Opinion: Facing term limits, Gov. Arnold dips a (big) toe back into movies

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Don’t go to Fandango just yet, but word is out this weekend that former movie-star-turned-governor-turned-budget-buster-and-tax-raiser Arnold Schwarzenegger is turning back to movies shortly, at least for a brief role.

The producer for good friend and fellow cigar aficionado Sylvester Stallone let word slip recently that Schwarzenegger had agreed to a cameo role in the upcoming ‘The Expendables.’ Not good. Not during a lockdown-drag-out struggle with the Legislature over a deficit larger than the entire budgets for some governments. So Sly covered his government friend by saying, oh, no, he’s too busy.

But now that the budget is settled, the governor confirmed his role in the movie, the fourth time during his Sacramento tenure that he’s slipped away to his former pretend life. ‘Of course I would help you do a cameo, there’s no two ways about that,’ Schwarzenegger told George Stephanopoulos of his conversation with Stallone.

But, he quickly added: ‘It had nothing to do with the budget crisis or with the budget negotiations because that will be done sometime in April. I enjoy him. He’s a terrific director, writer and actor. And we hang out a lot of times together.’

Stephanopoulos asked the big fellow if he would return to the movies when term limits force him from office in 23 months, and the governor said he hadn’t really thought about that. Which is Austrian for, of course, if the money’s there.

We checked with our Hollywood sources about the Stallone movie. We’re told it’s about an aging movie star who surprises his own wife by announcing his political candidacy on a late-night TV show and goes on to oust an unpopular incumbent governor and run the state like a center populist until there’s this huge budget confrontation and then the anti-tax guy caves and agrees to loads of new levies on everyone because he says he listened to the people, although many others in the same state missed the popular demonstrations demanding to pay more income and sales taxes across the board to finance programs the legislators need to ensure their reelections.

So then this one-time political savior becomes anathema to many within his own conservative party, but the governor doesn’t really care because he can’t run for office again and is considering returning to his movie career. If the money is there.

The movie plot sounded so very familiar, but our sources swear it was fiction. At least as of earlier last week.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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