pumping iron

The 1977 documentary is fringed with failings: theme music like the background polka of a bad porn, careening cameras that never let you become really sure of your footing, and a film with the rosy red sheen of 1970s television—or a chunk of hunky flesh. It’s probably the flesh—that’s all the movie is really, ostensibly, about. This is a documentary about musclemen, a breed as rare as mermen, a breed which expunges semen like seamen, a breed which toys about gyms and slaps each other on the ass with wet little white towels. Watch them as they loop spaghetti around forks as thick as fists, as they wait around the water cooler watching bubbles pop, as they bench 452 pounds and check out each other’s pecs as they squat! Follow them to the Mr. Olympiad contest, where one of the contestants stressed by the camera is about to make history as a six-time winner. Describing the state of elation he gains from weight-lifting, the heavy-weight shrugs: “It’s like coming. When I’m lifting it’s this sexual sigh, it’s like every time I lift a weight I come, I’m coming all day in the gym, and then I go home and make love to my woman, I am also coming. So imagine how happy I am—coming all day.” The speaker’s name is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This isn’t so much a “movie” as a shred of historical evidence. His eyes glint as he tells the camera how he goes about “psyching-out” his competition. When he wins, as per usual, it’s no surprise. Bench that: It’ll be no surprise.