Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

With some hits, like Conan the Barbarian , the numbers are promising right from the start. With other films, they signal that it could go south. That was the case with Total Recall. Even after weeks of trailers and advertisements, its awareness was in the 40s, not the 90s, first choice was only 10 percent, and it wasn’t being named as a “want to see.”

I knew pretty much all there was to know about the marketing of movies by then, but it wasn’t doing me much good. The source of the problem wasn’t Total Recall itself but TriStar Pictures, the distributor, which was responsible for cutting the trailers and handling the publicity. Its marketers didn’t know what to do with the film, and the studio itself was in upheaval. TriStar and its sister studio, Columbia Pictures, were being taken over by Sony and merged in one of those 1980s megadeals. New leadership had arrived—Peter Guber and Jon Peters—to oversee the whole thing, which meant that many TriStar executives were about to lose their jobs.

In most cases, a change in studio management can sink a movie. Not only do the new guys have their own projects, but also they want to make the previous administration look bad. That wasn’t a problem with Guber and Peters, both of them highly successful producers, because they were animals. They just wanted success, no matter who started the project. Over the years, I’d gotten to know Guber well enough to be able to get him on the phone and raise the alarm about Total Recall .

“Peter, we are three weeks away from opening, and there’s only a forty percent awareness of the movie,” I said. “That, to me, is disastrous.”

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

“The problem is that your studio is screwing up the publicity campaign and the trailers that are in the movie houses. But don’t take my word for it. I want you and Jon to have a screening of the movie and the trailer. I’m going to sit there with you. Let’s look, and you tell me what you think.”

So we sat down and watched Total Recall and the trailer. “This is incredible,” Peter said. “The movie looks like a hundred-million-dollar movie, but the trailer makes it look like a twenty-million-dollar movie.” He was all set to call in the TriStar marketers and say, “I want to see size, guys! I want to see the big action that we have here!”

But I stopped him. “I think we’ve got to hire outside help,” I said. “Don’t let the studio make those decisions anymore, because they’re not capable until you clean house. You haven’t done that. The old guard is still there. Give the movie to an outside company to do the marketing. Let’s go to the top three and have a bidding war to see which firm comes up with the best idea.”

They listened, and we held meetings with three promotion firms. Cimarron/Bacon/O’Brien, which was number one in the business, articulated the failings of the Total Recall trailer even better than I had. It won the contract, and by the following weekend, we were out there in the marketplace with new trailers and a totally different campaign. It sold the movie using taglines like, “They stole his mind. Now he wants it back. Get ready for the ride of your life,” and “How would you know if someone stole your mind?” The trailers highlighted the amazing action and special effects. They got the message across: in fourteen days, we went from a 40 percent awareness to 92 percent awareness. It was the talk of the town. Joel Silver called, in spite of our falling-out over Predator , and said, “Fantastic. Fantastic. It’s going to blow everyone away.”

Sure enough, Total Recall had not only the number one spot at the box office in its opening weekend, it was the number one opening weekend of all time for a nonsequel movie. We pulled in $28 million in the first three days, on the way to $120 million that year in the States alone. The equivalent today would be more than $200 million, because the ticket prices have doubled. The film was a huge success abroad as well, earning over $300 million worldwide. It won a Special Achievement Oscar for its visual effects. (A Special Achievement Oscar is how the Motion Picture Academy honors an accomplishment for which there is no set category.) Paul Verhoeven had a masterful vision and did a great job. I was proud that my interest and passion helped to bring about the movie. But the experience also proves how important marketing is—how important it is to tell the people what this is about; really blow up their skirt and make them say, “I have to go see this movie.”

I LOVED BEING ANaction hero, and with my body and background, it was a natural for me. But you can’t spend your whole life running around blowing things up. I’d dreamed of doing comedy for years.

I’ve always believed that everything in life has a funny side. It was funny to be posing all oiled up in little skinny briefs in front of all these people, trying to be the world’s most muscular man. It was funny getting paid millions of dollars to fight a predator from outer space. It was funny going through Lamaze classes trying to pretend that pregnancy is a team effort. I saw great humor in Maria and me coming from totally opposite upbringings. I laughed about my accent, and I loved Saturday Night Live ’s Hans and Franz characters takeoff on me. I’d always been the perfect target for jokes; there was so much material to work with. Being Austrian, marrying Maria, being Republican, the accent. With all this going for you, you need a sense of humor so you can join the fun.

In 1985, the year after The Terminator became a hit, I was at a dinner in Denver on the eve of the Carousel Ball, a famous charity extravaganza organized by Marvin and Barbara Davis. Marvin, who was then the owner of Fox Studios, where I was making Commando , was known for his sense of humor. He and Barbara were seated with a bunch of comedians who were due to perform at the gala, including Lucille Ball and her husband, Gary Morton. I was at the next table with the Davises’ son, John, and the younger crowd. There was a lot of laughing at Marvin’s and Barbara’s table, and the jokes were starting to fly thick and fast. I heard Marvin call out, “Hey, Arnold, come over here. Why don’t you tell us a joke?” That was typical Marvin, I later learned. But I was speechless. I didn’t have a joke prepared. I didn’t even know what kind of jokes to make at such an event.

All I could say was, “Give me a little bit of warm-up time here. Maybe tomorrow I tell you,” or something like that.

But Lucille Ball jumped right in. “He’s very funny. You don’t have to worry about him,” she said. “I worked with him.” So she covered for me, and then Gary Morton interrupted with a joke, and then Milton Berle went off on a routine about what would Gary Morton be without Lucille Ball. I was saved, but it was a perfect example of how important it is to be prepared for such moments.

I’d met Milton Berle at the West Coast engagement party for Maria and me in 1985. Berle’s wife, Ruth, and Maria knew each other from the Share Girls, a charity group that Maria joined when she moved to LA; it included Johnny Carson’s wife, Dean Martin’s wife, Sammy Davis Jr.’s wife, and so on, and we called it the rich broads’ foundation. There was a great history between the Berles and the Kennedys because Milton had been a big fan of JFK. They’d hung out together, and Milton had given JFK a humidor that eventually sold at the Kennedy auction for $520,000 to Marvin Shanken, the publisher-editor of Cigar Aficionado magazine. Milton gave me one just like it, one of only three he ever gave away.

So Maria and Ruth became good friends, and Ruth brought Milton to our engagement party. The first thing he did was walk up to some guy I didn’t know and shake his hand. He said, “It’s so nice to be here today at this engagement party. Maria is marrying Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Arnold, this is great, thank you so much for inviting me.”