9 Ways Plot of Arnold's Nixed Movie Mirrors His Scandal

Before the world learned he’d fathered a child with his mistress, Arnold Schwarzenegger was due to star in his first post-governor film: Cry Macho, a story that bears nine weird similarities to the Governator’s own recent tale, learns the Daily Beast after taking a look at the 1975 novel on which the film is based. First, Arnold’s character, cowboy Mike Milo, is a buff former star. Both character and man have defined their work in terms of sex, with Arnold comparing bodybuilding to intercourse and Milo using phallocentric cowboy-speak.

Both Milo’s ex-wife and Maria Shriver are onetime journalists. Milo engages in “petty adulteries” and finally a full-blown affair. But the central plot revolves around his quest, at his ex-boss’s request, to kidnap the son the boss fathered with a Mexican woman—a boy who’s now 11, around the same age as Schwarzenegger’s illegitimate son. When Milo finds the boy, he himself becomes involved with the mother. The boy later asks the former star: “Why can’t you be my father?” Click through for more odd similarities. (More Arnold Schwarzenegger stories.)