Last Testosteron Hero

Spitsnet, a public transport dayly paper has a two page special on the new T3 movie and Arnold Schwarzenegger. We've translated to our best knowlidge and present it to you, the rest of the fans outside of the Netherlands ;)

He is the last of the Mohekans of the 80's Action Movie Stars. Jean Claude van Damme is baking fries in some friescottage in Walonia, Steven Segal is study-ing to become a Michelin representative and his biggest rival Sylvester Stallone has taken up painting. But Arnold Schwarzenegger is still here. For his third appearance as the Terminator, the Austrian Oak recieved 30 million dollars, a record. And if the rumours are correct he's at the first steps of a political carreer. A portret of a phenomenon.

In the beginning of next week, the 30th of july to be exact, he becomes 56 years. As a son of a police-officer Arnold Alios Schwarzenegger grew up in the Alps-city Graz. Not the most obvious place for a Hollywood-star in the making. But Schwarzenegger has turned his motivation to overcome obsticles in a person life-time motto.

The young Arnold was a 'thin' kid, most of the times sick and such. Until he became obsessed by the old Hercules-films from the 60's with contending bodybuilders like Steve Reves and Reg Park. Thats what the teenager also wanted. He started training and within one year he became Mr. Universe, the most prestigious award in the sport. He would earn the title a total of seven times, and revieved a permanent admission in the Guinness Book of Records as the worlds most perfect build man in history.

Difficult start

Not a small winning, but not enough to keep Schwarzenegger satisfied. He never kept it secret that bodybuilding was not his goal, but his meaning for bigger goals; he wanted to be the best on the screen. Apparently a difficult task. With his accent and his difficult pronounced name, Arnold was not high on the castinglists. In one of his early actingjobs, the horrible satire 'Hercules in New York', his name was changed intro Arnold Strong and his voice was dubbed by another offscreen actor. And when he joined for the leadrole in the TV-series 'Hulk', he was beaten by his Mr. Universe successor Lou Ferrigno. Arnie was not tall enough to portray the green monster.

Breakthrough

It came in 1977. Schwarzenegger arranged himself to be filmed and documented during his preperations for bodybuilding competition. "Milk is for babies, real men drink beer" he said with a smile towards the camera. 'Pumping Iron' became a great success and the charismatic jokester from Austria became the center of all talks. You could not call it acting, but for the first time you could see that the camera loved Arnold. And that would become the strongest weapon of Arnold on the big screen.

It took some more years, but eventually Schwarzenegger got the leadrole in John Milius' B-movie 'Conan the Barbarian'. He had to change his work-out, because his arms were to wide for him to swing his sword in a normal matter. He did his own stunts, because there was not stuntman with the same 'appearance'. "Crush your enemies, and see their women cry before you", was Conan's mantra. Not very friendly, but Conan was a great success. The film took an amazing 156 million dollars and Schwarzenegger was finally a movie-star.

Terminator

A year later Schwarzenegger did another Conan movie, but wanted to do other things. He came across the script of the low-budget movie The Terminator. A conversation followed with the totally unknown director and scriptwriter James Cameron. He thinks Schwarzenegger probably wants to play the hero, so he tries to do anything to turn the muscleman down. But when the actor tells him he wants to play the role of the Terminator, Cameron grabbed the oppertunity.

The rest is history. Schwarzenegger says "I'll be back" and he's a mega-star. He had 15 lines of text in the whole thriller. But the impact was not small at all. Schwarzenegger starts to 'role' on a winning streak. The whole rest of the 80's he broke record after record. He marries Maria Shriver, became multimiljonair and became the living symbol of the 'I'-decennium of the American dream.

In the 90's it went downhill for Arnold. Influencial moviemagazine Premiere starts a bashing streak at the star about unwanted intimicy on the movie sets. Several friends, like Jamie Lee Curtis, try to support him ...but the damage was already done. Also on screen things aren't running smouthly. 'Terminator 2' was a big hit and the following movie 'True Lies' was also a hit, but 'Batman and Robin', 'Junior' and Jingle all The Way' are movies that would cost anyone a carreer.

Schwarzenegger did not let this take him down. With T3 Rise of the Machines, his biggest character is back on screen in the most expensive movie yet 170 million dollars).

The white screen / The White House

Their are talks about a new Conan movie, but the question arrises if the movie-star will have time for it. The Republican Party in California tries to convince him to run for the elections of gouverner. The latest opinions tell us he would have a good chance at it. The Repiblicans have had an earlier gouverner living in the gouvernershouse. His name was Ronald Reagan. Schwarzenegger's biggest dream would be to follow those same steps towards The White House. It would be the perfect Hollywood ending in a special stars life. But it's probably not going to happen. People that have been born outside of America can not take the seat of the President. His place of birth can not be terminated.

comments powered by Disqus