Home
Here comes Arnold!'' says the publicist. It's nearly midnight on a Manhattan set for Eraser, a $70 million-plus summer-'96 action thriller. And, yes, there's Arnold Schwarzenegger strolling past wardrobe racks lined with blood-speckled combat wear. Tan, lean, and radiant, he looks almost eerily self-possessed in black T-shirt and fatigues as Eraser's witness-protection agent. He clenches a stogie between perfect teeth as he greets bystanders with a hearty ''How aah you?'' en route to a soundstage where costar Vanessa Williams awaits.
But Schwarzenegger isn't the Arnold the publicist meant. Instead, he points out a panting, slightly distracted 60-year-old man. The herald's tone of imperial arrival isn't misplaced: Eraser producer Arnold Kopelson is the hot-streak impresario behind breakout hit Seven (not to mention Platoon, The Fugitive, Falling Down, Out for Justice, and Outbreak, which together have grossed over $1 billion worldwide), and though he's a head shorter and a good deal fleshier than his flashier star, this Arnold just may be the most powerful box office muscleman on the set.
''I had to wait tables to put myself through law school,'' Kopelson says later in his comfy trailer. ''Now I'm making a movie with the most commercial actor in the world. We worked out the other day.and I said to myself, this is f -- -ing incredible that I, Arnold Kopelson, who came from Brooklyn, am making a movie with the No. 1 action star in the world.''
How does this walking late-night infomercial court the likes of Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford? Simple, Kopelson says: ''Every one of my screenplays is extremely well written.'' Kopelson has gone so far as to hire nine screenwriters (on The Fugitive) to reach that level; so far, Eraser has had a mere five. Kopelson's obsession with scripts, he says, began after Platoon ''changed the world's thinking'' in 1986 -- and soured him on the sort of pre-Platoon schlock he'd been shoveling to product-hungry foreign markets, stuff on the order of 1984's cheerleader comedy Gimme an ''F.''
As Kopelson has climbed, he's been boosted more than a little by his wife, partner, and sounding board of 20 years, Anne. Says Schwarzenegger, ''Arnold does not just rely on his male opinion, but also on a female opinion. That's the way it works in my house, too.'' Indeed, the Kopelsons' shrewd eye for material, married with their command of international venues -- 70 percent of the grosses of their last five pictures came from overseas -- has just landed them a wedding cake of a contract: Though based at Warner since 1990, in 1997 they'll move to Twentieth Century Fox for a five-year run, controlling one of the largest discretionary budget funds in movie history.
Some in the industry cluck that Fox gave away the store. But Fox COO Bill Mechanic insists, ''Last time I looked, there was still a store. Arnold walked away from bigger money to come to us, and he'll find a very supportive environment here.'' One, perhaps, where, when people shout, ''Hey, it's Arnold!'' the brass will assume it's the one from Brooklyn.
