Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Here to Pump You Up (Emotionally)

Arnold Schwarzenegger has been a part of the American landscape for so long that the improbability of his story is all too easy to take for granted: An immigrant bodybuilder from Austria with a long and unwieldy name, a heavy accent and a physical appearance unlike that of any other major movie star became one of Hollywood’s biggest stars ever, and then, with no previous political experience, was elected governor of California before settling down into his current status as something of an elder statesman. As improbable as his achievements are, Schwarzenegger believes his life and outlook can be a model for others. At least that’s the premise of his new self-help book, “Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life,” which will be published Oct. 10. “I’m not guaranteeing anybody anything,” says Schwarzenegger, who is 76. “What I’m doing is saying: Look, everyone that I’ve talked with, that I’ve helped and reached out to, they learned from me the sky’s the limit. If you fail, [expletive] it. It’s not the end of the world.”

I want no schmäh. No. There’s a schmäh with everything. Sometimes people take schmäh meaning you’re lying, which is not what it is. It’s kind of like, you wrap it up in a more attractive package. In order to sell something you have to have the schmäh. It’s just the way it is.

Too late to turn around. I go, and we started teaching Special Olympians how to bench press — the most unbelievable experience. You could see the change in those kids. I was blown away. I went home at night and said to myself: “It’s funny that I feel so good about this. I didn’t make any money, and it was not a career move.” It started there. It has not stopped since.

But we can be sympathetic to someone and what happened to them and also say facts are facts. His facts are different. I understand what you’re saying, but there’s people out there who have their own facts.

That’s the problem. Of course it’s a problem, but I’m just saying it’s not that you can go to someone and say, “Look, these are the facts.” I see Bobby in Gold’s Gym. I like him, and I love that he’s out there running. I will always say great things about Bobby, because during my entire existence with the Kennedys he always treated me with respect. I will always do this the same way back: absolute respect.

No kidding. More like a Clint Eastwood, because he was out of the ordinary. He created his own ladder and became the biggest star. I saw myself as that. There was no way for me to compete against an Al Pacino or a Dustin Hoffman because they were speaking perfect English. They played the all-American roles — those guys, fabulous. But I said, there’s a room in between that, because what do you do for guys who buy the comic-book magazines and admire heroic guys who can do the impossible? “Conan” came along, and it opened up that can of worms. Your question is a good question, because there’s so many other elements that come in. If I hadn’t had Jim Cameron at that time create “Terminator” and have me appear without the muscles, but still everyone knew what was underneath the leather jacket — that was kind of like, yeah, I get it, Schwarzenegger is a machine, so the body looks different than anything else; he talks like a machine with his accent. Without that, it wouldn’t have worked.

The combination of your accent and your delivery — there’s a woodenness to it. Were you consciously aware of using that as an actor? Because some of your lines are funnier with you saying them than if it had been anyone else. No. A lot of times it’s accidental. The Germans have a difficult time with the “r” in the end. They said “ah”: toom-ah; chop-ah. Then I realized that that’s funny. Now I spice that up and make it more exaggerated. Then it becomes a line that the people want to repeat because of the way you say it. Now I drive around with a bicycle and someone will scream out, “Get to the chop-ah!” Or I go to the Arnold Sports Festival, and people will scream out my lines: “I hope you leave enough room for my fist because I’m going to ram it into your stomach and break your goddamn spine!”; “Crush your enemies and see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of their women.” It’s the way I say it that makes it funny.

You mentioned Clint Eastwood. He’s the first guy I remember who would have one-liners in an action movie. That became a thing you were known for. The guy comes around the corner and I stick him with the knife through the chest into the pole and I said, “Stick around.”

When did you realize that kind of line was magic for you? First of all, it comes from my sense of humor.

So you came up with those lines? No. In the ’80s, I was what they call in German a lehrling, an apprentice. I was an apprentice to Milton Berle. I told him: “Look, I love humor, and I know it’s very difficult for Germans or Austrians to have an American kind of sense of humor. You’ve got to help me.” He says, “That Nazi! I have to train him? [Expletive] this.” He was complaining and insulting me. But anyway, he loved me. He was there at my engagement party. He was there at my wedding. He was always there, whatever I did.

He taught you to be funny? Not to be funny, but to write lines for me because I had it in me. I had a sense of humor, but I needed help with the writing. So whenever I went to do some speech, I started out with the funny lines that he would write. Most of my stuff in the ’80s and ’90s, Milton Berle wrote. I would get an award somewhere: “Wow, this is amazing. I tell you, as a bodybuilding champion, you get many medals. You get certificates, get trophies, all of this, but this award, without any doubt, is the most recent.” Of course, the first time I did it, Milton Berle immediately criticized. He says: “You said it too fast. What the [expletive] is the matter with you? Have you heard of timing, Schnitzel? The idea of it is that you say ‘this is the most’ — you can’t say it; you’re choked up — and then you say, ‘recent.’” All this crazy stuff was his.

Could you improvise a kill line with me if I gave you a scenario? Like what?

You take my recorder and slam it down my throat! OK.

But what’s the line? “Eat it.”

No, I got one: “What, no comment?” [Laughs.] That’s why I need a writer.

The box office is driven by I.P. and by franchises now. There are very few movie stars left who can, on their own name, reliably open a movie the way you used to. Do you think the era of the movie star is gone and not coming back? I don’t know. I’m not a fortuneteller. I was just talking the other day with someone from Mattel. This company changed from a toy company to an intellectual-property company. But who was he sitting with to do one of his franchises? Me.

The right often uses Hollywood as a punching bag: “It’s all wokeism; it’s not friendly to conservatives.” What do you think of that criticism? Well, it’s true, but so what?

What part is true? The wokeism and that they’re trying to be goody-goody. Let’s not fool ourselves. They talk about the environment and all that stuff, look at which studio has solar panels on top of the rooftops. None of them. They talk a big game. Doesn’t mean that there are not a lot of sincere people in the game. But the bottom line is, Hollywood at least is out there talking about the right issues: women’s rights and equal rights, giving Blacks and Asians more opportunities, Latinos more opportunities; those who are acting out Native Americans ought to be Native Americans. This is all good. This is why I say, let them be what they are. The bottom line is, I never complained about Hollywood, the way they’re pushing certain things. Sometimes the Academy Awards is kind of like, “Look how good we are.” It drives me nuts. But it hasn’t hurt anybody. So, yes, the right wing always dumps on it. The left wing dumps on the right wing, the right wing dumps on the left wing. To me it’s funny, because I’m somewhere in the middle.

My question was whether you still feel at home in the Republican Party. It doesn’t matter. There was very rarely anyone like me in bodybuilding, very rarely anyone like me in acting and very rarely like me in politics. I’m me. If they want to be stuck in the ideological corner, then I say, I think I’m freer if I’m not, and I can work with more people. I feel totally comfortable in the Republican Party. I just think it is important to listen. I encourage them to listen to the polls and make every effort to be a public servant and not a party servant.

But making decisions just based on polls is what makes politicians say that Jan. 6 was overblown or that Trump won the 2020 election. If politicians don’t feel comfortable with the truth, that’s nothing unusual. These guys can lie better than anybody. Some people do that in order to get re-elected. For that, they will say, “Yes, this election was rigged.” If you put them on the lie detector, I can guarantee you it’ll be a different story. But that’s OK. They have to play their schmäh in their game, and it doesn’t mean I have to buy into this whole thing.

Maybe I was being too idealistic, but I was hoping for some schmäh that was a little more inspirational than that. Oh, now you want some schmäh, huh?

What do you think of the different sides’ positions on the issues? It’s more complicated than what they say — A.I. is the thing that we are worried about, or Netflix is not really paying us residuals? It’s not that simple. When you get deeper into the weeds, you find out what it means.

Well, what? I don’t want to get into it. I have to stay neutral on all this stuff. But I can tell you there’s much more to it.

I’ll give you one more chance at a kill line because you whiffed before. I am about to publish the story that destroys the world — you slam the laptop on my head and blood spurts everywhere! What’s the line? “You’re terminated.”

“If it bleeds, it leads.” That’s funny. When did you think of this [expletive]?

Everything’s a schmäh. Exactly.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and the columnist for Talk. He recently interviewed Alok Vaid-Menon about transgender ordinariness, Joyce Carol Oates about immortality and Robert Downey Jr. about life after Marvel.