fueled by insecurity
Speaker 1: and Arnold is just this like bounding, confident puppy.
Speaker 2: Fucking yeah, he's like a giant Golden Retriever with his
Speaker 2: lipstick out. Yeah yeah, right, yeah, Oh that's actually Arnold
Speaker 2: and Brigitte hit it off in Red Sonya, which is
Speaker 2: not a Conan movie.
Speaker 3: Red Sonya is red Sonya.
Speaker 2: And then Arnold plays exactly a character like Conan but
Speaker 2: named like a name of different. Yeah, it's just it's
Speaker 2: just like, yes, we can't legally call him Conan, but
Speaker 2: he's a barbarian who focks a chick with a sword
Speaker 2: in this movie.
Speaker 1: Yes, and he also they he said that they shot
Speaker 1: him from like three different angles in every shot that
Speaker 1: he was on, so like they could just like stretch
Speaker 1: the footage as much as possible. He was just like,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to do this, and they're like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you're just here for a couple of days, and then
Speaker 1: they're like he's actually the star or of the movie.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So the one thing that Arnold always had
Speaker 1: the ability to do which is weird because he doesn't
Speaker 1: like seem like that funny of a person necessarily, but
Speaker 1: he could always do comedy and that drove Stallone crazy,
Speaker 1: and so in nineteen ninety two he decided to fuck
Speaker 1: with Stallone. Let's and tell him that the movie Stopper
Speaker 1: my mom will shoot. That script was going around and
Speaker 1: he said that he read the script. It was a
Speaker 1: piece of shit. Let's be honest. I say to myself,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do this movie. Then they went to
Speaker 1: Sly and Sly called me, have they ever talked to
Speaker 1: you about doing this movie? And here, I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you the quote, Miles, so you can read it.
Speaker 4: And I said, yes, I was thinking about doing it.
Speaker 4: This is a really brilliant idea of the movie. When
Speaker 4: he heard that, because he was in the competition, he said,
Speaker 4: whatever it takes, I'll do the movie.
Speaker 1: And of course the movie went major into the toilet,
Speaker 1: major into the toilet.
Speaker 2: You're it's so awesome. That movie is fucking bad and weird.
Speaker 2: You guys, you don't just cover the good ones on action.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we haven't done Oscar yet, which is all which
Speaker 2: is slies other attempt at comedy that fucking failed hard. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Arnold just has a better sense of humor even about himself,
Speaker 2: which I think is like the thing that makes him better.
Speaker 2: The rock doesn't have that, like none of none of
Speaker 2: our modern maybe Sina does, but none of our modern
Speaker 2: people have that about themselves, like, you know, like everyone's
Speaker 2: too self serious or like worried that you know, like
Speaker 2: that nineties toxic masculinity mentality of like, well, if I
Speaker 2: made fun of myself, then everyone knows I'm a bitch, Okay.
Speaker 1: Then what then I might become gay or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: someone will think I'm day if Kevin Hart mocks me
Speaker 1: in a movie like no, I should rip Kevin Hart
Speaker 1: in half. In this movie Predator, I think arguably his
Speaker 1: best movie. I don't know Tato is probably my favorite
Speaker 1: of his movies, but it's a really great movie. His
Speaker 1: muscles are used for comedy and like that. That also
Speaker 1: gets to the question of like how much is he
Speaker 1: aware of it and how much is he just willing
Speaker 1: to let himself be used by directors in the way
Speaker 1: that like he like kind of finds the right people
Speaker 1: to work with and then lets him do their job.
Speaker 1: Whereas that seems to be the exact opposite of Sylvester Stallone.
Speaker 2: He gets like guys that he can bully and be
Speaker 2: in charge of and fire as.
Speaker 1: The initial director, and then gets like some guy who
Speaker 1: he can just like put more or less. Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Arnold's strong suit is like a trust in directors and
Speaker 2: like a ability to go like I don't fully understand
Speaker 2: what I'm saying in this scene, but you just tell
Speaker 2: me how to say phonetically and I'll get it out.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: And then you watch Sly.
Speaker 2: Movies and realize, like English, what was Sylvester Sloane's first language?
Speaker 2: He sounds like that and English is the only language
Speaker 2: they spoke in his life.
Speaker 1: The only other detail I learned about Predator in this
Speaker 1: from Jam is that there was they had a problem
Speaker 1: with their water filtration system. The cast got sick. As
Speaker 1: far as I know, this is the only Arnold Schwarzenegger
Speaker 1: movie in which he shipped his pants during the filming.
Speaker 1: And I bring that up only because I have a
Speaker 1: loose theory, because that's also true of Harrison Ford and
Speaker 1: Raiders of the Lost Arc. All the all the desert
Speaker 1: films are filmed while he's like running off to ship
Speaker 1: his brains out because he was like incredibly sick. Also
Speaker 1: true of the most iconic moment of Michael Jordan's career.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, when you have to, when you have
Speaker 1: to like focus your mind on not shitting your pants,
Speaker 1: you do some pretty iconic work. We don't know, Like
Speaker 1: it's not It's also not something that like Einstein would
Speaker 1: have said, Like, you know, when I came up with
Speaker 1: the equals MC squared, I was shitting my back out
Speaker 1: of my button up the pants. It wasn't just a
Speaker 1: loose theory.
Speaker 4: It's a loose stool that it's a really Yeah, I
Speaker 4: mean that's inspired me.
Speaker 1: Jack.
Speaker 4: I think next week I'm gonna do we'll do the
Speaker 4: diarrhea episodes to see if that.
Speaker 1: Changes my performance here on the.
Speaker 3: Pod Theory of diar Reativity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, relativity. Kindergarten Cop gave us the soundboard, which
Speaker 1: I do think is like one of the most iconic
Speaker 1: things about his career.
Speaker 2: Reinvigorated him in a weird way and it really made
Speaker 2: him in like crystallized like a joke version of Arnold
Speaker 2: that then he got to like push against by becoming
Speaker 2: a politician. Like it was like there's like this weird
Speaker 2: thing where this is like he's a household joke with
Speaker 2: the fucking soundboard which we were all obsessed with that
Speaker 2: shout out eBaum's World for giving me like fucking six
Speaker 2: years of fucking joy. And Howard Stern is where I
Speaker 2: first heard it too, But then he survives becoming like
Speaker 2: that much of a fucking joke somehow, which is just crazy.
Speaker 3: That's impossible.
Speaker 1: This soundboard still exists.
Speaker 3: Dude, who is your daddy and what does he do?
Speaker 1: Who is your daddy? I want to ask you a
Speaker 1: bunch of questions.
Speaker 4: Uh huh, I have to answered immediately who is your
Speaker 4: daddy and what does he do?
Speaker 3: Pop?
Speaker 1: Who don't know what this is our yoga listeners? Like
Speaker 1: it was just it's like a pool string toy, but
Speaker 1: like you know, you can like hit everything and it
Speaker 1: like gives you all these different lines from Schwarzenegger. And
Speaker 1: it was used for a great like prank call effect
Speaker 1: on many a radio show. And but I also think
Speaker 1: like something I think it was Rogers said on Action
Speaker 1: Boys that I thought was really smart is that both
Speaker 1: as a movie star and like just how we thought
Speaker 1: of him, He's just an action figure that you like
Speaker 1: dress up in different things and like make do different things.
Speaker 1: And like that's why I think the soundboard works so
Speaker 1: well is because it's basically the pool string toy for
Speaker 1: like pre internet shit posters, where you can just like
Speaker 1: use Arnold quotes to just like do whatever, like use
Speaker 1: it as many times as you want.
Speaker 2: And there's no scene where he's a child opening up
Speaker 2: a package making the audience cry watching the movie. Like
Speaker 2: everything he says is like weirdly ah, you know, and.
Speaker 1: It's like a right right.
Speaker 4: My favorite one was he called the Gator Lodge was
Speaker 4: one where he confuses this old woman.
Speaker 1: Dude.
Speaker 4: Those are the best videos or though I guess they
Speaker 4: were just you know, audio clips at the time, but
Speaker 4: I think, like to your point, it really was sonically,
Speaker 4: Arnold Schwarzenegger is just in your subconscious on this in
Speaker 4: this way that you also got excited at the idea
Speaker 4: that someone was just laughing in your face, playing blatantly
Speaker 4: Arnold Schwarzenegger's rights and they're like who.
Speaker 5: Is this and they're like, Detective John Kimball, you fucking
Speaker 5: need it's Detective John Kimble, you idiot, you idiot.
Speaker 2: Okay, Hey, Bennetts left off some steam. Yeah, remember when
Speaker 2: I told you I'd kill you last I love my
Speaker 2: friend is dead tired. Commando Commando is the most full
Speaker 2: of those, like.
Speaker 1: If you're Commando And Kindergarten Cop.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Kindergarten Cop is.
Speaker 1: The one that like has so many of my favorite
Speaker 1: Kindergarten Cop like weirdly is one of the ones that
Speaker 1: kind of looms the largest in my memory other than
Speaker 1: Terminator two, Like Terminator two is the most burnt on
Speaker 1: my brain or movie of my life. But Kindergarten Cop
Speaker 1: just really like every review when you go back and
Speaker 1: look is like this really shouldn't work. Why does this work?
Speaker 1: But it like really fucking does.
Speaker 2: The Bad Guy is like too scary for like a
Speaker 2: movie that also features children and Arnold, Like it's like also,
Speaker 2: it's like our first time we see Arnold and a beard, right,
Speaker 2: like yea and my guy and I'm a big fan
Speaker 2: of Arnold with facial hair and he has a fake
Speaker 2: beard in the beginning of that and those weird little
Speaker 2: like fucking shooter glasses. It's like very it's that is
Speaker 2: that was Jack. I kind of get what you're saying
Speaker 2: because we were young when we saw it exactly. I
Speaker 2: was kind of like, you know, the other movies were
Speaker 2: like grown up movies, but this felt like a movie
Speaker 2: that we were like allowed to see. And so then
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden, you feel like, wow,
Speaker 2: imagine if your fucking teacher like had a gun, not
Speaker 2: to think about it would be sick. My dad, he's
Speaker 2: a guyanic cologist and he looks like vagianas all.
Speaker 1: It was a time before that was actually a political
Speaker 1: talking point that all teachers should have guns.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like I haven't really been able to get
Speaker 1: Arnold much in front of my kids because like, I
Speaker 1: don't want their first experience to be jingle all the way,
Speaker 1: because I don't think that's like that good of a movie.
Speaker 1: And so I was gonna show them. I was going
Speaker 1: to show them Kindergarten Cop, and then I listened back
Speaker 1: to the Action Boys. You're like, there's like a drug
Speaker 1: overdose in this. Yeah. I don't want to get on
Speaker 1: the wrong idea about drugs, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know we'll be using them wisely in our house. Exactly,
Speaker 2: both of my kids know where the narcan is.
Speaker 1: You got test strips man, Exactly.
Speaker 4: It says we have to learn to use the Yeah,
Speaker 4: We're gonna go get our fenyl vaccines today.
Speaker 1: His comedies are like on pap again, all of the ship,
Speaker 1: like he doesn't make any sense on paper, like Twins
Speaker 1: is a deeply fucked up eugenics story, Like it begins
Speaker 1: in a top secret government lab where scientists are attempting
Speaker 1: to create a physically, mentally and spiritually advanced human being,
Speaker 1: and the narrator has like a thick Austrian accent, so
Speaker 1: it's like it doesn't make it seemed like it wasn't
Speaker 1: about x Nazi doctors trying to create a master race.
Speaker 1: And then kindergarten cop is like gun toting policeman again
Speaker 1: goes undercover the most conspicuous human being on the plant,
Speaker 1: Like if that guy was just a cop, he would
Speaker 1: be famous, right, how fucking cool he looks? And then Junior, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Twins is like maybe your best back to show kids,
Speaker 2: but it's like all adult themed. It's not like it's
Speaker 2: not like really fucked up, but it is like too,
Speaker 2: like I couldn't imagine kids holding their interests, like almost
Speaker 2: like if Conan wasn't so scary, that would be the
Speaker 2: one that makes the most sense. But it's a touch
Speaker 2: spooky with like snake worshippers and shit like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I am very interested to see, like if his
Speaker 1: appeal still holds. You know, I'm sure it does, right,
Speaker 1: It's still like these movies are good. But then I
Speaker 1: thought that about Jaws, and my son was like, it's
Speaker 1: almost as good as the meg too, So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know it's hard. You're like fucking with
Speaker 2: the modern attention span, which is just like on it.
Speaker 2: It's like modern consumption is on just a different frequency
Speaker 2: than we had growing up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, we kind.
Speaker 2: Of had no choice but to be like, well, Jaws
Speaker 2: is what's on. I have to like set my brain
Speaker 2: to be able to sit here for this, which we'd
Speaker 2: barely ever see a shark. And then you're a kid
Speaker 2: and you just get baby Shark, and then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden you're like, who cares about Jaws when there's
Speaker 2: baby Shark?
Speaker 1: Why is the shark singing? Why does Chief Brody not
Speaker 1: open the video by being like, hey, guys, you know,
Speaker 1: talking directly to me. We're at the kind of part
Speaker 1: where his career starts to go away a little bit,
Speaker 1: starts to go downhill for the first time. He's like
Speaker 1: kind of invincible for a long time. Two things that
Speaker 1: happened in the early nineties. One his Planet Hollywood, which
Speaker 1: was like a massive deal at the time, but it
Speaker 1: just it fell apart pretty quickly. The food suck. Schwarzenegger
Speaker 1: pulled out in two thousand. He was notoriously bad at
Speaker 1: pulling out early enough.
Speaker 3: Uh, that's a.
Speaker 1: One time he put one time he pulled out, one
Speaker 1: time actually pulled out on top. And then the Last
Speaker 1: Action Hero was like the big the big one. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was everybody was like focused on it, so it
Speaker 1: got like watered down by studio notes. It doesn't like
Speaker 1: totally cohere. There's some like really good stuff in it,
Speaker 1: but like.
Speaker 2: An inshanely good concept that they just fall a little
Speaker 2: short on. And I remember loving it as a kid,
Speaker 2: and or I loved it at least wanting to love it,
Speaker 2: and then rewatching it as a grown up, You're like, man,
Speaker 2: this could be so much better. Yeah, they also movie
Speaker 2: to remake. Everyone on these remakes movies that everyone loves.
Speaker 2: Remake a movie that kind of sucked.
Speaker 4: Because it had like kind and yeah, he was also
Speaker 4: listening to mini discs.
Speaker 1: I think, like in his stereo in his car. Its
Speaker 1: just like a technology. It's like a satire of action
Speaker 1: movies that like doesn't really get a lot of action
Speaker 1: movie like tropes are like there's a cartoon character walking
Speaker 1: through the police station. He's like always throwing dynamite around.
Speaker 1: It's like, what the fuck is that? He keeps calling
Speaker 1: f Murray Abraham Salieri too. He's like, that's Alma Dais.
Speaker 1: What are we talking about it. They also made a
Speaker 1: pretty confident decision by deciding to release it the same
Speaker 1: day as Jurassic Park, which didn't go well. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: same day June ninety three, What a Time erected a
Speaker 1: gigantic inflatable Schwartzenegger in the middle of Times Square. But
Speaker 1: it was like Kaiju sized and holding a bundle of dynamite,
Speaker 1: and it was three days after the World Trade Center bombing.
Speaker 1: They had to immediately move it out. They also put
Speaker 1: the title of the movie on a NASA space shuttle,
Speaker 1: spent five hundred thousand dollars to have it on the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle launch, and then it got delayed till like
Speaker 1: five months after its release date. It was like that
Speaker 1: is a like it would almost be at that point
Speaker 1: like terrible luck for the nasubmission to like write that
Speaker 1: movie's name on it. But it was also just like,
Speaker 1: in terms of action heroes, this is like Diehard has
Speaker 1: come out, Batman has come out, like lethal Weapon, and
Speaker 1: you're starting to see people kind of trend towards more
Speaker 1: normal sized action heroes. It's just like people are like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's kind of weird that that is
Speaker 1: as fucking massive as he is.
Speaker 2: Right because much like the Brad Pitt paradox, or you know,
Speaker 2: like if Arnold's movies were any more realistic, like every
Speaker 2: scene would just have people stopping him on the street
Speaker 2: going like what the fuck, or like picture with your arm.
Speaker 2: The Brad Pitt one is like, dude, you are fucking hot.
Speaker 2: Like every situation would just be absolutely ruined by like
Speaker 2: wait a minute, dude, you're fucking hot.
Speaker 1: You're a carpenter. Dude, I'm wearing glasses and have a
Speaker 1: bucket hat on, so nobody's gonna even pay attention to me.
Speaker 1: But just a quick anecdote from that time, Bruce Willis
Speaker 1: says that after I heard he walked into a restaurant
Speaker 1: and Arnold was already there, and he like called across
Speaker 1: the dining room. Do you know why he'll never be
Speaker 1: an action hero. And then he flexs and he goes
Speaker 1: tooth pick arms. True Eyes, I will say, is a
Speaker 1: incredibly islamophobic but very watchable high this like late career
Speaker 1: part of there with you Don't mess with the Sohan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a fun fucking movie, but you can't believe it.
Speaker 1: You know, they're like wild.
Speaker 2: It's like really kind of Oh yeah, it's fucking crazy.
Speaker 2: I'll do anything for that. Jamie Lee Curtis, uh sequence, yeah.
Speaker 1: Do it sixty, do it slowly. And even there he's
Speaker 1: doing he's kind of using a soundboard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Running Man when he's picking out his woman
Speaker 2: sleezy like, that's a great one board line tozy athletic.
Speaker 1: His You know, we can offer all the cultural commentary
Speaker 1: we want on why we think his movie career faded
Speaker 1: down the stretch of like the nineties.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 1: His theory is that it was when he fixed the
Speaker 1: gap in his teeth. He recently told Glenn Palell during
Speaker 1: like the Running Man movie run up that he thought
Speaker 1: it was he should have never fixed the gap in
Speaker 1: his teeth.
Speaker 2: He might be right, but that's definitely not what it was.
Speaker 2: Some people just start making bad choices like money and team,
Speaker 2: like shit gets in the way and you just start
Speaker 2: choosing stuff like Arnold had like accidentally great taste for
Speaker 2: what he would put, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 2: like it just made like he would he was in
Speaker 2: things that were so perfect for him and he never
Speaker 2: like stretched too far. But then he would do like
Speaker 2: Eraser and stuff, and you would be like, these are
Speaker 2: bad versions of stuff.
Speaker 3: He's already done.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But when you look at it, if you think like, okay,
Speaker 4: true Lies ninety four, your hairy tasker, A great next
Speaker 4: movie is yeah, you know, then Eraser then Jingle all
Speaker 4: the Way, you're like, oh, yeah, it's cresting now, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And Jingle all the Way would be a fun
Speaker 2: like career, like aside if he kept the other ship
Speaker 2: going on, but Jingle all the Way became, then he
Speaker 2: was just like, oh this is who I am.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think also like as you lose the heat,
Speaker 1: like no, you're no longer working with James Cameron. Now
Speaker 1: you're working with whoever directed like you know some of
Speaker 1: these movies, and then it's like you you don't have
Speaker 1: Danny DeVito re teaming with you in Jingle all the Way.
Speaker 1: As he was supposed to. It's like, although symbat's great,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's just like he stops having It's
Speaker 1: hard to like sustain a thing like that. And I
Speaker 1: always remember, like Batman and Robin, him coming into that
Speaker 1: world felt like an admission of like being a failure,
Speaker 1: like he had given up, because it's just like, no,
Speaker 1: this is like the thing where they have to paint
Speaker 1: on your muscles, Like you don't. You don't have to
Speaker 1: do that. You're fucking in a suit, dude, yeaheah. So
Speaker 1: he's like, all right, my career slowed down. I'm going
Speaker 1: to become the governor of California. He does. There's like
Speaker 1: a recall election, a bunch of celebrities, Gary Coleman runs,
Speaker 1: He runs. Everybody treats it as a joke. At first,
Speaker 1: he's doing like just terminator puns the whole time. But
Speaker 1: then he wins and becomes like an actual politician. And
Speaker 1: this is where we come to. You know, he was bad.
Speaker 1: He had like you know, he fought gay marriage, and
Speaker 1: by saying that gay marriage should be between a man
Speaker 1: and a woman, you know, the sorts of malapropisms that
Speaker 1: you know, you can edit out of a movie. But
Speaker 1: then it beends like a thing that everybody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you're a lawmaker, it hits a little different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there was this moment where I
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys remember Barbara Bush like showed
Speaker 1: up with a cast and they said that she like
Speaker 1: slid down an icy hill on a saucer sled and
Speaker 1: that's how she broke her leg. Arnold recently told the
Speaker 1: true story, which I'm going to put in the Chat
Speaker 1: Free Month.
Speaker 4: It was snowing of the and we had this toboggan
Speaker 4: and Bush is trying to teach me how to slide
Speaker 4: that because I was only used to sledding down with
Speaker 4: Austrian sleds, which you direct kind of with your feet,
Speaker 4: and so we went down totally out of control, and
Speaker 4: of course we crashed into.
Speaker 1: Barbara Bush, who broke a leg. Then after that, Jesus,
Speaker 1: he just trucked poor Barbara, and of course we crashed
Speaker 1: into and of course we crashed when he says like
Speaker 1: and of course.
Speaker 2: And of course we are crashing and like because we
Speaker 2: talk about it, like he has like these like rolling
Speaker 2: dialogue things, and of course we are. And then I
Speaker 2: am here, I am on the delhi'side geist. I am
Speaker 2: talking to Miles and Jack, and I am here with
Speaker 2: Jack and Miles, and we are having fun and we
Speaker 2: are talking about the sled and of course I'm sledding
Speaker 2: and I'm sledding on with with Miles and Jack like
Speaker 2: like it's kind of you know, He's like, I am
Speaker 2: here on the Tonight show to talk about Collateral and
Speaker 2: its Collateral is the film I am.
Speaker 1: Coming out of that Collateral. Yeah, it just keeps going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I think the coolest thing he ever did as
Speaker 1: a politician was.
Speaker 2: Well, it's so funny because I remember being I was
Speaker 2: not very politically minded, uh for a long time in
Speaker 2: my life, and I remember being like, oh, that's cool,
Speaker 2: Arnold's the governor. And then like some people whose opinions
Speaker 2: I liked as a young kid were like, he's like not,
Speaker 2: he's not that like cool, like he's got he's got
Speaker 2: like bad politics, and You're like, oh okay, And now
Speaker 2: as like a grown up, I'm like, fuck, Like imagine
Speaker 2: Arnold was like what the right was like a dream
Speaker 2: come true and there just actually are only about taxes
Speaker 2: somehow and not about like policing every fucking choice every
Speaker 2: person makes He's.
Speaker 1: Like, uh, pro choice but no healthcare.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean that's kind of sad, warm warmer progress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh he said on nerdous Chris Hardwick asked him, uh,
Speaker 2: is there any law you would change if you could
Speaker 2: as a lawmaker, and he said it is obvious, but
Speaker 2: I would change The president has to be natural boy,
Speaker 2: like he.
Speaker 3: Would change the rules so he could run for president.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: At the time, you're going like, yeah, right, but a
Speaker 2: celebrity winning.
Speaker 3: President, I got no man, I would kill that.
Speaker 1: We that is like one of the reasons we wanted
Speaker 1: to do this show is like to like have more fun,
Speaker 1: but also like, you know, icons are powerful and like
Speaker 1: they become they take on a life of their own,
Speaker 1: and like Donald Trump was just a cartoon rich guy,
Speaker 1: and yeah, you know, like we just I think we
Speaker 1: have a tendency to like misunderstand what they become, how
Speaker 1: people get iconic, and also like the power that they
Speaker 1: have over us, and like I feel like he kind
Speaker 1: of he's been a critic of Trump, but it's hard
Speaker 1: not to see that his political career is like a
Speaker 1: template for Trump's rise, where he's like a wealthy megastar
Speaker 1: who was just like presented himself as an outsider underdog
Speaker 1: who could fix the problems.
Speaker 2: But for the twenty years before he was a politician
Speaker 2: with bad politics. You liked him so, like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's hard to shake that. Like Trump, no one liked Trump,
Speaker 2: but no one hated him either. He was like this
Speaker 2: rich douchebag. And then he got like a TV show
Speaker 2: and he was like kind of weird and kind of
Speaker 2: funny and gaudy, and you were like, oh, it's fucking crazy.
Speaker 3: And then you're like, he's in my life. He's someone
Speaker 3: I recognized.
Speaker 2: And then when he's like, oh, I'm running for office,
Speaker 2: a lot of us went like that makes no sense,
Speaker 2: and a lot of us were like I know him.
Speaker 3: They're like, oh no, I vote for him. I know
Speaker 3: any name.
Speaker 1: He's not the law determinator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's actually he's very rich, so he doesn't he
Speaker 2: knows how to get rich for everybody, So I'm going
Speaker 2: to be rich.
Speaker 1: I'm quoting like six of my family members in one
Speaker 1: when I say that, right, right, right, exactly, Yeah. I mean.
Speaker 1: There were lots of scandals in line with his run
Speaker 1: for governor. Shortly before the two thousand and three election,
Speaker 1: La Times published a story documenting a long history of
Speaker 1: sexual must conduct at least fifteen women claiming they were
Speaker 1: groped or harassed by Schwartzenegger. And then in twenty eleven
Speaker 1: his marriage he married into the Kennedy family Maria Shriver,
Speaker 1: and it was revealed that he had fathered a child
Speaker 1: with their housekeeper, which came to late because the kid.
Speaker 1: No one has ever looked more like Schwartzenegger before.
Speaker 2: It's funny because Christopher looks more like him than Patrick does.
Speaker 2: Patrick has Patrick has Kennedy jeans, which of course are beneficial.
Speaker 2: Christopher is like big, square jawed, handsome, Like it's very
Speaker 2: but I look, it's fucking you know, wear a rubber
Speaker 2: when you have affairs with employees.
Speaker 1: That's a little lesson that we're taking away.
Speaker 3: That's amazing to take away.
Speaker 2: But I would also say, like it's bad, it's fucked up.
Speaker 2: But the fact that he's like, loves and accepts Christopher
Speaker 2: is so fucking real, Like it's so Joseph is that Joseph, Joseph,
Speaker 2: Joseph Joseph. Patrick is the one from White Lotus. Joseph
Speaker 2: is the Yeah, yeah, that's when we bought a jeep. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just so like it's funny, like it's he's just like, yes,
Speaker 2: she's I had affair with but he's my son and
Speaker 2: yeah I was the governor. Like he's just like that's
Speaker 2: the power he like he's he has where we're just
Speaker 2: like a, come on, Arnie, what's twenty women.
Speaker 3: Reporting sexual assault your coneen?
Speaker 4: You're just say he's not even because he's not a
Speaker 4: person in a weird yeah idea. Yeah, Like I'm like,
Speaker 4: I don't know, I don't think Arnold was saying is
Speaker 4: a person to be honest, He's like, again, he's a
Speaker 4: fucking g I Joe toy that you just fucking pose
Speaker 4: in different things.
Speaker 1: Allegations were not shocking to anybody who's seen that Brazil
Speaker 1: video home. There's a video from early, very early in
Speaker 1: his career where they sent him down to Brazil, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's one of the wildest things. It's like the most
Speaker 1: overtly horny anyone's ever been on camera, Like uh, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he's like grabbing women's asses who are like
Speaker 1: you can see samba dancers who are like pushing his
Speaker 1: hands off of is.
Speaker 4: They're like dancing around him, like doing like carnival dancing
Speaker 4: and he thinks it's a strip club and he's like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: let's get let me grab you by the way shorty,
Speaker 4: and it was yeah, it's it's pretty just everything, even
Speaker 4: his interactions like with like that one woman, like he's
Speaker 4: like feeding her carrots and.
Speaker 1: Shiit no no, no no. It's wild, but overall like
Speaker 1: a very weird, a very weird career that just like
Speaker 1: I do wonder how much it's going to fade over time,
Speaker 1: Like do you guys think those movies are going to
Speaker 1: make sense to people in like even like thirty more years,
Speaker 1: is it going to be like poly Shore movies, you know,
Speaker 1: where it's just like this was the thing that people
Speaker 1: were obsessed with and like studied more sociologically. Some of
Speaker 1: the movies are just like too good and undeniable. But
Speaker 1: it does also feel like thirty years from now people
Speaker 1: will look back and be like so weird that he's
Speaker 1: like this giant fucking oh.
Speaker 4: Right, Like is it more of a thing that people
Speaker 4: like are like oh okay, I get it, or it's
Speaker 4: like one of those things and you're like what the
Speaker 4: fuck were people back then.
Speaker 3: Think you're anti seat belts?
Speaker 2: You know, like like that shit when you're just like,
Speaker 2: we smoked on planes.
Speaker 1: This guy clearly no one's asking why he's talking like
Speaker 1: this in the reality of the film, right, All right, guys, sure.
Speaker 2: I mean, if if film still exists, I'm sure there'll
Speaker 2: be very interesting ways to discuss what the trends air
Speaker 2: and stuff. But fucking up like it is funny Jack,
Speaker 2: Like you just casually say something like in thirty years,
Speaker 2: how will we look at that? And then my brain
Speaker 2: just goes to be like, what the fuck is going
Speaker 2: to be happening in thirty years years? I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: talking to two dads, so I feel I always lessen
Speaker 2: my nihilism in those moments.
Speaker 1: God Jesus Christ, I know over a glass of water.
Speaker 2: Based on your day job here at TDZ, I'm assuming
Speaker 2: you guys are a little plugged into that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm always envisioning The Road by Cormick McCarthy.
Speaker 1: When we're doing The Road. Is gonna appreciate Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
Speaker 2: All we have is this iPad pre loaded with last
Speaker 2: action here. Sorry, I really wish you'd had can our
Speaker 2: Terminator on it.
Speaker 1: As a big bridget Wilson fan, this is a big
Speaker 1: break in it well, John Gabris, such a pleasure. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on. Always such a good
Speaker 1: time talking to YouTube.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you having me on especially I don't have
Speaker 2: to deal with today's awful news stories and we could
Speaker 2: just talk about I know how awesome Arnold is to
Speaker 2: even throw over treat to do TDZ with you guys.
Speaker 2: But it's not about the state of the universe feels good.
Speaker 2: It's about mister Universe instead.
Speaker 1: Olympia. Where can people find you, follow you, hear you,
Speaker 1: all that good stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm at Gabris On social media. I got a free
Speaker 2: podcast with Adam Pally called stany Live. Wherever you get
Speaker 2: podcasts or YouTube, I got Action Boys, which is a
Speaker 2: Patreon podcast where if you remotely like what this episode's about,
Speaker 2: it's unfortunately that for three hours every week. That's at
Speaker 2: actionboys dot biz. We have some free episodes that you
Speaker 2: can get addicted, you know, we get you, get you hooked,
Speaker 2: and then.
Speaker 3: You come back for more.
Speaker 2: And then lastly, I made this physical media thirty episodes
Speaker 2: of the Gino Lombardo Show. It's like three ten episode seasons.
Speaker 2: I turned it into a USB drive with like original
Speaker 2: art that comes in like a cassette form and you
Speaker 2: can get that at Geno dot Gabris dot com.
Speaker 3: If that's something that.
Speaker 1: Appeals amazing any comedy Bang Bang fans out there, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: forget that. Well, that's where I first first heard. I
Speaker 1: still remember sound Speeds. I still remember writing Gino Lombardo
Speaker 1: and then John Gabris down in my notes app I
Speaker 1: think it was like its first appearance and I was
Speaker 1: just like, who the fuck is this guy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was like my second podcast appearance ever. I
Speaker 2: didn't even know what podcasts where I had moved out
Speaker 2: here and I did Geno for Gotten, and I had
Speaker 2: such a good time that I didn't know I would
Speaker 2: be doing exclusively that.
Speaker 3: Character for the next fifty years.
Speaker 1: One day we'll be doing an Icon episode about Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: What's well, don't worry.
Speaker 2: His sexual assault scandals are are coming in hot. He
Speaker 2: grew up the bagel boss guy.
Speaker 1: Hessed him on the back of the neck. All right,
Speaker 1: that was a fun one. This is the notebook, dumb.
Speaker 1: You may have noticed first of all, that we didn't
Speaker 1: hit air standard question. If this person or character existed
Speaker 1: in the present tens or in our reality, would they
Speaker 1: have been on the epsteam flight logs. We didn't hit
Speaker 1: it because this is our first icon who did exist
Speaker 1: in our moment, and he wasn't on them, dinging casino
Speaker 1: jackpots sound effect, he was not on them. I think
Speaker 1: we decided Miss Higgy wasn't probably on them also in
Speaker 1: that alternate reality, and people were pissed. People were like, yes,
Speaker 1: she definitely would have been with Arnold. I'll say the
Speaker 1: internet actually couldn't believe he wasn't on it and made
Speaker 1: a fake list of names that went viral on Twitter
Speaker 1: claiming these people were on the flight logs. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's still early. It's still early, folks. We still don't
Speaker 1: know every We still haven't seen every file yet. One
Speaker 1: thing that's becoming a recurring theme also as we look
Speaker 1: at these icons for me is the question of I
Speaker 1: guess it's like kind of a nature nurture question, more
Speaker 1: of a was it them or was it us? Of
Speaker 1: the icons we've covered so far, like Einstein is one
Speaker 1: extreme because he's this super singular genius who is going
Speaker 1: to be famous no matter where and when he existed,
Speaker 1: and then Erkeles kind of the other side, probably doesn't
Speaker 1: become an icon in most other moments. Historically, or places
Speaker 1: in time, but catches something peculiar about the cultural moment,
Speaker 1: and I'd say Arnold is kind of somewhere in the
Speaker 1: middle there kind of an enigma. I feel like he
Speaker 1: was going to be famous no matter what. Everyone who
Speaker 1: meets him, like even the people who go in being like,
Speaker 1: this guy seems like an idiot, like James Cameron, for instance.
Speaker 1: They come away from like a single meal with him
Speaker 1: being like, this is the face of and titular character
Speaker 1: of my next movie. But the specifics in the level
Speaker 1: of his dominance feel very peculiar to the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: Like it'll be one of the weirdest sections of the
Speaker 1: Future Museum about the late twentieth century, Like people will
Speaker 1: just be like, why is this guy everywhere? And why
Speaker 1: does he.
Speaker 3: Look like that?
Speaker 1: I also wanted to note that you can kind of
Speaker 1: see the specificity and the suddenness and massive impact of
Speaker 1: his influence in movies he never appeared in like the
Speaker 1: same way that you can see certain cataclysmic volcanic eruptions
Speaker 1: in tree rings on like other continents. Like the example
Speaker 1: I was thinking about is the Rocky franchise. In the
Speaker 1: first Rocky movie, Stallone's trying to play by the roles
Speaker 1: of the seventies. He's a schlubby every man who isn't
Speaker 1: as ripped as his opponent. That was kind of the point.
Speaker 1: It's an underdog tail, like all our movies are generally underdogtails,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't make sense that he'd be the superman.
Speaker 1: But then Arnold hits and by Rocky three, Stallone looks
Speaker 1: actually like too muscular to make sense as a boxer.
Speaker 1: But by that time the point was no longer to
Speaker 1: make sense. The point was suddenly to always look as
Speaker 1: conspicuously awesome as possible, no matter the role. And then
Speaker 1: Arnold's influence fades, and you know, he and Van dam
Speaker 1: are replaced by action heroes with tooth pickoms, and Stallone
Speaker 1: goes back to playing a schlubby guy in Copland. I think.
Speaker 1: Cop Land came out the year after Eraser, I think,
Speaker 1: which was the first of Arnold's big swing action movies
Speaker 1: that like doesn't really exist. It's not like a flop
Speaker 1: or a bomb like last actor hero is just like
Speaker 1: people are like I don't even remember what that movie
Speaker 1: was about. On the subject of bodybuilding's relationship to acting,
Speaker 1: there's this mystery at the heart of filmmaking I've always
Speaker 1: found interesting, which is why do actors like Robert de
Speaker 1: Niro and like John Turtrurou, who are these great actors,
Speaker 1: You know, they're actors actors, but then when they direct movies,
Speaker 1: nobody really like they're not great directors. And then the
Speaker 1: actors who do make great directors are people like Ben
Speaker 1: Affleck and Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford, who are kind
Speaker 1: of one dimensional. I mean, they're movie stars, like you'd
Speaker 1: never want to go see them in a stage play,
Speaker 1: but they end up making great directors. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons is that they understand a very
Speaker 1: simple thing, which is how to look on camera, like
Speaker 1: how to show up, you know, without the interiority of
Speaker 1: the acting process to rely on, they focus on everything
Speaker 1: outside of them, their relationship to the camera, what angles
Speaker 1: make them look best. If you're not a great actor,
Speaker 1: but you're good at looking awesome on camera, you have
Speaker 1: to be sort of directing while you act, and like
Speaker 1: sort of bending the movie around your face, which requires
Speaker 1: a much broader understanding of how filmmaking works. Because they
Speaker 1: don't have the tools inside, so they figure out how
Speaker 1: to work within the machine around them. To look awesome,
Speaker 1: and that sets them up to be better directors than
Speaker 1: somebody who just like shows up and is like, I'm
Speaker 1: the Jordan of this shit. I don't I don't need
Speaker 1: to pay attention to these idiots with cameras. Obviously, Arnold
Speaker 1: didn't become a great director, but I was thinking about
Speaker 1: that when researching how his bodybuilding led into his acting career,
Speaker 1: because from a very early age, he's thinking about how
Speaker 1: to pose and like hit his angles and how to
Speaker 1: appear to people. He's just like pure exteriority. He's studying
Speaker 1: how to show up at the right angle to portray
Speaker 1: the right things, which for him, the right thing is
Speaker 1: always to just look awesome and strong, and that was
Speaker 1: the right thing for America in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 1: I mentioned how he tried the Stanislovsky method. I talked
Speaker 1: about how his teacher thought it got great results. Arnold disagreed.
Speaker 1: Arnold eventually was like, I don't want to be that
Speaker 1: kind of actor. I want to be an action hero,
Speaker 1: and he quit the Stanislovsky method and committed to weapons training,
Speaker 1: and he won all sorts of awards from gun nut
Speaker 1: magazines and shit like that for being the best shooter
Speaker 1: of guns in movies. I don't know. I don't subscribe
Speaker 1: to them. Next up, I think the question we kind
Speaker 1: of talked about this, but the question of like is
Speaker 1: Arnold hot is interesting and like why is he not?
Speaker 1: You know? Gabrius mentioned that the women characters in his
Speaker 1: movies are often like ooh ho a hoba, look at
Speaker 1: this guy, but he kind of gives off the same
Speaker 1: vibes as the Rock. He's sort of like too invulnerable
Speaker 1: to make sense in that way. He's sort of a
Speaker 1: marble statue come to Laye, which I think does tie
Speaker 1: back into fascism. There's a really good article called Everyone
Speaker 1: Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny on the website
Speaker 1: blood Knife that talks about the sort of sexless, bloodless
Speaker 1: nature of our movies while everybody has suddenly become completely
Speaker 1: shredded like the Rock and the Marvel movies. And in
Speaker 1: that article, the writer Rs. Benedict connects it back to
Speaker 1: Paul Verhoven's satire of fascism and American action movie Starship
Speaker 1: Troopers and describes the co ed shower scene as quote,
Speaker 1: a room full of beautiful, bare bodies and everyone is
Speaker 1: only horny for war. And I feel like that's a
Speaker 1: perfect summation of Arnold movies. Like they had to cut
Speaker 1: a sex scene from Commando because the actress and the
Speaker 1: director were like, this doesn't make sense and like it
Speaker 1: feels weird, but they were willing to add an extra
Speaker 1: like one hundred and fifty people being killed in the
Speaker 1: final scene. In terms of Arnold's relationship to other action stars,
Speaker 1: as I was reading that book The Last Action Heroes,
Speaker 1: I feel like John Claude Van Dam and Arnold Schwartzenegger
Speaker 1: are sort of spiritually linked. They're just these unquestioningly confident
Speaker 1: like puppies who've never been told no. And then Stallone
Speaker 1: and Segal are these massively insecure, sort of sad boys
Speaker 1: who refuse to let their guard down. Their careers are
Speaker 1: like scar tissue that's like grown over their wounded ego.
Speaker 1: And then Schwartzenegger and Van Dam are like these IDs
Speaker 1: that just sort of shed their super ego like needless
Speaker 1: shirts and are just running around flexing and waving their
Speaker 1: dicks in our faces. And finally, I talked in a
Speaker 1: past episode about this theory I was working on of
Speaker 1: like icons have to have like a contradiction at their core,
Speaker 1: Like there's too many famous people. We don't want to
Speaker 1: learn about another famous person. We're already holding all this shit.
Speaker 1: We don't want to have to pick up another famous person.
Speaker 1: But our brains are intrigued by contradiction, and so you have,
Speaker 1: like Einstein is not just a super genius. He's a
Speaker 1: super genius who can't remember to put his shoes on
Speaker 1: before walking out the door. Erkele's a dork, but he's
Speaker 1: a dork who's extremely confident. This Piggy a career motivated
Speaker 1: diva primarily driven by a romantic love of Kermit. And
Speaker 1: if I had to jam Arnold into the contradiction theory,
Speaker 1: I'd highlight some of the stuff we touched on. He's
Speaker 1: an American hero who spoke with a thick Austrian axe.
Speaker 1: He's constantly going undercover while being the most wildly conspicuous
Speaker 1: character in any movie. And it's interesting that he thinks
Speaker 1: that the thing that killed his career was fixing the
Speaker 1: gap in his teeth. You know, he's a subscriber to
Speaker 1: the contradiction theory apparently. And you know, Stallone also had
Speaker 1: an imperfection with the way he talked and kind of
Speaker 1: slurred his words because like one side of his face
Speaker 1: was lightly crushed by a fourceps accident when he was
Speaker 1: being born. But I'm going to shoot you guys straight,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's a lot of contradiction here. I
Speaker 1: think Arnold is a pretty straightforward like cartoon of a jock.
Speaker 1: He makes locker room blowjob jokes, he smokes massive cigars.
Speaker 1: He's just like the toxic masculinity of the seventies, pumped
Speaker 1: up to the extreme to just like the physical embodiment
Speaker 1: of what a seven year old would design an action
Speaker 1: hero to look like. Yeah, so, I'm not sure where
Speaker 1: we're at with this contradiction theory. I feel like I
Speaker 1: might need to place it with our new theory that
Speaker 1: people do their most iconic work while shaitting their pants.
Speaker 1: All right, that's going to do it for Arnold. We're
Speaker 1: back next Monday with possibly the most famous and recognizable
Speaker 1: figure on the face of the planet, who, depending on
Speaker 1: the tradition that you follow, may have done their most
Speaker 1: iconic work while shaitting their pants. I'm talking, of course,
Speaker 1: about our icon number five, Santa Claus. Talk to you then,
Speaker 1: I