Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

Notice the way he wipes his mouth, the way he talks, the way he grabs the women? Everything has style, everything’s a little bit larger than life and done with mischief. That’s the way Conan is.” He also made me pay attention to the swordsmanship, because kenjutsu was part of a whole range of combat styles that Milius was weaving into the Conan universe; the script called for an entire museum’s worth of swords, battle-axes, lances, knives, and armor from throughout history.

He started sending experts to train me: masters in martial arts, armorers, stunt people who were horse- riding specialists. For three months I was tutored in broadsword combat two hours a day. Unlike the samurai sword, which is very light and very sharp—designed for lopping off heads and limbs and slicing bodies in half—the broadsword is massive and double edged. It’s meant to deliver big blows that eventually hack through armor and flesh. I had to learn which parts of the body are vulnerable to attack and how to swing the sword, not to mention what happens if you miss. The momentum of an eleven-pound sword can pull a fighter out of position, like a gun with tremendous recoil, so you have to anticipate and channel the momentum in order to come back right away with another chop.

A kenjutsu trainer came next, and then an expert in a style of Brazilian fighting that combined punching and wrestling, with all kinds of throws, elbow blows, and body slams. A stuntman taught me climbing techniques, how to fall and roll, and how to jump fifteen feet onto a mat. Milius was busy with postproduction on Big Wednesday, but he always took time to come by to check my progress and videotape me.

The training was as intense and time consuming as getting ready for a bodybuilding competition, and I took to it completely. I felt like my movie career had suddenly come into sharp focus. The vision had always been there, but hazy: I never knew which direction it would go or how I was going to get the big break. But being chosen for Conan was like winning my first international bodybuilding title. Until then I could see my progress in the mirror, I could see my muscles slowly grow, but I really never knew where I stood. Then, after winning Mr. Universe, I thought, “Jesus, that was international judging, and I was competing against guys I see in the magazines, and I won. I’m going to succeed.”

Some of Hollywood’s biggest players now had a stake in my career. Dino was giving me an opportunity to prove myself in movies, a little like Joe Weider had in bodybuilding. And I now had a connection with Universal Pictures, a major international studio that was doing giant hits like The Deer Hunter and Jaws. Now the studio was making a movie about a lovable extraterrestrial stranded here on Earth: E.T. The guys who ran Universal, Lew Wasserman and Sid Sheinberg, were legendary characters, people who manufactured stars.

My stunt trainer, a Hollywood veteran who was a shrewd observer of the scene, wasted no time pointing this out. “Man, you are so lucky,” he said. “Do you realize that you’re now part of the Hollywood machine? Do you know how much money will be spent on you? Just on you? Twenty million on the movie—twenty million! —and you’re playing the title role. All that machinery is going to work for you. You are going to be huge.”

I thought about the people who had come to Hollywood and were struggling to make ends meet, working as waiters and waitresses while they auditioned for parts. I’d met some of them in acting class and heard them say things like “I was turned down again, I don’t know what to do.” The rejections in Hollywood go on and on, and the psychological beating can be relentless. Then you have to go home embarrassed after having failed. It’s why so many actors and actresses turn to drugs. I’d been able to avoid that kind of despair, and now I was the one getting the shot. They’d picked me. Of course, now I had to show I was worthy, but I didn’t feel at all concerned. I would do whatever it took to get there. I didn’t share my feelings of pride with anybody. My style was to keep moving and not reflect too much. But it felt great.

By far the wildest trainer Milius found for me was a Conan fanatic who actually lived outdoors in the mountains. He was so into the Conan stories that he wanted to experience the Conan life, and he’d become an expert at sleeping in the snow, climbing trees, living off the land. He even called himself Conan. Dirt and freezing cold didn’t seem to bother him: I went skiing with him in Aspen, Colorado, and he skied in shorts. I wondered if he’d resent me for being cast as Conan instead of him, but instead he loved that I’d gotten the job. The news had gone out among the Conan fans that I was training heavily for the part and that I was going to do the horseback riding and the sword fighting myself. So the die-hard fans decided that I was a great choice, especially since my body looked so much like Conan’s in the comics. I felt happy to be accepted, and it was a promising sign for the film, because the core audience who would go back to see the movie again and again and recommend it to all their friends was supposed to be guys like this. As a reward for taking the time to help, we brought “Conan” to Europe when we did the shoot. He got to play an enemy warrior in a fight scene, where he was hacked to pieces—by me.

CHAPTER 13 Maria and Me

ALTHOUGH MARIA AND I were on opposite sides of the fence politically, it was politics that brought us together geographically, when she moved to California to work on Teddy Kennedy’s 1980 presidential campaign. In American politics, it was almost unheard of for an incumbent president running for reelection to be challenged from within his own party. But Jimmy Carter’s first term had been so disappointing, and America was in such a depressed state, that Teddy decided to run. Of course, when any Kennedy ran for office, it was all hands on deck. If you were a family member, you were supposed to put your life on hold and campaign.

The first thing that Maria and her friend Bonnie Reiss did was plaster Kennedy ’80 posters and bumper stickers all over my Jeep. I had a brown Cherokee Chief that I was really proud of. It was massive compared to ordinary cars—the first-ever sport-utility vehicle—and I’d gone all the way up to Oregon to take delivery so that I could get $1,000 off the price. I’d had my Jeep outfitted with a loudspeaker and siren for showing off or scaring other drivers out of my way. But now when we drove around town, I’d sink a little lower in the seat, hoping that no one would see me. It was weird pulling up at the gym every day: like most of the people there, I was known as a Republican, and now here I was with the Teddy stickers.

Personally, I was hoping that Ronald Reagan would be elected president, but no one was asking my opinion; it was Maria they wanted to see. Hollywood, of course, is a big liberal town, and her family connections went deep. Her grandfather Joe Kennedy had been heavily involved in movies, running no fewer than three studios in the 1920s, and the Kennedys were famous for involving entertainers in political campaigns. So everyone in the family was very much aware of Hollywood, and they turned to actors, directors, and executives for help in fund-raising. Maria’s uncle Peter Lawford was a big star, and buddies with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. She’d heard about those guys in the “Rat Pack” growing up, had seen them at her parents’ house, and had been to their places in Palm Springs, California. No sooner did she arrive in 1980 than she got to know their wives.

The Kennedy campaign center would call the studios and talent agencies and line up appointments for Maria with big shots and celebrities. “Maria would like to visit you and talk about an event we have coming up,” they’d say, and almost invariably the reaction would be “Omigod, a Kennedy is coming!” and doors would open. Usually Maria would go with other campaign staff, but sometimes I’d tag along or even drive her. Teddy’s candidacy was so controversial that winning endorsements wasn’t easy. Often I’d listen to people like producer Norman Lear explaining to Maria why they didn’t support Teddy and were either backing the independent candidate, Illinois congressman John Anderson, or sticking with Carter.

Maria wasn’t even twenty-five, but already she was a force to reckon with. That had been clear to me early on. In 1978, about six months after we first met, I posed for a photo essay in Playgirl magazine. Ara Gallant, my trendy New York photographer friend, had the assignment, and I came up with the idea that we should do a beer hall scene. It would be a traditional beer hall, but instead of hefty German women serving the beer steins and pretzels and sausages around me, it would be young sexy girls with bare tits. It was one of my crazy ideas and Ara loved it. But when I described this to Maria and said, “We’re just now working on the layout,” she told me instantly that the whole thing was a mistake.

“I thought you wanted to go into movies,” she said. “So if you pose with those girls with their tits hanging