room. Five of his sisters were going to
sleep in the room with me, so this was
quite wonderful. Then I realised Franco’s
father was sitting right outside the
window at the foot of my bed, watching
me all night long.
How long were you in Sardinia?
Probably a week.
That’s fun footage. The movie is so
international, and it’s amazing how
you did it on such a small budget
with such a small crew and yet it’s
this globe-hopping excursion.
Well, we filmed in Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Montreal. We filmed at the
Whitney Museum in New York. We
filmed in Connecticut. We filmed in
Massachusetts. We filmed in Paris
and we filmed in South Africa.
Now I’d be hard-pressed to figure
out exactly which scenes were
shot where.
Well, where Franco blows up the hot-
water bottle is in Massachusetts. Mike
Katz was filmed in Connecticut. The
movie actually opens in San Francisco.
Is that the ballet scene?
The ballet scene was New York City. That
was another location I forgot to mention.
It was shot in Joanne Woodward’s dance
studio in Manhattan.Another interesting tidbit. Turning
now to Arnold. We all know that he
is this self-made man. What was
your impression of him? Did he just
seem like a guy who was born to
be successful?
Yeah, well, the reason I made the film
was because I thought he was very
charismatic and interesting and smart.
But initially, when I met him, he had
been in America four years and virtually
nothing had happened. You know, he
wasn’t in other movies. We were the
first people outside of bodybuilding
to interview him.Yeah, he did Hercules in New York
and then laid dormant for a while.
Hercules Goes Bananas.With Arnold Stang.
[Laughing] Yeah. And even his voice
had to be redubbed in that movie.That’s probably the best aspect
of it: the overdubbed voice.
And I’ll tell you another little sidebar.
When I was trying to get Pumping
Iron going, I was very short on money.
So I went to this lab in New York,
and I had just come back from shooting
the initial part of the film. I asked
them if they’d give me some credit,
which is the kind of thing they normally
do when you get going on a movie.
This was a place called DuArt Film Lab,
and the owner of it was some- one
named Irwin Young. So I went in with
my hat in my hand and asked him if he
would give me $15,000 worth of credit.
He said, “Tell me what you’re doing,”
and I said, “Well I’m making a movie
about bodybuilding.” Then he said,
“Does it have anything to do with
Arnold Schwarzenegger?” and I said,
“Yes.” So he said, “Forget it. I won’t give
you any credit. I had a movie in here
called Hercules in New York, and they
never paid a bill, and they owe me
30 grand.”That’s a riot! What a coincidence.
[Laughing] It was an unfortunate one. FLEXGeorge Butler and crew film Arnold repping out a set of barbell curls in preparation for his sixth Mr O in Pretoria, South Africa.FLEXONLINE.COM.AU | FLEX 67