Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

I kept quiet about politics when I visited Austria, too. The media there lionized me as a native son made good, and I never wanted to be perceived as some wise guy coming back and telling people what to do. Once or twice a year, when I visited, I’d hang out with my friends and catch up on the latest political debates and developments. My political mentor Fredi Gerstl had become a member of the Graz city council and was an increasingly influential voice in the conservative People’s Party nationally. I found it enlightening to talk with him about how the American and Austrian systems compared: private ownership versus public ownership of industries; representative democracy versus parliamentary government; private funding versus public finance. Fredi gave me an inside view of the political maneuvering in Austria on key issues, such as the push to privatize the transportation systems, as well as the tobacco, steel, and insurance industries, and the fight against the resurgent extreme right wing.

Fredi also introduced me to Josef Krainer Jr., who won the governorship of the state of Styria in 1980. He was a little younger than Fredi, and his whole life had been in politics. His father, Josef Sr., had been the governor of Styria throughout my boyhood—a national figure who’d won election after spending all of World War II in prison because of his opposition to the Anschluss: the occupation and annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938. Josef Jr. had studied in Italy and America, and his beliefs were an interesting blend of economic conservatism and environmental advocacy that I found very appealing. Another good friend of mine was Thomas Klestil, a fast-rising diplomat who’d been the consul general in LA when I first arrived. He was now Austria’s ambassador to the US and was destined within a few years to become Austria’s president, succeeding Kurt Waldheim.

Ties like these made me reluctant to renounce my Austrian citizenship in 1979, when I became eligible to apply in the United States. (I’d had my green card for the required minimum of five years.) I never like to cut things from my life, I only add. So dual citizenship would be ideal. But while it was permitted in America, Austrian law said I had to choose—I couldn’t have it both ways. The rare exceptions were typically for distinguished diplomats, and the decision had to be made by the governor of an Austrian state. I asked Fredi what I should do. He told me that with Josef Krainer Jr. about to run for governor, I’d be wise just to wait. Three years later, I was deeply honored when Josef granted me the exception. I celebrated by taking Maria to dinner at 72 Market Street and applied for my American citizenship immediately.

After another year, it was granted. On September 16, 1983, I stood proudly among two thousand other immigrants in the Shrine Auditorium across from the University of Southern California campus and swore my allegiance to the United States. I’d felt like an American from the time I was ten years old, but now it was becoming real. Raising my hand and repeating the oath gave me a chill, and I felt goose bumps all over my body. Afterward, photographers tracked me down and took pictures of me showing off my naturalization certificate, with Maria beside me, both of us grinning. I told the reporters, “I always believed in shooting for the top, and to become an American is like becoming a member of the winning team.”

At home we had a party for our friends. I put on an American flag shirt and an American flag hat and I couldn’t stop smiling with the joy of being officially an American at last. It meant that I could vote, and I could travel with an American passport. I could even run for office someday.

CHAPTER 16 The Terminator

WHEN I FIRST SAW the mock-up for The Terminator movie poster, the killer robot pictured was O. J. 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 O. J. 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.”

This was in the spring of 1983. I’d been reading lots of scripts with the idea of doing a new project in addition to the Conan sequel, which was supposed to start shooting near the end of the year. I was being offered war movies, cop movies, and even a couple of romances. A script about Paul Bunyan, the mythical lumberjack and he-man, was tempting. I liked it that he went around righting wrongs, and I thought that having a blue ox for a sidekick would be funny. There was also a folk hero script called Big Bad John, based on country singer Jimmy Dean’s 1961 hit song. It was about the legend of a hulking, mysterious coal miner who uses his strength to save the lives of fellow miners during a mine collapse but doesn’t make it out himself. Now that I’d done a big movie connected with names like Dino De Laurentiis and Universal Pictures, studios and directors were courting me and the projects I was being offered were getting better and better all the time. Shortly before Conan came out, I changed agents, signing with Lou Pitt, the powerful head of motion picture talent at International Creative Management. I felt bad leaving Larry Kubik, who’d helped me so much when I was nowhere in my movie career. But I thought I had to have a major agency like ICM behind me because it handled all the big directors and big projects and had the connections. And it was satisfying, of course, to come in at the top of one of the giant agencies that had turned me down just a few years earlier.

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, publicize 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 realized this, I felt a great sense of calm. Because I could see it. Just as I had in bodybuilding, I believed 100 percent 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.

Lou Pitt and I were already looking at war movies and heroic movies as a fallback in case Conan ever lost steam. Otherwise, it was more of a speculative exercise, because under the terms of my current contract, Dino De Laurentiis owned me for ten years. It called for me to make one Conan movie every two years for as long as Dino chose, up to five movies, and to take no other roles. So if Conan became the success we all wanted, we would do a third movie in 1986, a fourth in 1988, and so on, and we’d make a lot of money. As to being tied up, Lou told me, “Don’t worry about that. If we need to, we can renegotiate.” So I put that worry aside as the idea of going from muscles to mainstream action movies gained stronger and stronger appeal.

Mike Medavoy arranged for me to have lunch with the director of The Terminator,