Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

by Arnold Schwarzenegger

  Later on, I realized that it had a lot in common with a campaign trip. You’re on a tight schedule, you have to be there at a certain time, do the speech, pump everyone up. The school bands welcome you, and the local politicians come out and drum up a storm of support. After being the fitness czar, running for governor of California felt like déjà vu.

  Interestingly, nobody ever objected to my using my own plane. If people asked, “Is the government paying for this?” it was good to be able to tell them, “No. I’m paying for everything myself. Including the stationery. I’m not doing this for money. I’m doing it to give something back. My talent is fitness and, therefore, this is something I can give back.” It felt great to be echoing Sarge.

  Those fitness summits were like a crash course in politics. In California, when I urged the attendees to step up the physical education in the schools, they jumped on me.

  “Well, tell our governor to put more money into education, so we can hire phys-ed teachers.”

  “But there’s a recession,” I said, “and from what I’ve read, our state is getting less revenue, so our governor doesn’t have the funds.”

  “He should reallocate funds from other programs. This is for the kids.”

  “But if there’s no money, why don’t you look somewhere like the YMCA or one of the local sports clubs, and see if they can provide trainers to help out?”

  “Oh! So the schools should use volunteers instead of teachers? That’s a good one. In fact, if you read our state law, Arnold, you’d know it’s illegal to fill an existing teaching slot with a volunteer.”

  I was running into a teachers’ union taboo against volunteers in the schools. Encountering that attitude was a real eye-opener. It was not about the kids, as they claimed. It was about getting more teachers jobs. Of course, I understood that’s what unions do: fight for their own.

  Of all the governors, the one who made the deepest impression on me was Mario Cuomo. New York was about the tenth state I visited. From a distance, I’d never liked Governor Cuomo because of the way he’d attacked Reagan in his 1984 Democratic convention keynote address: “Mr. President,” he said, “you ought to know that this nation is more a ‘Tale of Two Cities’ than it is just a ‘Shining City on a Hill.’ ” But when I met him and we talked about fitness, he was responsive and complimentary. He gave very valuable pointers. For example, he advised, “You have to mention more about kids’ health, and you’ve got to talk about the costs. That is big, big, big. Talk about the health disaster that will develop and what it will cost the taxpayer if kids don’t get fit.” He was very supportive of what I’d done. I could see why Cuomo was so well liked in his state and why he was a great leader.

  Then we went before the media, and he did a whole spiel about how great it is for me to travel around the United States and to use my own money and do all this voluntarily. “This is what service is about,” he said. I thought, “He knows that I’m a Republican and that I represent a Republican president; it’s really gracious and generous of him to make this much of an effort.” More than that, I thought he was right. I still had forty states to go, and I was able to incorporate his suggestions in my message.

  My friendship with President Bush was warm from the time we first met during the Reagan years. I felt honored when he asked me to attend the inauguration and to introduce him at some of the surrounding events—although introducing him was also somewhat uncomfortable at times, I have to admit. There were so many people who perhaps would have been more worthy. In particular, I remember a Martin Luther King Day celebration where there were a lot of African-Americans in the audience and many black speakers. If I’d been sitting there, I’d have wondered, “Why is he the one introducing the president?” But that’s the way Bush was. He didn’t care about any of that. If you had talent and did him a favor or he liked you, he would push you forward whether it made sense or not. He was a different breed, a sweetheart of a guy. Both he and Barbara were really courteous and kind. Every single thing I did for them, he would drop me a handwritten note or call to say thanks.

  We grew quite close after he chose me for the fitness job. I could go over to the White House and see him anytime I was in Washington. We had that kind of relationship. Anytime. John Sununu was his chief of staff in the beginning, and he also was welcoming to me. It was never “The boss is busy now, come back tomorrow.”

  We felt honored to be invited many times to join the president and Barbara at Camp David. The White House can be very confining, and they loved to get away there on the weekend, even though the president always brought along work. I would fly up with them on the helicopter or meet them there. We’d go out to local restaurants and go to church on Sunday. And, of course, President Bush loved physical activity and games.

  One time, when a journalist asked him, “Mr. President, did Arnold show you some exercises?” he laughed and said, “Oh, when he comes up to Camp David, we work out together all the time. He teaches me weight training and I teach him about wallyball.”

  “Wallyball? You mean volleyball.”

  “No, no, wallyball.”

  “What’s wallyball?”

  “We have this indoor arena where we play volleyball, and we have special rules that let you play the ball off the wall. Arnold has played several times already, and he’s getting better.”

  I bowled up there with the president. We threw horseshoes. We swam. We lifted weights. I went trap shooting with him! (When does the Secret Service ever let you carry a gun around the president?) On a snowy weekend in early 1991, just as Katherine was learning to walk, the three of us visited the Bushes and went tobogganing. Unfortunately, I did not know the toboggan. It’s different from a sled, which you can steer with your feet; the toboggan is flat, and it slides differently. The president and I came down the hill too fast and crashed into Barbara, and she ended up in the hospital with a broken leg. I still have the photo President Bush sent me afterward. It shows him and me on the toboggan and is inscribed, “Turn, dammit, turn!”

  Heavy meetings went down at Camp David after Iraq’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It was so strange to shuttle back and forth between a real-world crisis and the make-believe threat to the future on the Terminator 2 set in LA. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and General Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would come up to Camp David to brief the president and hold decision-making sessions. By fall, President Bush had launched Operation Desert Shield, the massive buildup of US and coalition forces along the Saudi Arabian border with Iraq and Kuwait. I made my own small contribution to the military effort after reading a newspaper report that American troops in the desert were doing their weight training using pails of sand. Of course, a person’s muscles don’t care where the resistance comes from. Still, I thought we could do much better for the troops. I remembered how I’d carried weights and a training bench on my tank in the Austrian army. So I went to General Powell and asked him what he thought of sending over proper weight-training equipment. He loved the idea, and within a few days, I was able to enlist manufacturers to donate forty tons of weight machines, benches, barbells, and other gear for Operation Desert Shield. Sending it aboard a cargo ship would have taken many weeks, so instead Powell and Cheney worked out a way to have it airlifted from Oklahoma along with private contractors’ shipments. Within two weeks, the gear was delivered to the troops, and I started receiving extraordinary letters and photos thanking me and describing how soldiers were training in shifts to maximize access to the new equipment.

  I’ve always felt appreciative of the armed forces because I’ve benefited from the American dream, and their courage and dedication is what safeguards it. From my early days as a bodybuilding champion, I made a point of visiting military bases and warships whenever I had the opportunity. As I got into movies, it was natural to add USO appearances to my promotional tours abroad. I often visited marine detachments at American embassies too, in Japan, Germany, South Korea, Russia, and many other countries. There�
��s no school to teach you how to entertain the troops, but I traded notes with other celebrities like Jay Leno and developed a shtick. I’d talk about my movies, do a little standup (the grosser the better), bring along a new movie for the troops to watch, and maybe hand out some stogies. It was all about pumping them up—and saying thank you. Much later, when I was governor, people in the state capital of Sacramento always asked, “Why do you spend so much time on the armed forces? Why are you fighting for them to get a free education? Why are you helping with their student loans? Why are you fighting for them to get jobs? Why are you fighting to speed up the construction of veterans’ homes and build more veterans’ housing than any governor in California history? Why are you battling to get the establishment to acknowledge post-traumatic stress syndrome and help these young men and women when they come back?” The answer was simple: America wouldn’t be the land of the free if it wasn’t the home of the brave. When you see the work they do and the risks they take, you realize what we owe our military.

  Only once at Camp David did I personally witness serious business. The conference room that served as the president’s command center was normally off-limits to guests, of course. But one afternoon in February 1991, while I was visiting and sitting in my room reading a script, the president called. “Come on over, meet the guys,” he said.

  They were relaxing around the big conference table taking a sandwich break. He introduced me and said, “You know, we’re making some important decisions about the Middle East war.” The air-attack part of Operation Desert Storm was already under way, and for months the United States and its coalition partners had been massing their armored forces. “Look at these pictures,” the president said, showing me aerial reconnaissance photos. Then he played a video taken with a tanker’s helmet camera, showing how close to the border they were. The tank divisions were maneuvering, feinting attacks on the border and then pulling back, and he explained that one day soon they would just keep going into Iraq and Kuwait. “So they’ll get hit by surprise, and at the same time, they’ll get nailed with—” and he showed me the ship positions in the Persian Gulf where the navy was ready to launch cruise missiles plus an amphibious landing by US Marines. “They’re going to get hit with so much, they won’t believe it,” he said.

  The war planning picked up informally around the table where it had left off. The conversation had a kind of intensity and focus that made me think of doctors in an operating room. Yes, they were dealing with life and death, but they’d made decisions like this before and knew what they needed to do. There was no panic. The informal tone was just a reflection of Camp David—it was less fraught than the White House, which was why they loved meeting up there.

  When they finished eating, the president said, “Okay, I’m going to take Arnold over and show him this horse, and I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

  I left the next day knowing that the ground war was going to start in forty-eight hours. It was a Thursday, and two days later, on February 23, they were going to attack. I walked around thinking, “I know something no one else knows except in that circle. Not the press, nobody.” The fact that President Bush put such trust in me had a powerful effect. I felt there would never, ever be a time, no matter what happened, when I would violate that trust or let the man down.

  —

  The rest of 1991 was golden for me: at home, in my public service work, and in my movies. Terminator 2: Judgment Day opened in theaters on the Fourth of July weekend and quickly became the biggest box-office hit of my career. Just three weeks later, Christina was born. I also became the proud owner of the world’s first civilian Hummer, whose military counterpart, the HMMWV or Humvee, had played a big role in the Gulf War. I’d noticed the Humvee just the summer before, up in Oregon, while we were shooting scenes for Kindergarten Cop. A convoy of US Army Humvees drove by, and I fell in love. It was the best-looking, most rugged SUV I’d ever seen. The Humvee had as standard equipment features that guys would spend thousands and thousands of dollars adding to their Jeeps or Chevy Blazers: oversize wheels and mirrors, high ground clearance, extra lights, including infrared, a brush bar in front, and a winch for hauling yourself out of trouble. The Humvee looked ballsy without having to add anything!

  Not only did I want one for myself, but also I knew there would be a ready-made market if I could talk the manufacturer into building a version for the public. That was my sales pitch when I went to see the CEO and other executives at AM General in Lafayette, Indiana, which made Humvees for the military. I finagled permission to buy one, and then turned it over to a company to make it street-legal and civilize the interior, and then sent it back to AM General, saying “Now, copy this.” That’s what it did, and that’s why the Hummer became so closely identified with me when it went on the market.

  There was an interesting business adventure that year too. I joined Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis in New York that October for the official launch of a glitzy new moneymaking machine: a celebrity restaurant and merchandising chain called Planet Hollywood. Every celebrity you can think of was there. It was not just an event, it was the beginning of an empire.

  The idea was to put Planet Hollywoods all over the world and make them a magnet for people who loved American movie stars. Movie memorabilia and props would be the décor—like Tom Cruise’s flight suit from Top Gun, Jayne Mansfield’s swimsuit from The Girl Can’t Help It, and a motorcycle from The Terminator. The restaurants would host premieres and visits by the stars and sell specially designed jackets, T-shirts, and other souvenirs. It was the brainchild of Keith Barish, a movie producer, and Robert Earl, who had built up the global restaurant business based on music memorabilia, the Hard Rock Café. Keith had convinced Robert that Hollywood-themed restaurants could be even bigger than music-themes ones—especially now that the Iron Curtain had fallen and the whole world was wide open to American culture. The two brought the idea to me. “We want you to be our business partner,” they said. “We don’t want a crazy celebrity who doesn’t understand. You have a business mind. And you’re the number one star. If you do this, others will follow.”

  I thought the idea made sense, and word got around fast. Pretty soon my lawyer, Jake Bloom, who also represented Sly and Bruce, said they were asking to sign on. “Would you mind if they’re in on it?” he asked.

  “Absolutely not,” I said. I was especially happy about Sly. Jake knew that Stallone and I had been feuding for years. This went back to the early Rocky and Rambo days, when he was the number one action hero, and I was always trying to catch up. I remember saying to Maria when I made Conan the Destroyer, “I’m finally getting paid a million dollars for a movie, but now Stallone’s making three million. I feel like I’m standing still.” To energize myself, I’d envisioned Stallone as my archenemy, just like I had demonized Sergio Oliva when I was trying to take the Mr. Olympia crown. I got so into hating Sly that I started criticizing him in public—his body, the way he dressed—and I was quoted as bad-mouthing him in the press.

  I couldn’t blame him for hitting back. In fact, he’d escalated the fight by secretly feeding negative stories about me to the media. For a while he even paid the legal bills for a British journalist whom I’d sued for libel. But time had passed, I was a lot more confident about being a star, and I wanted to make peace. I said to Jake, “Tell him that he is welcome to be in it, and it’s my way of being gracious and making up.”

  So Sly, Bruce, and I became a team. We’d fly to the latest Planet Hollywood opening, greet the local celebrities, wave at the cameras, talk to the press, and do everything we could to reward the loyalty of the fans. On the airplane, Sly and I were smoking stogies and constantly trading jokes. We never talked about the feud. We were typical guys, totally in denial, as if there had never been any problem and nothing had ever happened. That’s how we moved forward.

  Even with all this going on, I could feel myself starting to get restless. It reminded me of the restlessness I’d felt after winning my third or
fourth Mr. Olympia. All of a sudden the idea of having the most muscular body didn’t mean that much to me anymore. It was a phase I’d gone through and a means to an end: bodybuilding had brought me to America and launched me into the movies. But I grew out of that phase as much as I’d grown out of playing with little wooden trains as a kid. Of course, I always wanted to promote the sport of bodybuilding, and I wanted to promote fitness. But being the most muscular man didn’t mean anything to me anymore.

  Becoming the biggest action star had been the next challenge. Eventually I’d accomplished that as well. Then I’d gone another step, into comedies. But I’d always known I’d grow out of that too.

  In the seven years between the two Terminator movies, my feelings about the business had changed. Throughout the 1980s, I was enthusiastically grinding out the films. I was gunning for the top, trying to double my salary with every project and have the number one movie at the box office and be the biggest star. I literally hated having to sleep. When I did The Terminator, I dreamed of being able to operate nonstop like a machine. Then I could shoot all night on the set with Jim Cameron, and in the morning just change wardrobe and drive over and do a daytime movie on a daytime set with a daytime director. “Wouldn’t that be cool?” I thought. “I could do four movies a year!”

  But now, after Terminator 2: Judgment Day, I saw things completely differently. I had a growing family. I wanted to have a nice life. I wanted to enjoy my wife and kids. I wanted to see Katherine and Christina grow up. I wanted to be able to go to events with them and take them on vacation. I wanted to be home when they came home from school.