The Fix

Arnold brushes off his past, Mort Zuckerman remembers meeting Brando and Spike Lee goes cable. Plus: Straight guys like to watch gay guys!

Published August 28, 2003 2:37PM (EDT)

Yesterday, after the Oui magazine interview surfaced in the media (see below) Arnold Schwarzenegger was on a radio talk show and made a statement that amounted to a brushoff, saying, "I haven't lived my life to be a politician." Except he learned somewhere along the line how to deal with pesky facts like a good Republican: just brush 'em off. (Washington Post)

It really is all about picking up chicks. Today is the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, and New York Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman was there. He remembers it as a day of valor, and a day when he met Marlon Brando, who was speaking French to a woman. To establish contact, Zuckerman said, "That is the worst French accent I have ever heard." Brando smiled. "Well, I just made this movie in Tahiti ["Mutiny on the Bounty"], and if you wanted to meet a woman there, you had to speak French. This is the best I could do." (New York Daily News)

Spike Lee, who made last year's underappreciated "25th Hour," is frustrated and is turning to cable TV. The director says Hollywood is making "sequels, action movies, silly comedies, comic-book movies" so he's shooting a movie now for Showtime called "Sucker Free City" because "you're free to do what you want. You're not restricted in areas like language and violence." That should help, since the film is about San Francisco gangs told from the perspectives of three young men: one white, one black and one Chinese. (IMDB)

Speaking of cable TV, it seems to be changing the world. Now we have a site called Straight Eye for the Queer Shows where four straight dudes recap and comment on "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," and link to sites like the "Boy Meets Boy" page on Bravo and the Carson Kressley fan site. The guys -- Matt, Dallas, Nando and Larry -- claim that they just "really like some of the reality-based TV that Bravo's been delivering to us with frosty goodness" and that they have the cred because they were "the first to register the straighteye.com domain." These fellows either covet gay-guy tips on how to be fabulous or they are paid professionals, doing extravagant P.R. work for Bravo.

-- Karen Croft

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Harrison Ford isn't afraid of the snakes he thinks are making U.S. policy decisions these days and he's speaking out against them. "I'm very disturbed about the direction American foreign policy is going," Ford told the foreign press during a promotional visit to Madrid. "I think something needs to be done to help alleviate the conditions which have created a disenfranchised and angry faction in the Middle East. I don't think military intervention is the correct solution. I regret what we as a country have done so far." (AAP)

Money Quotes
Arnold Schwarzenegger on the potential political fallout from a 1977 interview in Oui magazine in which he boasts about participating in group sex, discusses his penis size and admits to using drugs: "I haven't lived my life to be a politician." (The Hollywood Reporter)

That's putting it mildly. Here are a few choice quotes from the interview:

On joining in an orgy with other builders and one woman: "Everybody jumped on [her. We] took her upstairs where we all got together." But not everyone took their turn doing the heavy lifting: "just the guys who can fuck in front of other guys. Not everybody can do that. Some think that they don't have a big-enough cock, so they can't get a hard-on."

On whether his penis is disproportionately small: "Well, that depends on what you mean by disproportionate. The cock isn't a muscle, so it doesn't grow in relation to the shoulders, say, or the pectorals. You can't make it bigger through exercise, that's for sure ... Women have told me they're curious about its size -- you know, outgoing chicks who're just trying to be outrageous or horny. I hear all kind of lines, including 'Oh, you're hurting me; you're so big.' But it means nothing. Bodybuilders' cocks are the same size as everyone else's."

On whether he ever feels exploited by women: "No, I'd feel used only if I didn't get something out of it. If a girl comes on strong and says, 'I really dig your body and I want to fuck the shit out of you,' I just decide whether or not I like her. If I do take her home, I try to make sure I get just as much out of it as she does. The word exploited therefore wouldn't apply."

On whether he does drugs: "Yes, grass and hash -- no hard drugs. But the point is that I do what I feel like doing. I'm not on a health kick."

On chubby women: "I can look at a chick who's a little out of shape and if she turns me on, I won't hesitate to date her. If she's a good fuck, she can weigh 150 pounds, I don't care."

At least the interview won't cost him the flabby-lady vote. (Read it all on The Smoking Gun)

Best of the Rest
Page Six: Comedian Jeffrey Ross previewing jokes he's written for tonight's MTV Video Music Awards: "Courtney Love wanted to be here but she had trouble stuffing her heroin into the overhead compartment"; Britney Spears to star in a remake of "Footloose" directed by Baz Luhrmann?; Football Hall of Famer Joe Montana opens Sonoma vineyard; Cher makes $125,000 donation to public schools in California in order to keep her higher-than-regulation 10-foot wall.

The 411: MTV Video Music Awards will see Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Madonna and Missy Elliott singing up a storm, but Jennifer Lopez had other commitments; Angelina Jolie threatening to adopt another baby; Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke rumored to be heading to splitsville onaccounta Hawke's "wandering eyes"; Michael Jackson, who's turning 45, has hired a "brand-new team" that promises to make him "more acceptable and approachable."

Boldface Names: Joe Namath, now a 60-year-old, divorced father of two, says he no longer likes his Johnnie Walker red and his women blond: "I'll tell you what, I've wised up a bit. The color of the hair doesn't make a bit of difference to me anymore, and I haven't had a Scotch in, God knows, a long time." Geraldo Rivera (also 60) cuts short honeymoon in South of France to go to Baghdad. His 28-year-old bride, Erica Rivera (née Levy), says, "I just told him to go for it."

-- Amy Reiter

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