Name: Arnold Schwarzenegger | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #587
Uploaded: 2025-06-05T14:01:11.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Arnold Schwarzenegger | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #587' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-05. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Arnold Schwarzenegger | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #587' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-05. Transcript available.

Arnold Schwarzenegger | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #587

Today's guest is a legendary actor, a bodybuilder,
tastemaker, really, in the world of bodybuilding.
He was the governor of California.
When you think of the American dream, he is pretty much it.
The second season of his Netflix show, FUBAR, is dropping soon.
We're going to talk about that and a lot more.
I'm honored to sit down with the one and only Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I know me and I will find a song.
I've been singing.
I love this.
So where do you work out of, where do you work out of?
I live in Nashville, Tennessee now.
Tennessee.
Yeah.
I lived here for about 12 years.
That's a growing city now, isn't it?
Yeah.
It's growing fast because it's safe.
They have, you can have a weapon if you need to.
So you can, you know, I think there's that semblance of you can take care of
yourself type of energy.
Right.
And so, and it's a friendly community and it's very safe.
You know, it's like a lot of cities, some of them get kind of dangerous.
It's known for its country music, right?
Yeah.
Did you ever listen to country music growing up?
I mean, that's, when that's growing up, growing up was kind of rock and roll,
you know, the fifties rock and roll.
Did they have any, cause you grew up in Austria, right?
Or till what age?
Austria.
Yeah.
I was in Austria until I was 19.
And so we were, there was a program that was called Hit Parade and the Hit Parade.
A television show?
No, no, no, we didn't have television.
So we just had the radio at home.
But I had then bought, I was like 15 and I just bought my first transistor
radio.
Yeah.
In a little plastic box, right?
And I paid off like 50 shilling a month until it was paid off a year later.
But then that I always took down to the lake where I grew up and we were
sitting around the boys from a village and we were listening to this Hit Parade.
It was from seven to eight at night on Wednesdays.
And there was like Little Richard and Chuck Berry and all of those guys that
were, you know, big in the fifties, fifties, fifties, fifties, fifties, fifties,
fifties.
And so I grew up with that.
And that's why I have that station in my radio fifties at all times.
Oh, so you still listen to it.
I just listen to it.
I just love it, right?
Then when I came over here, I became aware of a little bit of the country
western kind of music.
Did you go to a concert in Austria?
Was there a concert you ever went to before you came here?
No, no, I could never afford a concert.
Are you kidding me?
I had no money.
But I mean, when I came over here, I then became aware of the country western
songs, especially Johnny Cash.
He did a television show, a weekly television show.
And it was great, great music.
And so I fell in love with that.
And then friends of mine here in America then took me to concerts.
You know, it was like a jazz concert or a country western concert and all of
this stuff.
And so then that's when I started really getting into it.
But I mean, I loved the music.
But I mean, you grow up in Austria, the most of the stuff that you hear is
really Austrian music.
You know, the umpala, umpala, the delay and all this kind of thing.
Is it beautiful music?
Beautiful music.
But I mean, that's what you hear on public radio and public television also.
That's what you see.
And you see operas and you hear concerts.
And my father himself was a musician.
He played six instruments.
Six instruments?
Yeah, all kind of like a fleekly horn, trumpet, saxophone, clarinet, all of the
stuff like that.
A lot of traditional music he would play?
Yeah, very traditional because he was the conductor of the chandemarie music,
which is the police,
the country police, like the sheriff's.
Chandemarie it's called?
Yeah, chandemarie.
Chandemarie it's a French word, chandemarie and so he was, he was a chandemarie,
he was a police officer.
And so he played in that chandemarie music.
Would he play at home or where would he play at home?
He, he, he, he practiced at home, you know, he would, while I was training, I
remember I was doing my workouts and he would be standing,
the window would be open up at our house and he would be kind of playing out to
the window, out the window.
And there was a kid, that was my age, that lived 150 yards away from us.
He was one of my best friends.
And he also learned how to play the trumpet at the age of like 13 or 14.
So he would play over there and then my dad would play over here and they were
going back and forth like that.
So it was really fun.
Like a couple of birds almost.
Yeah, but I never, for some reason or the other, my dad always wanted me to get
into music, not just professional.
Did you try it at all?
Yeah, I tried it, it just didn't work.
What instrument?
Well, he tried with trumpet, obviously.
Then he thought that he can seduce me kind of into the music because I liked
Elvis.
So he said, well, why don't you learn how to play the guitar?
Yeah.
I don't play the guitar, he says, but there's a farmer.
That is a hundred yards up the road.
He plays the guitar and he can teach.
He's also a teacher.
And so I would go to him, but it just, you know, I just could see right away
that that
was not meant for me.
Was there a lot of like, when you were a child in Austria, was there a lot of
like individualism
or was it, were things very like regimented?
Like in America, you could like, you can be an individual, right?
But some countries it's a little bit harder to kind of like, you know, be an
individual and
have a voice.
I'm just wondering, what was it like there when you were young?
Did it feel like things were regimented or it was okay to be rebellious?
What was it like there?
Well, I was rebellious in a way because, I mean, think about it, soccer and
track and field,
they were kind of like the in sports.
But when I was exposed to weightlifting and to powerlifting and to bodybuilding,
I fell in love
with that.
And also because my heroes like Reg Park and Steve Reeves, they were doing Hercules
movies
and I just started looking at those movies, right?
And so I said to myself, I want to be like that.
I don't want to be a top soccer player.
I want to be like that.
I want to have the muscles like that.
And I want to get into movies like that.
And that all of a sudden became my dream.
So you really want it to be like this?
Yeah.
So I was fixated.
I was like kind of like concentrating that I kind of put visually my head on
Reg Park's
body.
And I said to myself, there was a picture, a famous picture where he won the Mr.
Universe
contest in London in 1951.
And when I saw that picture, it was like him holding the trophy and flexing his
bicep.
Yeah.
And then I said to myself, can you imagine if this is me?
I'm going to make this me.
And so that's what I was training for.
So my parents thought that it was kind of like, what is that all about?
Where did that come from?
And the whole neighborhood was kind of like wondering, what is this guy doing
training
every day, two hours, three hours a day.
I came home and instead of having lunch, I would put my sit-up board up in the
kitchen
table and I would be doing sit-ups.
500 sit-ups during lunch.
So you were addicted to it.
You were addicted.
Totally, totally addicted.
Because I was driven by my vision.
You know, so it was always there.
Yeah.
Even when I was in school, I would sometimes just wander off when the teacher
was teaching
out there, writing up something on the blackboard.
And I would be looking at that.
And then all of a sudden he could see that I was just kind of like staring off.
And then all of a sudden he threw a chalk at my head and I would bang.
And I looked back again and he says, Arnold, I'm up here.
I mean, I know you're looking at the beautiful trees out there.
They're more beautiful maybe than me, but you got to listen to what I'm saying
here.
So I noticed I was always kind of drifting off and visualizing my dreams,
always visualizing
my dreams, being on that stage in a Mr. Universe contest, doing maybe Hercules
movies, going
to America and all of that.
So it was very different.
So that was not the norm.
So I did step out of the norm.
And because everyone else was talking about, oh, I'm going to go and get a job
with the
government because I want to make sure that I collect my pension when I was 65
and all
this.
I had no interest in any of that pension.
I mean, what are we talking about now?
The age of 18, we start talking about pensions.
I mean, it's crazy, right?
But that's the European way.
Everyone looks for stability, especially in those times where government was
really ruling.
So then that's also, I think, an explanation of why when I came over here to
America in 1968
and I saw Hubert Humphrey and Nixon campaigning.
Hubert Humphrey, who is Hubert Humphrey?
He was the vice president under Johnson.
Okay.
And so he was campaigning.
After Kennedy?
To become, well, Johnson was after Kennedy.
Then Humphrey was his vice president.
So he was running for president.
Oh, yeah.
And so it was Nixon.
Looks like he eats gumdrops, that guy.
And so it was really interesting when I listened to the debates, and I didn't
understand maybe three-quarter of it.
But I had a friend that spoke German, and he translated for me.
And when I heard of what Nixon said, it was so opposite of what I grew up with,
which I didn't like.
The government was kind of in charge of everything.
In Austria?
In Austria, yeah, exactly.
And since I was in Germany and in all those countries over there in Europe,
socialism was the system that I grew up in.
So when Nixon spoke, I felt like, wow, get government off your back.
Get the government off your back.
That sounds great.
Wow, and lowering the taxes, strong military, strong police force, strong, very
strong, and a strong economy.
Let the people be free.
Let them shop all around the world, and blah, blah, blah.
And I said to myself, this is, like, unbelievable.
And then when Humphrey spoke, it was like I was back in Austria.
You know, so then I said to myself, what are the parties here?
Because they didn't understand really the parties here.
Why? What was it about Humphreys that made it feel like you were back in
Austria?
Well, he said government is the solution.
Oh, I see.
So he was more like the cage.
We all know that the government is not the solution.
I mean, it's like the free enterprise, the economy and orders.
Yeah, I got to let people be free and not be controlled by government.
Government is good, but you have to find kind of the middle ground of all this
stuff.
Yeah, you can't, if you rely solely on the government for your life, then you'll
just be a, you'll be a part of the government, basically.
Well, and you become a vegetable.
Yeah.
Because they create the safety net, then you don't have the will to really kind
of make it on your own.
So what the big advantage of coming to America was that there was no safety net.
So I was on my own.
Yeah.
So I had to get really creative.
Okay.
How can I go and go to school and educate myself?
How can I go and get more English classes?
How can I go to Santa Monica City College and at the same time work and at the
same time train five hours a day and do all of those kind of things?
So this is, but it was up to me now to be successful, not up to the government.
Oh, I like that.
So the government was providing the opportunities and orders, the structure,
but that is what I enjoyed.
And so this is why I became kind of like a Nixon Republican and people always
were kind of like, you know, especially in California, which is a much more
liberal state.
Like how can you be a Republican?
Yeah.
So I really enjoyed it.
Nixon, of course, came from California.
I'm going to go to America and I'm going to go to America and I'm going to go
to America was even a popular path for people to go.
Well, remember, I started saying this when I was 10.
Ah, I see.
So it had been your parents knew it was in your head.
Yeah, exactly.
So I saw a documentary, a black and white documentary in a school that showed
always those films with this eight millimeters, whatever 