Boom! This is Books & Biceps #380!

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If you’re a new subscriber you’ll love this profile that the New Yorker ran on us.

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The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood’s Kings of Carnage by Nick de Semlyen

Over the holidays I find myself watching a ton of 80s and early 90s action movies late at night when everyone’s asleep, which is why it’s the perfect time for one of the most “Books & Biceps” books I’ve ever recommended here in B&B. It’s definitely a first ballot B&B Hall of Famer.

Not only do we have an in depth look at all of our favorite action heroes (Arnold, Sly, Norris, Willis, Seagal, Lee, Van Damme, Snipes, etc…) but we also have A+ writing and research by author Nick de Semlyen.

In short, he wrote this book for us, the amazing Sophisticated Meathead crew.

From the personal paths to fame for all the stars mentioned above, to brilliant behind-the-scenes stories and hijinks and drama and ego clashes on the sets of Commando, Conan, Predator, Rocky, Rambo, Die Hard, Hard to Kill, Bloodsport, Delta Force and on and on, you’ll be saying “that’s awesome” to yourself 100 times while reading it.

I loved this book and when I reached out to Nick to tell him a while back, I asked if he’d be up for an exclusive Books & Biceps interview for us because, as you can imagine, I had questions…

Being the gracious action aficionado that Nick is, he agreed. So please enjoy this week’s B&B Q&A with Nick de Semlyen:

Finkel: The beginning of the book tracks Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger as they rise from obscurity to Hollywood meathead mega stars. Most people know about Arnold’s dedication to fitness from his bodybuilding days, and Stallone certainly got beyond jacked for his films… BUT… I’m not sure people realize just how intense and insane about fitness and diet Sly was. You describe how he trained John Travolta while directing Staying Alive and how he made Dolph Lundgren go through marathon boxing sessions for Rocky IV while making him “eliminate dairy and beef and start every day eating huge spoonfuls of wild rice soaked in apple juice.” What was the wildest “Stallone is a weightlifting lunatic” story you uncovered?

De Semlyen: Stallone remains a fitness fanatic to this day: his daughters Sistine and Sophia recently revealed on their podcast that he used to make them get up every day at 6am and do push-ups, sit-ups, dead lifts and shotput throws. (Following all that, they’d wind down by reciting poetry with him.) But back in the 1980s his routines were truly wild. For a while he ate only burned toast, his body-fat percentage plummeting to a dangerous 2.9%. And on Rocky III, drinking 25 cups of coffee a day, he got so dizzy that he had to repeatedly do headstands to get the blood back into his head. “I honestly wouldn’t advise anybody to train the way I did,” he would later say. No kidding.

The section in the book where you discuss Jackie Chan’s movie beginnings and how he met Bruce Lee is phenomenal. In a way, Lee’s legacy is a shadow over several of the films you mentioned in terms of fight sequences… If Lee hadn’t died suddenly in 1973, who is the one actor you profile in this book you’d have loved to see him team with for a classic 80s action movie and why? I think a buddy/action movie with Bruce Lee and Arnold would have been incredible. Like Twins but with explosions and brawls.

Bruce Lee is definitely the spiritual forefather of a lot of these guys, and not just Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan, who both worked with him at the start of their movie careers. “I fell in love with his magic, his inside power,” said Jean-Claude Van Damme once, remembering seeing Enter The Dragon when he was 13 and how it inspired him to start doing martial arts. Steven Seagal even claimed to have met him (and accused him of “bad-mouthing” other martial artists), though the chronology there is highly suspect. Lee never did a true double-act movie, but long wanted to do a movie that was a hybrid Western/ kung fu movie: it’s fun to imagine the two Bruces, Lee and Willis, teaming up to clean up the Wild West — maybe a riff on the little-seen but brilliant 1971 film Red Sun, which starred Toshiro Mifune and Charles Bronson.

After Die Hard was a hit, you write about a classic moment where Arnold saw Bruce Willis at a restaurant and shouted so everyone can hear: “You know why you’ll never be an action star, Bruce? Toothpick arms.” I love everything about this. You discuss the rivalry between all the men in this book a lot (Stallone, Arnold, Willis, JVCD, Chuck Norris, etc…). What was your favorite moment/exchange that exemplified the competition between all these guys?

For drama, it’s hard to beat the moment when Stallone hurled a flower pot at Schwarzenegger’s head at the 1976 Golden Globes. But in terms of ridiculousness and sheer entertainment value, I love the whole Van Damme/ Seagal feud, which simmered throughout the 1990s before coming to a boil at, of all places, Stallone’s house in Miami in 1997. “When you’re sober, if that day ever comes, come and say shit to me. I don’t care how small you are or how girlie you are. It won’t matter,” Seagal later claimed to have told his nemesis. But according to Stallone, it was Seagal who ended up fleeing the premises before a fight could break out. The mind boggles in imagining how the surreal, testosterone-drenched scene unfolded — not least as eyewitnesses apparently included Shaquille O’Neal, Madonna and Don Johnson. Peak ’90s.

One of my absolute favorite parts of these movies has to do with the characters names. From Rocky’s foes (Clubber Lang, Apollo Creed) to Arnold’s roles (John Matrix, Dutch) to the champion, Steven Seagal (Mason Storm, Casey Ryback)… Since I consider you an expert now, what goes into making the perfect action hero movie name? And which is your favorite?

Weirdly, a LOT of these action heroes were called John — John Matrix, John Rambo, John McClane, John Spartan, et al. It probably has something to do with the clean, firm, one-syllable terseness of the name, so solid that you can pair it with any manner of ludicrous surname and it’ll still sound tough. But for me, a truly great action-hero name has to go for broke, swing for the fences, think big across the board. Gibson Rickenbacker, as played by Van Damme in Cyborg, is a great example of this (with a name like that, he was never going to become an accountant). Seagal’s Mason Storm scores highly (at one point Hard To Kill was actually titled The Seven-Year Storm). Also fun to say out loud: Marion ‘Cobra’ Cobretti (Stallone in Cobra), Jericho Cane (Schwarzenegger in End Of Days), and perhaps my favourite, Van Damme’s Chance Boudreaux in Hard Target. “What kind of a name is Chance?” someone asks him. “Well, my momma took one,” he replies. Indeed.

ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE LAST ACTION HEROES HERE

I only “save” a few things in my Instagram feed, mainly swim workouts, burger/pizza places near me and sick garage gyms.

Look, I love my Flex Factory, and it works for me, but there are levels to the garage gym game and as far as suburban garage gyms go, where the gym is actually in the garage (and not a giant building out back or in a ridiculous basement in a huge mansion) this one below might be the coolest. I mean, this dude has every piece of equipment you’d want, plus sweet overhead lighting, posters and more. And it’s in a normal garage. Hell, this guy could be your neighbor. And if he is, he should be your best friend. He’d be mine, haha.

You gotta see this one:

If you’re a guy over 40 and you’ve been looking for a new digital magazine that’s written for midlife men, by midlife men, on the topics that actually matter to us: family, fitness, fashion, finance, food & fun, then join us at Midlife Male.

I write a column every Tuesday called The Manologue. This week, I share one of the coolest sport and business stories you’ll ever hear: Roger Staubach’s rise from high school JV to the Navy, the Heisman Trophy, Vietnam, the Cowboys and the $600M business exit you probably didn’t know about:

The chaotic days of the holiday season are upon us… The kids are home. Winter is here. Relatives are around… You’re planning trips, taking trips, packing, unpacking, trying to stay focused in between, doing cool stuff while somehow also feeling like every day only has 6 hours of daylight.

Then all of a sudden, it’s 2026 and the kids are in school and your schedule goes back to normal… BUT… you’re spent. You haven’t opened a book in a month. You’ve barely had time to work, let alone work out.

You did a lot this holiday season, but if feels like you did nothing. Like you didn’t accomplish anything unique or interesting for YOU!

Now, what if you combined two things you love: reading and a great book into ONE CHALLENGE! And what if that challenge lasted all of December and was broken up into doable, and phenomenal, bite-sized pieces:

10 pages/day. 1 home workout/day.

By January 1st you’re in better shape and you read a book that will stick with you forever.

Sounds awesome, right? You’re in luck. As a bona fide Sophisticated Meathead reading Books & Biceps, we’ve got your back. That’s why I created the:

You’ll be reading one of the TOP 5 most popular B&B recommendations we’ve ever had.

Here’s the description straight from the back cover:

Experience “one of the best adventure books ever written” (Wall Street Journal) in this New York Times bestseller: the harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole.

In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.

In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.

You even get a printable Endurance Challenge checklist to track your progress.

That’s it. No fluff. No apps. No equipment needed.

Just a book, your body, and a challenge you can do anywhere, even in your old childhood bedroom or your in-laws basement in New Jersey.

By Day 30, you’ll have:

This is your Rocky IV montage month.
This is your fight against modern softness.
This is how sophisticated meatheads like us build real, lasting endurance.

Let’s lift. Let’s read. Let's goooooo!

You can do this, Books & Biceps crew!

- Jon

Think about it. You could keep doing the same old, same old… OR…

By January 1st, when the holiday season ends, you could have done 30 consecutive workouts while finishing an iconic book that you’ll never forget.

We start on December 1st.

Get your ‘Read More, Lift More’ Challenge Right Now!

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