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.

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.

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.

Pumping Iron (1977)

Film: Pumping Iron (1977)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, Mike Katz, Franco Columbu

Directors: George Butler & Robert Fiore

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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.

It makes sense to start a month on the man who, more than any other this year, provided the definitive answer to "who is a great action star" with a first for our series.  In nearly seven seasons, we have never done a documentary, mostly because documentaries aren't really something you associate with the creative output of actors.  But Pumping Iron gives us both a really strong set up into Arnold Schwarzenegger, and also is one of the main reasons he became a star.  Growing up in Austria, the son of a local police chief (who was a member of the Nazi Party, something that would haunt Schwarzenegger for the remainder of his life, and would be a marked part of his celebrity donations, giving enormous sums of money to organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center and making a pointed effort to focus on Holocaust remembrance and Jewish organizations in his time in the celebrity spotlight and during his political career), Schwarzenegger's first forays into the spotlight came not from acting but from bodybuilding.  While Schwarzenegger would become the most famous figure in bodybuilding due to his subsequent movie stardom, even without that work, he'd arguably become (give or take Lee Haney & Ronnie Coleman) the most significant athlete just within the sport, and a lot of that is due to his work in Pumping Iron, a documentary that nearly wasn't released due to budgetary issues, but when it was in 1977, became a surprise hit (particularly in early home video sales), and launched Schwarzenegger into acting.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie isn't really a "spoilers needed" situation because it's based in fact, but I'll issue it mostly because the movie is about the 1975 Mr. Olympia competition (and who will win), a bodybuilding feat that is pitting some of the best in this then-niche sport against each other, and we meet them and their families.  The film centers on a number of different figures, and while all of them are big names in bodybuilding (not just because of their success at the time, but also because many of them became famous after this movie came out), you see the pitfalls of the sport, and the ways that only some people get to be the best (while others get to fail in the process).  The monetary award here is clearly secondary to other things, like personal pride, and in the case of the eventual winner (Schwarzenegger) modeling contracts and an intense amount of ego in terms of being near super-human in his perfect physique.

This is the best part of Pumping Iron, a surprisingly strong and intriguing look at a deeply hyper-masculine sport at a time when men weren't being pushed to show their softer side...because the film itself shows its softer side.  We see Mike Katz playing with his kids, and then the disappointment in him when he ends up getting fourth place in the competition he'd been so proud to brag about in the previous scene.  There's Lou Ferrigno, admitting that his parents weren't proud of him initially, and he feels a constant need to push for them to succeed...even though it's clear his parents seem to adore him (whatever the outcome).  And then of course there's Schwarzenegger, who at one point talks about how bodybuilding is the equivalent to having near constant orgasms (he uses the more colorful term of "cumming" that I'm going to use only because it's funny to think a future governor spoke this way even if it might end up getting this post flagged).  But later he has a scene where he talks about missing his own father's funeral because he couldn't deal with the headspace of such actual-world realities when he is in competition mode.  It's said with the same nonchalance as he does when he talks about the sexual gratification he gets from the sport, as if they are similar statements, and not one that's quite silly and the other hauntingly devastating.  It's like watching toxic masculinity, and the damage that it causes, in real time.

But it doesn't feel like toxic masculinity, because Schwarzenegger is unfathomably charming in this.  If you think of him from some of his later action films, where he is forced to drain anything resembling life force in favor of a robotic perfectionism, you are in for a treat.  He is flirty, friendly, braggadocios, and aware that this is a fleeting moment in his life.  You can see that he knows this isn't forever, and in some ways that life isn't forever, so he's going to enjoy and win everything he can from this moment before tackling the next challenge.  It's worth noting that in the immediate aftermath of this movie, it was Ferrigno who had immediate success with the smash hit (pun intentional) The Incredible Hulk which ran for five seasons on CBS.  But Arnold's time was coming, and it would be much, much higher than Ferrigno would ever dare to jump.  We'll talk about that next Saturday.

Saturdays with the Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger

Each month of 2026 we are looking at an actor or actress who found their fame in action films, fighting bad guys & saving the day.  Last month, we spoke about Harrison Ford, a man who is basically the definition of a modern movie star and would in some ways serve as the template of "action hero with multiple major franchises."  This month, we're going to talk about someone who in many ways was Ford's biggest rival for the title of top action star of the 1980's & 90's (though he was not the rival the press and the actor himself most considered his competition), the only one who would come close to him in terms of tentpole films and action blockbusters.  But this star isn't remembered for that today, primarily because instead of trying new types of movie roles in the 21st Century, he chose instead to go into politics, being elected Governor of California.  This month's star is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger was born in Austria in 1947, just a few years after World War II ended, and as a result, his father Gustav was a Nazi military police officer who fought for the Germans on the Eastern Front.  By all accounts Gustav and young Arnold had a tough relationship, and the younger Schwarzenegger would later characterize what Gustav would do to him as child abuse (it's also worth noting, given his ancestry, that the younger Schwarzenegger would become a prominent ally to the Jewish community, donating huge sums of money to fight anti-semitism, in stark contrast to his father).  Arnold would start weight-training at the age of 13, competing in increasingly high-profile body-building competitions, becoming the youngest ever (a title he still holds) Mr. Olympia, the highest honor in the sport.

Schwarzenegger's movie career started with Hercules in New York (where he was billed by the name Arnold Strong), but despite appearing in a number of films in the 1970's, it wasn't until 1982's Conan the Barbarian that Schwarzenegger became a household name.  He'd follow that up with his most iconic role, as the titular Terminator in James Cameron's 1984 science fiction classic, and for the next few decades, until his time as Governor of California, Schwarzenegger would have a fascinating career, making a series of memorable (if not always quality) action films, most of which would be successful in the United States but even more so internationally and in home video markets, the latter two helping him when his action hero roles began to go out of style in the early 1990's.  This month we'll talk about Schwarzenegger's claims-to-fame, his political career, and what his legacy now feels like when his type of movie star (which inspired many copycats in his day) is all but extinct to modern audiences.

Why Gavin Newsom is in Trouble

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA)

I'll be honest here-I have largely ignored the California gubernatorial recall on this blog because it felt like a gigantic waste-of-money where the end result was a foregone conclusion.  I'm going to date myself here, but I remember the 2003 election, and there were a lot of differences between then and now (which we'll get into in a second) that made it feel like this was simply an exercise in futility, Republicans throwing chaos onto the flames, potentially trying to harm the progressive governor of America's largest state.  To some degree I still think that's the case-I still think that Gavin Newsom is going to avoid getting recalled.  However, polling shows that Newsom is in trouble-this is not a foregone conclusion, and as a result I want to give some time to this topic on the blog.

For those unfamiliar, Gov. Gavin Newsom is being recalled in California.  California has a somewhat low (one would argue too low) bar to recall their public officials, and Republicans have organized the recall as a "Hail Mary" stunt to see if they can get Newsom out-of-office.  Newsom is not exactly unpopular, but he isn't a beloved politician.  Handsome & wealthy, the straight, white, male Newsom represents a different era of Democratic politicians, and he's not a natural retail campaigner in a state that has elected some colorful & very skilled politicians to the national stage.  This makes him an easy target for the recall, because while he would beat any Republican (this is ocean blue California), in normal circumstances, with a recall the way the question is framed up is he's competing against himself.  If you're someone who wouldn't pick Newsom over a Republican, but wish the Democrats would have a different governor for the next four years, this might be a way to throw Newsom to the wolves without having to mount a primary challenge.

I mentioned above that I didn't initially anticipate Newsom having too much trouble, and that's because California did have a recall, one that was successful, in 2003.  In 2003, Gov. Grey Davis was challenged during his second term for his seat during a recall, and ended up losing that race rather handily, in the process letting Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger take over the state as governor, a role which he'd serve in for the remainder of the decade.

Comparing 2003 to 2021 doesn't really add up, though, which is why I thought Newsom was safe.  For starters, Davis was much more unpopular than Newsom, disliked by both Republicans & Democrats alike-Davis is more inline with how popular Joe Biden is in Alabama than Newsom, who is like "Biden in Wisconsin" popular.  More crucially, in 2003 it was very clear that there were two choices to make in the recall.  Schwarzenegger, through his movie stardom, was universally known and much more moderate than any of the Republicans running in the primary (California also wasn't as blue as it it is now)-he was showing up on late night shows & everyone in the country was following the race because they wanted to see if he'd become the "Governator."  Perhaps more crucially, the Democrats also had a serious candidate running to replace Davis; Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante initially ran as a safety net but eventually it became clear that Bustamante had his eye on actually winning the race & succeeding Davis, which left a bad taste in Davis' strategy (since loyal Democrats had a serious option if they wanted to get rid of the governor).  That's not the case in 2021-though Democrats floated the idea of people like former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or 2020 presidential candidate Tom Steyer running, no major candidate got in, making it "Newsom or Bust" for the Democrats.

It's likely at this point that if Newsom is recalled, a few things will happen.  For starters, the Democrats will eviscerate Newsom for pressuring major Democrats for not getting into the race as an insurance policy (regardless of where this lands, it seems foolish to not have had Villaraigosa or Steyer running just so that there was no worry about the Democrats losing the office).  Secondly, the Republicans will win the governorship, more than likely talk radio host Larry Elder.  While the Democrats will almost certainly mount a recall of Elder (pointing out the futility of this endeavor), one that would likely be successful, or they might even try to impeach him since Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis is a Democrat (though it's not obvious on what grounds), Elder could create serious damage even in a short amount of time.  Elder would surely lift many of the Covid restrictions that the state has in-place, potentially upending recovery in a state with almost 40 million people (California's Covid infection rates have stayed considerably lower than Texas or Florida's largely because of Newsom's more cautious approach to the disease).  It's possible that Covid could ravage the state if Newsom is recalled.  Additionally, Sen. Dianne Feinstein is 88-years-old, and has stubbornly refused to resign despite worries that if she were to pass away while Elder was governor, he would replace her with a Republican, handing the Senate majority to the Republicans in the middle of one of the most important infrastructure negotiations in sixty years.

There are other concerns about Elder being in charge of the state (though the state's Democratic state legislature would keep Elder in check to some degree), but Covid & Feinstein's age are enough to put a lot of worry in Democrats.  It's obvious at this point that Newsom has run a poor campaign, making a safe seat a tossup, but the Democrats are not in a position to be able to point fingers-the health of 40 million people (and the Senate majority) is on-the-line in one of the bluest states in the union, a state where Larry Elder couldn't win under normal circumstances...but these aren't normal circumstances.

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Film: The Long Goodbye (1973)
Stars: Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Mark Rydell, Henry Gibson, Jim Bouton
Director: Robert Altman
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Throughout the Month of June, as a birthday present to myself, we'll be profiling 15 famous film noir movies I've never seen (my favorite film genre).  Look at the bottom of this review for some of the other movies we've profiled.

We're now going to be moving away from the classical era of Film Noir, which ended in the late 1950's when movies like Touch of Evil (possibly the last great "classic" film noir movie ever made, and just one of the greatest films ever made in general), and move into the neo-noir style that would emerge in the 1960's with films like The Manchurian Candidate.  Noir as a genre became less of a mainstay and more of a throwback, a way to capitalize on a Hollywood glamour long-lost, and would pop up occasionally in the decades that followed, but with none of the consistency of the 1940's & 50's.  For the last two entries in this series, we're going to take a look at two of the most well-known examples of neo-noir, ending our run in the early 1980's, though of course the genre would continue (we still see examples like Shutter Island, Inherent Vice, and the John Wick trilogy today).  First up is The Long Goodbye.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, one of Robert Altman's many celebrated films of the 1970's focuses on Philip Marlowe, a character we saw earlier this month played by Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep but is here portrayed by Elliott Gould, in a comeback role of sorts after being blackballed by Hollywood for his diva histrionics during the filming of What's Up Doc.  Marlowe, in the film's opening scenes (including an hilarious sequence with his cat, who runs away and never returns about ten minutes into the picture), helps his friend Terry (Bouton, who was far better known as a pitcher for the Yankees than an actor) run to Mexico after a dust-up with his wife.  It turns out Terry may have killed his wife, though Marlowe doesn't believe it of his friend, but he doesn't have time to look into this too fully after he's brought in for questioning by the police, as he's hired by Eileen Wade (van Pallandt) to find her husband Roger (Hayden), who seems to be in some sort of cult run by an evil Dr. Verringer (Gibson).  Marlowe is also being blackmailed by a violent hood Marty (Rydell, in one of his occasional acting roles, though he's best known for directing movies like Cinderella Liberty and On Golden Pond) for money that Terry supposedly ran off with.

The movie runs the line pretty thinly between a proper noir and a parody of the genre.  Casting Gould, who is so good at comedy, in the lead makes this line blurrier, as does the weird juxtaposition between Marlowe's behavior and those of the people around him.  Marlowe smokes in literally every scene of the movie, something none of the rest of the health-conscious beach bodies (there's literally a sea of women who are in various states of undress next door to Marlowe who do yoga & run a candle-dipping store) will indulge.  Marlowe feels of a different time, and you can see that in the ways that Altman uses proper violence in the picture.  There's a scene where Marty is trying to show Marlowe that he's serious about getting his money (the money Terry apparently took) and to prove it, he horribly mutilates his beautiful girlfriend Jo Ann (Jo Ann Brady).  This recalls in a lot of ways The Big Heat where Lee Marvin scars Gloria Grahame as punishment for helping his enemy, but here it's done completely at random, and you actually see Brady's face as it bleeds, Marty not seeming to care what he's done to his "love."  Combined with a musical motif that riffs on classic noir (both by using "Hooray for Hollywood" with a healthy level of irony at the beginning & end of the picture, as well as having a running joke where John Williams-composed song "The Long Goodbye" is rearranged in every musical genre imaginable), it's clear that Altman didn't want to make a more traditional film, instead skewering the genre.

(Weird side story-in true "let's cast a bunch of non-professional actors" fashion that seems employed here with Bouton, Rydell, and Arnold Schwarzenegger in only his second screen role as a mute hitman, Brady was actually the waitress for Altman & Gould at a restaurant when they were shooting, and they cast her in the movie because they thought she was beautiful.  She assumed it was a joke because they didn't have money to pay for their bill at the time since they'd just come from the beach.  This is her only film appearance.)

The problem is that the spoof isn't that funny, and meanders too much if this is supposed to be a proper parody.  It's Altman, so there's still moments of genius-Gibson's great as the creepy doctor, and Rydell is fun & manic in a way that Joe Pesci would perfect years later in GoodFellas, but the movie doesn't quite work, and feels lax, particularly as we catch the twists toward the end of the picture.  It turns out that Terry was alive the whole time, actually tricking Marlowe, and was having an affair with Eileen whom he is going to run off with now that her husband had committed suicide and she's inherited his massive estate.  The film ends with Marlowe killing Terry, but it feels out-of-the-blue.  Gould has played him like a carefree slacker for so much of the film, it's hard to understand why he cares that much that Terry screwed up his life for a while.  The clever, interesting touches make the film passable for sequences, but it's lesser Altman and it's not wink-y enough to feel like it's taking the piss out of the noirs of the 1950's.

Previous Films in the Series: Sweet Smell of Success, The Killing, The Big Heat, Pickup on South Street, Gun Crazy, Night and the City, In a Lonely Place, They Live By Night, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, The Killers, The Woman in the Window, The Big Sleep