Pumping Iron

Arnold Schwarzenegger Pumping Iron HD Giveaway!

pumpingiron

I love Arnold, you love Arnold, we all love Arnold! But we all haven’t seen the excellent 1977 documentary Pumping Iron, which in my opinion is essential viewing for Arnold fans. This giveaway gives you a chance to rectify this oversight with a digital HD copy of the film plus bonus features!

Watch as five-time champion Arnold Schwarzenegger defends his Mr. Olympia title against Serge Nubret and the shy, young, deaf Lou Ferrigno. From Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach, California to the showdown in Pretoria, amateur and professional bodybuilders prepare for the 1975 Mr. Olympia and Mr. Universe contests in this part-scripted, part-documentary film. Also included are two featurettes: Still Pumping and The Hard Science of Bodybuilding!

Pumping Iron (plus bonus content) available now: http://www.vudu.com/movies/#!content/611872/Pumping-Iron-plus-bonus-content

This giveaway, open to US and Canada residents only, will run until 12-20-2014 at 12:00 AM, so there’s plenty of time to rack up a whole mess of chances! Good luck!

The ways to enter are:

Raw Iron: The Making of Pumping Iron (2002)

rawiron_1 Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, Mike Katz, Franco Columbu, George Butler, Joe Weider, Bill Grant, Ken Waller, Reg Park, Ed Corney, Matty Ferrigno, Liev Schreiber, Sylvester Stallone, Bud Cort

Directed by Dave & Scott McVeigh

Expectations: Moderate.

I’m not in the habit of reviewing DVD extras, but this one seemed juicy enough considering I’ve covered all the other Arnold-related bodybuilding films. I’m hesitant to rate it, though, as it’s hard to really quantify its quality as a film. In any case, I really enjoyed watching it, and I think any big fan of Pumping Iron or Arnold would enjoy it too. So a definite thumbs up, but I’m going to forgo the stars this time.

There were over 100 hours of footage shot for Pumping Iron, so Raw Iron takes a different approach to the “Making of” documentary. Instead of simply gathering a bunch of people to talk to the camera and tell their stories, Raw Iron actually tells its story through deleted footage from the film. These scenes were kept in the vault until Raw Iron‘s release for Pumping Iron‘s 25th anniversary. This deleted footage is mostly great, too, from an unused sub-plot with Arnold trying to teach Harold and Maude‘s Bud Cort how to pump up in the gym, to the film’s bodybuilders posing on top of a Malibu mountain while listening to Arnold pontificate about “the pump.” It’s great fun to see all this unused footage.

The Comeback (1980)

The Comeback (1980)
AKA Total Rebuild

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Platz, Frank Zane, Dennis Tinerino, Boyer Coe, Mike Mentzer, Samir Bannout, Roger Walker, Roy Callendar, Ken Waller, Tony Emmott, Chris Dickerson, Casey Viator, Ed Corney, Roy Duval, Danny Padilla, Bill Pearl

Directed by Kit Laughlin

Expectations: Moderate.

The Comeback is a short film that caught a choice moment in the history of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Just a few weeks before filming for Conan the Barbarian began, on the precipice of true Hollywood stardom, Arnold decided that since he was already pumped up for that barbaric role, he’d challenge himself to prepare for a Mr. Olympia competition in only eight weeks. Most of the competitors train for at least a year to compete in this competition, but Arnold had six wins under his belt already (the sixth was the one featured in Pumping Iron), and he had the cocky, self-assured attitude to go with the accolades.

Pumping Iron II: The Women (1985)

Starring Rachel McLish, Bev Francis, Carla Dunlap, Kris Alexander, Lori Bowen, Lydia Cheng, Steve Michalik, George Plimpton, Randy Rice, Clark Sanchez, Steve Weinberger

Directed by George Butler

Expectations: Moderate. This will be an interesting re-watch, as I saw this a bunch of times growing up.

Like the competitors it portrays, Pumping Iron II: The Women is a slimmer version of its male counterpart. It successfully replicates the struggle of the previous film, between one “good & honest” bodybuilder and one “villain” bodybuilder. In reality, I’m sure it was much less emotionally charged than it appears at times in the film, and because of the fictionalizing done in Pumping Iron I was constantly watching for similar instances in this film. Due to this, Pumping Iron II actually feels even more fabricated and questionable as a documentary, but that shouldn’t discredit it, just like the previous film.

The film focuses mostly on four of the competitors, but two are clearly the stars of the show. There’s Rachel McLish, at the time the most successful female bodybuilder and responsible for bringing a lot of attention to the sport for females. She has something of a more defined model look, which is to say that she maintains her feminine physique while achieving quality muscle tone. She was the crossover star of the sport, perfect for magazine covers to interest all who gaze her way.

Pumping Iron (1977)

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, Matty Ferrigno, Victoria Ferrigno, Mike Katz, Franco Columbu, Ed Corney, Ken Waller, Serge Nubret

Directed by George Butler & Robert Fiore

Expectations: High.

Pumping Iron is a great document of a sport once regarded as a weird subculture reserved for those crazy enough to devote their lives to pumping iron. While watching the film I couldn’t escape the similarities to Perfect, depicting people’s desire to achieve perfection through working out. I did some research and found that this isn’t too far from the truth, as Pumping Iron‘s success in 1977 helped to popularize the sport and facilitate the rise of the commercial gym, leading to the fitness craze of the 1980s. And of course, it’s also the film that catapulted Arnold Schwarzenegger to stardom. He may have appeared in a couple of roles prior to its release, even winning a Golden Globe, but none of it compared to the power of Pumping Iron (which would later be eclipsed by Conan the Barbarian as Arnold’s true breakout role).

Even though Pumping Iron depicts the 1975 Mr. Olympia competition where Arnold competed for his sixth straight title, it’s not quite the raw, honest documentary it appears to be on the surface. Some of the scenes were specifically filmed to “fill narrative holes,” such as the Ken Waller football scene where he plots to steal the shirt of Mike Katz. In fact, the competition footage had already been shot and the directors came up with this scene to enhance the drama and the rivalry between two bodybuilders who were actually good friends. This makes me wonder if the touching scene in the locker room showing Katz’s crushing despair, and his subsequent, reserved happiness after hearing that Waller had won, is a fabrication also. Katz seemed incredibly genuine in that moment, though, asking the cameraman (or himself) the contemplative question of how it must feel to win. Even if this is a fake (which I don’t think it is), Katz’s intense passion to win the competition is palpable and honest.

Ewoks at the Gym

This will come as a completely random bit of WTF for most people who only know me via that Internet, but allow me to explain. My co-workers and I have kicked around a joke about Ewoks working out at Venice Beach for quite some time now. I was bored tonight and decided to make some evidence of the Ewok’s diligence in his pursuit of physical nirvana. So here you have it, Wicket at Muscle Beach wearing a Gold’s Gym tank. Watch your ankles, folks… this one packs a wallop. And yes, he’s one-handing that barbell in the second shot.

Silver Emulsion Film Reviews

Pumping Iron