Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

The best downtown parties were thrown by Ara Gallant, a skinny little guy in his midforties who always wore tight leather or denim, high-heeled cowboy boots with silver toes, a little black cap with jingling gold charms, black sideburns, and, at night, eyeliner. In the fashion world, he was famous as a photographer and as the hair and makeup stylist who created the seventies disco look: red lips, spangly clothes, big hair. He’d invite every model he could think of to his parties in his big, exotic apartment, which had red lights, thumping music in the background, and a constant haze of pot smoke. Dustin Hoffman would be there, along with Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, and Gallant’s best friend, Jack Nicholson—all the major players from the movie world. To me it was heaven. I went to every party I was invited to and was always one of the last to leave.

Andy Warhol had loaned Jamie Wyeth space in his famous studio, the Factory, to paint a portrait of me. Usually late in the afternoon I’d go there to pose, and by eight or nine o’clock Jamie would be finished, and we’d head for dinner. But one night Warhol said, “If you want to stay, you are more than welcome. I’m doing some photos in a half hour or so.”

I was fascinated by Warhol, with his blond spiky hair, his black leather, his white shirts. When he talked to you, even at a party, he always had a camera in one hand and a tape recorder in the other. It made you feel like he might use the conversation in his magazine, Interview.

I said yes; I was curious to see him at work. A half-dozen young men came in and took off all their clothes. I thought, “I may be part of something interesting here.” I was always ready for a discovery or new experience. If it got flaky, I would tell myself, “God has put me on this path. He means me to be here, or else I’d be an ordinary factory worker in Graz.”

I didn’t want to stare at the naked guys, so instead I casually walked around talking to Andy’s assistants. They were putting up old-fashioned spotlights around a table in the middle of the studio. It was a big, sturdy table with a white cloth on top.

Now Andy asked a few of the naked guys to climb up on it and form a pile. Then he started moving them around. “You lie there. No, you lie across him, and then you lie across him. Perfect. Perfect.” Then he stepped back and asked the other naked guys, “Who is flexible here?”

“I’m a ballet dancer,” somebody said.

“Perfect. Why don’t you climb up, get one leg underneath here and one leg on top, and then we will build it sideways …”

Once he had the pile just the way he wanted, he started snapping Polaroids and adjusting the lights. The shadows had to be just so—he was fanatical about it. “Come over here, Arnold. See? This is what I’m trying to get. It’s not there yet. I’m frustrated.” He showed me a Polaroid that didn’t look like people, just shapes. “It will be called Landscapes ,” he explained.

I said to myself, “This is unbelievable, this guy is turning asses into rolling hills.”

“The idea,” he went on, “is to get people talking about and writing about how we got that effect.”

Listening to Warhol, I had the feeling that if I’d asked in advance to watch him work he’d have said no. With artists, you never know what reaction you’ll get. Sometimes being spontaneous and jumping on an opportunity is the only way you can see art being made.

Jamie Wyeth and I became good friends, and months later, when the weather warmed up, he invited me to the family farm in Pennsylvania, near the Brandywine River Museum, where some of his father’s best paintings are displayed. I met Jamie’s wife, Phyllis, and then he brought me next door to an old farmhouse to meet his dad.

Andrew Wyeth, then sixty, was fencing when we walked in. No one else was there, but it definitely looked like he was facing an opponent because he even had on the mask. “Dad!” Jamie called, waving to get his attention. They talked for a moment, and then Wyeth turned toward me and took off the mask. Jamie said, “Dad, this is Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he’s in Pumping Iron , and I’m painting him.”

After we chatted for a while, Andrew asked, “Do you want to drive up with me to see the field where I’m painting right now?”

“Sure!” I said. I was curious to see how he worked. Wyeth led me out back to a beautiful, gleaming vintage sports car from the Roaring Twenties called a Stutz Bearcat: a two-seater convertible with huge exposed wheels, big, swooping fenders and running boards, exposed chrome exhaust pipes, and big headlights separate from the hood. It was a beautiful pimp car. I knew about the expensive, rare Stutz Bearcat because Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. each owned one. We started driving up a dirt road, with Wyeth explaining that he’d gotten the car from a vodka company in exchange for working on an ad. Meanwhile, I was noticing that we weren’t driving on a road but on a farm track with ruts for the wheels and with weeds growing up on both sides and in the middle—clearly not meant for cars like this. Then even the track ended and yet Wyeth kept driving up a hill, bumping through knee-high grass.

Finally, we arrived at the top, where I noticed an easel and a woman who was sitting on the ground wrapped in a blanket. She wasn’t beautiful, exactly, but sensuous, strong looking, and captivating—there was something unique about her. “Take it off,” Wyeth said. She dropped the blanket and sat with her breasts exposed, beautiful breasts, and I heard him mutter, “Oh, yeah.” Then he said to me, “I’m painting her now,” and he showed me the beginnings of a painting on the easel. “Anyway, I wanted you to meet because she speaks German.”

This was Helga Testorf, who worked at a neighboring farm and who was Wyeth’s obsession. He drew and painted her hundreds of times over many years, in sessions they kept secret from everyone. A decade later the story of the paintings and the obsession ended up on the covers of Time and Newsweek . But in 1977 I just happened to be there, and he let me in.

Running around promoting Pumping Iron ate up a lot of time, but I enjoyed the work. At the Boston premiere, George Butler introduced me to his longtime friend John Kerry, then a first assistant county district attorney. He was there with Caroline Kennedy, JFK and Jackie’s nineteen-year-old daughter who was an undergraduate at Harvard. She seemed reserved at first, but after the movie we all went to dinner and she warmed up. Caroline told me she wrote for the Harvard Crimson , the university’s daily student newspaper, and asked if I would come speak the next day. Of course I agreed happily. She and other Crimson staff members interviewed me about government and my sport. Someone asked who was my favorite president. I said, “John F. Kennedy!”

All of this was fun, and it was also a good investment in my future. By promoting Pumping Iron and bodybuilding, I was also promoting myself. Every time I was on the radio or TV, people became a little more familiar with my accent, the Arnold way of talking, and a little more comfortable and at ease with me . The effect was the opposite of what the Hollywood agents had warned. I was making my size, accent, and funny name into assets instead of peculiarities that put people off. Before long people were able to recognize me without seeing me, just by name or by the sound of my voice.

The biggest promotion opportunity on the horizon was France’s Cannes Film Festival, in May. In preparation, I decided to do something about my clothes. Up until now, my uniform had pretty much been double-knit pants, a Lacoste shirt, and cowboy boots. One reason for this was lack of money. I couldn’t afford to have a wardrobe custom made, and the only off-the-rack clothes that could be made to fit came from big men’s stores, where the waist had to be taken in by a foot and a half. Another reason was that up to now, clothes were just not part of the plan. Every dollar should be invested to turn into two or three dollars and make me financially secure. With clothes, the money was gone. George told me the best tailor in New York was Morty Sills. So I went to him and asked, “If I had to pick one suit to own, what would it be?”