Yahoo Movies Kevin Nealon reflects on unmade 'Hans and Franz' movie and why Arnold Schwarzenegger ultimately turned it down
It started at a hotel in Des Moines. It was 1987 and Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon were touring after wrapping their first seasons on Saturday Night Live. After a disastrous season 11, the show recruited Carvey, who then suggested his close friend Nealon. Thanks to their contributions, season 12 was a return to form for producer Lorne Michaels. In this post-season glow, performing stand-up across the country, the two cast members were about to conjure two of their most popular characters on the show.
Nealon was watching TV in his hotel room and landed on an Arnold Schwarzenegger interview. Fascinated by the action star's description of his exercise and relaxation methods, he called up Carvey to watch along with him. Throughout the rest of the tour, they would slip into imitating the Terminator star. They knew this was the genesis for a potential character once they returned to New York.
On Oct. 17, 1987, the premiere date of SNL's 13th season, "Pumping Up With Hans & Franz" made its first appearance on the show. The premise involved two Austrian bodybuilder brothers, supposedly cousins of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who host a show where they ridicule people for being weak "girly men." As the announcer (Phil Hartman) informs viewers over mock Austrian yodeling, the cable show — one of SNL's structural crutches — is designed to be "the informative training program for the serious weightlifter."
Bulging grotesquely beneath sweats and speaking with comically exaggerated accents through gaps in their front teeth, Carvey and Nealon clap in unison before delivering one of the era's most iconic catchphrases: "We want to pump you up!" Over the next several seasons, the characters would utter nonsensical phrases like, "Hear me now and believe me later," and taunt viewers as "flappy, pathetic losers." They welcomed guests like Patrick Swayze and mocked Rick Moranis for shrinking them. It was a loving, spot-on spoof of Schwarzenegger's hyper-masculine persona, as well as a sendup of a steroid-obsessed '80s gym culture.
Schwarzenegger himself made two cameos during the sketch's run. The first occurred on Dec. 3, 1988, when Schwarzenegger was appearing in Twins with the episode's host, Danny DeVito. Later, on Oct. 26, 1991, as the sketch was waning in popularity, Schwarzenegger again joined the duo courtesy of a pre-tape as part of his PR campaign as the Chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. Clearly, Schwarzenegger took the homage in stride. (Meanwhile, host Steven Seagal was famously miffed at the suggestion that Hans and Franz might beat him up in a sketch.)
When Carvey left SNL in 1993, the bodybuilder characters were retired, though they reemerged during a "Weekend Update" stopover when Carvey returned to host in 1994, poking fun at the show's other recurring characters. They also popped up in a Behind the Music parody near the end of the decade. The characters have endured into the 21st century, with references to the sketch popping up in the likes of Sesame Street and World of Warcraft. Two NASA crawler-transporters are nicknamed Hans and Franz.
In 2014, the duo appeared in several State Farm commercials with Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. This places them in unique SNL company: Beldar and Prymaat Conehead also starred in their own "Jake From State Farm" commercials and a few staples of "Bill Swerski's Super Fans" appeared in a commercial with Rodgers.
But the top of the mountain for SNL sketch characters remains the feature film adaptation. It's a treacherous climb that only a small handful of characters have successfully managed. A larger contingent of sketches, including "Sprockets" and "Bill Swerski's Superfans," have fallen short in their efforts to pivot from the small screen to the silver one.
"Hans and Franz" is another example and remains a fascinating "what if" possibility. While promoting his book, I Exaggerate: My Brushes With Fame, Nealon spoke to EW about the process of writing a script for a potential film adaptation. "I wrote with Dana, Robert Smigel, and Conan O'Brien, mostly in a hotel in Santa Monica," he said. "Conan was doing The Simpsons at the time. Dana was doing something else. So it was me and Smigel a lot of the time. It was my laptop — Smigel would want to be the writer, and I would throw ideas around with him. I remember he would always be eating greasy chicken and he liked to touch the screen of the computer. I'd see these streaks of chicken grease all over my screen."
NBC Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon as Hans and Franz on 'Saturday Night Live'
Nealon also noted that Schwarzenegger wanted to co-produce and co-star in it, adding: "We also decided to make it a musical. The original title was Hans and Franz: The Girlyman Dilemma. Maybe it was Go to Hollywood, because they do go to Hollywood on a bicycle built for two, a bicycle with a sidecar, I think… Then I guess when push came to shove, Arnold and these big movie stars have like six films in development at a time, then they have to decide what to do. Arnold had just parodied himself in Last Action Hero, so he opted not to do this one."
In other words, the project's big screen aspirations got thwarted by timing. It doesn't help that the '90s were inundated with adaptations like It's Pat and Stuart Saves His Family that couldn't light up the box office like Wayne's World did in 1992.
At a time when any show or movie with a nostalgic fanbase runs the possibility of a revival, few SNL characters deserve the reboot treatment like Hans and Franz. "We have pitched it as a cartoon but by then it was passé, this was a couple of years ago," shared Nealon, pausing. "We first did that sketch in 1987 — over 35 years ago, if my fingers are correct!"
Passé or not, the sketch remains in the cultural consciousness all these years later, proving that Carvey and Nealon's creation was more than just a mere Schwarzenegger spoof.
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
Related content:
