What are the odds for an Austrian farm boy to come to America and become the greatest bodybuilding champion of all time, to get in the movie business, marry a Kennedy, and then get elected governor of the biggest state of the United States?” This was what Arnold Schwarzenegger asked a reporter who told him that the odds of an unflattering message (see picture above) contained in a letter the California governor had sent to members of the California State Assembly were two billion to one.
The answer, as Arnold sets out in Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, was probably not spontaneous, because everything the Austrian Oak does is more than well-planned: it’s already imagined and done, in the way he would visualise his biceps as mountains while building and sculpting his body on the way to seven Mr Olympia bodybuilding titles. But there was no dreaming in that Californian answer; Arnold basically told the world that the real Incredible Hulk isn’t a comic-book experiment gone wrong and green, but a flesh and blood bodybuilder-filmstar-politician whose success owes nothing or very little to the theory of probability.
Arnold’s autobiography is, well, a very well-built life story. It takes the reader through his early days in Austria and his dreams of America, the ferocity of the weight training that took him to the places he wanted to go to, and all the Hollywood peaks he summited to get to the top in sunny California.
There’s little arrogance, but there is unabashed pride as Arnold comes through large and clear. Winning the Best Built Junior Athlete of Europe title in 1965 meant he had to go AWOL from his posting as a tank driver in the Austrian military. It was the first time Arnold had travelled outside Austria. “I felt like King Kong,” he says.
And he didn’t just look strong; he WAS strong, picking up weightlifting and powerlifting trophies—including one for stonelifting in Munich—as he built and rebuilt his already massive physique.
There’s honesty: Arnold doesn’t explain why he used steroids; he tells it like it was. “No stone left unturned,” he says. “Besides, I was 20 years old and thought I was never going to die.” Modern bodybuilders use 20 times as much as in the 60s, and there was none of the scary Growth Hormone around those days, says the man who is now combating drug use in bodybuilding.
There’s an understanding of defeat, and the satisfaction of its conquest: Losing to Chet Yorton at his first Mr Universe in 1966, when Arnold flew in a plane for the first time, and coming back to win it the very next year; losing to ‘The Myth’ from Cuba, Sergio Olivia, at Mr Olympia in 1969, and winning it next year.
There are old friends. Franco Columbo, the short Italian who could manhandle parked cars like they were made of balsa wood and blow up hot water bottles with the force of his lungs; Joe Weider, the granddaddy of American musclemen; Reg Park, the inspiration Arnold got to compete against—and beat. The newer friends are a who’s-who list of America’s rich and famous. There’s Hollywood, from his had-to-be-dubbed first film to the box-office smashers of the 90s. How many know Arnold has won a Golden Globe? Or that he wanted the infamous Terminator line to be ‘I will be back’, instead of ‘I’ll be back’, because it sounded more machinelike, and how James Cameron convinced him otherwise. And of course, all the Conan the Republican politics. And the women, including the Guatemalan maid with whom Arnold has had a son, and over whom his marriage is on the rocks. Total Recall is like an action movie, Arnold the good guy every reader can expansively identify with at every success and on every turn, the power of dreams marking every page.