How a skinny, intense James Cameron first persuaded the Austrian Oak to play the Terminator, instead of OJ Simpson. Very few actors had ever gotten across the idea of a machine. Schwarzenegger, Cameron said, could capture the coldness exactly
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Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Simon & Schuster
Paperback, Pg 700
Rs.699
When I first saw the mock-up for The Terminator movie poster, the killer robot pictured was OJ Simpson, not me. A few weeks earlier, I?d run into Mike Medavoy, the head of Orion Pictures, which was financing the project, at a screening of a picture about a police helicopter.
?I have the perfect movie for you,? he said, ?It?s called The Terminator.? I was instantly suspicious because there?d been a schlock action movie called The Exterminator a few years before.
?Strange name,? I said.
?Well,? he said, ?we can change it. Anyway, it?s a great role, a leading role, very heroic.? He described a sci-fi action movie where I would be playing a brave soldier named Kyle Reese, who battles to save a girl and protect the future of the world. ?We?ve pretty much got OJ Simpson signed up to be the terminator, which is like a killing machine.?
?Why don?t we get together?? Medavoy suggested. ?The director lives down in Venice near your office.?
…My mind quickly adjusted to the new world I was in. I?d always told Maria that my goal was to make $1 million for a movie, and with the second Conan movie, the money was locked in. But I no longer wanted to be just Conan. The whole idea of making a few Hercules-type movies and then taking the money and going into the gym business like Reg Park went right out the window. I felt I had to aim higher.
?Now that studios are coming to me,? I said to myself, ?what if I go all out? Really work on the acting, really work on the stunts, really work on whatever else I need to be onscreen. Also market myself really well, market the movies well, promote them well, publicise them well. What if I shoot to become one of Hollywood?s top five leading men??
People were always talking about how few performers there are at the top of the ladder, but I was always convinced there was room for one more. I felt that, because there was so little room, people got intimidated and felt more comfortable staying on the bottom of the ladder. But, in fact, the more people that think that, the more crowded the bottom of the ladder becomes! Don?t go where it?s crowded. Go where it?s empty. Even though it?s harder to get there, that?s where you belong and where there?s less competition.
It was very clear, of course, that I would never be an actor like Dustin Hoffman or Marlon Brando, or a comedian like Steve Martin, but that was okay. I was being sought out as a larger-than-life character in action movies, like Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson, and John Wayne before them. Those were my guys. I went to see all their movies. So there would be plenty of work?and plenty of opportunity to become as big a star as any of them. I wanted to be in the same league and on the same pay scale. As soon as I realised this, I felt a great sense of calm. Because I could see it. Just as I had in bodybuilding, I believed 100% that I?d achieve my goal. I had a new vision in front of me, and I always feel that if I can see it and believe it, then I can achieve it…
Mike Medavoy arranged for me to have lunch with the director of The Terminator, as well as the producers, John Daly and Gale Ann Hurd. I read the script before I went. It was really well written, exciting and action-packed, but the story was strange. A woman, Sarah Connor, is an ordinary waitress in a diner who suddenly finds herself being hunted down by a ruthless killer. It is actually the Terminator, a robot encased in human flesh. It has been sent back in time from the year 2029, an age of horror where the world?s computers have run amok and set off a nuclear holocaust. The computers are now using terminators to wipe out what?s left of the human race. But human resistance fighters have begun turning back the machines, and they have a charismatic leader named John Connor: Sarah?s future son. The machines decide to eliminate the rebellion by keeping Connor from ever being born. So they use a time portal to send a terminator to hunt down Sarah in the present day. Her only hope is Reese, a young soldier loyal to John Connor, who slips through the time portal before it is destroyed. He is on a mission to stop the terminator.
James Cameron, the director, turned out to be a skinny, intense guy. This whole weird plot had come out of his head. At lunch that day, we hit it off. Cameron lived in Venice, and like a lot of the artists there, he seemed much more real to me than the people I met from, say, Hollywood Hills. He?d made only one movie, an Italian horror flick called Piranha II: The Spawning, which I?d never heard of, but I got a kick out of that. He told me how he?d learned moviemaking from Roger Corman, the low-budget producing and directing genius. Just from Cameron?s vocabulary, I could tell he was technically advanced. He seemed to know everything about cameras and lenses, about the way you set up shots, about lights and lighting, about set design. And he knew the kinds of money-saving shortcuts that let you bring in a movie for $4 million instead of $20 million. Four million was the amount they were budgeting for The Terminator.
When I talked about the movie, I found myself focused more on the Terminator character than on Reese, the hero. I had a very clear vision of the terminator. I told Cameron, ?One thing that concerns me is that whoever is playing the terminator, if it?s OJ Simpson or whoever, it?s very important that he gets trained the right way. Because if you think about it, if this guy is really a machine, he won?t blink when he shoots. When he loads a new magazine into his gun, he won?t have to look because a machine will be doing it, a computer. When he kills, there will be absolutely no expression on the face, not joy, not victory, not anything.? No thinking, no blinking, no thought, just action.
I told him how the actor would have to prepare for that. In the army, we?d learned to field strip and reassemble our weapons by feel. They?d blindfold you and make you take apart a muddy machine gun, clean it, and put it back together. ?That?s the kind of training he should do,? I said. ?Not too different from what I was doing in Conan.? I described how I?d practiced for hours and hours learning to wield a broadsword and cut off people?s heads like it was second nature. When coffee came, Cameron said suddenly, ?Why don?t you play the Terminator??
?No, no, I don?t want to go backward.? The Terminator had even fewer lines than Conan?it ended up with 18?and I was afraid people would think I was trying to avoid speaking roles, or, worse, that a lot of my dialogue had been edited out of the final film because it wasn?t working.
?I believe that you?d be great playing the Terminator,? he insisted. ?Listening to you, I mean, you could just start on the part tomorrow! I wouldn?t even have to talk to you again. There?s no one who understands that character better.? And, he pointed out, ?You haven?t said a single thing about Kyle Reese.?
He really put on the hard sell. ?You know, very few actors have ever gotten across the idea of a machine.? One of the few to succeed, he said, was Yul Brynner, who played a killer robot in the 1973 sci-fi thriller Westworld. ?It?s a very difficult, very challenging thing to pull off, from an acting point of view. And Arnold, it?s the title role! You are the Terminator. Imagine the poster: Terminator: Schwarzenegger.?
I told him that being cast as an evil villain wasn?t going to help my career. It was something I would do later on, but right now I should keep playing heroes so that people would get used to me being a heroic character and wouldn?t get confused. Cameron disagreed. He took out a pencil and paper and began to sketch. ?It?s up to you what you do with it,? he argued. ?The Terminator is a machine. It?s not good, it?s not evil. If you play it in an interesting way, you can turn it into a heroic figure that people admire because of what it?s capable of. And a lot has to do with us: how we shoot it, how we edit.?
He showed me his drawing of me as the Terminator. It captured the coldness exactly. I could have acted from it.
?I am absolutely convinced,? Cameron said, ?that if you play it, it will be one of the most memorable characters ever. I can see that you are the character, and that you are a machine, and you totally understand this. You?re passionate about this character.?
I promised to read the script one more time and think about it. By now the check for lunch had arrived. In Hollywood the actor never pays. But John Daly couldn?t find his wallet, Gale Anne Hurd didn?t have a purse, and Cameron discovered that he didn?t have any money either. It was like a comedy routine, with them standing up and searching their pockets.
Finally I said, ?I have money.? After having to borrow plane fare from Maria, I never left the house without $1,000 in cash and a no-limit credit card. So I paid, and they were very embarrassed.
(Pages 297-302)
