David O'ConnellPUMPING IRON: Terminator vs. Hulk
August 19th 2009 02:19
What’s more potentially laughable than a fly-on-the-wall, behind the scenes documentary about 1970’s bodybuilders? Especially when the star attractions are the Governor of California and the original Incredible Hulk!
It’s 1975 to be exact and surrounded by imposing figures carved out of molten granite, Arnold Schwarzenegger begins the process of swatting away pesky combatants for his sixth straight Mr. Olympia crown, including the sport’s latest upstart Lou Ferrigno. These supermen of professional posturing have a hard road ahead and George Butler and Robert Fiore’s muscle-flexing extravaganza Pumping Iron is the premier remaining document of its time to remember their sacrificial deeds in the name of grotesquery, met with wave after wave of adulation.
After a general, mildly diverting overview, with brief inspections of the delusions of granduer haunting apparently significant figures such as Ken Waller, Franco Columbu and Mike Katz, the film settles down into a more thorough examination of opposing goliaths - the established champ and his potential nemesis.
It’s when the deftly-tuned routines and egomaniacal stage antics begin that we really take notice; here we see - sandwiched between a full-scale eruption of body parts with unpronounceable names - how tiny briefs clinging below midriffs are the only thing preventing either a full-scale evacuation of a rapturous stadium of goggling eyes or a lawsuit from a guy in the front row.
These men as superstructures, these form-defying deities, are a wondrous revelation to their confounded mass of scrawny admirers. It’s a magnetic hold they have over their minions.
We soon discover there’s nothing celestial about the God these guys worship, gazing upon the exaggerated, grossly inflated image staring back from the mirror with a beefy, self-satisfied smirk. But can you blame them?! Trillions of hours in the gym have to earn you some respect or degree of awe; even if it’s only from a jabbering, demonic midget purring away on your sweat-sluiced shoulder.
Brandishing deltoids and biceps that weigh as much as bricks of gold bullion, these ego-savaged, steroid-chomping gym junkies play to their crowd with starburst smiles and polished striations of muscular perfection.
Jealous of all the attention? You have every right to be and you’re not alone. I could feel the underwhelming framework of my scrawny physique retracting even as I gazed on in wonder at this dreamy continuum of routines.
The world of Pumping Iron is a strangely heightened one; after all, this is an arena for extolling the perfection of vacuity; men thriving to become more than men before galvanized hordes of admirers; puny purveyors of envy.
The outcome is a mere formality of course – Arnold is a colossus in a room full of shrinking Adonis’s and he eats the competition for breakfast. Capping his latest triumph with an arrogant dismissal of the need to continue, he assures the transfixed crowd that although this is the end of the line he’ll continue bodybuilding for the rest of his life for it’s “the greatest sport in the world!” Why, it certainly is Arnold. Right up there with World Championship Chess and Navel Fluff Accumulation.
By this time, the vanquished (i.e. mortally wounded) Ferrigno has long exited, becalmed by his beseeching, irrationally obsessed, marginally insane father with a consolatory message of how his own time would come in due course. And that it would - in garish green make-up, giant furry eyebrows and a fright wig whilst howling like a dog with its tail shot off.
Dignity meant something different in those days.
There’s a sense of preposterousness to this whole charade, this silly masculine jostling for supremacy.
This parade of freaks.
There, I said it.
Dig a little deeper and you have another bitter truth to savor, for this is superficiality honed to callous disregard: Arnold admits he didn’t attend his own father’s funeral because it would have been an interruption to his increasingly intense regime for a competition………….two months away!!!
Though they didn’t know it at the time, Arnold and Lou were both on their way to Hollywood fame of different degrees, but what became of the rest of these ghosts? The line between fame and insignificance would seem to be a scarily thin one, if it exists at all. Did they shrivel down to nothing in the wake of their continual near-misses; become dried-up old husks, muscles deflated like withered balloons, trying to convince themselves of being sated by their 15 minutes of glory?
A curiosity for capturing the fame of its heroes in infancy, Pumping Iron is hardly important. Nonetheless, it's compelling viewing in the way train wreck footage is impossible to bypass on the nightly news.
It’s 1975 to be exact and surrounded by imposing figures carved out of molten granite, Arnold Schwarzenegger begins the process of swatting away pesky combatants for his sixth straight Mr. Olympia crown, including the sport’s latest upstart Lou Ferrigno. These supermen of professional posturing have a hard road ahead and George Butler and Robert Fiore’s muscle-flexing extravaganza Pumping Iron is the premier remaining document of its time to remember their sacrificial deeds in the name of grotesquery, met with wave after wave of adulation.
After a general, mildly diverting overview, with brief inspections of the delusions of granduer haunting apparently significant figures such as Ken Waller, Franco Columbu and Mike Katz, the film settles down into a more thorough examination of opposing goliaths - the established champ and his potential nemesis.
It’s when the deftly-tuned routines and egomaniacal stage antics begin that we really take notice; here we see - sandwiched between a full-scale eruption of body parts with unpronounceable names - how tiny briefs clinging below midriffs are the only thing preventing either a full-scale evacuation of a rapturous stadium of goggling eyes or a lawsuit from a guy in the front row.
These men as superstructures, these form-defying deities, are a wondrous revelation to their confounded mass of scrawny admirers. It’s a magnetic hold they have over their minions.
We soon discover there’s nothing celestial about the God these guys worship, gazing upon the exaggerated, grossly inflated image staring back from the mirror with a beefy, self-satisfied smirk. But can you blame them?! Trillions of hours in the gym have to earn you some respect or degree of awe; even if it’s only from a jabbering, demonic midget purring away on your sweat-sluiced shoulder.
Brandishing deltoids and biceps that weigh as much as bricks of gold bullion, these ego-savaged, steroid-chomping gym junkies play to their crowd with starburst smiles and polished striations of muscular perfection.
Jealous of all the attention? You have every right to be and you’re not alone. I could feel the underwhelming framework of my scrawny physique retracting even as I gazed on in wonder at this dreamy continuum of routines.
It's like chalk and cheese - or steroids and Vitamin C (guess which one these abnormals are on?)
The world of Pumping Iron is a strangely heightened one; after all, this is an arena for extolling the perfection of vacuity; men thriving to become more than men before galvanized hordes of admirers; puny purveyors of envy.
The outcome is a mere formality of course – Arnold is a colossus in a room full of shrinking Adonis’s and he eats the competition for breakfast. Capping his latest triumph with an arrogant dismissal of the need to continue, he assures the transfixed crowd that although this is the end of the line he’ll continue bodybuilding for the rest of his life for it’s “the greatest sport in the world!” Why, it certainly is Arnold. Right up there with World Championship Chess and Navel Fluff Accumulation.
By this time, the vanquished (i.e. mortally wounded) Ferrigno has long exited, becalmed by his beseeching, irrationally obsessed, marginally insane father with a consolatory message of how his own time would come in due course. And that it would - in garish green make-up, giant furry eyebrows and a fright wig whilst howling like a dog with its tail shot off.
Dignity meant something different in those days.
There’s a sense of preposterousness to this whole charade, this silly masculine jostling for supremacy.
This parade of freaks.
There, I said it.
Dig a little deeper and you have another bitter truth to savor, for this is superficiality honed to callous disregard: Arnold admits he didn’t attend his own father’s funeral because it would have been an interruption to his increasingly intense regime for a competition………….two months away!!!
Poor Lou, gazing skyward for divine intervention
Though they didn’t know it at the time, Arnold and Lou were both on their way to Hollywood fame of different degrees, but what became of the rest of these ghosts? The line between fame and insignificance would seem to be a scarily thin one, if it exists at all. Did they shrivel down to nothing in the wake of their continual near-misses; become dried-up old husks, muscles deflated like withered balloons, trying to convince themselves of being sated by their 15 minutes of glory?
A curiosity for capturing the fame of its heroes in infancy, Pumping Iron is hardly important. Nonetheless, it's compelling viewing in the way train wreck footage is impossible to bypass on the nightly news.
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Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Talking of Arnie, someone once made a point that perhaps the reason he seemed reasonably humble during his film career was because he got all the arrogance out of the way during his bodybuilding. Good to see he ate something else for breakfast before he switched to Green Berets.
Assuming you've seen this?
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
You may have a point about his ego, he certainly lapped up the attention in those early years in a very extroverted way.
Pumping Iron's a lot of fun actually. It manages to fascinate and repel in equal measure!
Comment by Anonymous
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Stay Hungry is also worth a look IMO, despite it being panned by many.
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
I've never seen Stay Hungry JD, will try to track it down. It's definitely all about the raging egos of these men. If they'd never achieved any kind of fame in Hollywood, it'd all feel pretty sad and pathetic now.