Author: Tom Shales

“Lightweight” may be the last adjective one would use to describe Arnold Schwarzenegger, physically anyway, but See Arnold Run, a new cable movie about the muscle-bound social climber, is a lightweight pure and simple. Especially simple. It’s as substantial as a snowflake, though hardly as fascinating.

The film was made by Paramount for the Arts & Entertainment Network — seemingly on a low budget and brief shooting schedule. This thing is less a movie than an Etch-a-Sketch doodle, a sloppy pop biography of the bodybuilder, movie star, and now California governor that largely ignores the “movie star” part and Arnold’s unlikely reign as a box-office powerhouse.

Perhaps dressing up an actor to look like the Terminator, in scenes dramatizing the making of that movie, would require more legal work than the producers could afford, what with copyrights being the big cans of worms that they are. In any case, the film — which premiered on A&E January 30th and will replay February 2nd, 3rd, and 6th — gives us Arnold in his bodybuilding phase and his political spree, and we all know he was a movie star anyway.

If Arnold’s “reign as a box-office powerhouse” was “unlikely,” so was just about everything else the hulky-bulky Austrian-born optimist did. If there is a point to his story as the movie tells it, it’s that nothing is really unlikely for anybody who is determined enough about making it happen. At least — in America.

The screenplay cuts back and forth between parallel watershed moments in Arnold’s life — his attempt to win the title of Mr. Olympia for a fourth time in 1974 and his battle to become governor of California nearly 30 years later. Both feats were formidable; however silly-looking a “sport” bodybuilding is, winning the Olympia title four times in a row was unheard of.

Arnold’s bid to become governor did not come about in the normal way. In California, the freak-show state, few things come about in the normal way. Arnold was one of a field of candidates seeking the office when the electorate demanded a chance to recall its governor, dull Gray Davis. The movie streamlines the election and reduces the competitors to two: Arnold vs. flinty feminist Arianna Huffington.

In addition to those two main story lines, both of which involve Arnold defying skeptics in triumph, there’s a third — hazy and subsidiary (and in black-and-white) in which Arnold is a wee little boy trying to defeat another kid in some sort of competition, with Arnold’s imperious father standing by. In their superficial way, the makers of See Arnold Run ask “What made Arnold run?” and answer with that corny standby, “His daddy didn’t love him.”

See Arnold Run breaks with one old movie tradition but not very sensibly. It used to be that when real people were portrayed on the screen, they were played by actors who looked much better and more glamorous. That’s flip-flopped here. The real Arnold certainly outshines Jurgen Prochnow, the grim and scary creature chosen to play him in this film. Prochnow does avoid doing another Arnold impersonation, but his attempts to seem playful are grisly.

Similarly, Mariel Hemingway, though she certainly has looked beautiful on the screen, seems a frowsy substitute for Maria Shriver, Arnold’s press-wise wife and ambassador to the Kennedy clan. “Politics is hell — worse than hell,” she warns Arnold when he thinks about running. “I know. I am the media!” Do you think she really said that? (Shriver did have a solid career in network news.)

We follow Arnold through his various gaffes and crises as a campaigner. He puts down old suspicions about his father, Gustav, being a Nazi and tries to dismiss stories about his womanizing youth on the bodybuilding circuit. In one of innumerable flashbacks, a sexy groupie decorates Arnold’s chest with chocolate syrup and then licks it off. Oh, the decadence!

The guy playing the young, partying Arnold, Roland Kickinger, is more handsome than Arnold at any age and actually projects real magnetism, unlike Prochnow and his burnt-toast persona. Some of the flashbacks are perky, but too much of the movie’s running time is given over to scenes of tedious strategizing sessions by Arnold’s political advisers. Few things in life are more boring than watching a meeting.

Some day there might be a smart, savvy political movie made about Arnold and his insistence on overachievement, but See Arnold Run is not it, and it’s not awful enough to be fun either.

Orson Welles said a movie studio was the greatest set of toy trains a boy could ever have. Much later, David Letterman epitomized that same gleeful philosophy, but his toy-train set was an NBC television studio. Now, at CBS, Letterman still drops pumpkins off rooftops and sends camera crews out on ridiculous romps, but the new king of naughty boys is Conan O’Brien, proprietor of Letterman’s old Late Night show and the tallest, funniest, most sickly looking wit on television.

O’Brien had a rocky start as Letterman’s successor. He was met with hoots, boos, catcalls, brickbats, rotten tomatoes, and day-old Danishes. Critics petitioned the State Department for his immediate deportation. Actually, some of that stuff never happened. But we’re trying to make it more dramatic.

His early failure makes it all the more flabbergasting that O’Brien held his ground — Letterman’s old studio in Rockefeller Center — and not only survived but looks as though he’ll live long and prosper. Hence the Late Night with Conan O’Brien Tenth Anniversary Special, a fat and splashy 90-minute extravaganza which aired late last year and is now available on DVD.

Near it on video store shelves is another commemorative DVD starring one of the most memorable characters to be introduced on Conan’s show — more memorable even than Vomiting Kermit (yes, the frog, but in a state of constant spew); Little Jay Leno, a pint-sized version of the comic whose Tonight Show precedes Conan’s hour; and even the infamous, inimitable, inexcusable Masturbating Bear, one of the show’s more dubious yet irresistible inspirations.

Just as vulgar in various nefarious ways is Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a show-biz monster dreamed up by the brilliant Robert Smigel, who also created such modern-day myths as the Ambiguously Gay Duo, a pair of cartoon do-gooders who rescue good guys while bad guys try to figure out if the heroes are homosexual lovers or Just Good Friends. Villains stare confounded at the team’s suggestive behavior and end up in the clutches of the law, which they seem to find preferable to the clutches of the duo.

Unfortunately, the Ambiguously Gay Duo does not appear on either of these DVDs. Perhaps they’ll get their own one day. But what is there is choice, from the rowdy and surrealist Late Night to the scandalous antics of Triumph, who twice visits the Westminster Dog Show mainly for the purpose of sniffing other dogs and sizing up the female entrants.

His vulgarity is impeccable and unrelenting; the shamelessness of it part of its hilarity. Smigel works the hand puppet, does the voice (in an unidentifiable East European accent), and comes up with many audacious ad-libs. Most of Triumph’s material is written by the brilliant Late Night writers.

Triumph’s visits to the dog show are in the best spirit of guerrilla journalism. Jeff Ross, who executive-produces Conan’s show with Lorne Michaels, says that footage of Triumph being thrown out of the Westminster event — not once but twice — is absolutely authentic. Stuffy officials from the show commit the unforgivable sin: They cover the camera with their hands or big note cards. The shame of it! Surely the First Amendment applies to dogs too, as long as the dogs can talk.

Triumph can talk and talk and talk, especially to the “bitches” competing at the dog show. Triumph’s lechery is a more explicit version of Harpo Marx’s and his readiness with sarcastic remarks and obscenities parodies, sort of, the illustrious and indefatigable giant Don Rickles. And yet when Rickles meets Triumph in a guest appearance on Late Night, Rickles acts utterly baffled by his wacky acolyte. It’s a generational gap, not a conflict of species.

Which of the two DVDs is funnier? Since Triumph appears on both, he can be happy with either answer. Even though O’Brien’s show includes appearances by Will Ferrell, former Conan sidekick Andy Richter, and a heckling Ben Stiller, Triumph triumphs with crude humor that’s funny over and over. His favorite joke is repeated mercilessly: “That’s a great show — for me to poop on.” Pooping and having sex are his two reasons for living, and in that, he resembles not only millions of dogs but millions of men as well.

Triumph is at his most vicious at the premiere of a Star Wars sequel, dismissing those waiting in line as pathetic nerds and lonely losers. To one young man in costume he asks, “Have you ever talked to a woman without having to give your credit card number?” Triumph combines old-time show business with new-time candor. If he continues on his current path, he will eventually satirize everything and easily live up to his name. •

With various parts of the world at war, more or less perpetually but particularly now, it might seem trivial to complain again about violence on TV. But if warfare represents the failure of humans to coexist peaceably, violence in TV and movies represents a failure to come up with something saner, more imaginative, and less debasing than brutality and call it entertainment.

Violence reminds us we are animals. Art tells us that at least we are among the higher forms of animal. You see a lot more violence than art on television these days.

Although the Academy Awards made it look like movies are going through some sort of humanistic golden age, that’s hooey. Movies are more violent than ever. And since television has become the principal medium for marketing them, the violence in movies infiltrates and pollutes even the most nonviolent TV shows.

In Washington, Philadelphia, and many other major cities, reruns of Seinfeld, Roseanne, Home Improvement, and other off-network sitcoms air during the early evening hours, between the news and prime time. These are, for the most part, family shows, but at any given moment the show will stop and a commercial break will burst forth — and “burst” is just the word because many of those commercials are for vicious, brutal, R-rated movies.

Obviously, some episodes of Seinfeld are strictly for adults, but the fact is, kids are attracted to the show by the presence of Cosmo Kramer, the hilarious doofus played by Michael Richards. Some of his comedy is wacky slapstick.

When you sit down to watch such shows with young children — let’s say 12 and under — you’d better have the remote in hand, because Seinfeld also attracts affluent young adults, and movie studios see them as major moviegoers — people from puberty on up to about middle age (after which nobody cares about you — movies or TV shows).

Bang, crash, boom — the screen and soundtrack are filled with violent images: 12 guns a-shooting, 10 windows shattering, eight cars a-crashing, six monsters leaping — and, believe me, no partridge in a pear tree. If there were a partridge in a pear tree, a monster would be about to pounce on it or Arnold Schwarzenegger would be taking aim at it with a portable missile launcher.

Those who make these movie ads pack as much pure “pow” as they can into a punishing 30 or 60 seconds. Just unrelenting mayhem and aggression — blam, blam, blam.

While it’s true the commercials do not usually show actual gore from the films — flesh being riddled with bullets and that sort of thing — the ads are still odes to brutality of every imaginable kind. No matter how diligently parents may try to shield their kids from excess violence, these commercials come along and blast their efforts to smithereens.

In recent weeks, syndicated reruns of family comedies like The Simpsons have been interrupted by horrific pitches for such films as Panic Room, with women huddled trembling while bad guys armed to the teeth try to kill them; and Resident Evil, an Alien-like thriller in which the good guys battle vicious dogs who want to rip their throats out. Plus a whole new array of war movies glorifying violence of that kind.

A half-hour comedy may contain several ads for movies that are rated “R” for gore, brutality, and nightmarish peril. The result can be nightmares, all right — for little kids who see these images. The sitcoms often air five or six nights a week, and simple multiplication tells us that children will see dozens and dozens of violent images during that otherwise peaceful time.

There ought to be a sanctuary, a haven, a safe place in every broadcast day — a period during which parents can feel safe about their young children watching TV. Violent imagery should be kept off the air, in programs and commercials, until the later hours. Cruel, disturbing, potentially traumatizing movie ads shouldn’t air when children are likely to be watching. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, yes, but, more to the point, a young mind is a terrible thing to assault. To paraphrase an old Christmas song: Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with what children are exposed to on television.