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John
John Romano is a well known and controversial writer and champion of the Libertarian cause.  For 18 years he held the position of Senior Editor at Muscular Development magazine. He also contributed to Fitness Rx for Women magazine as well as Fitness RX for Men magazine.  He also authored and co-authored several books in the bodybuilding and fitness field.
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Romano's Review of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Total Recall

by: John Romano

“I knew I was a winner back in the late sixties. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way - I hope it never will.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger

I just put down Arnolds memoir. I was actually kind of excited to read it. After I put it down? Not so much. While my disappointment echoed that of reviewers from the LA Times, the NY Times and a slew of online sources, my own personal disappointment runs a bit deeper. The aforementioned reviewers panned the book because it fell short of the juicy details of Arnold’s philandering, especially the details of how in the hell he stepped out on Maria for that butt ugly housekeeper who ended up having his child. That child, of course, being the impetus to the eventual demise of his marriage. Out of 646 pages you’d think we would have gotten a little more than a PG-rated review of one of the most notorious womanizers in Hollywood. But, we didn’t. And I’m not going to dwell on it. It is what it is. My disappointment is not with what the book had to say, it is with Arnold himself. Not for what he did or didn’t say, but for what he has become.

I used to bump into Arnold almost every morning at World Gym in Santa Monica. We were never “friends,” but I was around him and his buddies enough to know that the wise cracking, practical joking, smiling big bundle of energy Arnold portrayed in his interviews was the real Arnold. He had an energy around him. Of course he was larger than life, but he was also charismatic; you could say that Arnold “sparkled,” that he could walk in the rain and miss all of the rain drops, that he drew people to him like a stripper draws 20 dollar bills. I didn’t get that in the book. Not because the guy who actually wrote the book, Peter Petre, didn’t do any more to not make the book nothing more than empty grandiosity. Nor because its outsized claim, “my unbelievably true life story,” is never delivered in any of those 646 pages, but because he fails to achieve either the depth or the emotional impact that would make us care more deeply about the guy who is our bodybuilding hero.

We do get almost 200 pages devoted to his bodybuilding career, the seminal point in his life that brought him from Austria to the US and launched him into a much bigger life. We read about his seven Mr. Olympia titles, his use of steroids - which he makes sure to say were legal back then - and his kind of strange Austrian upbringing that laid the foundation for his bodybuilding pursuits.

Most of the book is dedicated to Arnold’s acting career and various business successes along the way. It was, at times, exhausting to read because the book paints a portrait of a man who defines himself almost entirely by the goals he has reached – and there were many - no matter the cost to those around him.

Precious little of the book is dedicated to his political career. It is the only place he expresses any modesty, going as far to say that being governor of California was more complex and challenging than he had imagined.

What I was waiting for was the dirt on housekeeper Mildred Baena, with whom he fathered a child. Out of 646 pages this is what we get:

  • “It was one of those stupid things that I promised myself never to do. My whole life I never had anything going with anyone who worked for me. This happened in 1996 when Maria and the kids were away on holiday and I was in town finishing ‘Batman and Robin.’ Mildred had been working in our household for five years, and all of [a] sudden we were alone in the guest house. When Mildred gave birth the following August, she named the baby Joseph and listed her husband as the father. That is what I wanted to believe and what I did believe for years.”

That’s it. That measly paragraph is all we get. A colossal cop-out for a book that’s supposed to be a “tell-all” memoir.

At the end of the day, I don’t think you can appreciate the tone of the book – and see what I mean by “what he has become” - unless you watch the TV interviews Arnold gave on his media tour promoting it. He came across beaten, old, the sparkle gone. He seemed almost pathetic wallowing in remorse over losing Maria and how he hopes after enough time goes by some healing can occur and he and Maria can get back together. I think that seems a bit ambitious, even for Arnold.

According to the LA Times, “for all the salacious behavior that has been attributed to and admitted by Schwarzenegger over the years, he portrays himself as a reasonable, earnest kind of guy who has merely made a few high-spirited mistakes, none of which he cares to discuss here.”

Hmmmm….. “a few high-spirited mistakes.” Come on! Everything Arnold has ever done has been big. For all the chest pumping, ego boosting, larger than life persona Arnold has espoused over the last 40-something years since he came to America - and even before that in Austria - to say that Arnold would do anything on a small scale is ridiculous. If Arnold gets into a car wreck we expect huge a explosion, a giant fireball, numerous casualties and lots of destruction; not a mere fender-bender.

The same holds true in life. As much as he might want us to believe that banging the maid and having a kid with her right under his Kennedy wife’s nose should be construed as a “high-spirited mistake,” as the LA Times says, it’s not. It’s as huge a deal as anything else he’s done. Arnold is certainly not a reasonable, earnest kind of guy. He’s ARNOLD, and his book is nothing more than a laundry list of accomplishments showing the reader how great Arnold was, completely devoid of any introspection.

After all that, I still say it’s a decent read. If you are a true Arnold fan you’ll get something out of it. But, if you are expecting a “total recall,” you’re definitely not going to get it here.





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