Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s self-help book and memoir Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life is now on store shelves (copies can be purchased at THIS LINK), and in that book Schwarzenegger discusses some of the terrible stuff – actually, he says terrible shit, but I didn’t want to put that in the headline – that Conan the Barbarian director John Milius had him doing during the making of that classic.
Schwarzenegger wrote (with thanks to Insider for sharing), “I learned to ride horses and camels and elephants. I learned how to jump from large rocks, how to climb and swing from long ropes, how to fall from a height. I basically went to another vocational school, this one for aspiring action heroes. Then on top of that, Milius had me doing all kinds of terrible shit. I crawled through rocks, take after take, until my forearms bled. I ran from wild dogs that managed to catch me and pull me into a thorn bush. I bit a real, dead vulture that required I wash my mouth out with alcohol after each take. (PETA would have a field day with that one.) On one of the first days of filming, I tore a gash on my back that required forty stitches.“
He obviously didn’t mind doing the terrible shit, as he returned for the sequel Conan the Destroyer and has been holding on to the hope that he’ll get to make another Conan movie, King Conan, for decades.
Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life has the following description: Written with his uniquely earnest, blunt, powerful voice, Be Useful takes readers on an inspirational tour through Arnold’s toolkit for a meaningful life. Arnold shows us how to put those tools to work, in service of whatever fulfilling future we can dream up for ourselves. He brings his insights to vivid life with compelling personal stories, life-changing successes and life-threatening failures alike—some of them famous, some told here for the first time ever.
As for Conan the Barbarian, it told the story of an orphaned boy named Conan who is enslaved after his village is destroyed by the forces of vicious necromancer Thulsa Doom and is compelled to push “The Wheel of Pain” for many years. Once he reaches adulthood, Conan sets off across the prehistoric landscape of the Hyborian Age in search of the man who killed his family and stole his father’s sword. With beautiful warrior Valeria and archer Subotai, he faces a supernatural evil.
Are you a fan of Conan the Barbarian, and will you be picking up a copy of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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