Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

The chemistry between us worked really well right from the start. As shady Vincent, he was always trying to play me like putty. He’d conned a lot of people, and now he was going to con me. And I, as Julius, was an easy mark but at the same time smart enough to figure out the situation and do something about it. I just had to play my character exactly the way it was written: naïve, strong, smart, educated, sensitive, able to speak a dozen languages.

Compared to being an action hero, it was a lot easier to be a comic star. The rehearsals were all about changing the rhythm of my persona. I had to get rid of the stern looks, the hard lines, the commanding, machinelike talk. No more of that Terminator slow monotone. I had to throw out everything I’d learned in action films to telegraph leadership and command. Instead, I had to soften everything. I had to say the words more gently, roll them together, and combine them with gentler looks and smoother turns of the head. There’s a scene early in the movie where a bad guy on a motorcycle zooms up from behind Julius and tries to snatch his suitcase. But Julius doesn’t let go, and the guy wipes out. I had to do that scene without any show of anger or effort—to Julius, it’s just common sense to hold on to his suitcase, and he’s born with such tremendous strength that it’s no effort at all. I’m not trying to make the guy crash. As a matter of fact, I’m worried that he’s hurt and try to help him!

The comedy was there. We knew we had a winner. The idea of opposite twins worked perfectly, and there was always laughter on the set. Every evening when we watched the dailies, cast and crew who had seen us do four, five, or six takes of a scene would still laugh when they saw it on the screen. At first we shot in LA, and then we moved to the desert near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

No matter where we went, people would visit because word spread that it was a happy set. Clint Eastwood dropped by on the day we shot the scene where I sing. Julius is on an airliner listening to rock ’n’ roll on headphones for the first time in his life. He starts singing along to a 1950s hit by the Coasters, “Yakety Yak,” without realizing that all the other passengers can hear. It was my movie singing debut, and let’s just say that I’m no Frank Sinatra. Afterward, Clint said, tongue in cheek, “I didn’t realize you had such talent.” The only time I sing in real life is at the end of a party when I want the guests to leave.

One of the running jokes on the set was, “Never ask Arnold about politics.” Not that I’d get upset, but if you asked me, I’d fill your ear with sales talk about Vice President George H. W. Bush. It was presidential primary season, and he was battling Senator Bob Dole of Kansas and evangelist Pat Robertson for the Republican nomination to succeed Ronald Reagan. The other cast members of Twins were all Democrats, and the joke was that if I started talking, they’d get upset with me , which would threaten the sunny mood.

Something did happen during the time we were filming Twins that dampened my sunny mood, although it had nothing to do with either the movie or US politics. In February the News of the World, a London tabloid, ran a front-page story about me headlined “Hollywood Star’s Nazi Secret.”

The story attacked me, but the focus was my father. It claimed that he’d been a Nazi and a member of the SS, and that he’d rounded up homosexuals and Jews for the concentration camps. It called me “a secret admirer” of Hitler and claimed that I took part in the neo-Nazi movement and held “fervent Nazi and anti-Semitic views.”

Normally I would just blow off criticisms, but I’d never been libeled about something so serious. I knew I would have to respond. My first move after talking to lawyers and publicists was to call the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, whom I’d met before in Aspen. He listened as I explained that the story was false. “I would appreciate it if you don’t print it in America,” I said. “And I would appreciate it if the paper would publish an apology and say that it was a mistake, they got the wrong information. That’ll be the end of it. Mistakes can be made.”

“Well,” said Murdoch, “my guys over there tell me that they did a very thorough investigation. And if it is true, then I don’t think anyone should apologize. But in the meantime, I can promise you that I won’t print it here.”

“I’m not blaming you for every story in all your papers and outlets,” I emphasized. “But I want to bring to your attention that this is an injustice. Please look into it.” Rupert was as good as his word; he never did publish the story in his US publications or report it on his new Fox TV network. But nothing else happened. And while my lawyers sent a formal letter demanding a retraction and prepared to sue, other journalists started asking for my response.

I was in a very uncomfortable position. I knew that what the story said about me was false, but what about the accusations against my father? I thought they must be wrong, but what did I really know? There had been so little conversation at home about the Second World War. I truly had no idea.

So I decided to call my friend Rabbi Marvin Hier at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “I need your help,” I told him. “I know you have a system for tracking down war crimes. Could you check out my father’s war record? I want to know, Was he a Nazi? And second, did he belong to the SS? What was he in charge of during the war? Did he commit any war crimes—actively or passively? Did he do any of those things?”

“Arnold,” the rabbi said, “within a week or two I’ll have everything, because we have access to all the papers.” He called his people in Germany and maybe even the great Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal himself in Vienna, whom I met later. After three or four weeks, he came back with the information. He said, “Your father had the Nazi party membership card, but there is no evidence of any killing or war crimes on your father’s part, against homosexuals or Jews or anyone else.

“He was a sergeant, not in a position to order such acts without the authority of an officer. There is no indication that there was such an order given.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center sent that information officially so that it could be used in court.

As for the News of the World ’s allegations against me, Simon Wiesenthal himself wrote a letter to the court stating that there was no evidence whatsoever to back them up. Having those statements, together with the tabloid’s inability to produce facts to support its story, made it clear that its sources were unreliable. It took many months in court, but the tabloid eventually published a total retraction and paid substantial damages in an out-of-court settlement. The money went to the Special Olympics in Great Britain.

The Twins shoot wrapped just before Easter 1988, in the middle of the presidential primary season. Vice President Bush had been fighting hard battles. Even though he had Reagan’s endorsement, he lost some of the early primaries to Bob Dole. That’s because many people regarded Bush as Reagan’s shadow: what Austrians would call his Waschlappen , or dishrag. I knew the vice president from my visits to the White House. He was always very gracious, a real mensch, and he had his act together because of the important positions he had held previously, such as UN ambassador and director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Contrary to the Democrats’ spin on him, he had tremendous strength of character and will. But of course political campaigns are unfair. You look for vulnerability in your opponent; some flaw that you can make stick. The Democrats knew very well that Bush was fulfilling his office just as the Constitution meant the vice president to do: by supporting the president and standing ready to step in and lead if necessary. But they gained ground at the start by calling him weak. Bush battled back, and by the time we finished shooting, he’d dominated the primaries on Super Tuesday and had the nomination sewed up.