Forty-four years ago, bodybuilding wasn’t much more than just a marginal underground subculture—an obscure freak-show circuit populated by jacked-up guys in Speedos and slathered in baby oil showing off their impossible physiques in front of half-filled VFW halls. There wasn’t any real glory in the sport. No big paydays or purses. It was just another fringey demimonde desperate for something (or someone) to help it crossover into the mainstream. In 1977, it finally found that something in an American documentary called Pumping Iron…and it found that someone in a cocky, charismatic Austrian on the cusp of becoming a global superstar named Arnold Schwarzenegger. Directed by George Butler and Robert Fiore, Pumping Iron is the best kind of documentary. It initiates its unsuspecting audience into a world they most likely knew nothing about before the lights dimmed in the theater—a world of sweat, obsession, narcissism, pain, and ecstasy. And, as this hypnotic, enthralling film shows, it’s also a gladiatorial arena where sometimes physical brawn is less important to winning than manipulative mind games and cut-throat conniving. Pumping Iron is one… Click below to read the full story from Esquire
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Pumping Iron Captures the Creation of Arnold in Real Time
