BOOK OF THE WEEK
Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life
by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Penguin Random House £20, 262pp.
A friend was in a restaurant in Beverly Hills a few years ago when – with much excitement – Arnold Schwarzenegger entered with his wife at the time, Maria Shriver, a descendant of the Kennedy clan, and their children.
Most of the restaurant was understandably starstruck, especially when the waitress started taking their order.
“I’ll have salmon,” Arnie said and paused before continuing in that rich Austrian accent: “…grilled.” Later, he ordered dessert. ‘I’ll have the ice cream’, another pause: ‘…vaneella.’
The deep voice, the intonation, and letting it be known that the Terminator eats salmon and has a penchant for pudding are the kinds of facts that help the world go round.
It’s Arnie’s authenticity and humor that endear him to us and his friendship – for such a great man, he comes across as a warm, loving and even sweet human being.
Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, which first came out in 1984. Despite his success as an action hero, Arnold soon set his sights on becoming a leading man
Now 76 and after undergoing open-heart surgery, the champion bodybuilder, movie star, major philanthropist and former governor of California has embarked on a fourth career.
Not so much Conan the Barbarian, more Conan the Librarian, Arnie has written a self-help book.
And a guy who rose from a tough childhood in small-town Austria to become one of the most famous men in the world, with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank, is probably worth listening to.
It is not an autobiography (although he lets us in on many secrets), but it is a guide to living better, told with humor – he asks for his money back after a course on how to lose his accent – charm self-deprecating characteristic, honesty and catchy insults (‘F*** Plan B. It’s an excuse for failure’).
The book is probably best read with a guttural Austrian accent. The title, Be Useful, is the only advice his father gave him.
It’s all here, and you can think a lot about it yourself: have a vision (Arnie’s is America, its Cadillacs and skyscrapers that make the tallest building in Austria look like a tool shed), think hard and work a lot, because, as Arnie says it’s the only thing that works 100 percent of the time for 100 percent of things worth achieving.
In his early days in Hollywood, studio executives wanted to change his name to Arnold Strong or something like that.
But no, Arnie said, because his vision then was that he could see his name – SCHWARZENEGGER – in big block letters over the title of most of his films.
In Be Useful, Arnold’s guide to living better, he draws on his own life experience and tells readers to have a vision, think big, and work hard.
Soon he wanted to prove that he was more than just an action hero; he wanted to be a leading man.
His goal was to star in comedies, which meant the studios laughed him out of court.
He and director Ivan Reitman came up with the idea for The Twins, about brothers played by Schwarzenegger and Danny de Vito, an idea so good you don’t need the movie.
No one would finance him, though: Hollywood couldn’t see Arnie as a comedy leading man. Eventually, they came out with a whistle – neither of them would get a salary; instead they would receive a share of the net profits if the film made money.
Of all his films, it’s still the one that made the most money for Arnie, as he writes with some pride. This is the right solution to the problem.
How many times you want to be told ‘anyone can do it’ by a global star worth hundreds of millions of dollars is up to you, of course. But I would give it a go.
The impetus for the book was the end of his governorship and the breakdown of his marriage to Mrs. Shriver, when, as he said with cheering frankness: “I blew up my family.” He doesn’t go in here, but tells us to Google to find out what happened.
It would be a brave man to disobey the Terminator, so it is possible to reveal that, in 1996, he had an affair with his maid, Mildred Baena, who gave birth to a child, a few weeks before Arnie and Mrs. Shriver had their fourth child.
His marriage ran into trouble in 2011. Ms. Shriver wanted to know if Ms. Baena’s child was his. Since Joseph Baena, now 26, looks more like Arnie than Arnie himself, the answer was obvious.
A champion bodybuilder, Arnold posed on Venice Beach in 1977. Since then, he’s had multiple careers, including movie star, philanthropist, former governor of California and now self-help guru
Arnie had to make a choice: ‘I was face down in the mud in a dark hole and I had to decide if it was worth cleaning myself up and starting the slow climb, or just giving up.’
But the last thing Terminator does is give up. Now, he says with delight – he can laugh at himself, but you could never accuse him of false modesty – “people were paying me as much as ex-presidents to show up and give motivational speeches.”
Like any sports champion, he wants fitness to be a path to excellence for people and points out that there are many paths to a happy, fulfilling life outside of the university system. He is a great advocate for vocational education.
It supports ‘plumbers, electricians and cabinet makers, professionals in the trades they learned by (working) in the real world… (they are) the glue that holds the economy together’.
You can ‘build your dream life with a hammer and nails, a comb and scissors, a saw and some sandpaper’. There aren’t enough people doing these jobs in the UK and the Eurozone, he tells us, and he’s right.
He lets things move from time to time: we probably learn more than enough about the nexus of California district politics in Sacramento, and if you want to develop calf muscles, this book is for you.
The secret, it seems, is to wait until the end of your run so all your training partners can keep an eye on your calves and presumably start snickering if you’re not hitting the clock.
Although anyone who mocks Arnie for not working hard enough in the gym needs to be examined in my opinion.
Arnold was photographed on the set of the 1984 film Conan the Destroyer. He would later focus on acting in comedies, but it took a long time for film studios to pick him up.
And, my word, he knows them all and is not afraid to call their names: from Muhammad Ali to Nelson Mandela, every US president since Lyndon B. Johnson, Mikhail Gorbachev and even, he admits with disarming surprise, the Dalai Lama and two different ones. The Popes.
“Two different” is a nice touch, I think. Even Marcus Aurelius gets a nod.
However, Arnie has learned from everyone, because one of his main lessons is ‘Shut up, open your mind and be curious’. None of us can argue with that, though few would argue with a Pope or a president.
Above all, this is a book filled with Arnie’s overwhelming positivity… and who couldn’t be?
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