To go along with the return to Hollywood moviemaking, Arnold Schwarzenegger is also going back to his bodybuilding roots. But instead of pumping iron, he will be pushing the paper of a couple of very familiar American Media Inc. titles.

From today’s announcement:

David J. Pecker, chairman, president and CEO of American Media, Inc. (AMI), announced that Schwarzenegger will again join forces with AMI as group executive editor for Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines. Schwarzenegger, who won bodybuilding’s top contest, the Mr. Olympia, seven times, and is the youngest man to win the Mr. Universe title, returns to AMI in the position he held before becoming Governor of California in 2003…

Read more

A media blitz these days touches many more bases than the major networks and leading daily newspapers. Witness our former Governor, who wrapped up his first week of Total Recall autobiography chest-thumping with a 2:30 p.m PT Google hangout chat hosted by What’s Trending maven Shira Lazar.

The global audience made possible by this technology was plainly obvious. Commenters awaiting the event’s start were chiming in from Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Macedonia and points beyond.

Read more

Arnold Schwarzenegger has pretty much turned into a punch line at this point in his life.

But before he nearly destroyed the state of California and acting as we know it, Schwarzenegger was part of the Austrian Army as a teen.

Arnold’s Blueprint, as part of Grantland’s 30 for 30 Shorts, touches on this topic in a 12-minute film that was released on Wednesday. If you ever wondered how Schwarzenegger got involved in bodybuilding, then this is the film for you.

Michael and Jeff Zimbalist, the two men responsible for the incredible 30 for 30 film The Two Escobars,  directed the short.

The 30 for 30 Shorts will air monthly on Grantland and Schwarzenegger will join Bill Simmons on The B.S. Report podcast on Tuesday.

There’s a great piece in the September 24 issue of Newsweek about Arnold Schwarzenegger by Laurence Leamer, a biographer whose works include several Kennedy family chronicles and another, in 2005, about the former governor titled Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Much has changed in the intervening seven years, in large part due to a May 2011 LA Times story that broke the news of Schwarzenegger’s love child. Leamer writes that although Schwarzenegger is convinced Maria Shriver’s brothers leaked that news, the siblings vehemently deny it (at the time, TMZ reported some friends of Shriver were responsible). Overall, the author paints a now less than fantastic picture of a man ostracized by his family:

“Arnold is up there by himself in his mansion all alone with his pictures and souvenirs of a career,” says one of his old friends. “He’s like Citizen Kane.”

Read more

In this day and age when everyone is a 140-character comedian, the announcement of a USC think tank endowed and led by Arnold Schwarzenegger is almost too obvious a target. Sure enough, the peanut gallery is cracking wise.

But Zócalo Square editor Joe Mathews begs to differ. He knows Schwarzenegger better than most and blogs at NBC Southern California that the news should not be cause for snickering:

As governor, he was terrific at doing what a think tank does – bringing together the best thinkers from across the spectrum together, and synthesizing new policy. His proposals in various policy areas were praised as bipartisan and thoughtful.

What the governor wasn’t as good at was turning those proposals into action, particularly on fiscal matters, sometimes because of his own political weaknesses, sometimes because the state’s broken governing system got in the way. But those failures will be useful to this new enterprise, as Schwarzenegger can apply what he learned from defeats (and maybe teach people how not to repeat them).

Read more

The list of reasons why long-time Hollywood celebrity private investigator Paul Barresi (pictured) was banned from attending his father’s funeral on September 29 in Lemoore, California is long and complex. But certainly one of the contributing factors is his decision to work on a book about his fractured family life, tentatively titled Bless Me Father, For I Have Sinned.

What is much more unusual is how Barresi decided to deal with this traumatic situation. In the same manner that he has staked out locations for law-firm assigned clients ranging from Sylvester Stallone to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Eddie Murphy, Barresi camped out on that day near the church and later at the cemetery, watching from afar through the lenses of high-powered binoculars.

“This was the most painful experience of my life,” Barresi tells FishbowlLA via telephone. “One of my brothers was too sick to attend, but the other two–Matthew and Mark—finally spotted me about halfway through the burial service. They squinted and looked at me with such anger and disdain. I didn’t care that they spotted me. At that point, I came out of the bushes, about 100 yards away.”

Read more

It’s amazing what 6,000 miles of land and sea can do for a beleaguered former action hero, California Governor and once special Special Olympics figurehead.

According to an Access Hollywood dispatch, the pendulum of Austrian public opinion has swung fully back in favor of Arnold Schwarzenegger and was in evidence during his dedication today of a Thal homestead transformed into a personal museum. Apparently, locals were down on the Gov well before his love child scandal, thanks to his support of the Iraq War and death penalty:

Criticism grew after Schwarzenegger refused to pardon two convicted murderers in a row in 2005 to the point where he ordered city fathers in Graz–Austria’s second largest city where he spent his youth–to strip his name from the Graz soccer stadium and send back the city’s highest award, its ring of honor.

Read more

Arnold Schwarzenegger has a memoir in the works. Simon & Schuster announced today that our fair former Governator/Gropenator has begun work on an autobiography with the tentative title Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story.

“Truly, Arnold is one of the most fascinating figures of our time, and one of the greatest success stories in the world,” Simon & Schuster publisher Jonathan Karp said in a press release. “Nobody has a life story even close to his.”

Tough to dispute that. Doesn’t mean we’ll be giving him our money though. If the libraries weren’t broke thanks in part to his tenure as governor, maybe we’d be able to pick a copy up there.

Amazingly, this will be Schwarzenegger’s second book. He published The Education of a Bodybuilder back in 1977.

On the one hand, Los Angeles magazine can be accused of knowing exactly what it was doing when it put one of the authors of its October content, rather than issue subjects, on the cover. Because if socialite Wallis Annenberg had graced the front rather than the person who interviewed her, Maria Shriver, there’s no way the glossy monthly would have been able to wrangle today’s exclusive People.com preview.

On the other hand, what kind of journalism precedent is being set here? Sure, the theme of the October issue is “The L.A. Woman” and no one currently epitomizes the good and bad of what that entails more than Shriver. But there needs to be an actual story about her, not just by her.

In a tweet promoting the People mention, Los Angeles magazine promised that this first look at the October cover is “going to surprise you.” But in FishbowlLA’s case, that’s not actually true.

Read more

Nothing like an anonymous survey of British video game journalists to highlight how the industry has greased palms on the way to overtaking Hollywood’s movie industry.

Lucy Carter of MCV magazine solicited responses from more than four dozen leading industry chroniclers. FishbowlLA’s favorite question, “What’s the best ‘jolly’ you’ve ever been on?”, revealed helicopter flights down into the bowels of the Grand Canyon and above Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Brentwood compound, requisite stints at the Playboy Mansion, and this golden itinerary:

“My trip to Los Angeles in the run-up to Modern Warfare 2’s launch in 2009 still stands out as my favorite… Having Activision splash the cash on VIP tickets to Universal Studios and dinner at one of the most expensive restaurants in town is an experience I’ll never forget. After all, you’ve not been on the Jurassic Park ride until you’ve been on it with Jon Blyth and half of Zoo magazine.”

Read more