Friday, October 19, 2012

The one about the one with the muscles

Raw Iron (2002)
I'm covering all the "extras" and backstory that are included on the DVD under this.  Apparently Cinemax went back and interviewed everyone for the 25th anniversary of Pumping Iron and it's unspeakably cool to see everyone again and see them reflecting on what this meant to them at that time in their lives.  If anything, I may have enjoyed this more than the movie itself.  Some excellent behind the scenes on how the movie was made as well as some very cool interviews.  Quite a lot of fun backstory on the development of the show and the post-production "human statues" art exhibition to get the funding to complete the film.  Particularly fun to hear Arnold talking about the "role" he was playing in order to up the conflict/drama in the movie. 


They really did an amazing job if they had 100+ hours of footage shot that they distilled down to less than 90 minutes.  Hell, I'm lucky if I can trim out 1/5 of the pictures I take on a vacation.  It's so good, I would love to see even more footage.  I'm sure I'll be back to watch this whenever I watch Pumping Iron again.   Hard to separate reality from fantasy in a lot of Arnold's reminiscing, but it's good stuff regardless and at the end of the day, I don't really care what's real or not where Arnold is concerned, I just want to be entertained.  Very interesting getting to compare 1975 Arnold to 2002 Arnold in terms of how much more he has his schtick down later on.  He's still very fun to listen to later on, but there's something much less genuine when he's doing Arnold rather than just being Arnold.

Ahnold Quotient - 9
Seeing Future Arnold comment about his younger self definitely ups the AQ.  While he does seem to be genuine, he's absolutely hamming it up intentionally here.

Rewatchability - Milk with the cookies of Pumping Iron
It'd be hard not to watch this immediately after Pumping Iron, probably in the same sitting.

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