The King of Pumping Iron III

Over the weekend, when I wasn't writing I was watching movies.

I caught The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. It's a documentary about a guy named Steve Wiebe. He gets laid off. To kill all the extra time, he starts playing the Donkey Kong machine in his garage. Whaddaya know, the kid's a prodigy. He beats the all-time high score set by Billy Mitchell in 1982. But Billy's been around for so long, his reputation and score are considered unassailable. Twin Galaxies, the organization that judges classic arcade game competition, throws out Wiebe's high score because it was proven via videotape, using a machine with what they consider to be a murky pedigree. Undaunted, Steve travels to Florida -- Billy Mitchell's back yard -- to take him on in a public showdown.

This doc is nothing short of phenomenal. I can't even begin to describe how wonderful and entertaining this movie is. At first, I was totally behind Billy Mitchell, this arrogant, over-the-top dude who has spent his entire adult life as the alpha male of this very tiny, very specific community of competitive classic arcade game players.

But, beat-by-beat, you fall in love with Steve Wiebe. He walks around all the time with a slightly befuddled look, like the world's told a joke he doesn't quite get. He's described as a guy who has terrible luck, who's kinda failed at a lot of stuff in life, but he's extremely focused and detail-oriented. They almost intimate that he might have a touch of Asperger's Syndrome, a condition I only know about because I subscribe to Wired.

Steve is the classic underdog, struggling against Billy Mitchell and his entrenched gang of hangers-on and yes-men. While Billy's getting his picture taken and acting as the spokesperson of competitive video gaming, Steve is just this dude sitting his his garage... who happens to be the better player.

Steve is a man with a good heart. He's surrounded by people who love him. He appeals to that Capraesque desire most people have to believe that, if you play by the rules, do your best and be a good person, no matter what the world throws at you, you'll still get a shot a coming out on top in the end. Steve undenyable ability is one thing. It's only when the talent is paired with his inherent goodness that Steve finally begins to sway the Twin Galaxies crew.

Director Seth Gordon is fucking INCREDIBLE. It's stunning, the shit he gets. Above all, he's a gifted editor. There are montage sequences in this picture that are jaw-dropping in their skill and power. This is FILMMAKING. I've often thought doc is where you go for some of the best editing in the world. In doc, you can't write what the characters are going to say. You have create what you need the audience to know via found words and images. I know I sound like I'm drifting into hyperbole. So be it: I was literally awe-struck by some of the shit I saw in this movie.

I laughed until I was in pain, and choked up a bit at the end. This flick is proof you can find some of the most powerful messages in the smallest of stories. To the world at large, Steve Wiebe is the subject of a brief human interest puff piece on the local news. But in his world, the guy is fucking Rocky.

By a total coincidence, Pumping Iron arrived in my mailbox at the same time, thanks to the magic of Netflix. I saw this years ago, I think when I was a freshman in high school. For whatever reason, I thought about catching up with it again and randomly tossed it in my queue. Boy howdy, am I glad I did.

This is 1977 doc about the world of professional body-building. It stars a 28-year-old Arnold Schwartzenegger. He's the undefeated champion. The doc tracks Arnold's defense of his title.

Pumping Iron is stunning to watch, mostly because the whole time I was watching, I couldn't shake the thought: "This man is my governor." It's back when Arnold's young and hasn't yet developed a PR filter. He has a monologue in which he describes why he loves bodybuilding: it makes him feel like he cumming all the time. "Like when you're with a woman... I'm cumming all day, I'm cumming all night." Arnold says he first got into bodybuilding back in Austria because he would "look at dictators... great men who would be remembered for hundreds of years..." and he wanted that. He comes right out and talks about how he fucks with the other contestants' heads to get an edge.

He's the arrogant, power-entrenched guy who wins every year. Arnold Schwartzenegger is the Billy Mitchell of Pumping Iron.

The scrappy underdog is Lou "Louie" Ferrigno. He trains in a basement in the Bronx. His dad quits the police force to become his son's trainer, manager and coach. They talk about Louie overcoming his hearing disabilities. Like Steve Wiebe, he's a slightly-damaged guy with a big dream. Also like Steve Wiebe, he's a little better and stronger than Arnold.

But, in this movie, that bad guy wins. Arnold wins yet again, and retires from professional bodybuilding on camera. Louie takes third. He's visibly heart-broken.

Even though Louie's bigger, Arnold gets under his skin. And he's clearly the better showman. He says in an interview that he "has no weak points. I had weak points two years ago, but I got rid of them." That may sound like arrogant posturing but, when you actually watch him in action, Arnold dominates the stage. His body's huge and defined, his poses heroic. Arnold even has a signature move: he stops to stroke his chin every once in a while, as if casually contemplating his next pose. Then he smiles -- that's a good one -- and throws it up. Arnold makes it look easy and fun, while the other guys nervously go through the motions. They've spent so much time in the gym that they're uncomfortable outside that little world, in front of people. They might be huge, but they're struggling with stage fright. Arnold never has that problem.

It's not just show. Arnold talks about the pain barrier you have to get through. He says he can't remember how many times he's vomited while lifting weights because of the strain. He tells the story of how he missed his father's funeral because going would have put negative thoughts in his head, with a competition coming up. This is a guy who has the goods -- the drive to succeed and win beyond what almost all of his competition. He wins because he gives up everything else in his life to make it happen. It's a philosophy very close to Hagakure.

The Arnold/Louie A-story is mirrored in a subplot among the amateur bodybuilders. We meet a guy named Mike Katz, who seems like a real contender. He's huge, and the crowd loves him. His main competition is a guy named Ken Waller. Before the match (or whatever you call these things), Ken jokes about how he's going to steal Mike Katz's t-shirt to fuck with his head. And he does. The camera crew follows Mike Katz around as he searches for his "lost" shirt. A minute later, we get the rankings: Ken Waller is first, Mike Katz trails in fourth.

It shows that bodybuilding is as much about the mental game as it is the physical. And it shows how the alpha males like Ken and Arnold get an edge on their competition by playing the mental game. In the course of the doc, it became clear that a lot of these guys are, despite their size and strength, very insecure. Some of them are making up now for inadequate feelings from their youth. And the Arnold Schwartzeneggers of the world smell that internal weakness and move in for the kill.

I remember when I was a really young kid and Conan the Barbarian first came out. This movie would go on to shape a lot of my creative life. At the time, though, I recall some attention on Arnold because of his bodybuilding wins. It was treated to a degree like stunt casting, kinda like when a pro wrestler scores a role these days.

Pumping Iron captures that tiny slice of time between his stardom in the microscopic world of exercise magazines and bodybuilding competitions, and his stardom as one of the biggest A-list stars in history, and eventual move into politics.

Now, juxtapose these two true stories with a fictitious: Rocky III, a movie I love. In this film, it's Rocky who's surrounded by a media circus while he trains. He's the entrenched power, the face on the magazines. The training sequence cuts against scenes of Clubber Lang, keepin' it real while he sweats in his basement, driving himself to be harder and better. When Clubber beats Rocky, you're thinking of course -- one guy's focused, the other guy's goofying off and acting like a rock star. When Rocky goes back to the hood and gets down and dirty, he gets his shit back together and wins.

In Pumping Iron, we get an almost-identical sequence. Louie and his dad screaming and grunting in this shabby little basement gym, while Schwartzenegger poses for magazine covers and does push-ups with giggling blondes riding on his back. But Arnold wins. And goes on to become a major movie star and governor of California, while Lou Ferrigno goes on to star in The Hulk on TV in the '70s, and now signs autographs at Comic-Con.

And another identical sequence in King of Kong. Steve plays in his garage, while Billy poses for pictures. Billy kinda wins in a way, but the movie definitely gives Steve his own win by the end of the film.

Is there a through-line? Is there a message? Or are these different plays on a central dramatic device?

Both of these docs are fascinating enough that I could write about them all night. But I'm not... I have to get home and work on my own training sequence.