'IRON' WILL PAYING OFF FOR SCHWARZENEGGER

LOS ANGELES - Arnold Schwarzenegger encouraged the director of Pumping
Iron, the documentary that launched him in Hollywood 25 years ago, to
re-release it unedited - including a marijuana-smoking scene.

"I would refuse to wipe out that record or change it or alter it because of
image's sake," Schwarzenegger, 55, said this week. "That would not be true
to the filmmaker."

George Butler's 1977 documentary follows Schwarzenegger as he prepares to
defend his Mr. Olympia title against fellow bodybuilders including Lou
Ferrigno.

A digitally enhanced version of Pumping Iron, repackaged with previously
unseen footage and interviews with actors and athletes influenced by
Schwarzenegger, aired on Cinemax Friday night.

Schwarzenegger retired from bodybuilding after winning the competition and
began to build a movie career, including the early Conan the Barbarian and
the breakthrough The Terminator. He shot a third Terminator this year.

He's also dabbled in politics, most recently helping to win passage of an
after-school-programs ballot measure in California, and is perceived as a
possible GOP gubernatorial candidate in 2006.

Pumping Iron follows Schwarzenegger working out or trying to psych out his
opponents. He comes across as a merry prankster, telling a reporter in one
scene that he advised an aspiring bodybuilder to scream, loudly, during poses.

Schwarzenegger may have been putting that reporter on. His claim in the
film that he missed his father's funeral because it would have affected a
competition was untrue, he says.

It was part of the "docudrama" approach needed to sell a movie about the
little-appreciated sport of bodybuilding in 1977, he said. Each bodybuilder
had a part to play in the film and he was the calculating and cocky winner,
Schwarzenegger said. "The way to get headlines, to promote the sport, was
to make outrageous statements."

His determination, however, was real and apparently boundless. As a child
in Austria, he recalls in the film, he dreamed of coming to the United
States "and being the greatest."

"I had a vision when I was a kid and I went after that vision, after that
goal, after that dream, and I would not let go until it was accomplished,"
Schwarzenegger said. He's equally dedicated now, he said, toward movies and
toward projects such as the Special Olympics.

Schwarzenegger won't say if he has greater political aspirations, but he is
unconcerned that any part of his past - such as the drag he takes off a
marijuana cigarette in Pumping Iron - will hurt him.

"I did smoke a joint and I did inhale," he said, taking a jab at President
Clinton's statement. "The bottom line is that's what it was in the '70s,
that's what I did. I have never touched it since.

"I lived a certain life, I want everyone to know that's the life I lived.
As you grow up and as you become more mature, those things change," he
said. "The only one that's perfect is God."