Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.

One of the reasons I don’t like writing about political documentaries is because inevitably, people don’t discuss the film... they just argue the politics. I really don’t think most modern doc makers are trying to change anyone’s mind with the films they make. I think most of them are created to service a market that already wholeheartedly agrees with the message. Bias isn’t just expected... it’s demanded. When a Fox News viewer tunes in for a hatchet job, they don’t want to be surprised or disappointed. They want a goddamn hatchet job. And when Robert Greenwald’s audience watches one of his films, they don’t want to be suddenly surprised by which way something leans politically. Today’s political documentaries are basically comfort food for the ideologically lazy, and I try to avoid them as much as possible.

But it’s hard to turn down a film like RUNNING WITH ARNOLD, which deals not only with the modern political scene but also with questions of celebrity, specifically one of the most famous people in the world right now, Arnold Schwarzenegger. By now, it’s an old joke to refer to him as “The Governator,” which is sort of amazing when you think how bizarre it seemed when he first seriously announced his intention to run for office. This film, directed and written by Dan Cox, deals primarily with Arnold’s decision to run and then the process itself, and there’s no doubt by the end of the relatively brief running time where Cox stands on the issue of Arnold. Personally, I found myself turned off not by the factual material, but by the strident, almost smarmy tone of the entire thing.

I didn’t vote for Arnold. And now that he’s served his time in office and we’ve seen how he lives up to the promises he makes, I would never vote for Arnold. But my decision to support him as a public servant has nothing to do with his personal life, and I resent the way Cox strains to paint Arnold as a sexual predator.

Ultimately... who cares? Anyone who saw PUMPING IRON in the ‘70s has a pretty good idea of who the “real” Arnold Schwarzenegger is. Or at least, who he was at that point. He was a fucking animal. He was all ambition and appetite, and if you listen closely, Arnold laid out all his plans for world domination back then. At the time, he came across as one more fame-hungry fringe personality, a cartoon hustler. I love PUMPING IRON, and I love that Arnold is sort of this crazy asshole who enjoys fucking with his competition and talking about how he’s going to take over the entire world. I love that everything Arnold talked about back then, he ended up doing for real. Maybe the exact details are a little different, but the general shape of his dream has come true exactly as he predicted. First he conquered bodybuilding and became the best in the world. Then he conquered movies and became the biggest box-office star and highest-paid movie star in the world. Then he made the next logical move and became a politician, and he won his election. And believe me... that was no accident. He didn’t decide to run until he knew he was going to win. I don’t think Arnold Schwarzenegger makes impetuous moves, especially concerning something important like that, something he’s been building toward for his whole public life.

The reason I didn’t vote for Arnold is because I don’t want to vote for politicians who are politicians because they crave power. I want a public servant. I want to believe that the people I vote for are driven to become politicians because they genuinely believe they can make things better for their constituents. I want to believe in the idea of politicians as servants of the people, and that is not Arnold. I don’t care if you agree with him politically or not... you cannot tell me with any degree of sincerity that he ran for governor because he thought, “Oh my god, I can seriously make California the greatest state in the nation and improve the lives of every single person living here.” That’s who I want. That person may not exist, so I’ll compromise with some degree of that. Arnold has always been so naked about the idea that he sees politics as a logical progression for a man of power that he scares me. He’s an empty vessel, and that means that someone is filling him with their own ideas, their own purpose. Career politicians who simply want to move from job to job, collecting titles like baseball cards, seem to me to be addicted to the lifestyle, in it for themselves.

I think RUNNING WITH ARNOLD gets to that, but I think it just barely makes the right points. Instead, it’s much more interested in painting Arnold in a poor personal light, and that emphasis is what ruins it as a movie. Cox isn’t a subtle filmmaker, either, so the combination of the obvious bias of the film and the clumsy way it makes those points is probably what makes it so off-putting to me as a whole. Alec Baldwin’s narration is a poor choice. I love Baldwin when he allows himself to cut loose, like on 30 ROCK. I hate him when he’s busy jamming his politics down my throat, and I think his association with film is part of what feels so insincere. There is some compelling footage here, and I think Arnold is revealed as a blank in sequence after sequence. I’m sure his most devoted fans will see things differently, and they’ll claim that Cox makes Arnold look bad unfairly. I may disagree with the way Cox contextualizes some of the footage he uses, but the footage itself is incredibly damning, and that’s where I do think the film succeeds in part. This is Cox’s first film, and I have to think that he’s got potential. If he had tried to tell this story with less snark and if he had trusted the footage to communicate for him, he might have made something great. As it is, I’ll consider this a near-miss and hope that he learns a bit of discipline his next time out.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles