The Terminator franchise is littered with interesting pieces of movie trivia – whether that relates to casting choices like singer, Billy Idol, as one of director James Cameron’s first choices for the liquid metal assassin – the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face being generously lubricated with K-Y Jelly for his turn as the killer Cyborg in The Terminator (1984), to Terry Crews biting the bullet off-screen in Terminator Salvation.
The myriad of interesting franchise factoids is a long list worthy of a good plundering, though one of the most notorious pieces of Terminator trivia involves the near-casting of O.J. Simpson as T1’s eponymous Terminator…
Yes, I’m sure you’ve heard the story before, of course you have…
James Cameron himself has regaled interviewers many times over the years with the anecdote, but here’s a recap: the head of Orion Pictures (the company which distributed The Terminator) Mike Medavoy, had a brainwave at a party about how to get The Terminator off the ground with some, let’s say, imaginative casting – in which actor and American Footballer, O.J. “The Juice” Simpson was to play 1984’s murder machine from the future, The Terminator.
James Cameron stated:
“This was when everybody loved him [O.J.], and ironically that was part of the problem — he was this likable, goofy, kind of innocent guy.”
James Cameron
It seems that Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was originally eyed to portray the world-weary future war soldier Kyle Reese (later played by Michael Biehn), was also approached by Mike Medavoy about O.J. Simpson.
Arnold said:
“Medavoy came up to me at a screening and told me that they already had the Terminator cast with O.J. Simpson,”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Luckily enough though (given the dark turn O.J.’s life would take less than a decade later), James Cameron didn’t agree with Mike Medavoy’s choice – and with an eerie prophecy of what was to come, Jim said:
“Plus, frankly, I wasn’t interested in an African-American man chasing around a white girl with a knife”.
James Cameron
And now it seems, this legendary piece of trivia has cycled back around once more, as last year TheTerminatorFans.com interviewed the very talented sound engineer for Terminator 2: Judgment Day and True Lies, the late Tim Boyle, about his career in sound, and, strangely enough, the Terminator franchise and its connection to O.J. Simpson resurfaced.
Tim Boyle stated:
“There’s a funny story about him [James Cameron] on- I believe it was True Lies, I talked Brad [Fiedel] into doing a complete orchestral score, Brad just hadn’t done that before, and uh, he used an orchestrator for True Lies named Shirley Walker – a lovely woman, unfortunately she’s gone now but she was one of the true talented composers / arrangers / orchestrators in Hollywood. Great woman. Great, great great woman. And we were doing the movie over at Sony, and in those days there’s no big flat screen TV we were projecting in, but in the corner of the studio was this little black and white television, and on the television there was this epis- something was happening in the world, and what it was was O.J. Simpson… ? Driving along the freeway, and we finished the session, got all the music done, and sitting around that little television was Brad, myself, a fella named Bill Talbot – who was our maintenance guy, Jim Cameron and- I think that was probably about it, we’re all just sitting there and we’re glued to this TV set watching O.J. drive along with the white Bronco. And I realised, I can- I said: “You know Jim, you’ve got two studios dubbing your film – and I know you’re paying twenty-five hundred dollars – hourly, that means you’re spending five thousand dollars an hour, to get this film dubbed, and here you sit with us watching O.J. Simpson on this little TV…” *laughs* and he looked at me, harshly, and he said: “You know, no matter what – this film will get made. This on the television… ? Will never happen again. I’m watching the O.J. thing.” That’s an example of why Jim is who he is, you know, he loves people. He loves to see what people are doing, you know, and I think that comes across in all his films.”
Tim Boyle
It does make you wonder what was going through James Cameron’s mind as he watched O.J. Simpson racing away from police in that white Bronco; perhaps the realisation that he, and the rest of the world, had totally misjudged the character of “The Juice” and, perhaps, the close call that, the franchise which made his name, could possibly have been “terminated” if the lead had indeed been a suspected murderer.
As Jim had confidently predicted; True Lies did indeed “get made”, and saw the power-house team of Director James Cameron and movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, rake in $378.9 million at the box office. True Lies 2 was planned to go into production after James Cameron had finished with Titanic but due to world events, and the sensitive climate surrounding terrorism, it resulted in the big screen return of super spy Harry (Schwarzenegger) and Helen Tasker (Jamie Lee Curtis) being put on ice.
A TV show was announced by Terminator Salvation Director ‘McG’ in 2019. McG approached James Cameron about a reboot which is planned to hit Disney+ at some point in the future.
We hope Terminator Fans will check back to our website for the full interview with Tim Boyle next week, to hear more about Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Brad Fiedel and Tim’s extensive career in the industry.
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