related to the film’s release?
Oh, yeah. Well, it got fabulous reviews,
and through a friend I got Jacqueline
Onassis to come to a lunch for Arnold
and that sent people through the roof.
And I put Arnold before that in the
Whitney Museum and in a ballet studio,
and I got Jamie Wyeth to paint him.Now, I remember the movie from PBS
[the US Public Broadcasting Service].
It was before VCRs, so I used to run to
the TV with my audio tape recorder
and tape the audio for later listening.
When did PBS start airing it?
Probably, I would say, in late ’77.So pretty soon after the release.
Well, it was released in January ’77. So
probably in October/November, it went
on PBS. Even that was exasperating. The
distributor, which was a company called
Cinema 5, which was like the Miramax
of its day, sold Pumping Iron to PBS for
30 grand. About a week later, ABC came to
me, and Tony Thomopoulos, the president,
asked me if he could buy it. I said, “Well,
how much?” and he said, “$1,000,000.”And by that time it was too late?
Ye a h.Now among the bodybuilding set,
there is a lot of speculation
concerning a few of the scenes
in Pumping Iron. I’ve talked to others
who have wondered if some of thefilm is documentary or maybe a
little bit of the guys acting for the
camera. One case in particular that
everyone talks about is the “missing
T-shirt/crusher scene” and the
on-screen friction between Ken
Waller and Mike Katz. How much
of that was real?
The only tricky thing involved there is
that Waller evidently stole Katz’s T-shirt
because we got on film Katz saying,
“Where’s my T-shirt? I bet Waller took
it.” And so we filmed the before after.With him tossing the football around
with Robby and Roger talking about
how he was going to do it?
Exactly.What about Arnold? He told so
many great stories that are still
debated, like whether he really
missed his father’s funeral (as
he states in the film).
That’s true. He did not go to his
father’s funeral.And when he made his analogy of a
pump feeling like an orgasm, did he
clear that with you first or was it just
extemporaneous?
No, that was extemporaneous.Were there any things that didn’t
make it to the screen that were
great, funny, or remarkable?
[Laughing] Thousands of things.but how far it seems to have fallen at
that time. Back in the ’40s and ’50s,
guys like Charles Atlas and Steve
Reeves didn’t portray that image.
Yeah, but there were limited pockets of
bodybuilding. If you look at Charles Atlas,
he wasn’t really much of a bodybuilder, and
Steve Reeves made it in the movies and was
very handsome. Look at it this way: Arnold
Schwarzenegger arrived in America in
1968, and when we met him in 1972, the
Mr Olympia contest was held in a tiny
little auditorium in Brooklyn and the
prize money was something like $1000
and only Arnold and Franco were making
it as professional bodybuilders. Everyone
else had another job. Leon Brown worked
at a Laundromat in Staten Island.
I know that Steve Michalik was
a graphic artist.
Steve had to have a full-time day job,
and he was Mr America. It was a joke
it was so bad.
How big a crew did you have
for the filming?
Well, the way I shoot films, my crews
expand and contract. For instance, when
I was shooting at Lou [Ferrigno]’s gym
in Brooklyn, it was really just half a
dozen people. When we were shooting at
Gold’s Gym, we had a bigger operation.
It was probably 12 people, which
included the cinematographer, gaffer,
the assistants and me, and some
electricians, etc. Basically I’m very
proud of the fact that I’ve always
worked with a small crew. When we
were filming in South Africa at the
contest, we were running about six
cameras, and with South African
assistants we probably had 30 people.
It feels like a larger production,
though, especially the competition
scenes in which you go from
backstage to the audience’s
perspective to onstage. What
kind of a budget did you have?
I raised $400,000 to make the movie.
Amazing that you could film for so
long on such a small budget. You
shot for about three or four months?
Ye a h.
And so when Pumping Iron was
released, was it straight to the art
houses, or did it have a wide release?
Actually it began at the Plaza Theatre,
which was a regular movie theatre in
New York, and it broke every box
office record there was at the theatre.
Were the reviews generally positive?
Are there any memorable stories
Arnold famously
likened the pump
from lifting weights
to an orgasm.FLEXONLINE.COM.AU | FLEX 65