The Art of Manliness - The Rise and Fall of the Golden Age of Action Heroes

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00:00:54.700 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:58.460 In 1980s America, gritty streets are filled with crime, the threat of Cold War hovered

00:01:03.520 in the air, and action movies starring tough guy heroes dominated the box office.

00:01:08.020 This was a time in cinema when muscle, martial arts, and the perfect weapon were the keys

00:01:12.080 to saving the day.

00:01:13.100 When the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone ruled the silver screen,

00:01:17.180 and their on-screen carnage was only rivaled by their off-screen competition.

00:01:21.340 Why did this golden age of action movies emerge when it did?

00:01:24.120 And why don't they make films like that anymore?

00:01:25.760 Here to chart the rise and fall of the golden age of action movies is Nick DeSimilion, author

00:01:30.780 of The Last Action Heroes, The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage.

00:01:36.200 Today on the show, Nick shares the stories behind the larger-than-life stars of the action

00:01:39.500 genre, including Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Chuck Norris, and Steven Seagal, and the iconic

00:01:44.800 films they starred in.

00:01:46.280 He also discusses why the action genre fell out of favor in the early 90s, why its movies

00:01:50.460 nonetheless continue to endure in popularity, and the three action films he most recommends

00:01:55.000 watching.

00:01:56.100 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash lastactionheroes.

00:02:00.300 Nick DeSimilion, welcome to the show.

00:02:25.920 Thanks for having me.

00:02:26.760 So you got a new book out called The Last Action Heroes, The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds

00:02:31.840 of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage.

00:02:33.760 And this is all about the golden age of the action hero that happened in the 1980s and

00:02:39.180 early 1990s.

00:02:40.720 So we got stars like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, and the mysterious

00:02:46.860 and kind of weird Steven Seagal.

00:02:48.820 What was going on in American and Western culture at this time that led to this proliferation

00:02:54.500 of these big action-packed movies starring tough guy action heroes?

00:02:59.420 Well, it was like a bad time in America.

00:03:01.340 Like, obviously, you don't need me to tell you that, but coming out of the 70s into the

00:03:04.500 80s, a lot of bad things were happening, you know, abroad Vietnam and then at home with

00:03:08.760 Watergate.

00:03:09.520 And it was just a very kind of dark and gloomy and complicated time.

00:03:12.820 And then, you know, that was reflected in the movies of the 70s as well, which were generally

00:03:17.380 downbeat and often depressing with very complex heroes who were trying to do stuff and, you

00:03:23.520 know, having Chinatown happen to them and stuff like that.

00:03:25.860 And then you got this really just amazing group of larger-than-life people who came along

00:03:32.140 and their movies were the opposite of that.

00:03:34.680 They were upbeat in the sense that they would just kill anyone who tried to stop them, whatever 0.75

00:03:38.220 they were doing.

00:03:38.720 And, you know, they brought like a very simple philosophy and I kind of have Rocky really

00:03:45.640 as the marking point.

00:03:46.580 The first one of those that really, even though it's not your typical action movie, it's about

00:03:50.400 a boxer.

00:03:51.220 It was really the first kind of version of that one-man army movie with an upbeat ending

00:03:57.180 that kind of made you want to cheer for one of these guys.

00:03:59.620 And then, you know, Schwarzenegger came after Stallone.

00:04:02.240 And then, as you say, this armada of sometimes quite bizarre action heroes, definitely in

00:04:08.880 the case of Seagal and Van Damme, just coming in their wake.

00:04:12.420 But I think there was just something in the water in America and abroad that just made

00:04:16.940 things the perfect kind of conditions for these guys to arrive with their big bombastic

00:04:21.760 action epics.

00:04:23.140 Yeah, people are looking for some hope.

00:04:25.500 They're looking for some confidence.

00:04:26.660 Because I think you're right.

00:04:27.420 The movies in the 70s, you look at Francis Ford Coppola, his movies like Apocalypse Now,

00:04:31.740 you're kind of watching this thing.

00:04:32.840 It's like, I don't know.

00:04:33.700 There's no, it's kind of murky and you kind of feel cynical.

00:04:36.360 Or with Martin Scorsese, you had like, you know, Taxi Driver and even The Godfather,

00:04:40.900 kind of this murky thing, sort of ambiguous.

00:04:43.400 And then these guys, simple story, there's a good guy and a bad guy.

00:04:46.320 It was kind of almost a return to like the 1950s, you know, black hat, white hat, cowboy

00:04:51.260 Western in a way.

00:04:52.760 Exactly.

00:04:53.260 Yeah.

00:04:53.500 It was a return to that very simple black and white storytelling.

00:04:57.380 And it's interesting, the year Rocky came out and was at the Oscars, it was up against

00:05:00.980 Carrie, Network and Taxi Driver, three very brilliant, but very depressing films.

00:05:05.600 And it was Rocky that triumphed that night and changed everything, even though he doesn't

00:05:09.740 technically win at the end of that film, which some people forget, you know, the first one

00:05:14.180 didn't have the traditional, you know, triumphant ending, but it still definitely felt a lot

00:05:19.160 more upbeat.

00:05:19.820 And it had a lot more montages than Taxi Driver, that's for sure.

00:05:22.360 Right.

00:05:22.920 And besides the storylines about, you know, good guy versus bad guy, underdog story, these

00:05:27.960 guys also changed the game in terms of like special effects, like they were just blowing

00:05:31.920 stuff up.

00:05:32.840 It was big, a lot of violence.

00:05:35.160 And that was another thing they brought to this genre of film as well.

00:05:39.500 Yeah.

00:05:40.020 Well, their movies just kind of mutated.

00:05:42.520 I mean, it's, you go back and they look quite quaint.

00:05:44.880 The stuff these guys were starting with, like the first few Rockies and Conan, and it's

00:05:49.120 a guy with a sword or a guy in a boxing ring, and then over the next 15 years, the genre

00:05:53.840 just kind of went berserk and they were all trying to one up what they had done.

00:05:57.660 But also you've got these guys getting into pissing contests with each other and, you

00:06:02.220 know, insanely competitive, these stars and trying to outdo what the others were doing.

00:06:06.820 So, you know, you get these action movies turning into big sci-fi things with Predator

00:06:11.460 going into space with Total Recall.

00:06:14.020 And you can see it even like within a franchise like Rocky, where it starts with a guy in Philadelphia

00:06:18.300 trying to box.

00:06:19.800 And by the time you get to the fourth one, he's going up against the whole Soviet Union.

00:06:24.400 And, you know, you see the same thing happen with Rambo. 0.92

00:06:26.340 So it was like this thing where they were just getting pumping these movies up and up and

00:06:30.140 up.

00:06:30.460 And you've got some very bizarre and often outrageously entertaining things as a result.

00:06:35.760 So you mentioned earlier that you pinpoint Rocky as the starting point of this genre or

00:06:42.800 this golden age of the action hero.

00:06:45.180 And this was, again, this is Sylvester Stallone.

00:06:47.100 This is the movie that put him on the map.

00:06:49.860 And what's interesting about Stallone is that if you look at his early life and his early

00:06:54.140 career, I don't think you would have pegged him to become one of the brawniest tough guy

00:06:58.800 action hero types.

00:07:00.200 So like, what was he like as a kid?

00:07:01.520 And what was his early movie career like?

00:07:04.300 I mean, forget being one of the biggest stars on the planet.

00:07:06.200 I don't think anyone would have pinpointed him to be a successful actor, like a working

00:07:09.480 actor.

00:07:09.780 He had such an amazing kind of Cinderella story that his early life was, you know, he was

00:07:15.740 living in poverty.

00:07:17.220 He was a strange looking kid.

00:07:18.460 He had a slur.

00:07:19.600 He was bullied.

00:07:20.880 And, you know, I kind of opened the book with him in one of his many terrible early jobs

00:07:25.540 where he's at Central Park Zoo getting pissed on by lions.

00:07:28.280 And he had like year after year of just the most grueling, kind of humiliating circumstances.

00:07:35.900 But the thing about Stallone is he just does not give up.

00:07:39.640 And you see that all through his career.

00:07:41.520 Like even when everything is absolutely against him, he just keeps going and going.

00:07:45.080 And so I think Rocky really is like a, you know, it's a kind of biographical character

00:07:48.720 for him because Rocky is the same.

00:07:50.320 But he's a kind of fascinating guy to write about Stallone because he's this real study

00:07:55.560 in contrast that he, this action star, but he's also, you know, he's obsessed with Edgar

00:08:00.840 Allen Poe and he writes poetry and, you know, he wouldn't have got Rocky made had he not

00:08:06.120 written himself.

00:08:07.260 And that kind of sets him apart from any of these other action stars is that he just did

00:08:11.440 not give up.

00:08:12.120 And he was like, I'm going to make myself a movie star no matter what happens.

00:08:16.560 And he did.

00:08:17.740 And it's an incredible story.

00:08:18.780 Yeah, the story behind, you know, why he's got that sort of distinct look and the way

00:08:23.040 he talks.

00:08:23.540 I didn't know this until I read your book and also on Wikipedia.

00:08:26.820 I guess when he was born, the doctor was using forceps to get him out and he like squeezed

00:08:30.620 too hard and just basically destroyed a nerve, I think.

00:08:33.840 Yeah, exactly.

00:08:34.440 And he compared himself to Mr. Potato Head.

00:08:36.580 So, I mean, see, another thing about him is he's, he's very self-deprecating.

00:08:41.020 Well, at points, not always, but he can be.

00:08:44.380 And he's very funny.

00:08:45.880 And I think another thing that I was impressed by, Stallone, that I didn't know about that

00:08:50.200 you bring out in the book is unlike a lot of these other action stars, he seemed more

00:08:55.000 of like an artsy type.

00:08:56.180 Like you said, he loved Edgar Allan Poe.

00:08:57.880 He wanted to write this film about Edgar Allan Poe.

00:09:00.040 He'd write poetry.

00:09:01.000 He loved to paint.

00:09:02.540 I mean, he was larger than life, but his personality wasn't like a Schwarzenegger.

00:09:05.580 He was a little more subdued, I think.

00:09:08.240 Like, no, I mean, it's been said about Schwarzenegger, he never reads a book unless it's directly

00:09:12.600 for work.

00:09:13.260 Like he cuts out, eliminates anything kind of wasteful.

00:09:15.920 And I think that includes, you know, the great art and sitting down with a book or looking

00:09:19.420 at a painting.

00:09:20.400 Whereas Stallone, as you say, like he was very in touch with his artistic side and I think

00:09:26.160 kind of became an action star partly against his will.

00:09:30.900 If you look at the movies that he did after Rocky, he could have done anything.

00:09:33.960 You know, he was even in talks to play Superman.

00:09:36.680 He made some really strange films and experimental, kind of more dramatic, risky films like Paradise

00:09:43.500 Alley and Fist, which I'm not sure I recommend either the title or the film.

00:09:47.320 But he didn't just follow action movie after action movie.

00:09:51.320 He was trying to get out of it.

00:09:53.620 It took him quite a long time to become comfortable with being Rocky.

00:09:58.120 So let's talk about Rocky.

00:09:58.980 So this is part of the Western pop culture collective consciousness.

00:10:02.560 We all know Rocky, the theme song of Rocky.

00:10:06.080 People play that to get pumped up when they're at the gym or playing a sport.

00:10:10.060 The story behind Rocky is really interesting, the making of it.

00:10:12.900 Stallone actually wrote this movie.

00:10:14.860 So where did he get the idea of this underdog boxing movie?

00:10:19.380 He went to a boxing match, Chuck Wepner, who was a kind of Rocky Balboa type guy, like a

00:10:25.580 real life underdog who wasn't hugely successful, but he just kept going and going.

00:10:30.960 He was grimly determined.

00:10:32.300 And that was kind of the element that Stallone admired about him.

00:10:36.740 So he channeled that in.

00:10:37.800 And Rocky was just one of many, many scripts that Stallone was writing.

00:10:42.740 He was just writing because he wasn't getting anywhere with being an actor.

00:10:46.640 So he was like, right, I'm going to have to make this happen.

00:10:48.200 I'm going to have to write scripts.

00:10:49.060 So he would paint windows black of his apartment and just stay in there and write on these marathon

00:10:54.960 sessions.

00:10:56.000 And one of the scripts was Rocky.

00:10:57.600 The first draft of it was incredibly dark.

00:10:59.340 It didn't have much resemblance to the movie that ended up getting made.

00:11:02.320 But he took it into Winkler Chartoff production company and they weren't massively impressed,

00:11:09.020 but they were looking to do a boxing movie.

00:11:10.720 It was kind of a lucky break for him and they didn't want to cast him.

00:11:15.440 So he basically played chicken with them.

00:11:17.700 He said, I'm going to, you can only have the script if I play the main role.

00:11:20.900 And so he kind of forced himself into it.

00:11:22.660 And yeah, it was like nobody, including the people making it, thought it was going to

00:11:27.060 be a particular success.

00:11:28.780 It really took everyone by surprise.

00:11:31.120 And it was made on a shoestring budget.

00:11:32.520 It was really kind of put together haphazardly almost.

00:11:36.020 It was.

00:11:36.660 It was shot in Philadelphia.

00:11:38.160 They didn't really have any money for, you know, there was no catering.

00:11:41.740 They were kind of making do.

00:11:43.220 They were running around.

00:11:44.640 The guy who invented the Steadicam, Garrett Brown was there.

00:11:47.540 And so he got that iconic Steadicam shot up the stairs of the Philadelphia library.

00:11:51.900 But yeah, it was, it was a real kind of ragtag shoot that nobody thought was going to amount

00:11:58.280 to much.

00:11:58.800 But it's, it's, you know, a big part of that is Stallone's performance that he just put

00:12:02.740 his heart and soul into it.

00:12:03.980 And he was like, this is going to be a success.

00:12:05.920 He kind of willed it into being.

00:12:07.480 Didn't he have to sell his dog to make this movie happen?

00:12:11.240 Buttkiss.

00:12:11.640 Yeah, famously, he sold his very badly behaved, rather stinky dog, Buttkiss, to somebody and

00:12:16.940 then fortunately managed to buy him back.

00:12:19.880 So Buttkiss was back in Stallone's keeping by the time the movie actually was being shot.

00:12:24.820 But yeah, that was crazy.

00:12:25.980 He was so poor that he had to sell his own dog.

00:12:28.440 Yeah.

00:12:28.620 And Buttkiss, he stars in the movie and he gets a credit, at least in the Amazon Prime

00:12:33.080 version of Rocky.

00:12:34.220 Buttkiss the dog gets a credit there.

00:12:36.120 So well-deserved.

00:12:37.100 Well-deserved Buttkiss. 1.00

00:12:38.440 So yeah, no one thought there was going to be success, but then it just landed.

00:12:40.880 Like, why was this movie, why did it become such a, not only a critical success, because

00:12:46.260 it won an Oscar, but also just a popular success?

00:12:50.660 Well, I asked the producer, Owen Winkler, that and he said that his theory is that people

00:12:55.260 just wanted it.

00:12:55.980 It was that it just came along at the right time and everything had been so gloomy and

00:13:00.060 depressing.

00:13:01.420 And then it came along and it's just the story of a guy.

00:13:03.940 It's very relatable.

00:13:04.780 This guy is, nothing is going right for him.

00:13:06.680 You look at him and listen to him and he's not massively impressive.

00:13:09.500 And he just prevails by just keeping going and having a dream.

00:13:15.100 And that just really connected.

00:13:17.160 You forget just how giant it was.

00:13:18.900 It wasn't just the number one movie at the box office, but it was at the Oscars.

00:13:23.640 And Stallone was on stage, shadowboxing with Muhammad Ali.

00:13:26.740 Stallone didn't get the Oscar himself, which apparently bummed him out, but it was, it

00:13:30.840 was, it was gigantic.

00:13:32.720 And politicians were into it.

00:13:35.540 I mean, it just became a pop culture zeitgeist smash.

00:13:38.480 It was huge.

00:13:39.940 So as you say, this launched Stallone's career.

00:13:42.560 And at first he loved the success because it allowed him to experiment when he did some

00:13:46.020 weird movies.

00:13:46.620 You said there's like one about rhinestone.

00:13:48.920 It's kind of a weird movie.

00:13:50.080 It was a flop though.

00:13:50.840 No one liked it, but then, you know, people wanted more Rocky and did Stallone at some

00:13:56.380 point start feeling like he was a prisoner of this Rocky character.

00:14:01.240 He started feeling that straight after the first one came out.

00:14:04.500 He was kind of strangely, I mean, maybe not strangely, but he was, he was, he was resentful

00:14:10.280 because it became the one thing that everyone associated him with.

00:14:13.380 And everyone would come up to him on the street and go, yo, Rocky.

00:14:15.460 And he saw it as just one thing.

00:14:19.260 He wanted to do all kinds of things, but yeah, he kept being asked to make more Rocky sequels

00:14:25.220 and it took him a long time to accept it.

00:14:27.120 And he did come to a point where he, he, he accepted the character and kind of fell back

00:14:31.680 in love with him.

00:14:32.800 But yeah, there was a long time where he was very unhappy.

00:14:35.000 And you imagine after Rocky kind of changes him from being, you know, a poor unknown guy

00:14:40.980 to being one of the biggest stars in the world that that would transform your life in a good

00:14:44.680 way.

00:14:45.020 But he, you know, the more I read up on it, the more you realize that he, he had a really

00:14:50.180 hard time adjusting to fame and he really resented Rocky.

00:14:53.700 And there were quite a few years where he was just feeling bruised and misunderstood and

00:14:59.420 became quite isolated from everyone.

00:15:02.720 So it was quite a difficult time for him adjusting to fame, although he did manage it.

00:15:07.720 And you talk about in the Rocky movies, you can kind of see Sylvester Stallone playing out

00:15:12.460 this ambivalence he has towards the character and towards his own career with the movies

00:15:16.240 themselves, right?

00:15:17.140 So in the first one, Rocky's the underdog, just like Stallone was the underdog.

00:15:21.480 And by movie four, Rocky's this big star making tons of money, lives in this giant house.

00:15:26.980 They got a weird robot that talks and somehow has artificial intelligence in 1985.

00:15:32.720 And then, you know, you see Rocky, he feels like I'm getting soft and I'm, I just don't

00:15:37.420 feel like I'm back to my roots.

00:15:38.940 You see whatever his preoccupations are at the time, kind of bleeding into the films.

00:15:42.140 And that's really interesting because it's not many of these action icons who were creatively

00:15:46.420 so involved with their films.

00:15:47.900 And I think definitely with Stallone more than any of them, he was quite hyper controlling.

00:15:53.080 And, you know, I spoke to lots of directors and writers and he would tend to come in and

00:15:57.480 he would kind of insert himself right in the middle of the process, right the way into

00:16:01.620 the editing suite.

00:16:02.740 And so, yeah, I think he took these films deadly seriously and he put a lot of his personality

00:16:06.620 in and whatever he was struggling with at the time would make it into the film.

00:16:10.400 And speaking of, we mentioned earlier how these movies, they started getting bigger and

00:16:13.620 bigger and more, more bombastic as they progressed.

00:16:16.220 One thing I noticed with Rocky, if you watch Rocky one, you look at Stallone's physique and

00:16:20.080 he's a good physique, but it's not huge and bulking, but by Rocky three, the guy looks

00:16:25.760 like a bodybuilder.

00:16:27.180 And I think that's what people wanted.

00:16:28.660 People wanted the really jacked brawny action hero guy.

00:16:33.220 Yeah.

00:16:33.600 And like I was saying, it was kind of like this arms race against Schwarzenegger.

00:16:36.680 The two of them were competing in every single aspect.

00:16:38.720 And part of that was how big their muscles were.

00:16:40.880 I think they were like keeping an eye on each other's specific muscles and then heading

00:16:44.160 to the gym.

00:16:44.940 But I think the biggest change between one film and another is probably first blood,

00:16:50.080 to Rambo first blood part two, where, you know, he's placed John Rambo and he's this

00:16:54.400 Vietnam vet and he's quite a big guy.

00:16:56.680 He's quite an impressive guy, but he's not super jacked.

00:16:59.460 And, you know, people that they were considering for the role were people like Paul Newman and

00:17:03.460 Robert Redford and Al Pacino.

00:17:05.000 These are not big guys, but, you know, it's hard to imagine Paul Newman in Rambo first blood

00:17:09.280 part two, because by that point he's a monster.

00:17:11.960 Like Stallone is a monster.

00:17:12.920 His body in that is just like, you know, super, super ripped.

00:17:17.820 So I'm curious, do you have a favorite Rocky movie?

00:17:20.080 Huh.

00:17:23.440 Well, I have a, I have a soft spot, obviously more than a soft spot for the first one, which

00:17:27.140 is a classic and the original, and it kind of made so many things happen.

00:17:31.300 But for me, I tend to put on Rocky four.

00:17:33.480 I think that's just for pure entertainment value.

00:17:35.960 I love that about it's, I think approximately 80% montage.

00:17:39.460 I've got that number.

00:17:40.700 I watched the robot cut though.

00:17:42.540 Stallone famously recut it a couple of years ago and got rid of the robot.

00:17:46.920 But for me, I'm a robot purist.

00:17:49.380 This past summer or this past spring, our family, we watched all the Rocky movies from

00:17:53.720 the start.

00:17:54.220 And then we went all the way through the Creed films as well.

00:17:56.560 And our favorite one was Rocky two.

00:17:59.760 That's my girlfriend's as well.

00:18:01.220 She, she is a Rocky two hardliner. 1.00

00:18:03.460 So you may well be right.

00:18:05.820 So you mentioned Rambo as this other character that basically became Stallone, like Stallone

00:18:10.780 became Rambo.

00:18:11.600 It's synonymous.

00:18:12.540 And as you said, he wasn't the first pick for this.

00:18:14.980 He had other just like, you know, Paul Newman, Robert Redford.

00:18:17.760 How did Stallone end up being Rambo?

00:18:20.700 Well, he didn't really want to do it.

00:18:24.340 It's a weird one.

00:18:25.080 He signed up and then he tried to back out a bunch of times, even after the film was

00:18:28.580 finished.

00:18:29.260 He was offering to buy the negative and burn it.

00:18:32.420 It was the director, Ted Kocheff, who was a fan of Stallone, who kind of came up with the

00:18:36.860 idea of casting him and went to him and got a quick yes.

00:18:39.680 But yeah, it was an unusual film.

00:18:42.100 It's sort of got one foot in the seventies and one foot in the eighties.

00:18:44.980 It's this kind of character study of this Vietnam vet who kills himself at the end.

00:18:49.640 So that was how it was originally written.

00:18:51.880 And, but it's also like a kind of a rip roaring action film.

00:18:56.340 And it was neither one thing nor another.

00:18:59.380 And I think everyone was a bit uncertain how it was going to do much like Rocky.

00:19:03.660 But yeah, the film itself changed during the shoot and Rambo doesn't kill himself at the

00:19:08.260 end.

00:19:08.680 Spoiler.

00:19:09.320 That was Stallone's thing that he decided he wanted to keep playing the character potentially.

00:19:13.500 So he obviously his feelings changed.

00:19:15.480 But yeah, there was a big argument of that.

00:19:17.880 Kirk Douglas, who was originally cast as Colonel Troutman, quit the film in protest because

00:19:22.180 he loved the original ending.

00:19:24.000 But yeah, it was not a film that Stallone really was proud of when it came out.

00:19:28.160 And again, it took him a while before he kind of fell in love with the character.

00:19:32.180 And what do you think was behind Rambo's success? 0.73

00:19:33.800 Well, it's just this really, really great underdog story.

00:19:39.260 I think even more than Rocky, because, you know, you look at Rocky and he's got Mickey,

00:19:43.880 he's got Adrian, he's, he's in some films, he's got the robot.

00:19:46.800 But if you look at First Blood, it's literally just this guy in the woods and he's got absolutely

00:19:51.180 nothing.

00:19:52.180 He hasn't got a home.

00:19:53.140 He hasn't got friends.

00:19:54.140 He hasn't got allies.

00:19:54.940 And everyone is hunting him down.

00:19:58.480 And it's just this very well put together kind of underdog story of this guy managing

00:20:04.200 to survive that and come out of it.

00:20:06.060 And I think had he killed himself, probably wouldn't have connected in that way.

00:20:09.600 But as it is, it just came out and people really, really loved it.

00:20:12.820 And it's hard to say why one film connects and another one doesn't.

00:20:16.320 But people just love that character.

00:20:18.700 And then, yeah, it became a pop cultural phenomenon with the sequels.

00:20:21.680 And I remember as a kid, I watched the Rambo cartoon.

00:20:24.820 I had Rambo toys.

00:20:26.480 And you're looking back and it was pretty interesting that, you know, my parents would

00:20:29.500 be like, hey, we're going to get you some toys for this rated R movie you could never

00:20:33.180 see.

00:20:34.260 But I thought it was pretty cool.

00:20:35.880 But yeah, there was a Chuck Norris cartoon as well around the same time.

00:20:38.460 And it's like, which kids are watching Chuck Norris?

00:20:40.680 Like he's watching like Force of Vengeance or Silent Rage.

00:20:43.860 But yeah, they did.

00:20:44.720 They made some strange cartoons in the 80s.

00:20:46.640 They did that with the Police Academy movies, too.

00:20:49.920 Really?

00:20:50.580 Yeah, the Police Academy movies.

00:20:52.320 There was a cartoon and they also had toys.

00:20:54.840 And if you watch Police Academy movies today, you're like, this is not like a kid would

00:20:58.900 never should never be what should not be watching this movie.

00:21:01.360 But here, there's some toys.

00:21:03.180 Should not be pointing kids towards that.

00:21:04.880 Yeah.

00:21:05.120 Yeah.

00:21:05.340 The 80s, 80s weird time.

00:21:06.760 And so does Rambo, I think one of the Rambo movies, doesn't it still hold the record for 0.98

00:21:10.320 most people killed in a movie?

00:21:12.860 Yeah, I believe that's Rambo three. 0.89

00:21:15.260 It's definitely way up there.

00:21:16.320 Obviously spoofed by Hot Shots Part Deh, which is basically a bit of a Rambo spoof where

00:21:21.200 you see Charlie Sheen in like kind of Rambo gear just firing this giant gun and you see

00:21:25.800 the actual numbers on the screen going up and it's like more than Total Recall, more than

00:21:29.680 Rambo.

00:21:30.540 But yeah, like I said, Stallone and Schwarzenegger got into this pissing contest over like who

00:21:36.240 was going to have the biggest body count.

00:21:37.460 And I think it was Commando where one of the producers or something went to watch Rambo

00:21:43.080 two and counted how many people got killed and then went back and they did a reshoot to

00:21:47.580 make sure that they had more people dead.

00:21:49.720 So it became like this weird thing, kind of a symbol of quality.

00:21:54.220 If you could kill more people than the other films, we're going to take a quick break for

00:21:58.680 your word from our sponsors. 0.88

00:22:06.420 And now back to the show.

00:22:08.280 So Stallone's career rival was Arnold Schwarzenegger.

00:22:11.840 And so how did this Austrian bodybuilder with a funny accent become one of the biggest movie

00:22:18.160 stars of the 20th century?

00:22:21.120 Kind of like the same way as Stallone in that he, um, he was just relentless.

00:22:25.200 Like he was not going to take no for an answer.

00:22:27.360 Like, you know, one of them was suffering a lot more than the other one because Schwarzenegger

00:22:32.600 kind of broke through.

00:22:33.460 He had massive success in the bodybuilding world and then he came and he got into real

00:22:36.760 estate in America.

00:22:37.720 So he was already super rich even before he was a movie star.

00:22:40.380 So he was having like one success after another.

00:22:42.960 That's how their two differ.

00:22:44.000 But they both were like so ambitious and so, you know, relentlessly fixated on that they

00:22:50.080 were going to be, they were going to be successes.

00:22:51.940 And Schwarzenegger even wrote himself a list when he was still in Austria.

00:22:54.880 He was like, right, I'm going to go to America and I'm making a list and I'm going to do this

00:22:58.060 and I'm going to do that.

00:22:58.720 And one of them was be a movie star.

00:23:00.140 And he just like worked his way.

00:23:01.600 I love that it wasn't even his only ambition.

00:23:03.540 Like it was just one on the list, but he made everything happen.

00:23:06.060 And he was incredibly charming and straightforward.

00:23:11.200 And I don't know, he just came along and nobody had ever seen anything like him in

00:23:15.240 Hollywood.

00:23:15.880 It did take a while for him to take off because his first bunch of films were not good.

00:23:21.500 What were his first films that he did?

00:23:23.280 Well, he made something called Hercules in New York.

00:23:25.580 It's kind of a bit of a rite of passage for the whole, there's a whole kind of history of

00:23:29.660 Hercules movies with Hercules being played by bodybuilders and wrestlers.

00:23:32.720 And they're all terrible.

00:23:34.520 But one of them was starring a guy called Steve Reeve, which was a big defining moment

00:23:38.060 for Schwarzenegger when he went to the cinema and saw it.

00:23:40.820 But yes, Schwarzenegger played Hercules, a super low budget film.

00:23:45.680 He wrestles a guy in a bear costume in Central Park.

00:23:48.240 I mean, it is truly terrible.

00:23:49.760 But it took him another decade after that to get a bigger break.

00:23:55.740 His first real break was Conan the Barbarian.

00:23:58.400 That was the one that took him over the top.

00:24:00.500 Yeah, didn't like his first movies, maybe this was with Hercules in New York.

00:24:04.300 Didn't they dub his voice because they couldn't understand him?

00:24:07.400 They did.

00:24:08.140 They not only dubbed his voice with another actor, but they changed his name to Arnold Strong.

00:24:12.520 So he didn't have his own voice.

00:24:14.440 He didn't have his own name.

00:24:15.820 But he was fine.

00:24:16.960 Like he was kind of like, sure, he was happy.

00:24:19.640 I spoke to the director for the book and he was very graceful, Schwarzenegger about it

00:24:24.600 and happy to do it.

00:24:27.140 So I think he wasn't in a rush.

00:24:30.080 He was like, I'm going to be famous at some point, so I'm not going to stress about it.

00:24:33.680 So he was more easygoing probably than Stallone.

00:24:36.960 So his first big break was Conan the Barbarian.

00:24:39.240 And then after that, was it Terminator?

00:24:40.500 That's the one that really put him on the map?

00:24:43.400 Yeah, Conan Terminator took him over the top in a different way, kind of put him on the A-list.

00:24:47.960 You know, that was where you see his one-liners starting to come into effect.

00:24:53.040 And, you know, he only says 84 words or something like that in it.

00:24:56.120 So it's a very, it's obviously an iconic performance, but it was something so different from anything

00:25:02.200 he had done because, you know, Conan the Barbarian is quite chatty and quite smiley.

00:25:07.480 And so were all the previous movies he made, but it was a new thing for him playing a villain.

00:25:11.300 He was quite unsure about doing it, but he decided to do it.

00:25:14.880 And not every actor would have at that point in their career.

00:25:18.020 So as you mentioned, Schwarzenegger had a different personality than Stallone.

00:25:21.560 Stallone, more quiet, subdued, artsy.

00:25:24.620 Schwarzenegger, life of the party, charismatic, just wanted success.

00:25:28.560 He was kind of a type A person.

00:25:31.420 Yeah, Stallone is kind of the tortured artist who is always on kind of the brink of a big

00:25:37.000 disaster or something going really right or really wrong.

00:25:41.180 And there's always a lot of drama.

00:25:42.300 Whereas Schwarzenegger kind of just rolls through and seems to just have one big success after

00:25:48.100 another.

00:25:48.580 Like he doesn't really have those giant failures that Stallone endured.

00:25:51.560 Like you mentioned, Rhinestone, you know, staying alive.

00:25:54.060 There were a whole bunch of like real calamities, possible career enders.

00:25:58.260 But yeah, Schwarzenegger just seemed to make everything look easy and was just kind of rolling

00:26:02.880 through.

00:26:03.320 And even when he tried his hand at comedy, it worked for him straight away with Twins.

00:26:09.860 And then all the other comedies he did.

00:26:11.840 Stallone wanted to do comedy, but every time he tried, it was like a complete fiasco.

00:26:16.440 And why do you think, I mean, for most of their career, Stallone and Schwarzenegger, they

00:26:20.140 hated each other.

00:26:20.940 They'd actually almost come to like fist blows when they saw each other and when they did

00:26:25.140 encounter each other.

00:26:25.960 What was behind the rivalry, you think?

00:26:27.640 I think, you know, the same thing you see, the same kind of feud going on with Steven

00:26:34.480 Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme.

00:26:35.880 I think these guys are just all type A, super competitive, you know, going back to Arnold

00:26:40.920 and the bodybuilding world where you just want to take down everyone and they're all your

00:26:46.380 enemies and you are going to destroy them.

00:26:49.900 And that was the attitude that they had against each other.

00:26:53.520 It all kind of started with Stallone throwing a vase of flowers at the Golden Globes in

00:26:57.500 Arnold Schwarzenegger's direction when he won an award and Stallone didn't in the 70s.

00:27:02.220 But they genuinely were so competitive.

00:27:05.000 And it's fascinating reading interviews from the time where you get Schwarzenegger kind

00:27:08.180 of talking Stallone's fur coats that he used to wear at the time and, you know, saying

00:27:12.820 that Stallone's cigar club is sexist.

00:27:15.380 And they had all these little things and they were, they didn't have a lot of interactions.

00:27:20.160 Like they didn't encounter each other a whole lot.

00:27:22.300 They were kind of moved in slightly different circles.

00:27:24.060 But yeah, there's a famous story about Stallone and his entourage going into a bar in

00:27:27.400 New York and there's a picture of Schwarzenegger on the wall and Stallone makes the bartender

00:27:31.000 take it down before they'll stay.

00:27:32.940 So, I mean, this was like real pumped up rivalry and people kept trying to get them

00:27:36.700 together in a movie and not succeeding because there was just too much bad blood.

00:27:40.920 Yeah, the thing about Schwarzenegger, he loves psychological warfare and that goes back to

00:27:44.240 his bodybuilding days.

00:27:45.340 He would kind of corner competitors and tell them, man, you're looking really small.

00:27:49.480 What's going on there?

00:27:50.320 And psych them out.

00:27:51.120 Or he would tell them to do things that he knew would not be good for the competition.

00:27:55.340 And he carried that over into his film career too.

00:27:58.120 Just kind of just messing with people's minds to knock them off their game.

00:28:01.980 Completely.

00:28:02.420 So that's probably what he was doing with Stallone when he was talking about him to the

00:28:05.440 press and putting this stuff out.

00:28:07.200 But yeah, they definitely kept a very close eye on each other's like box office, everything

00:28:11.520 from the muscles to the size of the knives that they had to the box office figures.

00:28:16.340 Like they were definitely trying to outdo each other in every respect.

00:28:18.740 All right.

00:28:19.280 So Stallone and Schwarzenegger were sort of the big guys in this golden age of the action hero movie.

00:28:24.620 And you also talked about some of these other characters that also played a role in this

00:28:29.980 era of American film.

00:28:31.480 And one of them is Chuck Norris.

00:28:33.500 He's become a legend and an internet meme.

00:28:36.440 How did this country boy from a small town in Oklahoma end up one of the greatest martial

00:28:42.220 arts movie stars of all time?

00:28:44.000 Well, he was a soldier in being stationed out in Asia and he came across a karate class just

00:28:51.240 completely by accident and decided to join in.

00:28:54.060 And that was it.

00:28:54.820 He became this karate expert, kind of like Schwarzenegger with the bodybuilding.

00:28:58.420 He was in that world and of competitive combat and he was getting belts and working his way

00:29:04.880 up.

00:29:05.460 It took him quite a long time.

00:29:06.940 He came into acting quite late in life, but he had the real skills.

00:29:09.880 He went up against Bruce Lee in Way of the Dragon and held his own and in the big kind

00:29:15.140 of climactic showdown in the Coliseum.

00:29:17.440 And he was like a kind of taken really seriously in that world.

00:29:20.900 And then he got into acting.

00:29:23.200 His acting was not the best.

00:29:24.760 So he's kind of become a bit of a, you know, to a point, a figure of fun.

00:29:27.940 Obviously, the Chuck Norris facts that people love quoting about how invincible he is. 1.00

00:29:32.720 But yeah, no, he can really, you know, kick your ass. 0.98

00:29:35.380 But he has like a really interesting kind of persona of this kind of cartoonish cowboy 0.99

00:29:40.300 guy who, you know, it's kind of hard to take a lot of his films seriously because he's

00:29:45.300 up against, he's in some quite silly films. 0.71

00:29:47.540 And, you know, there's one where he's up against the kind of reanimated serial killer, 0.52

00:29:51.840 like a kind of Frankenstein type thing.

00:29:53.460 And yeah, it's quite something to work your way through the Chuck Norris oeuvre.

00:29:58.140 What were the movies that made him a big star in the 80s like that he's known for?

00:30:02.180 He never made it as big as Stallone or Schwarzenegger.

00:30:04.380 He was definitely a few degrees below them.

00:30:06.500 He was kind of doing the B-movie versions of what they were doing.

00:30:09.040 His breakthrough was probably this movie called Good Guys Wear Black, where he dropkicks a

00:30:12.800 moving car.

00:30:13.960 And it didn't make like a massive amount of money.

00:30:16.060 I think it made like 18 million or something like that.

00:30:17.820 So it wasn't like giant numbers, but it cost nothing to make.

00:30:20.760 So, you know, it was so profitable, they let him keep going.

00:30:24.000 And then he did things like Silent Rage and Forced Vengeance and all these movies with

00:30:29.020 these like kind of slightly generic Steven Seagali titles.

00:30:32.080 It probably is the one that kind of broke him out the most is Lone Wolf McQuaid with

00:30:37.460 David Carradine from Kill Bill as the villain.

00:30:40.120 And that's a really entertaining film.

00:30:42.400 And then he did a movie called Code of Silence with Andrew Davis directing, who did The Fugitive

00:30:47.460 and Under Siege.

00:30:48.900 That's probably his best film.

00:30:50.180 Like that's the, if anyone asks me, what's the Chuck Norris film you recommend, go see

00:30:53.420 Code of Silence because it's really fun.

00:30:56.160 He's a Chicago cop and he's kind of partners with Dennis Farina.

00:30:58.560 And it's a lot of fun.

00:31:00.000 And what was his personality like and how was it different from some of these other big

00:31:02.900 name action stars?

00:31:04.940 He was kind of this genial guy.

00:31:06.980 You know, Stallone was playing these intense, intense characters and Schwarzenegger was these

00:31:10.980 like walking sheds, you know, these giant behemoth, colossal guys.

00:31:15.940 Like Chuck Norris, he was, he was deadly, but he was not outlandishly huge.

00:31:21.040 And he was kind of genial.

00:31:22.320 It was like this kind of this blonde guy from the Midwest just going around karate kicking 1.00

00:31:25.400 people.

00:31:26.160 And so I don't know, I think there was a level of kind of wish fulfillment from people

00:31:29.840 maybe because, you know, Schwarzenegger was, you were never going to be Schwarzenegger,

00:31:34.200 but maybe you could be Chuck Norris.

00:31:35.480 So, you know, you could buy a pair of his action jeans and then try and karate kick people.

00:31:39.660 But he was, yeah, I think genial is probably the word.

00:31:42.340 Like he's just kind of like quite a kind of calm sort of easygoing persona, which is quite

00:31:48.300 unusual in these crazy action films.

00:31:50.000 My favorite Chuck Norris film, Sidekicks.

00:31:53.280 That was an awesome one when I was a kid.

00:31:55.000 That's a good one.

00:31:55.700 That's where he plays himself.

00:31:56.940 Yeah, he plays himself.

00:31:58.200 And it's funny, I still use, there's this, you know, it's Sidekicks who haven't seen it.

00:32:02.080 For those who haven't seen it, it's about this asthmatic kid who fantasizes or dreams

00:32:06.160 that he's friends with Chuck Norris and Chuck Norris helps him out, you know, defeating bullies

00:32:10.560 or whatever.

00:32:11.160 And then this kid starts karate.

00:32:12.980 But there's like this tip, this running tip the asthmatic kid got, like supposed to breathe 1.00

00:32:17.020 in four steps and breathe out four steps.

00:32:19.500 I remember watching that when I was, I don't know, 10, 11.

00:32:21.880 I still do that.

00:32:23.280 Whenever I'm jogging, I think Sidekicks.

00:32:25.460 So thank you, Chuck Norris, for teaching me how to breathe.

00:32:28.480 Sidekicks change your life.

00:32:29.260 Yeah.

00:32:29.980 Then how did he become Walker, Texas Ranger?

00:32:32.780 How did that happen?

00:32:34.320 He just kind of faded.

00:32:35.700 I think that was around 93.

00:32:37.160 He was phasing out of films.

00:32:38.520 He was getting on a bit in age and just deciding he wanted to mellow out his screen persona.

00:32:43.360 He was kind of done with, you know, laying waste to drug dealers and serial killers.

00:32:48.800 And he was moving into comedy himself.

00:32:52.380 Sidekicks was kind of part of that wave.

00:32:54.100 But Top Dog is maybe the Nadir in the Chuck Norris filmography. 0.93

00:32:57.440 That's the one where he teams up with the dog.

00:32:58.740 Have you seen that one?

00:32:59.600 I have not seen that one, no.

00:33:01.540 Check out the poster.

00:33:02.920 Maybe don't watch the film, but just look at the poster because it's incredible.

00:33:06.280 But yeah, he teams up with a dog.

00:33:07.520 That's kind of his Turner and Hooch.

00:33:08.780 And he had a bunch of flops.

00:33:10.260 And then I think this opportunity to do a TV show came along and he took it.

00:33:14.320 And the character hit big.

00:33:16.500 And so he kind of just stayed doing that and gave up the films.

00:33:19.820 Because another, one of the weirder action heroes to come out of this era was Steven Seagal.

00:33:25.560 And he seemed to come out of nowhere.

00:33:27.560 So where did this guy come from and what was his backstory?

00:33:31.140 Well, no one really knows, I think, to this day.

00:33:33.320 Because he gave different stories about where he came from.

00:33:36.160 And I think what you're saying is actually his appeal.

00:33:38.900 Like the fact that this mysterious guy, no one really knew.

00:33:43.120 He talks about, I've spoken to him and he told me a story about being in Japan and having his life saved by a mysterious white dog that then vanished when his dojo was burning.

00:33:52.240 So he has all these kind of quite wild stories about what he got up to in Japan and taking on gangs of bad guys in real life.

00:34:00.220 So I think that was part of his appeal was that he seemed like the real deal.

00:34:04.620 You know, he came along in Hollywood and there were all these action stars who were clearly just actors playing roles.

00:34:09.700 But then he would talk in interviews about having done operations for the CIA and been a bodyguard and what he was up to in his dojo in Japan.

00:34:18.240 So I think people were like, who is this guy?

00:34:21.160 And then I think even within Hollywood, people took him very seriously.

00:34:25.820 And he was training people.

00:34:27.500 He trained Sean Connery.

00:34:28.680 So, you know, who is this kind of mythical kind of mystic guy who might have been a real assassin?

00:34:37.340 And there was a bit of a throwback, I think, to like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, those kind of strong silent types.

00:34:42.840 And he came in and, yeah, had a lot of charisma at the start and became increasingly weird.

00:34:49.880 So you hadn't been able to verify?

00:34:51.260 Was he actually a CIA operative that actually happened?

00:34:53.800 He kind of, he kind of, his line is, because I tried to raise this with him when I spoke to him and his line is kind of like, oh, I can't get into that.

00:35:01.580 So his whole thing is that it would be breaking some kind of covert ops code if he were to talk about it.

00:35:08.560 So that's the thing.

00:35:09.660 You can never quite pin it down.

00:35:10.900 But I spoke to a screenwriter for the book who worked with him and he said Seagal would come in with like a loaded gun.

00:35:16.960 And the writers would ask him, what were you up to on the weekend?

00:35:19.520 And he would say, oh, I was, I can't talk about it.

00:35:21.980 It's classified.

00:35:22.780 So like even way into his career as a movie star, he was still kind of pretending whatever that he was.

00:35:28.960 He was out doing like real movie star stuff on the weekend.

00:35:32.220 What were his biggest films?

00:35:34.960 Well, he was pretty big right from the start.

00:35:36.920 I think a lot of these guys, almost all of them really struggled, you know, from Van Damme to Schwarzenegger to Stallone.

00:35:42.700 It took them all a long time and a lot of starts.

00:35:44.280 And Seagal kind of came in fully formed.

00:35:47.180 Warner Brothers signed him up for Above the Law, his first film, which was based on his apparent real life.

00:35:54.120 And it was a hit.

00:35:55.380 And then he did more films with three titles.

00:35:58.340 And then he did Under Siege, which was a giant hit and one of Warner Brothers' biggest summer movies.

00:36:04.260 So he had this really meteoric rise and then quite quick fall as well.

00:36:09.860 So it's a really strange career.

00:36:11.260 It's quite unusual.

00:36:11.780 When did these guys like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, when did they start to realize that their days were numbered?

00:36:20.680 Like things were shifting in the United States where their type of movie wouldn't have a receptive audience?

00:36:26.660 I mean, you could maybe go all the way back to Die Hard, which kind of changed the game in the action genre in terms of who the hero was and who the hero looked like.

00:36:38.340 Because up to then it was the Rambos, the Commandos.

00:36:41.440 It was these giant, you know, monster jacked up guys.

00:36:45.240 And then you had Bruce Willis come along, who's this quite slight, relatively cop, who's quite vulnerable.

00:36:52.140 And so that kind of started to change it.

00:36:54.480 And I think Stallone and Schwarzenegger paid attention to that.

00:36:57.160 Stallone has mentioned the Tim Burton Batman in 89 as something that he looked at that.

00:37:02.500 And I think he said something like, you know, now they can Velcro on muscles and we're in trouble.

00:37:06.500 And then I think just as you got into the 90s, as these guys started to get older, and then just the arrival of visual effects.

00:37:13.800 And, you know, I kind of pinpoint in the book, Last Action Hero coming along as Jurassic Park is about to come out.

00:37:19.700 And they both came out the same summer in 93.

00:37:22.200 And Jurassic Park was giant and Last Action Hero wasn't giant.

00:37:27.360 And people were paying to see the visual effects.

00:37:30.780 And these guys were the visual effects in the 80s.

00:37:32.700 It's like their bodies, they transformed their bodies.

00:37:34.420 And now you could do anything with the visual effects.

00:37:38.280 It kind of made what they were doing a bit less special.

00:37:40.800 And, you know, nowadays with the Marvel films and everything, literally any actor can be an action star.

00:37:46.240 So the USP of these guys had kind of gone.

00:37:50.240 So I think it's, yeah, the early to mid 90s is when you see them really going to fade away.

00:37:55.400 And how do they respond to that?

00:37:58.340 In different ways.

00:37:59.660 You know, Chuck Norris kind of stopped making movies.

00:38:01.580 Bruce Arnold eventually went into politics.

00:38:05.320 Bruce Willis got more into drama, you know, pop fiction and stuff like that.

00:38:08.980 Kind of left action behind.

00:38:10.880 Other ones just kept going.

00:38:12.860 You know, Stallone kept going and is still doing, I think, Expendables 4 is out in a couple of months.

00:38:17.820 And that's him.

00:38:18.440 And Dolph Lundgren and a bunch of these other guys still doing that, doing their 80s action thing.

00:38:23.960 Segal and Van Damme kept making their movies, but were going direct to DVD instead.

00:38:29.100 So I think they reacted in different ways.

00:38:33.180 I think Schwarzenegger and Stallone, who you could argue are kind of the smartest out of the bunch,

00:38:37.920 they both tried to get into comedy.

00:38:39.660 They both realized they needed to stop doing pure action and they needed to expand what they were doing.

00:38:44.100 So you see both of them trying to kind of evolve what they're doing.

00:38:49.100 Well, I think it's interesting with Stallone.

00:38:50.100 We mentioned that he's very involved in his films.

00:38:52.600 And oftentimes the films he does reflect what's going on in his life.

00:38:56.300 And I think you make the case, Demolition Man, that came out in 1993,

00:39:00.100 was sort of a response to this decline of the action hero.

00:39:03.360 Demolition Man is all about this tough guy cop that gets cryogenically frozen.

00:39:07.040 He's from the 90s and reawakens in the 2020s in America,

00:39:11.140 where everything's sort of bland and wussy, saying like,

00:39:14.760 oh, here, you know, we're no longer needed, but actually we're needed if you really need us.

00:39:19.680 Exactly.

00:39:20.340 Yeah, I mean, it's set in the future, but it might as well just be set in the 90s,

00:39:23.100 because I think that's, it's definitely a reflection of what was going on,

00:39:26.240 that these big, brutal, tough guys were suddenly out of time and out of their time.

00:39:32.300 And they get a lot of comedy out of that in the film.

00:39:35.240 And Stallone is for a game for kind of going along with it.

00:39:37.860 And I think it's a really great film.

00:39:39.740 It's got a lot to say about the action drama.

00:39:42.200 And it's basically making the point that these kind of big action movies are done.

00:39:46.180 And, you know, all the guns are in a museum.

00:39:48.280 But yeah, it's quite a smart commentary on what was going on with the drama, definitely.

00:39:52.520 Three shells. Do you ever figure out how to use the three shells?

00:39:56.140 I've never figured it out. I've never figured it out.

00:39:58.080 I've spent quite a lot of time attempting to figure out.

00:39:59.940 There's some diagrams out there that are interesting hypotheses that are kind of disturbing.

00:40:05.160 So I think one thing I noticed, so you mentioned, you know, we have these Marvel action stars.

00:40:10.100 And there's some other kind of action hero, like Chris Pratt, maybe you'd call him an action hero type.

00:40:14.760 But I feel like a lot of today's action stars, they don't have the same type of appeal or star power

00:40:21.100 or, you know, tough guy cachet compared to these stars of the golden age of action heroes.

00:40:26.540 You know, someone like, you know, yeah, Jeremy Renner or all the different types of Chris's that are out there.

00:40:31.660 They're just not on the same plane as a Schwarzenegger or Stallone.

00:40:34.280 Why do you think that is?

00:40:35.960 I just think there was something about these 80s and 90s action stars.

00:40:38.920 There was a purity to them.

00:40:40.580 They dedicated their lives to doing action.

00:40:43.100 And you very rarely saw them doing something that wasn't an action movie.

00:40:46.020 I think nowadays you have actors who dabble in doing a big, you know, VFX Marvel thing.

00:40:50.940 And then they'll go off and do a drama or they'll do a musical or whatever.

00:40:54.960 But you look at these guys and they literally dedicated their lives to it.

00:40:58.400 They were in the gym all the time, chugging protein shakes.

00:41:00.980 They were transforming their bodies.

00:41:02.860 And there was just something really unique about them.

00:41:05.360 I mean, it was almost impossible to imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger just doing something normal.

00:41:09.740 It was hard to imagine him in a supermarket.

00:41:11.540 Do you know what I mean?

00:41:12.160 He was like a walking special effect.

00:41:14.580 So there was something totally unique to them.

00:41:16.820 I mean, you get Dwayne Johnson, who's probably the closest thing these days.

00:41:20.860 But it's not the same, I think.

00:41:23.020 They were so pumped up.

00:41:24.460 No pun intended.

00:41:25.920 And I think also they just worked with great action filmmakers.

00:41:29.100 There's something about their films.

00:41:30.620 They were working with James Cameron and Paul Verhoeven.

00:41:33.520 And you got really, really interesting action films out of it.

00:41:36.840 And I think that they weren't working in that kind of factory like you get with Marvel,

00:41:41.060 where it's the same kind of film.

00:41:42.400 It doesn't really matter who's in it because you know what you're going to get.

00:41:45.360 Like, these big, crazy movies were being crafted around these guys' screen image.

00:41:52.400 And so you got really bizarre but cool films.

00:41:56.340 Another thing I noticed with all these action heroes you highlight in the book is all of

00:42:00.180 them came from poverty.

00:42:01.880 And also, you know, very adverse backgrounds.

00:42:04.180 You know, Stallone got beat as a kid.

00:42:06.480 Same with Schwarzenegger's dad was abusive and he had alcohol problems.

00:42:10.140 And they all had to work incredibly hard to get to where they were.

00:42:13.520 I think that might have given them a bit of grit.

00:42:16.680 You know, today a lot of actors come from middle class backgrounds and they went to

00:42:19.860 college and then they become an actor.

00:42:22.520 And something about that doesn't give you the same sort of cachet.

00:42:26.600 Yeah, definitely.

00:42:27.400 I think there was something about almost all of these guys.

00:42:30.020 Like you say, they couldn't fail.

00:42:33.200 They had something to prove and they were going to prove it.

00:42:35.040 And they weren't going to give up.

00:42:35.940 I don't think Stallone or Van Damme who came to America and he was sleeping in a car.

00:42:40.280 And I mean, these guys were just, they were not going to give up.

00:42:44.120 And you're right.

00:42:44.560 A lot of them had really tough upbringings and difficult relationships with their fathers,

00:42:50.000 like you say, in lots of cases.

00:42:51.420 And I think there was definitely something to prove with a lot of them.

00:42:54.520 And there was this kind of relentlessness and drive that they had for real that I think

00:42:59.800 then translates into the movies.

00:43:01.780 And you can see in any of these movies that these guys really, you know, they're going

00:43:06.140 to, they're going to, they're not going to give up.

00:43:08.260 So these movies that these guys starred in, they're 30, 40 years old now, but they're still

00:43:12.700 a big part of our pop culture.

00:43:14.380 Why do we keep going back to them?

00:43:15.660 What's the appeal of these movies, even in 2023?

00:43:17.680 I think part of it is the simplicity of these movies.

00:43:22.520 They're not generally part of a big, complicated mythology.

00:43:26.460 You can just pick up a Predator or a Terminator and you just kind of get it straight away.

00:43:31.060 They have a kind of like a primal, a kind of, I don't know, they just appeal to like that

00:43:36.180 part of your brain that just wants to watch one person go up against an army and prevail.

00:43:41.020 And I don't think any movies have done it better or more entertainingly.

00:43:44.300 If you watch Commando, it's so much fun still today just to watch Arnold going up against

00:43:50.180 a literal army of people.

00:43:52.740 And there's just a sense of fun to them and imagination and kind of an anything goes craziness

00:43:59.340 as well.

00:44:00.460 You know, I think it was fun.

00:44:02.220 We haven't talked about Jackie Chan, but Jackie Chan was also making great action movies at

00:44:06.760 this time.

00:44:07.320 And the amount of inventiveness in his films that he probably wouldn't be able to get

00:44:11.300 away with these days.

00:44:12.160 He certainly couldn't get away with it when he came to America.

00:44:14.820 And I think another thing too, I appreciate about those action movies, I get kind of annoyed

00:44:18.700 with a lot of movies do this today, but particularly action movies, modern ones, they're too self

00:44:24.160 aware about themselves.

00:44:26.120 And so you'll watch a movie made today and you'll see some sort of action thing.

00:44:30.660 And then the stars will make some sort of ironic knowing quip about, hey, we know this

00:44:35.540 is a cliche.

00:44:36.320 And so we're going to make like a sort of a subtle commentary on it.

00:44:39.500 It just takes you out of the whole thing.

00:44:41.480 And those movies in the 80s and 90s, they didn't do that. 0.97

00:44:43.740 They just, we're going to kill this guy in a weird, ridiculous way. 0.86

00:44:46.820 We're not going to even say anything about it. 1.00

00:44:48.080 Maybe a one-liner.

00:44:48.920 That's it.

00:44:50.980 Yeah.

00:44:51.320 The one-liners are essential.

00:44:52.720 But yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

00:44:54.140 I think the Expendables movies is kind of where they go wrong is they wheel on people and

00:44:59.080 then they're trying to do, you know, hey, it's Chuck Norris.

00:45:01.380 And then they'll have five minutes of jokes about Chuck Norris and they kind of forget

00:45:05.320 that it's just got to be a throwaway thing, but you've got to actually have great action

00:45:09.000 and imaginative stuff going on as well.

00:45:11.740 So if there were, I'd say, three movies from this period that you think every man should

00:45:15.880 watch, what would they be?

00:45:17.460 This is like an impossible question.

00:45:19.000 Okay.

00:45:19.540 It's really hard.

00:45:20.580 It would be hard to pin down even three per person, but I'm going to have a go.

00:45:24.820 I'm going to, I just mentioned Commando not long ago.

00:45:26.800 I think Commando still holds up as, I mean, it is, it is not a masterpiece.

00:45:31.780 It's definitely not as good as Terminator 2, but I'm going to pick it for an Arnie film

00:45:34.660 just because it's so fun and entertaining and Arnold hoists the log with one hand and

00:45:40.460 it's called John Matrix.

00:45:41.840 And it's so like ridiculous and outlandish all the way through that if anyone hasn't 0.75

00:45:46.560 seen it, you've got to watch Commando. 0.72

00:45:48.640 All right.

00:45:48.900 Commando.

00:45:49.360 Any other ones you like?

00:45:51.660 I'm going to throw in Die Hard.

00:45:52.820 It's, you know, it's obvious.

00:45:54.480 I think probably the greatest action movie of all time, the greatest action movie villain.

00:45:58.500 It's just timeless.

00:45:59.780 It's got such a great script.

00:46:01.020 So many brilliant one-liners and characters.

00:46:03.220 It's a rare action movie where you can probably quote 30 different characters in that.

00:46:07.520 It's got such a deep bench of great characters, which is very rare in action.

00:46:11.240 And then for the third one, I'm going to throw in a Jackie Chan because we haven't really

00:46:14.720 talked about him, but police story I got to see on the big screen in the Prince Charles

00:46:19.100 in London recently.

00:46:20.500 It's incredible.

00:46:21.400 It's got a shopping mall fight at the end that is so crazy and involves so much broken

00:46:28.000 glass that it's just, it's immense.

00:46:31.400 Well, Nick, this has been a great conversation.

00:46:32.680 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:46:35.220 Well, the book is now out.

00:46:36.820 So wherever you can find books.

00:46:38.580 And I'm editor of Empire Magazine, which is the world's biggest film magazine.

00:46:42.740 And that's a monthly one.

00:46:44.100 So you can head to wherever you can find magazines and hopefully find a copy of that.

00:46:48.280 Fantastic.

00:46:48.640 Well, Nick DeSimlian, thanks for your time.

00:46:49.920 It's been a pleasure.

00:46:51.120 Thank you so much.

00:46:51.680 This is great.

00:46:53.400 My guest today was Nick DeSimlian.

00:46:54.460 He's the author of the book, The Last Action Heroes.

00:46:56.520 It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:46:58.800 Make sure to check out our show notes at awim.is slash thelastactionheroes.

00:47:01.800 We can find links to resources.

00:47:02.960 We can delve deeper into this topic.

00:47:04.060 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.

00:47:14.080 Make sure to check out our website at artofmanless.com where you find our podcast archives, as well

00:47:17.860 as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much anything you'd

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The Art of Manliness - June 12, 2023

The Rise and Fall of the Golden Age of Action Heroes

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