A whole year passed without a new movie. Finally, I had a visit from Army Bernstein, a producer whose daughter had gone to the same preschool as our kids. He’d heard the talk from the studios and knew I was looking for work. “I’ll do a movie with you anytime,” he said. “And I’ve got a fantastic movie being written.” Independent producers like Army are the saviors in Hollywood because they’ll take risks that the big studios won’t. He had his own company with a string of successes and was well financed.
The film he had in mind for me was End of Days, an action-horror-thriller that was being timed to reach theaters in late 1999 and cash in on all the buzz around the world about Y2K, the turn of the millennium. I play Jericho Cane, an ex-cop who has to stop Satan from coming to New York and taking a bride in the closing hours of 1999. If Jericho fails, then the woman will give birth to the Antichrist, and the entire next thousand years will be a millennium of evil.
The director, Peter Hyams, came recommended by Jim Cameron, and like Cameron, he preferred to shoot at night. So when we went into production near the end of 1998, we were on a nighttime schedule in a studio in Los Angeles. To my amazement, there were insurance people and studio executives sitting on the set—the executives were from Universal, which had signed on to distribute the film. They were watching to see whether I’d faint or die or have to take a lot of breaks.
As it happened, the first scene we shot called for Jericho to get attacked by ten Satanists who beat him to a bloody pulp. The fight is at night, in a dark alley during a pouring rain. So we went to work, and we would fight until I ended up flat on my back staring up into sheets of man-made, backlit rain falling down on me as I lose consciousness. After the take, I’d come off the set and sit by the monitor, dripping with a towel around my shoulders, ready to go out and do the next one.
Around three in the morning, one of the insurance guys said, “Gee, isn’t it exhausting to do this over and over and get soaking wet and beaten to a pulp?”
“Actually not,” I said. “I love shooting at night because I have a lot of energy at night. I get a lot of inspiration. It’s really terrific.”
Then I would go out for another beating, and come back again and sit down and say, “Can I see a playback?” And I would study the playback as the technicians ran it on the monitor.
“I don’t know how you do it,” the insurance guy said.
“This is nothing. You should see on some of the other movies, like the Terminator movies, where we went really wild.”
“But don’t you get tired?”
“No, no. I don’t get tired. Especially not after the heart surgery. It gave me energy beyond belief. I feel like a totally new person.” Then the guy from the studio would ask the same question.
After that first week, the insurance guys and studio guys never came back. Meanwhile, word went out from the stunt guys and makeup and wardrobe people that I was feeling great, doing well, and so forth. From then on, offers started to come in again, and I no longer had to convince people that I still had a pulse.
Maria was full of personality and joy, a bundle of positive energy that I wanted to be around. At the beach in 1980. Albert Busek
We weren’t looking for an East Coast–West Coast relationship, but before we knew it, Maria and I were going out. Here on a river-rafting trip near Sacramento in 1979. Douglas Kent Hall
When Maria decided she’d stay in California after the 1980 presidential campaign, I bought my first house, on 21st Street in Santa Monica, for us to live in together. Schwarzenegger Archive
Maria and Conan the dog and I dressed up as bikers for Halloween in the early eighties. Schwarzenegger Archive
When in Austria, I often put on traditional clothes and do as the Austrians do. Above, hiking in the Alps. Schwarzenegger Archive
Ice curling. Fototom.at
Dancing in a beer-hall version of a conga line. Schwarzenegger Archive
Maria and I saw each other for eight years before this happy day in spring 1986. I was thirty-eight and she was thirty. Denis Reggie
Denis Reggie
Franco was best man, and among my twelve other groomsmen were my nephew Patrick Knapp, my friends from the bodybuilding world Albert Busek and Jim Lorimer, and Sven-Ole Thorsen, who played a thug in many of my movies. Schwarzenegger Archive
I escort my mom and my new American mother-in-law across the Kennedy compound to the reception tent. Fortunately, Aurelia and Eunice got along well. Schwarzenegger Archive
Andy Warhol was outrageous and Grace Jones could not do anything low-key. Warhol’s version of a tuxedo at the reception was a motorcycle jacket. Schwarzenegger Archive
Traveling with Maria and Eunice and Sarge in Europe was fun. Here we are on a ferry crossing the Chiemsee, a big Bavarian lake. Albert Busek
Hiking in the Alps I’d sometimes wear loud obnoxious Hawaiian shorts just to get a rise out of the lederhosen traditionalists. Here I have charmed a dairy cow. Schwarzenegger Archive
In Santa Monica, Maria and I lived so close to a state park that we kept horses and rode there every day. My horse was named Campy. Schwarzenegger Archive
Katherine had just been born when the first President Bush named me fitness czar and we staged the Great American Workout on the South Lawn of the White House. Mary Anne Fackelman-Miner
With Christina, our second child, I perfected the art of letting the baby sleep on my chest. Schwarzenegger Archive
On the way to vacation in Sun Valley in early 1993, I’m showing Christina a magazine story about how Maria balances family and career. Schwarzenegger Archive
Most days I would bring Christina with me to the gym. Schwarzenegger Archive
Patrick, our older son, was born in September 1993. Schwarzenegger Archive
By this time, I had the nurturing thing down. Above, Katherine snuggles while Patrick snoozes on my chest. Schwarzenegger Archive
I was also adept at his diapers and bottles. Schwarzenegger Archive
I celebrated my forty-eighth birthday in Sun Valley with the guys: my old friend Adi Erber, a ski pro, my nephew Patrick Knapp, my brother-in-law Bobby Shriver, financial advisor Paul Wachter, and Godfather producer Al Ruddy. Schwarzenegger Archive
Katherine read Arthur’s Chicken Pox to me while I was recuperating from the heart-valve replacement surgeries, 1997. Schwarzenegger Archive
We Schwarzeneggers clown around at a hotel in Hawaii, 2000. Our youngest, Christopher, is three. Schwarzenegger Archive
After fishing at a pond near our house in Sun Valley. Schwarzenegger Archive
Katherine and I horse around in the Santa Monica Mountains. Schwarzenegger Archive
I supervise Christopher and Patrick at a cricket stadium during a trip to South Africa for the Special Olympics, 2001. Schwarzenegger Archive
Tranquilized lioness, park ranger, and us on safari in Tanzania. I was at least as excited as the kids because big cats have always fascinated me. Schwarzenegger Archive
We’re a skiing family, here in Sun Valley—snow and skis and pine forests and mountains have always been part of my life. Christopher isn’t in the photo because he was only four and was busy that day skiing on the bunny slope. Schwarzenegger Archive
This is me kissing me on Halloween, 2001, except that the right-hand Arnold is Maria wearing a Terminator mask. Schwarzenegger Archive
As you can tell from the photo above, Halloween is a big deal in the Schwarzenegger house. Schwarzenegger Archive
Patrick and Christopher with me behind the governor’s desk in Sacramento. California State Archives / Steven Hellon
Trips like this one to Maui during spring break 2007 were a happy change from all the time our family spent apart because of the governorship. Schwarzenegger Archive
Katherine draping her long hair over my head for laughs. Schwarzenegger Archive
I still love driving my M47 tank from the Austrian army, which now resides at a studio lot outside Los Angeles and appears occasionally in World War II movies. On board with m
e are Patrick, Christopher (in the tanker’s helmet), and my assistant Greg Dunn. Schwarzenegger Archive
In winter 2011, my nephew Patrick and I went to the grave of Meinhard, my brother and his father, in Kitzbühel, Austria, during an unusually heavy snow. Schwarzenegger Archive
Suiting up with Christopher. Cindy Gold
Suiting up with Patrick. Schwarzenegger Archive
Katherine and Christina. Schwarzenegger Archive
June 2012 was graduation month for Patrick, who finished high school, and Katherine, who completed her bachelor’s degree at the University of Southern California. I’d grown the goatee for my role in The Tomb, a prison movie with Sylvester Stallone. Cindy Gold
For my fiftieth birthday, July 30, 1997, Maria surprised me with this poster. It’s a still life of tchotchkes and hobbies showing what I was all about: hiking, Hummers, fine pipes and watches, drawing in pen and ink, stogies and schnapps, being a dad, chess and pool, tennis and golf, movie scripts, motorcycles and leather, the history of weightlifting, and the future of bodybuilding. My list of interests has only grown since then. Schwarzenegger Archive
CHAPTER 23
A Political Proposition
PEOPLE LOVED TO JOKE about the possibility of me entering politics. At a governor’s council dinner in Sacramento in 1994, Governor Pete Wilson greeted me from the podium, saying, “I’d like to see you run for governor, Arnold. Someone who has played Kindergarten Cop already has the requisite experience to deal with the legislature.” That got a laugh. But it was not far-fetched that someone from Hollywood would run for governor. Ronald Reagan had already blazed the trail.
The year before, in Sylvester Stallone’s sci-fi movie Demolition Man, his character suddenly lands in the year 2032. He does a double take when he hears somebody talking about the Arnold Schwarzenegger Presidential Library. Running for president was off the table for me, of course, because I wasn’t a natural-born US citizen, as the Constitution requires. But I’d fantasize sometimes: what if my mother had gotten frisky at the end of the war, and my father wasn’t really Gustav Schwarzenegger but, in fact, an American GI? That could explain why I always had this powerful feeling that America is my true home. Or what if the hospital where she gave birth to me was actually in an American-occupied zone? Wouldn’t that count as being born on US soil?
I thought I was better suited temperamentally for being a governor than a senator or a congressman, because as a governor I’d be the captain of the ship—the chief executive—rather than be one of 100 senators or 435 representatives making decisions. Of course, no governor calls the shots all by himself. But he can bring a vision to the state and at least feel like the buck stops at his desk. It is very much like being leading man in a movie. You get blamed for everything, and you get credit for everything. It’s high risk, high reward.
I felt tremendous loyalty and pride about California. My adopted state is bigger than a lot of countries. It has thirty-eight million people, or four times as many as Austria. It is 800 miles long and 250 miles wide. You can easily bicycle through some of the smaller states in the US, but if you want to tour California, you should think about riding a Harley and getting your exercise in some more moderate way. California has spectacular mountains, 840 miles of coast, redwood forests, deserts, farmlands, and vineyards. The people speak over a hundred languages. And California has a $1.9 trillion economy—bigger than that of Mexico, India, Canada, or Russia. When the G20 sit down for a summit of the world’s twenty major economies, California should be right there at the table.
The state had gone through fast and slow phases during the years I’d lived in LA, but mainly it had thrived, and I saw myself as a happy beneficiary of that. In my political beliefs, I was conservative in the way that a lot of successful immigrants are: I wanted America to stay the bastion of free enterprise, and I wanted to do whatever I could to protect it from following Europe in the direction of bureaucracy and stagnation. That’s how Europe had been when I lived there.
The 1990s were prosperous years, and California now had its first Democratic governor since the mid-1980s, Gray Davis. He got off to a strong start when he took office in 1999, expanding public education and also improving relations with Mexico. He was a skinny, reserved guy, not much of a showman, yet his programs were popular, and he had a big budget surplus to work with, thanks mainly to the Silicon Valley boom of the eighties and nineties. His approval rating among voters was high: around 60 percent.
The trouble began with the dot-com crash. In March 2000, just before I finished shooting The 6th Day, a sci-fi action film about cloning humans, the internet bubble burst, and the stock market entered its worst decline in twenty years. A big slump in Silicon Valley was bad news for the state, because tax revenues would fall and a lot of hard choices would have to be made regarding government services and jobs. California gets a huge amount of revenue from Silicon Valley. When those businesses drop 20 percent, that ends up as a 40 percent hit on the state’s coffers. That is why I recommended using excess revenues in boom years for infrastructure, paying down debt, or setting aside a rainy-day fund to cover the wobbly economic years. You make a big mistake to lock in programs that require you to keep spending at boom-time levels.
On top of that came the 2000 and 2001 electricity crisis: first, a tripling of electricity rates in San Diego, and then power shortages and blackouts around San Francisco that threatened to engulf the entire state. The government seemed paralyzed, with state and federal regulators pointing fingers at each other instead of taking action, while middlemen—mainly the now-infamous Houston energy company Enron—curtailed supplies to drive prices through the roof. In December 2000, Gray Davis made a point of turning off the Christmas tree lights in the capital right after he lit them, to remind people to conserve electricity and to be ready for power shortages in the coming year. I hated the way this made California look: like some developing country rather than America’s Golden State. It made me angry. Was that our answer to the energy shortage in California? Turning off the Christmas tree lights? It was stupid. I understood it was meant as symbolic, but I wasn’t interested in symbols. I was interested in action.
A lot of this was not Gray Davis’s fault; the economy was just on a slide. But at the halfway mark of his term, people began to think that he would be vulnerable when he came up for reelection in 2002, and soon his approval ratings showed a huge decline. I felt as frustrated as the next guy. The more I read up on California, the more it was like bad news piled on top of bad news. I found myself thinking, “We can’t continue this way. We need change.”
All this played into that long-running debate in my brain about what should be the next mountain to climb. Should I produce movies? Or produce, direct, and star, like Clint? Should I become an artist, now that I’d gotten back in touch with how much I love to paint? I was in no rush to resolve these questions; I knew they’d crystallize into a vision in their own good time. But I still had my old discipline of setting concrete goals each New Year’s Day. Most years, whatever movie I had in the works would be at the top of the list. But while I was committed to a few films in development, including Terminator 3, nothing was actually scripted or scheduled. Instead, on January 1, 2001, I put at the very top of my list “explore running for governor in 2002.”
The very next morning, I made an appointment with one of California’s top political consultants, Bob White, Pete Wilson’s chief of staff for almost three decades, including Wilson’s eight years as governor. Bob had been the guy who made the trains run on time, and he was seen as one of the key Republican power brokers in Sacramento. I knew him from years of fund-raisers and dinners, and when he’d left the statehouse, I’d asked if we could stay in touch.
Of course, hiring Bob and his team of strategists and analysts didn’t mean that I had the support of the Republican Party. I was too much in the political center for the party higher-ups. Yes, I was fiscally conservative, pro-business, and against raising taxes, but everybody knew I was als
o pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-lesbian, pro-environment, pro–reasonable gun control, pro–reasonable social safety net. My connection to the Kennedys made many conservative Republicans nervous too, including my admiration for my father-in-law, whom they viewed as a big-government tax-and-spend type. You could almost hear them thinking, “Yeah, right, that’s all we need: Arnold and his liberal wife, and then in comes his mother-in-law and father-in-law, and then Teddy Kennedy, and then they’ll all come. It’s the goddamn Trojan horse.” The party leaders were very appreciative that I helped raise funds and talked about their candidates and Republican philosophy on the campaign trail. But it was always, “This was very nice, thank you so much for helping.” I don’t think they had ever really warmed to me.
That wasn’t why I went to Bob and his associates, though. I wanted a thorough, professional assessment of my potential to run and win, along with the polling and research to back it up. Even though I’d been part of campaigns, I also wanted to know what it really took to run for office, given that I wasn’t a typical candidate. How many hours would I have to spend on a campaign? How much money would I need to raise? What would be the theme of a campaign? How do you keep your kids out of the spotlight? Was Maria’s coming from a Democratic family an asset or a liability?
Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story Page 50