ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
From Mr. Universe to The Terminator to the governor of California, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER’S career has taken some bold turns. Now, after launching green doc Wonders Of The Sea 3D, it’s about to see the most surprising move yet: eco-warrior. Does he still h
“I’m here! Grill me! Do it!” Arnie opens up about Trump, Terminator and tackling climate change.
The subtitle of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s official website tells you all you need to know about this most iconic of Austrians: ‘Film, Fitness, Politics.’ A movie star, a bodybuilding champion, the governor… there isn’t much he hasn’t done in the past four decades. But now you might add ‘eco-warrior’ to that list. Arnie’s back – but this time when he says, “Come with me if you want to live,” he really means it. Six years on from leaving his post as governor of California, he’s turning his attention to one of the most pressing issues of the day: the environment.
When Total Film encounters Schwarzenegger, he’s at the Cannes Film Festival. The last time he was here, he was pressing the flesh back in 2003 for Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines, his last film before his eight-year stint in office. Now, about to turn 70 this July (“I like Montecristo No. 2,” he jokes, in case TF is thinking of buying him a box of his favourite cigars to celebrate), he could easily pass for his mid-fifties. Thick hair, thicker accent and a smile broader than his belt-buckle, he’s a perfect tanned specimen even as he nears his eighth decade.
Striding into the Majestic Hotel (where else would you meet Arnie?), he’s dressed in jeans, a pinstriped jacket and a blue polo shirt. On his finger is a giant skull ring, a present from one of his children (he has two boys and two girls with his former wife, journalist Maria Shriver, whom he separated from after 25 years of marriage in 2011). So how does he look so good? “I don’t think I have a secret,” he says. “I think it’s two things. One is that I work out every day and the second one is I really love my life.”
He then lays bare an average month or two in the life of Arnold Schwarzenegger: make a movie (he’s just wrapped Why We’re Killing Gunther with Cobie Smulders), promote his Arnold Sports Festivals in China, South America or Australia (“We have them in six continents”), deliver a commencement speech at the University of Houston (for his eighth honorary doctorate), cut a real estate deal (“And make another few million dollars”), ride his motorcycle at 5am… and more besides. “So how can you not feel good about your life?”
Such is his aura, he could be a motivational speaker. Right from the day he saw former Mr. Universe Reg Park cast in 1961’s Hercules And The Captive Women, he visualised the same success for himself. “I always enjoy what I’m doing,” he says. “Even when I had to crawl on the ground with the sword in my hand and rocks on the floor and
bleeding elbows and knees on [his 1982 fantasy breakthrough] Conan The Barbarian and have John Milius say, ‘I need one more take, I need a close-up of your face!’ Even then, I visualised the scene finished and that brought me joy to do another take.”
Schwarzenegger may be the living embodiment of the American Dream – having arrived in the US in 1968, with little English in his vocabulary – but he’s come to realise that there’s something far bigger than even his pecs: the destruction of the planet. No, we’re not talking Skynet here, but eco-tastrophe. “You get to a certain age where other things become much more important,” he says. “[It’s] not thinking just about me, but thinking about us all collectively, and how can I reach out and help people and how can I help the world, help my neighbourhood and my state.”
It’s why he’s in Cannes. Saving the world on the movie screen is one thing, but the Governator now wants to do it for real. He’s here with his first ever documentary, Wonders Of The Sea 3D, which he narrates. Co-directed by Jean-Jacques Mantello and Jean-Michel Cousteau, son to the famous ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, it’s a passionate and vibrant look at what lies beneath. Arriving at the same time as Al Gore’s own eco-doc An Inconvenient Sequel (see p20), the follow-up to his Oscar-winning 2006 film, it couldn’t be better timed.
In reality, Schwarzenegger’s nephew, entertainment lawyer Patrick Knapp, first alerted him to the film. “[He said] ‘You should see it, because there is a great environmental message there.’ And he was right. The environmental movement always has the bad habit of pointing fingers and saying, ‘Don’t dump things in the ocean, don’t smoke this, chimneys are bad, lighting a fireplace is bad, taking a Jacuzzi is bad, flying on an aeroplane is bad.’ This movie celebrates. This movie says the glass is half full rather than half empty – let’s go and protect it.”
Easier said than done with President Donald Trump in the White House and, at the time of writing, pulling the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement. “I wish Trump good luck,” says Schwarzenegger, diplomatically. “When he does well, we all do well. That’s the bottom line. So Democrats [and] Republicans should support the things that he wants to do that are really good. When it comes to the environment, he’s misinformed. He’s back in the Stone Age and eventually I hope we can get through to him and make him understand that we need to be on the right track.”
For Schwarzenegger, this is no act of bandwagon-jumping. As far back as 2010, during his time as governor, he created the R20 – Regions of Climate Action. “We do great work – we encourage sub-national governments, like states, provinces, cities, neighbourhoods, to take matters into their own hands,” he explains. “We don’t need to wait for the capitals – London, Moscow, Beijing, Washington… [it’s] people power. Let’s just do it locally. And really start fighting for a clean environment. Let’s get rid of pollution, let’s get rid of greenhouse gases and fossil fuels.”
He’s even turned his extensive Humvee collection green. He still owns four of the beasts, but they are now powered by biofuel and hydrogen. One is even being converted to electric. “My point is not to point fingers at big cars, but to point the finger at the technology inside the car.” The idea, he says, is to make people feel part of the solution, not alienated by it. “I’m a fanatic about technology,” he adds, “because the technology is becoming so regularly available now, we want to make the world know about it and use it.”
Schwarzenegger equates it to his own experiences in bodybuilding. Choosing the discipline at the tender age of 14 – despite his police chief father wanting him to join the force
– he became the youngest ever Mr. Universe six years later, in 1967. A decade on, after his move to the US, he was starring in the docudrama Pumping Iron, about his rivalry with future Incredible Hulk star Lou Ferrigno. Even now, it’s difficult to contemplate just what an impact that made.
“Look at it today, 40 years later. How successful has it been? Every hotel in the world has a gymnasium. Everyone is working out with weights. Everyone is doing resistance work. Every university has weight rooms, every high school, every military installation, every fire station, every police station… everyone is working out! So it was highly successful, the whole thing, and that’s what we want to do with the environment. Bring out good footage. We didn’t blame anyone [in the film].”
Of course, the one thing stopping Schwarzenegger from world domination (or at least taking a seat in the Oval Office) is the fact he was not born in America. Would he have run for president if he could? “I would’ve, yes, that’s clear,” he says. “But you can have a great impact on the world without being inside politics. The best way it works is if the public sector, the private sector and the non-profit sector all work together in harmony. That’s the ideal thing. So you can attack the problems from different angles.”
One thing is for certain, Schwarzenegger is self-aware enough to know that his on-screen persona has a largerthan-life caricature quality. In Wonders Of The Sea, he deliberately drops his iconic T2 catchphrase, “I’ll be back.” Certainly, it’s a maxim that rather sums up his indefatigable nature. Following his time in politics, he managed to reboot
his movie career, appearing alongside other action veterans in the Expendables franchise as well as more intriguing films, such as 2015 zombie effort Maggie.
So have these words taken on more meaning than simply a throwaway pay-off line? “Not really,” he shrugs, “Jim Cameron wrote it. I argued with him for hours about saying, ‘I will be back.’ He kept saying ‘I’ll be back’. He was obviously right, saying it his way, and it became one of the most used movie lines in the history of moviemaking. Actually three or four of my lines became the most used ones.” He’s even created a promotional bodybuilding t-shirt that reads: “Come with me if you want to lift.”
in most cases, my lines have become famous because… I say it wrong!” he says, chuckling. He then proceeds to give examples of his marvellous mispronunciation, including, “It’s not a tumor,” (one that’s inspired countless memes) from his classroom comedy Kindergarten Cop. “It’s like the way James Cameron said… when we promoted The Terminator, he said at the press conference, ‘What made the movie work is that Schwarzenegger actually talks like a machine!’ I said, ‘Thanks Jim, I don’t know if I should take that as a compliment!’”
Despite the disappointment of the last outing for Arnie’s cyborg, 2015’s Terminator Genisys, there’s already talk of another entry for this most indestructible of franchises – this time with Cameron back in the hot seat. With Ridley Scott returning to the Alien franchise, it makes sense, despite Cameron’s current pre-occupation with the Avatar sequels. “It is moving forward,” says Schwarzenegger, who recently met with Cameron. “He has some good ideas of how to continue with the franchise – I will be in the movie.”
Beyond that, Schwarzenegger is hopeful that The Legend Of Conan reboot will gain traction, a sort of Unforgiven-style take on the character 30 years on, despite reports from producer Chris Morgan that studio Universal had passed. More likely is Triplets, the oft-mooted sequel to Twins that will team Arnie with Danny DeVito and Eddie Murphy, and see the original’s director/producer Ivan Reitman involved. “The script will be finished in a month,” he promises.
With a team-up with Jackie Chan, Journey To China:
The Mystery Of Iron Mask, already in the can, the Austrian Oak just keeps growing. “There are a lot of things that I’ve never envisioned,” he says. “I did not know the career was going to go as far as it did, that I was going to have the biggest movie of the year, with Terminator 2, and that
I would be doing comedies. Or that I would be sitting here one day and promoting an environmental movie.” The legend continues…
Wonders of The sea 3d Will open later in The year.
‘WHEN IT COMES TO THE ENVIRONMENT, TRUMP’S MISINFORMED, HE’S BACK IN THE STONE AGE. EVENTUALLY I HOPE WE CAN GET THROUGH TO HIM AND MAKE HIM UNDERSTAND’