Arnold Schwarzenegger is larger than life. That’s a given — just look at his Mr. Universe title and his action hero status in Hollywood. But in Total Recall (an amusing title for a memoir), the Austrian bodybuilder turned actor turned California governor bares all, or a lot more than he does primping for Mr. Universe cameras. Billed, with typical humility, as “the greatest immigrant success story of all time,” Schwarzenegger goes on to show just why his story is so much more compelling than that of the countless thousands of poor and huddled masses who came to America and merely eked out a living.
Except the braggadocio sometimes leaves a sour aftertaste, as though the Austrian who came to America in 1968 feels like he had all his good fortune coming to him. No; in truth, Arnold makes it clear there was a lot of hard work and preparation involved. In one early section of the book, Arnold points out how singly focused he was on winning the Mr. Olympia title. So focused, in fact, that he thought nothing of bulking up on anabolic steroids, which, as he points out, were “legal” back then.
As soon as I figured out what steroids were, I went to the doctor to try them myself. You could get them with a prescription then, yet already people seemed to feel two ways about them… All I needed to know was that the top international champions were taking steroids, which I confirmed. I would not go into a competition with a disadvantage. “Leave no stone unturned” was my rule.
Arnold then modifies his views, ruefully pointing out in the next paragraph that “guys today are taking steroids twenty times the amount of anything we took,” as though this mitigates the doping he did back in his day. It’s like saying that, even if you inhaled back then, it was nothing compared with today’s designer herb.
Arnold saw bodybuilding titles as a stepping stone to Hollywood, a place that would be the proper stage for his outgoing personality and beefcake presence. It didn’t matter that he spoke virtually no English; he was dedicated to self-improvement, taking classes in English, business, real estate and yes, acting. (It’s worth recalling that Arnold did win a Golden Globe for his first actual role, as a bodybuilder in Bob Rafelson’s Stay Hungry. He beat Truman Capote in Murder by Death and that creepy kid from The Omen.)
We learn early on that Arnold’s childhood was not ideal: his mom remembers combing through the Austrian woods for scraps of food right after the war ended. But this didn’t stop Arnold from growing up as a beefy lad who lifted weights in order to “get girls.” Since the Soviets kept Austria within its ambit after the war, Schwarzenegger remembers fearing their presence: this may be a primary source of his later embrace of American Republican values. It didn’t take much to sell Arnold on the “Evil Empire” concept: he lived right in its backyard growing up.
Another curious moment comes when young Arnold and his brother Meinhard come across a large picture book that they would use to play “priest.” It was actually a photo book glorifying the achievements of the Third Reich: “There were separate sections for different categories, such as public works, tunnels and dams under construction… I loved the pages that showed magnificent train stations and powerful locomotives spouting steam.” But that book was removed from the Schwarzenegger home by Americans after the war — along with any posters, books, pamphlets and films detailing the Nazi regime. It’s perhaps not surprising that young Arnold found it difficult to understand how a country could be asked to erase its own past. Yet Arnold still holds vivid memories of that book.
From champion bodybuilder, Arnold took to Venice Beach, then moved on to Hollywood. His first film was Hercules in New York, a largely forgotten satire from 1969 that foreshadowed Schwarzenegger’s later screen image: a larger-than-life fish out of water. Whether playing the Terminator — an alien assassin grappling with earth fashion and lingo (“I’ll be back”) — or as Danny DeVito’s oversized sibling in Twins, the joke was Arnold’s hugeness dwarfing everything else.
But simply being huge isn’t enough to make you a box office star: Schwarzenegger also possessed smarts, or at least a keen ability to somehow make his thickly accented delivery and deadpan delivery part of the joke. It became his calling card in an age when irony was spreading through Hollywood like a virus. Movies like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon retooled the classic “tough guy” image in the ‘80s, adding layers of postmodernism. It worked: for a few years, at least, Arnold was the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. He even spawned a running Saturday Night Live parody: Hans and Franz, the struggling Austrian “cousins” of Schwarzenegger who “just want to pump… you up.”
While the many pages of Total Recall devoted to which muscle groups Arnold liked to focus on for his next bodybuilding match may appeal only to weightlifters, it’s the Austrian’s strategic deployment on two other fronts that made him such a cultural juggernaut: his cozying up to the political Shriver family and his attachment to certain Hollywood directors who helped move his career into overdrive. With the Shrivers, he is smitten early on with daughter Maria, but in typical Arnold fashion, he nearly blows it. Meeting grand matriarch Eunice Kennedy Shriver for the first time at a fancy dinner party, he nervously blurts out: “Your daughter has a great ass.” Such a charming fellow.
In James Cameron, Schwarzenegger found a visionary director who created a role almost perfectly suited to the heavy-accented actor: an emotionless killing machine with a total of 18 lines in The Terminator. But this was all leveraging for Arnold, who plots each direction in life like it’s a conquest, and cites Hollywood grosses more often than a seasoned Variety reporter does.
Of course the book charts the governor years (spotty), and Arnold’s marriage to Maria Shriver — an otherwise happy portion of his life that unfortunately ended in a hail of “Sperminator” jokes after he impregnated a housekeeper. It avoids the accusations of sexual harassment during his governor run (an episode known to media as “Gropegate”).
Schwarzenegger is truly the embodiment of Californian contradictions: he’s a liberal when it comes to sex, drugs (marijuana in addition to steroids) and green energy, and a conservative when it comes to welfare and free handouts (he titles one chapter “Lazy bastards”). Reading his book gives us a glimpse of how America can be such a vast melting pot of choices and differing opinions: nobody is “100 percent” anything in America; you’re allowed to “invent” your own reality, good or bad.
None of this would have worked if Schwarzenegger weren’t an engaging, outgoing dude who was focused on success like an Austrian laser beam. (It helps to read the book aloud in a fake Arnold accent; also makes it a lot funnier.) He hooked up with the right people, the right directors — arty ones like Rafelson and commercial ones like Ivan Reitman — and chose (most of) his scripts carefully. (We won’t dwell on Junior, Kindergarten Cop or Jingle All the Way.) In true immigrant style, he did make something remarkable of himself, taking advantage of the opportunities in America. And that’s the part of Total Recall that will appeal to others seeking to go beyond their humble beginnings and seek a better life.
As Arnold might say, “unbelievable.” But true.