I once met ... Arnold Schwarzenegger

Communications and branding guru and former ABC producer Julian Canny met Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1970s ... The briefest interview that ever made it to air ... Arnie at "optimum extension" ... Aunty's scratched footage 

Arnie - fully extended

"Mr Olympia is waiting for you," the PR operative said ushering us into a dressing room in the bowels of the Sydney Opera House. 

"I must warn you he doesn't have much English, so keep it simple."

It was the mid-1970s and we were a small TV crew shooting a story on bodybuilding for the 6.55pm time-slot before the ABC News. 

Once inside, we exchanged puzzled looks. There was an empty chair, but no sign of the magnificent torso we were there to interrogate. 

While the cameraman set up his lights, I became aware of a series of short sharp grunts emanating from behind a curtain at the back of the room. In the next instant, the curtain was drawn back to reveal the man himself, the full walnut, his bulging biceps glistening under the camera lights.

"Arnold Schwarzenegger, the reigning Mr Olympia," his handler announced with a flourish.

"How do you spell Schwarzenegger?" I asked filling out a talent release form to him to sign.

I cued the cameraman to roll. We were half way into the first question when a camera malfunction forced us to cut.

Schwarzenegger glared and retired behind the curtain again. When he didn't reappear after five minutes I started to worry.

"What's going on, we're ready to go" I said.

"He has to pump himself up again," the PR man explained. "He won't go on camera unless he's at an optimum extension."

A few minutes later, a fully inflated Arnold returned and we started again. 

Almost immediately the cameraman signalled he was still having problems. 

"Keep rolling," I signalled back, fearing that we would be picked up by King Kong and smashed against the wall if I again called "cut". 

Back at the studio, we reviewed the footage. The cameraman had been right. A deep scratch rendered 99 percent of the interview unusable. There was however a small segment of undamaged film we were able to put to air:

ABC: Are you afraid of anything?

Schwarzenegger: No.

It must be the shortest interview the future Governor of California ever recorded. 

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