![]() Not so with Schwarzenegger the businessman. ![]() Often when movie stars take production credits, it means either that their egos have started to enlarge, or that they're pursuing a pet project in the face of the odds. We'd felt to begin with that maybe there was too much action in the movie, and we should show more vulnerability, but we were wrong, so we went back to the original story."įor Schwarzenegger, reshooting some of the scenes was a business decision as well as an acting choice, because on " Last Action Hero" he was working as a producer as well as the star. ![]() So what we did was go back to the original pages where that was exactly what was written. Our movie was a big hit with the test screenings, but there was one thing that was very clear: The audience did not like to see my vulnerability, They wanted me to kick in gear and get the action going. When you have a sneak preview you hear the audience loud and clear about what it doesn't like. "As in all movies that I've done, especially the last six, we did go out and shoot additional stuff. We always intended to shoot the movie for a PG audience it was always from the beginning a fantasy movie of epic proportions, a spoof on action heroes, with a lot of comedy. We never rewrote the script and we never reshot because of the rating. I heard, I said, that "The Last Action Hero" sort of changed courses in mid-stream, starting out R and then turning into PG-13, and that scenes were reshot to get the broader family rating. What will they want to see? That makes me think about films where the entire family can go out and see a movie and have a great time and not be offended by too much violence and all these other things." ![]() But let's assume they're 5, 6, 8 years old. Right now they're so young they basically only watch cartoons. Two, I'm a family man myself now, and I'm always concerned about what kind of movies I can go and see with my daughters. "The Last Action Hero" is rated PG-13, not R (like most of his action films have been), and there are reasons for that: His message, repeated more than once during the day, was that there is a kinder, gentler Arnold Schwarzenegger. He had flown in the day before, and might excusably have claimed jet-lag, but no: Arnold was affable and cheerful, shaking hands, slapping backs, acting like the greeter at his own party. Working from the verandah of the Hotel du Cap d'Antibes, with the blue Mediterranean and the yachts of several millionaires as a backdrop, he ground out the television and print interviews. And it also had a lot to do with the inspired box-office idea of giving Arnold a young sidekick that the kids in the audience can identify with.Īs Arnold greeted his visitors at Cannes, watching him in action was a lesson in time and motion studies. How did the kid get from the audience into the movie? Did it have something to do with an enchanted ticket from a kindly old theater manager? Maybe. The movie is based on the magical blurring of the division between a movie and its audience-a gimmick that has worked before in the movies, from Buster Keaton's "Sherlock, Jr." all the way up to Woody Allen's " The Purple Rose of Cairo." In the film, Schwarzenegger plays a movie action hero who somehow finds that his biggest fan, a kid who watches all of his movies countless times, is somehow in the back seat of his car during a chase scene. Now he had come to Cannes to promote "The Last Action Hero," an action extravaganza that cost a rumored $60 to $70 million, and will open Friday in every city, town and hamlet where light is still projected through celluloid onto a screen. He pumped iron harder than anyone else, and then he threw himself into a movie career with such energy and determination that he became, against all the odds and despite his Austrian accent, the number one movie star in the world. The key to Schwarzenegger's success has always been hard work. Now that's he's making $10 million and up, per picture, plus a percentage of the profits, I think we can safely assume he has turned the corner and can stop pouring over those back issues of Money magazine. I met Schwarzenegger most recently at this year's Cannes festival, where, after the success of "Total Recall," " Kindergarten Cop," "Terminator 2" and some of his other hits, nobody thought to ask him if his portfolio was still outperforming his paychecks.
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