OVP: True Lies (1994)

Film: True Lies (1994)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Bill Paxton, Art Malik, Tia Carrere, Eliza Dushku, Charlton Heston

Director: James Cameron

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Arnold Schwarzenegger: click here to learn more about Mr. Schwarzenegger (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Today we're going to talk about a film that was made at the peak of Arnold Schwarzenegger's career, and arguably (definitely after Terminator 2) one of his best films.  But the 1997 release of Batman & Robin, a movie considered so bad at the time that it seemed like it might end the Batman movies (side note: young, gay John loved this movie, mostly because of Chris O'Donnell) seemed to cause a different chapter in Arnold's largely teflon career.  End of Days barely turned a profit (only making that because it did so well overseas but tanked domestically), and The 6th Day was a financial disaster, and called into question Schwarzenegger's then exorbitant salary of $25 million per picture.  Followed by Collateral Damage (which also tanked), not even the solid box office of Terminator 3 could've really saved what seemed unthinkable-after twenty years of record box office, Arnold Schwarzenegger's career as a bankable movie star was coming to an end.

But here's where Schwarzenegger had a career second act as a movie star that only Ronald Reagan & Hedy Lamarr could really top: he went into politics (me now shifting to the other side of this blog to tell this story).  In 2003, California Gov. Grey Davis was wildly unpopular.  He had won reelection in 2002 by only 5-points, and hadn't reached 50% due to the strength of a Green Party candidate.  For all of the talk about Claire McCaskill largely inventing the "help elect the worst opponent in the opposite party's primary technique" that is still used today (just look at Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan), Grey Davis used it in 2002, running ads calling Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan "too moderate" to take advantage of the newly closed primaries for the GOP.  Riordan was seen as a moderate, and would've beaten Davis, but against businessman Bill Simon (son of President Ford's Treasury Secretary William E. Simon) Davis was able to win based off of the (at that point) relatively blue California electorate (the state got bluer in the next two decades).  But California's recall laws were relatively easy to push, and Schwarzenegger was the kind of candidate (flashy, moderate, and likable) that the GOP couldn't pull off in 2002.  Against Davis, who was mired in controversy thanks to raising auto fees in the state and a huge budget spurred by the dot-com bust that hit California especially hard, someone like Schwarzenegger who could announce his run on The Tonight Show with millions of Americans watching in awe, Arnold was unstoppable.  He would be elected Governor and serve as a (relatively...until the latter half of his second term, which happens to most governors) popular incumbent who could still win in 2006 as a Republican even though it was a blue wave.

(Spoilers Ahead) What does this have to do with True Lies?  Honestly, nothing, but I chose the film because I didn't want to watch The 6th Day or End of Days because they're famously terrible (and because I've not only seen Terminator 3 already, I saw it before I saw the first two movies in the franchise on a weekend where I otherwise spent time ordering pizza & beer while playing Grand Theft Auto with my cousin's boyfriend...the closest I may have ever come to successfully being a straight man), and then Arnold really didn't work in movies when he was governor.  So we're going to end our month with him on the high-note of True Lies, a really fun film about Harry (Schwarzenegger) who lives a conventional, in some ways autopilot life with his wife Helen (Curtis).  She thinks he's a computer hardware salesman (despite him looking like, well, Arnold Schwarzenegger), but he's actually a top agent for a counterterrorism unit.  When Harry suspects Helen of having an affair with a man named Simon (Paxton), he tracks her down, realizing Simon is pulling the opposite con (he poses as a spy but is actually a used car salesman), and he instead tricks her into doing a "job"...but then she gets pulled into the actual job that he's doing when Juno Skinner (Carrere), a terrorist organization leader, kidnaps them both.

True Lies is obviously a big, flashy action movie (and it looks good, this is James Cameron we're talking about-the man can't make a bad-looking picture), but it gets its flair from being a comedy first, and an action movie second.  This is probably the only true comedy that James Cameron has ever made, but he's quite adept at it, and has the good sense to hire a gifted comedic actress in Jamie Lee Curtis as his lead.  She does a wonderful job opposite Arnold (not a gifted comedian, and while fine, seemingly bad by comparison because Curtis is outacting him so well) totally selling this bored, sexually-frustrated housewife just wanting some adventure & attention in her marriage.  There are moments toward the middle where you actually feel her pain, that she really might leave him and touch the third rail of a comedy by having an actual affair, and Curtis plays it organically in a movie of heightened reality.  She would get Golden Globe & SAG nominations that year, and given the dearth of strong lead actress performances, probably was close to getting her first Oscar nomination decades before Everything Everywhere All at Once had there not been some category confusion over where to put her (she's a lead for the record, for whenever we get to the 1994 OVP).

Schwarzenegger returned to acting after his time as governor, but by 2011 the movie star landscape had changed, and the glowing world of the 1990's where they ran Hollywood like deities had evaporated into a world of comic books and intellectual property.  He would find himself largely just doing work in established franchises like Terminator and The Expendables.  His attempts at original films either missed expectations (Escape Plan) or basically no one saw (Sabotage, Maggie).  By the 2020's, Schwarzenegger's acting career, once big enough to demand the largest salary in Hollywood, had been reduced to making a comedy series for Netflix that got cancelled after two seasons.

Next month, we're going to talk about an actor whose career has been inextricably linked to Schwarzenegger's despite them not working together during their initial heyday.  But to link the two is to compare the two, and depending on your approach...it's hard to tell which one ends out the champ.

Dolly Parton (1946-2026)

I never know whether to call myself a "crier" or not when someone asks.  I think I cry relatively regularly, but not excessively.  What I am, though, is consistent with my tears.  There are certain pop culture moments that pretty much always do it.  The finale of Lost.  The scene where they sing "Le Marseillaise" in Casablanca.  Every time I read the last ten pages of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.  All of them do it to me.  But one of the most consistent ways to make me cry?  Put on the opening notes of "Coat of Many Colors."  It's almost comical how, though it sometimes takes a second into the song, I will surely have started to tear up by the end of "back through the years, I go wandering once again, back to the seasons of my youth."  There's something about it that captures me in a way that few other things do.

But that makes sense, because, honestly Dolly Parton, more than any other singer, has been the soundtrack of my life.  On any given day, she'll have competition from Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell, Aretha Franklin, & Edith Piaf for the title of "my all-time favorite vocalist" but at the end of the day-Dolly is the singer who has mattered the most in my life.  It's not just "Coat of Many Colors."  Back when iTunes tracked such things, "Jolene" was unmatched for decades as the "most-listened to" song on the app for me.  The first time I sang karaoke in college, it was of course a duet of "Islands in the Stream."  Pretty much every breakup I've ever had, at some point I start driving around in my car blasting "Dumb Blonde" as loud as is humanly possible, singing that man out of my (brunette) hair.  Even as a child, the CD I would steal regularly from my mom was The Bodyguard, to the point that it eventually became mine.  Dolly didn't sing it, admittedly, but "I Will Always Love You" became my first favorite song for a reason-her brilliant lyrics.

But that's the thing about Dolly Parton-she felt personal to everyone.  My mom, who lost her Dolly-penned CD to her son, would tell my brother & I stories about dancing in the halls of her dorm room with all of her classmates singing "Here You Come Again."  "9 to 5" has become an anthem for an entire nation that's overworked and underpaid.  What other musician could've launched not just one of the most successful music careers of all-time, but side hustles as a movie star, TV host, baked goods entrepreneur, and the namesake of one of America's most beloved theme parks?  Dolly Parton's music allowed us all to dream, to love, to cherish, and occasionally to kick that scoundrel to the curb.  But Dolly Parton the person was so kind, generous, and beautiful that she felt like a beacon of a time gone by, someone that everyone could rally around.  I got to see her just once in concert (the Backwoods Barbie tour of 2008), and it was awe-inspiring going into that concert.  I sat in a row of gay guys in cowboy hats, but behind us were a group of middle-aged women, and in front of us a family with some young kids.  There was no specific cross-section or profile to her fans, and everyone felt like family as she sang.  Like puppies, ice cream, and payday...everyone loved Dolly Parton.

OVP: Total Recall (1990)

Film: Total Recall (1990)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Michale Ironside, Ronny Cox

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best sound, Sound Effects Editing, Visual Effects*...I didn't make a mistake there, the statue for Visual Effects was technically an honorary statue, the last time to date a film has had that happen rather than nominating Visual Effects contenders for a competitive field)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Arnold Schwarzenegger: click here to learn more about Mr. Schwarzenegger (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I said last week, Schwarzenegger's career is too big to fit into one month, and honestly the films he made only play so much of a part.  Schwarzenegger, in a lot of ways like figures such as Marilyn Monroe & James Dean, ended up being an outsized icon, bigger as a celebrity idea than his actual films.  You see that in the 1990's.  We start out with Total Recall, a film that made a huge impact (it was in the Top 10 finishes of the year, above Die Hard 2 with his competitor Bruce Willis), but his successes were not as consistent in the 1990's, as the type of action-hero flick that had made him a superstar in the 1980's began to go out of vogue (this wasn't just true for Schwarzenegger-men like Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude van Damne also suffered a similar fate as the decade would continue).  For every True Lies there seemed to be a Last Action Hero or End of Days.  Schwarzenegger was helped, pretty dramatically, by international box office, justifying his gigantic paydays against increasingly lousy domestic grosses because he made so much overseas, particularly in a growing Asian market, and he always had the Terminator to fall back on, but it's worth noting as we head into our last week of Arnold next Saturday, by the time a different type of opportunity rolled around in 2003, he was in a position very different than someone like Bruce Willis or Tom Cruise (who had diversified their standing in the 1990's with other genres, something that, kindly, Schwarzenegger probably didn't have the range to pull off), and was ready for a new challenge.

(Spoilers Ahead) But let's back up and talk about Total Recall, one of the movies that is most-remembered from Arnold in the 1990's, and maybe one of his most interesting performances?  The film is about a world where there are literally people living on other planets, specifically Mars (though apparently also, defying all laws of physics, humans can also inhabit Saturn now), and Douglas Quaid (Schwarzenegger) is a construction worker who wants to see Mars, because he keeps having bizarre dreams about a brunette woman there.  He eventually goes to a place that simulates a visit to Mars, and he requests that it be him as a spy, trying to save the planet as part of the vacation.  Before they can imprint the memory, though, the machine malfunctions, and it turns out that Quaid is a spy, and his wife Lori (Stone) is a secret agent, one who is working for Cohaagen (Cox), the ruthless governor of Mars who is basically having the people there living in poverty because he holds the keys to making the atmosphere habitable.  Quaid, whose actual name is Hauser, goes to Mars, and realizes the woman in his dreams is real, and part of a resistance on the planet to try and overthrow Cohaagen.

This is just part of the plot.  The best things about Total Recall are that they almost completely throw reality or sense or any sort of logical consistency in the script to hell (it backs up the fan theory that all of the scenes after Quaid is put in the chair are a false memory, one he doesn't wake up from before the credits).  This is partially because of Verhoeven's bananas filmography (he was inches away from making Sharon Stone, who is the best performance in this movie by a country mile, into a bonafide movie star in Basic Instinct), but mostly because it's way more fun.  At this point, we've seen a lot of violence from Arnold, but we haven't seen his playful side, and here we get a bit of that.  Schwarzenegger is not a good actor, and even with a decent director like Verhoeven, he can't perform miracles.  But this is a fun performance, one that leans in on the crazy ride and supporting cast of the movie (there's so much double-crossing you'll need a flow chart by the end of it to keep track), and I have to tip my hat to Schwarzenegger for pulling this off.

The film's makeup and visual effects are really what make it famous (how it didn't get a Makeup nomination in 1990, the world will never know).  The film leans in on the mutant freak aspect of the Martians (they look like humans who have been sent through burn makeup...except one woman is a stripper with three breasts because why not), and the effects use that makeup to their effect.  Honestly, this is weird to frame against Terminator 2, which would come out a year later, win the same Oscar (with the same leading man) but would revolutionize the industry while this would only be a good example of it, but the scenes on Mars, particularly the climactic creation of the atmosphere, is funny & thrilling.  I liked it.

Predator (1987)

Film: Predator (1987)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elpidia Carrilo, Carl Weathers, Richard Chaves, Bill Duke, Jesse Ventura

Director: John McTiernan

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Arnold Schwarzenegger: click here to learn more about Mr. Schwarzenegger (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, like most movie stars, has had his love life pretty well-chronicled, but for most of his time as a movie star, it was largely linked to one woman.  He had dated English teacher Barbara Outland (who would eventually write a rather scathing memoir about their time together when he was running for reelection as governor in 2006) before he started acting regularly, but other than a brief fling with Eleanor Mondale in the late 1970's (when her father was vice president), his primary romantic partner was Maria Shriver, the daughter of Sargent & Eunice Shriver, and the niece of President Kennedy (meaning that Schwarzenegger, a future Republican Governor, did in fact date the scions of two major Democratic families).  Shriver & Schwarzenegger's romance was unconventional, but seemingly happy for much of its run.  They had four children, and their political views (while commonly-known) were largely kept quiet given that Shriver was a journalist at NBC at the time.  There was the fun juxtaposition of Arnold campaigning for George HW Bush in 1988 while Maria's senator uncle Ted was stumping for Michael Dukakis, but by-and-large they presented as a solid couple even though Schwarzenegger was repeatedly cheating on his wife (the unkind maxim about Kennedy women looking the other way on their philandering husbands definitely feeling accurate in this case), until it was outed that Schwarzenegger had father a love child with a maid (a story that conveniently happened when Schwarzenegger's political career was coming to a close).  The couple remained married for a decade after this, though, until 2021.

(Spoilers Ahead) The start of their marriage was happening when Schwarzenegger's film career 

was hitting a new height.  Freed of his contract with Dino de Laurentiis, he was able to start making major action films in the vein of someone like Sylvester Stallone, who at the time was a bigger star than Schwarzenegger in the genre even if that wouldn't last very long.  A big part of that was Predator in 1987, which featured Arnold as Major Dutch Schaefer on a rescue mission in Guatemala.  The film, like much of Arnold's movies of the 1980's, is short on actual plot.  All you need to know is that they are on a mission that will soon be deterred because they are being hunted by an extraterrestrial being that is not really referred to (the title word "predator" is never uttered in the movie).  His crew, one-by-one, is picked off, and it's left to Dutch to try to hunt the Predator largely solo, doing so through covering himself in mud (that disguises the creatures vision), eventually resulting him trapping the creature (and it then exploding itself in hopes of killing them both...which he doesn't).

Let's start with the movie and my thoughts before we talk about two oddities about this film in relation to Arnold's career.  First, it's a pretty good.  This is not Celine and Julie Go Boating or any such intellectual exercise as a picture, but it's solidly constructed and has a terrific special effects-driven bit of construction when it comes to the actual creature, both the invisibility effects and then (when it's revealed) the fantastically gross alien practical effects & makeup.  I also loved the film's Deliverance-style vibes, which honestly the further I get into this season, the more I realize that Deliverance had as much of an influence on action films as The Godfather did on mafia movies or Star Wars did on science-fiction.  The film also has one of my all-time favorite closing credits, which has all of the (mostly now dead) characters showing up again in title cards with the actors' names, all of them grinning cheesily like they're in a Mentos commercial...except Arnold who totally botches the concept by just being stoic.

Two things I want to note before we go here.  First, this stars Jesse Ventura in addition to Arnold Schwarzenegger-he plays heavy gunner Blain Cooper, one of the men who fall victim to the Predator in the film's first hour.  This is one of three films starring the two men, along with The Running Man and Batman & Robin.  Ventura would be elected the Governor of Minnesota in 1998 in one of the biggest upsets in American political history, five years before Schwarzenegger, and while they did not mirror each other stylistically in politics (Arnold was much more successful in the job & won reelection, Ventura was so unpopular he couldn't even run for a second term) they both represented a level of "entertainment being crucial in politics" that would come to a shocking result in 2016 on a national scale.

I will also end with this-the Predator films five sequels/prequels...none of which would feature Schwarzenegger.  Schwarzenegger refused to make the sequel due to a salary dispute.  This was also a deterrent in sequels to Conan the Destroyer, Eraser, Total Recall, and Kindergarten Cop, as well as a long-gestating sequel to Twins.  Not all of these are totally attributable to Schwarzenegger's salary disputes (Twins 2 was lost in development hell for decades and eventually crashed with the death of Ivan Reitman), but it's a testament to Schwarzenegger's ability at the box office that he could forego solid paychecks like this, as well as his alleged difficulty offscreen that would result in studios walking away not thinking he was worth the money (or the effort) even with probable hits on their hands.  Compare this to some of his contemporaries like Steven Seagal, Dolph Lundgren, & especially Sylvester Stallone, when sequels were being made, they tended to feature in them and take the easy paycheck (Jean-Claude van Damme, like Schwarzenegger, tended to not make it through negotiations).  This ended up being a blessing for Schwarzenegger for a while, we'll find with our final two movies, as going for an original concept (and with better directors) made him a much hotter property as a movie star than always needing to go back to the Rocky or Under Siege well.

Ranting On...Hank Green and the Complicated World of AI

I have made a concerted effort in the past year to genuinely reduce the amount of time I spend on my phone.  This has been a mixed bag.  Partially, it's because for the true time-killers (for me, that's Twitter and waiting for texts) I have transferred to just watching on my laptop, which is still better (because I also do other things like actual hobbies, writing, and work) on those, but still not what I wanted, which was to truly cut back on my wasted online time.  But what it did do (because I have cut well over an hour off of my average screen time compared to, say, December & January) is cause me to look at video websites like TikTok and YouTube much, much less.  In fact, for someone who used to religiously keep up-to-date on YouTube videos, for me it's pretty much just Bad Boy that I consider "appointment viewing" that I will not miss a single episode.  But that doesn't mean that I don't keep abreast with some of my past YouTube obsessions, and that includes Hank Green, one of the two hosts of The Vlog Brothers, the extremely long-running YouTube channel that launched both Hank and his brother John into an echelon of pedigreed YouTube stars and of whichI have been a viewer for many, many years (looking through the page, I have seen several in 2026 even with my cutback on screen-time).  John is a New York Times bestselling author whose books The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns have both been made into major motion-pictures, while Hank has become an essential part of America's classrooms, with his series like Crash Course and SciShow regularly shown by teachers in educating their students.  For a certain generation, Hank Green is a hero, and though I'm a bit too old to be calling him that (even though it wouldn't entirely be untrue), I'm definitely a fan.  I've seen his show with his brother live, and I have a framed photo of me meeting both of them on the dresser in my bedroom.

Which is why when there was a fan revolt over Green in the past two weeks, I stood up and took notice, and wanted to get an article out about it even though my To Do list right now is drowning me.  Essentially, in a recent video, Green used the phrase "I appreciate the pushback" which caused fans to wonder if Green had used an AI program to write his script for the "Future Hank" segment of the video.  Anyone who has spent much time on AI knows that "I appreciate the pushback" is a tell that you are using AI to write something, as it's a commonly used phrase by the programming when you are challenging it to create something better.  Green admitted in a Twitter post (that has since been deleted) that he had used ChatGPT for research on the script (which was about how the sounds of words help to create their construction), but did claim that "I appreciate the pushback" was something he said of his own volition.

This caused a significant amount of reaction online, something that seems to follow literally any use of AI in modern culture.  For starters, Green saying he used AI to research his video but not to write it made some viewers/followers doubtful-you can see countless people saying that they don't think he actually was being truthful here, which given that he's using words that sound like AI, well, gives cause for doubt.  But I'm going to take Green at his word, because I've watched enough of his videos (for decades) that that sentence doesn't feel out-of-character for me.  Green has a thoughtful, nerdy, and sometimes sporadic cadence when he speaks (whereas his brother is a bit more contained), and so "I appreciate the pushback" feels at home for him.

But I do think this controversy opens up some other doors.  Green, in an apology on Reddit, pointed out that some of the people who were attacking him seemed to be doing so in large part due to his use of AI at all.  Green acknowledges the environmental and ethical ramifications of the tool, but also is pretty clear that he has a more nuanced view of it, which some people may disagree with.  He then goes on to point out that he has become over-reliant on LLM's and AI in his research, which has impacted his relationships not just to his work, but to the people around him (he name checks both his wife Katherine and his brother John as agreeing with the latter statement, which makes it feel a little bit more like a family issue than one involving his fans).

This opens up two questions for me, so let's start with the first one.  I have written a couple of articles on this blog about AI and ChatGPT specifically.  I struggle with something like ChatGPT for a variety of reasons, the biggest being the environmental impact.  I also think, to a degree the "either use it or get left behind" aspect is a bit self-fulfilling prophecy (we're only being left behind because we're being forced to be left behind), but I will own that I have used AI and ChatGPT specifically, both professionally (this was heavily encouraged at my place of business) and personally, which I recounted here (I will note, as I have in pretty much every mention of the technology on this article in the past, that I will never use it for writing a blog article, as honestly I'd rather shut the place down than use AI to write an article on here-everything on here, including the mistakes, is all me).  I think, ultimately, the environmental aspects of it are hard to fault Green for, because literally everyone's using AI (just try googling without using it), so why shouldn't he too?  But the academic implications of it, particularly given how much of AI is inaccurate (which I also profiled in that article if you haven't already read it-it's a good one), is where Green gets into trouble.  Green has become a trusted source on the internet (people literally tag him in TikTok videos to see if he can explain phenomena in videos); that he's using a tool that is rife with inaccuracy (fairly or unfairly) makes people doubt the veracity of his videos.

I also think that what he says about ChatGPT being addictive (we're coming to the end, so we're bringing this back to the first paragraph about screen time...proof there's a method to my madness) is really important.  ChatGPT I have used in my personal life a few times, and it is shockingly addictive.  Partially, to Hank's credit, it's voluminous as a research tool.  You need to always double check everything if you're using it, which requires extra work that some won't put in, but if you ask it for, say, a list of movie musicals made in 1950, it's going to give you a better list than if you Google that same prompt (this is partially because Google has denigrated its quality in the past five years, a conversation for a different day).  It's also a decent brainstorming tool-I recently was working with ChatGPT to plan a trip and trying to get all of the things on my wishlist for it done, and eventually through a lot of pushback (forbidden word choice use intentional), I realized that the trip I was planning was impossible the way I was planning it, and came up with a Plan B I probably wouldn't have realized in the same amount of time on my own, and transparently maybe not at all.

But it also shapes the way you research, sometimes to your detriment.  I can type in a prompt asking for a list of all of the movie musicals of 1950, but it also gives opinions on those movies, some of which are gleaned from less-than-reputable sites where those opinions are presented as facts (and ChatGPT interprets them as facts).  This is dangerous because the human brain is not meant to constantly sort through things like that, but also because it's hard not to assume that the research & direction of that approach aren't where you need to go.  ChatGPT gave you an idea...even if it's a good idea, it's still ChatGPT's idea.  You didn't do that thinking, you are using the AI algorithm to create that idea and it is informing your research.  And because it's hard work to create ideas, having something do that thinking for you, particularly with effusive praise and lots of encouragement as if it were your idea is scary, and can make you think you can do more than you can.  This seems to be what Green is getting after-this is causing him to over-extend, and the more you over-extend, the more you think you need ChatGPT to work.  It's hard not to read those sentences, and replace it with a word like, say, alcohol or gambling, and not realize that there's an under-discussed addictive quality to AI/LLM's that we aren't allowing for in understanding its value.  That, more than anything, feels not like a scandal (I remain pro-Hank Green after this, and maybe even more so because of the honesty he brought forth in showing how challenging using this tool can be), but a wake up call.  If Hank Green, endlessly creative & boundlessly trying to make the world a better place, can fall prey to ChatGPT...anyone can.

Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Film: Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, Sandahl Bergman, Ben Davidson, Mako, Max von Sydow

Director: John Milius

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Arnold Schwarzenegger: click here to learn more about Mr. Schwarzenegger (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was a different kind of movie star not because he came with an accent (so did Greta Garbo & Marlene Dietrich) nor because he was a muscle-bound figure (as we talked about a few months ago, Bruce Lee was totally jacked and a huge star both here and abroad).  Schwarzenegger's phenomenal success in large part stemmed from coming at the right time.  In the post-Jaws/Star Wars era, blockbusters were a regular thing, and something happened where we had the effects budget to regularly churn out big, sometimes gaudy action films (which would become Schwarzenegger's bread-and-butter), but also because home video became really important.  If you look at the early successes of Arnold's career (Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator), the films themselves were not massive successes.  Conan was a hit, sure, but its domestic box office was dwarfed by films like An Officer and a Gentleman, Porky's, and even a prestige drama like The Verdict.  The Terminator was the same situation-modest hit, but it was outgrossed by now forgotten films like Tightrope and Breakin'.

Why have you heard of these films as a result?  It's because Schwarzenegger became a star on home video.  Conan the Barbarian was one of four action flicks that Dino de Laurentiis made with Schwarzenegger in the 1980's, and the biggest calling card of these movies was that they would sell better than their theatrical grosses would indicate in the burgeoning home video market.  Conan would, by some estimates, nearly quadruple its initial gross through home video rentals & sales, and The Terminator would do similarly well.  Both films would eventually also have additional success through repeated showings on cable television.  As we'll talk more and more about Arnold over the remainder of the month, you're going to note that this is a pattern-Schwarzenegger was a huge star, but not always through traditional domestic box office like his predecessors, instead relying upon growing international markets & home video sales to ensure that he was always profitable and worth the exorbitant salaries he demanded from the studios...even on films that didn't click with American audiences.

(Spoilers Ahead) Which brings us to the movie, the first narrative film we're talking about with Arnold after last week's documentary.  The film follows Conan (Schwarzenegger), whose parents are murdered when he is a child by cult leader Thulsa Doom (Jones).  Afterward, he is taken into slavery, and forced to work at a mill that turns him into a glistening, muscle-bound gladiator (aka the Arnold we all know and love), and through his time as a gladiator gains his freedom.  This leads him on an adventure, one where he treks across the land to gain his revenge on Thulsa Doom, eventually finding him and beheading him in a dramatic fashion...that allowed for him to come back in a sequel (Arnold always likes to keep his options open for a sequel).

You may note that the intro is way longer than my description of the film, and that's because Conan is practically a silent movie it uses so little traditional dialogue, particularly from Arnold himself.  I can't find an exact account of this, but Schwarzenegger himself has roughly 24 lines in the movie, most of which are reserved for a scene where he beats up & steals from an effeminate priest who is clearly hitting on him (he does not have a line in the first 24 minutes nor the last 25 minutes of the picture).  This isn't unusual for some of Schwarzenegger's early films (I believe he has even less spoken dialogue in The Terminator) and given his limited ability as an actor even when he was actually talking, this may have been for the best.  But it also feels almost silly as it goes, and when he's paired with real performers (like a scene about halfway through the film when he's opposite acting god Max von Sydow), it reads as comically uneven.

But this is kind of the appeal of Dino de Laurentiis's movies (he was the film's producer).  De Laurentiis was capable of greatness (he made some of Fellini's best pictures), but by 1982 de Laurentiis was largely best-known for making profitable schlock.  With Schwarzenegger, he found a goldmine, and they would make four movies together.  The two would have a complicated relationship.  De Laurentiis would get rich off of these movies and Schwarzenegger would become a proper movie star by the end of their partnership (something he likely would've struggled to do in mainstream movies had they not gone down this path...it's easy to see him being more Chuck Norris than Sly Stallone without De Laurentiis's help), but the last two pictures they made together (Raw Deal and in particular Red Sonja) left such bad blood that Schwarzenegger vowed to never work with him again, which meant that the third chapter in the Conan movies never happened.

Which in its way is a pity, because I quite enjoy the camp value & silliness of de Laurentiis films in this era.  Arnold can't act, this is written with an overwrought pen, and it makes all of the actually talented actors in the movies feel like they're in some weird type of kabuki theater...but it's still very watchable.  There's something there...there's a reason this movie became a hit at home, because it's equal parts funny and entertaining, even if it's objectively not good.

Max Miller and the House One-Term Wonder Phenomenon

Rep. Max Miller (R-OH)

This past week, two House Republicans involved in massive political scandals have (thus far) seen very different outcomes.  Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC), a congressman who was elected in part because he was replacing Rep. Madison Cawthorn who had been involved in a sex tape scandal (and is currently running for the House in Florida), chose to not run for reelection after it was revealed that he had had inappropriate relationships with junior staffers, sending them intimate texts & poems, as well as expensive (and honestly, somewhat embarrassing) gifts.  Meanwhile, Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) has repeatedly chosen not to step down, despite allegations that he was physically abusive to both his wife and daughter (after allegations he was physically abusive to his ex-girlfriend were revealed in 2021).

These are good reminders of something that happens in waves: the concept of a one-term wonder.  If you look at recent wave midterms (specifically 2006, 2014, & 2018...I'm lifting 2010 out because it's too hard to track with redistricting add its own unique fun), you'll find that a recurring theme.  In 2020, even with Joe Biden winning nationally, 12 Democratic freshman members of the House lost.  In 2016, even as Donald Trump was winning nationally, 4 Republican freshman members were losing.  And in 2008, with Barack Obama taking a landslide victory, another 4 Democratic freshman were losing.

In virtually all of these cases, something had happened in the previous year's election that (even with a good cycle for them two years later), had caused them to win.  A combination of a toxically bad relationship with the incumbent president, a lower turnout that doesn't get out base voters, and a wave helping them makes something that our stats-honed political watchers can't really understand: you get someone who can defy the odds and get a victory in territory that would normally be unwinnable.  A lot of these incumbents were in seats that their party had won the previous cycle at a presidential level, and in most cases, the seat reverted back-to-form at a presidential level, causing the incumbent to lose at the bottom of the ticket.

Sometimes, this is just relatively innocuous-people lose elections, that's sometimes the point.  In other scenarios, complacent incumbents who haven't hard to worry about a general election in years suddenly get caught unawares and lose to a newcomer who can't sustain that kind of luck in the next election (Jim Ryun/Nancy Boyda is a good example of this).  But wave elections also have something similar to what Edwards nearly opened up, and Max Miller is definitely opening up: a bizarre set of circumstances, usually involving congressional scandal, that causes a one-term wonder to emerge.

Two examples of this happened in 2006/08.  The first, probably the premiere scandal of that cycle, was when Rep. Mark Foley was outed as having inappropriate, frequently sexual, communications with a House page, in this case an underage one.  Foley had to drop out, but he was unable to be replaced by another Republican on the ballot, and even though another person could be the "nominee" Republicans would have to convince voters to cast their ballot for a man accused of sexual misconduct to win the election.  Even though Bush had won 54% of the vote here in 2004, without another Republican on the ballot, it became likely that Tim Mahoney, a chairman at a Finance company who was essentially running as a sacrificial lamb, would win the seat, and while Mahoney barely won (he beat the replacement nominee, State Rep. Joe Negron, by less than 2-points), he did win, getting a House seat he couldn't possible hold in any other election...which of course he didn't.  Two years later, Mahoney lost the seat by over 20-points.

The other example is Nick Lampson.  Unlike Mahoney, Lampson was an experienced politician, one who had actually beaten a "one-term wonder" to get his seat in the first place.  He had actually been in the House for 4-terms before losing in 2004 after a controversial mid-decade redistricting led (in part) by Rep. Tom DeLay.  Lampson chose to run in the 22nd district (DeLay's district) at least, in part, it seemed, for revenge on DeLay (he had represented portions of it while in the House, but by-and-large wasn't from the district).  But DeLay was vulnerable-his 2004 election results had been underwhelming, and he had been mired in a series of ethical scandals, including money laundering charges that essentially caused him to successively resign as House Majority Leader, then stop his reelection, and then eventually to resign from the House all in the same Congress.

That last step ended up being the GOP's undoing.  DeLay's replacement on the ballot became Republican Houston City Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs.  But Sekula-Gibbs had to run a write-in campaign, and more pertinently, was running for the remainder of DeLay's term in the lameduck session.  Lampson was smart, and decided to only run for the main term, meaning that both he and Sekula-Gibbs only appeared on the ballot once each, with Sekula-Gibbs needing voters to vote for her in the special but write in her name for the general...which caused confusion for voters.  Sekula-Gibbs got enough votes in the special to beat Lampson had they been head-to-head, but she got 15,000 less votes as a candidate in the general as a result of the confusion and needing the write-in.  Lampson won his term in the House, and despite a strong election cycle for the Democrats in 2008, still got trounced when he tried to run again under normal circumstances.

All of this is to say, waves create weird situations, and the weirder the situation, the more likely it is that we get a fluke congressman.  In Miller's case, Brian Poindexter, a Brook Park City Councilman and iron worker who gives off the aesthetic I've been told Graham Platner shone for months (but in this case feels legitimate) is in a good position.  He doesn't appear to have any scandals of his own (which oftentimes derail these circumstances), and will probably be able to get a Wikipedia page out of this scandal, provided Miller doesn't follow Edwards lead, making him one of I suspect several one-term wonders we're going to see in November.