Name: Arnold Schwarzenegger Did His Own "Predator" Stunts | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2025-11-14T16:01:14.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Arnold Schwarzenegger Did His Own "Predator" Stunts | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-14. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Arnold Schwarzenegger Did His Own "Predator" Stunts | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-14. Transcript available.

- So Arnold, how's married life treating you now?
- Oh, it's absolutely fantastic.
I tell you, I think it was the happiest year in my life,
and especially what I like about it is
that now finally I found someone
that helps me put oil on my body.
- Oh yeah, that's right.
'Cause I know I have the trouble at one spot
way back down there on my back, I can never get to that.
- Oh, I know, you practically have to be a contortionist
to put on the oil yourself, you know?
- It's crazy.
Okay, thank you very much, Peter.
And Arnold, seriously, thank you very much.
I'm sorry about the chair,
they were supposed to fix it yesterday.
- Oh, that's it, they're gonna worry about it.
- Listen, did you get accused to call my deltoid program?
- I tried, I tried to do the weights.
Did you say it's 340 pounds?
I tried.
- Hey, you know, you're just getting more and more successful.
This, you really are living the aversion
of the American dream, aren't you?
- Well, thank you very much.
I mean, coming from you, that's a real compliment, I tell you.
- But I'm serious about that,
because you came from Austria,
you didn't, you didn't, you had an accent,
you had an odd name, and you weren't really,
well, no, I mean, but I'm, seriously.
- No, no, absolutely.
David is right, because this is the kind of stuff
that I heard in the beginning.
- Yeah.
- And I wanted to get into acting.
- You couldn't get a job.
- Yeah, I couldn't get a job.
I mean, people said your body was weird,
your accent is not understandable,
and the name, of course, no one could pronounce,
but those things did work now to my advantage.
- Yeah, I don't know if people understand,
the odds against a guy growing up in Kansas
and moving to California to become a movie star
are pretty, pretty severe,
let alone coming from a foreign country to do it.
- That's right, yes.
- Now tell me about your,
your name is pronounced Schwarzenegger or Schwarzenegger now?
- Schwarzenegger.
- Schwarzenegger.
Because I hear on the commercials for this movie,
it sounds like it's been changed to Schwarzenegger.
- Maybe it sounds more dramatic, you never know.
- Yeah.
- But it is Schwarzenegger.
- Schwarzenegger.
- Schwarzenegger.
- Actually in Austria they pronounce it Schwarzenegger.
- Schwarzenegger.
- Yeah, so it just to confuse you a little bit.
- Yeah, yeah.
Does the name mean something?
- It means Black Plowman.
- Black Plowman?
- Plowman, yeah.
- Wow.
- What can I tell you?
- Yeah, yeah.
So tell me about,
the wedding and your relationship with the Kennedy family.
- What do you want to know?
- Well now, how do they feel about having
a Black Plowman in the group?
- That's good.
- So now you're married to Maria Shriver,
who by the way is a very lovely woman.
- She's terrific.
- Yeah.
- And you're married to Maria Shriver,
who by the way is a very lovely woman.
- She's terrific.
- Yeah.
- And you're married to Maria Shriver,
who by the way is a very lovely woman.
- She's terrific.
- Yeah.
- And you're married to Maria Shriver,
who by the way is a very lovely woman.
- She's terrific.
- And she starts--
- I wish she'd have a camera back there in the control room,
because she's back there.
- Yeah, we did that once before in the theater.
- I know.
- Yeah, I know.
I wouldn't.
- She was kind of embarrassed.
- But--
- So how do you get along with the family?
- I get along well.
- Eunice is your mother-in-law, right?
- Yeah, she's a terrific mother-in-law, I tell you.
It was just a little bit of problem
to make her understand that when I go on my honeymoon,
I want to go by myself with Maria.
- They all wanted to go.
- Well, definitely she wanted to go,
but we couldn't find a bed that is for three people,
so it was, I mean, you know, what can I tell you?
- Do you, do you, did you, you got married up in Hyannisport?
Is that what it was? - I got in Hyannisport, yeah.
- Yeah. - As a matter of fact,
we just celebrated the one-year anniversary.
- Congratulations.
- It must have been a thrill just to be up there,
let alone the fact that that was the site of your marriage.
I mean, that would--
- Well, it was terrific.
The only problem I had was that I had to leave
after three weeks of filming "Predator."
and, you know, the schedule was really strange,
and so I had to leave the shoot,
and I flew up to Hyannisport,
and then they wanted me to come right back.
- Right, back to-- - Yeah.
- To film in the jungle. - Where were they shooting at?
- It was in the jungle, in Puerto Vallarta.
And so I had to kind of, how do you explain this to your wife,
you know, that you want to go now back working in the jungle
right after the wedding?
- So I took Maria on my honeymoon to Puerto Vallarta,
and I explained to her there's a beautiful vacation site
and all that, and so she was very excited to go down there,
and little did she know that she ended up
in the jungle of Mexico while we were shooting the film.
But it was a fun honeymoon.
- Yeah, was it really difficult conditions
under which to work down there?
- Oh yeah, it was very difficult,
because it was very hot, very humid,
and the stunts, whenever you do an action film like this,
the stunts are always very dangerous.
- But you're not doing your own stunts anyway, are you?
- Was it though? - No, you're not.
- Oh, come on, David, come on.
- No, you're not. - Oh, come on.
- No, you can't, because you're a huge star,
you represent millions and millions of dollars,
and if something happens, forget it, everybody goes home.
- I hope that everyone in Hollywood heard all that,
what you just said, I'm a huge star.
Okay, millions of dollars, okay.
- But so, now do you really do your own stunts?
- I do, not always, but I do in most cases.
- What, give me an example of a stunt you would do.
Like you open your own doors, right?
- No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
- In this film, for instance, going over a 40- or 50-foot waterfall.
- You did that?
- Repelling from helicopter around 200 feet.
- No, you didn't do that.
- Yeah, sure.
- Well, that's insane.
- Yeah, I know it's insane, but that's why you try to tell them that,
but they want the real thing there, because they shoot a lot of close-ups.
And the fans that they really want to see the act of doing all those things.
And when you see the film, you will understand what I mean.
I mean, the film is, like, from the beginning to the end, full of action.
- Yeah.
- And a lot of close-ups.
And you need to sell the idea that I'm doing it, so that's what it basically is.
- What was the other film?
The Exterminator?
- Terminator.
- The Terminator.
- You're really up-to-date.
- Got a guy who worked for Orkin, and they go from...
Now, that was a great movie.
They put that together really nicely.
I thought that was very entertaining.
- Well, if you like Terminator, you will love Predator.
- It's not the same guy, right?
- It's not the same guy, no, but this time I am the hero I play on the other
side.
But it is an action-packed film that is a combination of Terminator and maybe
Aliens,
or something like that.
And it has the same suspense.
And it's almost like a horror film, in a way.
It starts out as an action-adventure film, but then it becomes a horror movie.
- We're going to see a clip from it in just a couple of minutes.
Is it going to be a big film, you think?
- Huge.
The reaction we've gotten so far from the people that have seen it was very
favorable.
Over 90% of the people love the film, so I'm very high on that one.
- Okay, we'll take a look at it here in a second.
We have to do a commercial, and then we'll be right back with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Okay.
I know I asked you this one other time when you were on the show,
but how is your body different now than when you were competing?
I guess you've trimmed down considerably, huh?
- I trimmed down.
When I was competing, I weighed around 250 pounds, and now I weigh around 215.
- Do you feel better at 215 than you did at 250?
- Yeah, I feel better.
I feel much more flexible because of that, and I do much more cardiovascular
training now
than I did before.
I do a lot of running and stuff like that.
I do a lot of running, bicycling.
And especially when you get ready for films, then you end up training a lot.
- Do you think that training for that kind of competition for as much and as
long as you
did was detrimental to your overall health or longevity?
- No, not at all.
I think it was a big plus for me.
- Yeah.
You don't think that putting your body through that was an unnecessary strain?
- Not an unnecessary strain, otherwise I wouldn't have won the competitions.
But I think that top competition training is never the healthiest thing.
So the months, maybe one or two months before competition, you really take the
body through
a strenuous workout that maybe is a little bit too much.
- Yeah.
- But the other times, it's really healthy.
I mean, it kept me young and feeling good.
- But if you wanted now, say you decided tomorrow that between films or
something,
you wanted to go back and compete.
And I guess you probably could.
That's not an unreasonable notion, is it?
- Well, it is not as much the physical thing as the mental thing.
I think mentally I'm not ready for it anymore to spend four hours in the gym
every day
and lie out in the sun and get a tan.
- But that tanning is grueling, isn't it?
- I tell you, yeah.
It's boring.
It's boring.
- Oh, boy.
You work up the sweat and everything.
- Doing films is really, for me, the challenge now.
That's what excites me, doing better films each time
and eventually getting into producing and directing.
- But the question I'm getting to here is from where you sit now in your
physical body there,
what would it take to get you back to competition form?
Could you do it in a month?
- Physically, it would take two or three months of hard training,
four or five hours a day, eating again like an animal.
- Yeah.
- And it goes through those kind of things that are necessary to win.
- If you had to do it again, would you use steroids, do you think?
- No.
- I think that drugs, you know, the name already says bodybuilding, you know?
And this means that you build your body, that you build your health, and you
want to stay away from any kind of drugs.
And I always tell people in seminars that I hold and so on, that you must
create the body without the steroids and without the drugs.
And no matter what it is, if it is acting or anything else, you know, drugs are
just temporary.
- But did you use them in your training initially?
- We experimented with it, sure.
But it was foolish to do.
- Could you have achieved the same results without them?
- Absolutely.
Oh, yeah.
It would take maybe an extra half year or a year, but it's such a small
percentage that you get.
And then when you stop taking it, it goes back to normal, you know?
It's really just a temporary thing, and it doesn't pay off in the end.
- I'm on steroids right now.
- I can tell.
I can tell.
You know when I can tell?
When your cheeks get really puffed, because it's water retaining.
- We're going to look now here at a couple of minutes of Arnold's new film,
which is entitled Predator.
- Predator.
- You know what we're going to see here, Arnold?
- I hope so.
What are you going to see, basically, is we are going into a guerrilla camp
where the
American hostage is being held, and you will see the action would be going
through.
- You're going back to rescue guys who have been...?
- Yeah, basically, hostages, right.
- Okay.
Here it is, Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Is there some comedy in the film?
Some funny things about it?
Yeah.
Gee, I couldn't be happier for all your success, and your wife has got a new
show here on NBC,
and I hope everything continues to be great for you guys.
- Thank you very much.
- Nice to see you again, Arnold.
- Thank you very much.
- All right, yeah, we'll do a commercial here, and then we'll be right back.