Like most kids growing up in the ‘80s, I’ve been a fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger since the first time I saw him in The Terminator. I never missed a single one of his movies at the theater. But I guess I did miss one on TV. It wasn’t until yesterday that I discovered the Austrian Oak had directed a single movie. And it’s so not what I would have ever thought.
Yes, I was totally surprised to learn that Arnie jumped behind the camera to helm a film way back in 1992, less than a year after Terminator 2: Judgment Day decimated the box office to become one of the biggest movies of all time. I was even more shocked to learn that his directorial debut was a romantic comedy. I would have guessed an action-thriller. I would have been so wrong.
The movie in question is Christmas in Connecticut, a made-for-TV basic cable remake of the 1945 classic of the same name. Instead of turning to his typical Hollywood pals for a cast, he joined forces with some unlikely actors that aren’t action-adjacent. We’ve got Dyan Cannon and Tony Curtis starring alongside Kris Kristofferson, the latter of whom has done some actiony type fare, but is mostly known as a country superstar.
Christmas in Connecticut follows a famous TV cooking show host who cannot actually cook and lives a single life in a Manhattan apartment. To boost ratings, her opportunistic producer forces her to host a live, televised Christmas dinner at a fake Connecticut farmhouse for a heroic forest ranger. The crew scrambles to fake a perfect family and hide her complete lack of culinary skills, but the elaborate fraud gets complicated when she unexpectedly falls in love with their rugged guest.
Arnold was so unhappy with the outcome of his film that he still calls it “a total failure”. The guy hates it so much, he refused to mention it in his memoir Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, and it was omitted from his three-part Netflix documentary simply called Arnold.
The Terminator Sneaks Into a Christmas Movie
Schwarzenegger jumped behind the camera to direct Christmas in Connecticut almost immediately after wrapping Terminator 2. With the sequel still fresh in his mind, he even snuck in a meta-reference to James Cameron’s hit, sticking one young actor in the T-800’s black leather jacket and glasses while having him utter Arnie’s famous catchphrase, “I’ll be back.” That wasn’t enough to make anyone notice whose name was listed in the credits as the director.
Going one step further, he even stuck himself in front of the camera for a quick blink-and-miss cameo that had him showing up during the chaotic live TV broadcast. He can be seen exactly one hour and sixteen minutes into the runtime, sitting in a chair in front of a media truck. He’s playing one of the crew members, and his dialogue, spoken into a phone, is muffled, reduced to nothing more than background noise.
Don’t worry. No one noticed that either.
Why Arnold Schwarzenegger Chose a TV Movie
So how the heck did Mr. Olympia, known for such action classics as Conan the Barbarian, Commando, Predator and Total Recall, wind up directing some throwaway TNT telefilm that no one remembers?
It’s an interesting bit of lore. Arnold Schwarzenegger made his directorial debut with an episode of Tales from the Crypt. He was considering a career pivot, and wanted to see if he had a future in directing. Afraid of risking his massive box office presence at the time, he signed onto the low-risk task of taking on a TV show.
Tales from the Crypt felt like the right move, as the anthology series had already invited a strange roster of names to come in and handle episodes. He took on Season 2’s second episode called The Switch, which starred Christmas Vacation favorite William Hickey and John Travolta’s wife Kelly Preston in the tale of an elderly man who swaps bodies with some young stud.
The experience proved to be a total blast, and Arnie was hooked. He even used the opportunity to toss himself into the opening, where he can be seen pushing the Crypt Keeper out of the way to introduce the story himself.
The confidence was now there to do something bigger. The Governator decided to make a feature-length movie. But he was still worried about what it might mean for his name as a marquee action icon. Knowing whatever he took on could be a huge box office bomb, he went for something that couldn’t possibly fail. Something that was so low stakes, if it went belly up like a cow in a ditch, no one would notice.
So out of a pile of screenplays on his desk, he very smartly and strategically pulled one that was super low-budget. He went with a family-friendly basic cable remake of Christmas in Connecticut that would air exclusively on TNT. A channel mostly watched by grandmas at that time. Not T-800 Heads hungry for the next Arnie explosion fest.
A Christmas Movie Nobody Wanted
Christmas in Connecticut debuted to a sound no louder than an air-soft rifle piffing off a rubber bullet. Can’t really say it was a bomb, as there was no box office to speak of. And the ratings were never going to bring in broadcast television numbers. This wasn’t an NBC Wednesday Night Movie. It was just a throwaway holiday nothing burger floating around the release schedule whenever TNT needed a hole to fill.
In the oddest move, TNT didn’t even save this Yuletide feel-good laugher for December. They debuted it on April 13, 1992, perhaps as some kind of belated April Fools joke. The movie was a snow-covered romance, and it got dumped into the middle of spring, right when the weather outside the window was heating up.
Critics at the time completely shredded Christmas in Connecticut. To say they didn’t like it is an understatement. It was slammed for its “sloppy editing, bizarre transitions, poorly composed shots, and pointless camera zooms.” It was also called “muddled, stilted and disjointed.”
Not one to take criticism lightly, Arnie quickly turned away from any further directing aspirations and walked away as quietly as he could, hoping his fans, who didn’t even know the holiday movie was a thing, wouldn’t really notice. And that worked. I didn’t hear about it until 2026.
While Schwarzenegger considered Christmas in Connecticut one of his biggest failures as an artist, and it kept him from ever directing again, there was one shining light. When he later became Governor of California, he remembered his days managing such a tight production budget working for TNT, and signed the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program into law in 2009.
In just its first two years, Arnold’s California Film & Television Tax Credit Program handed out $300 million in tax credits, helping keep productions in the Golden State and generating $2 billion in direct spending. The program became a permanent part of California’s Hollywood machine, and the California Film Commission continues to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits each year to productions from major studios and streamers, including Netflix, Disney, and Warner Bros.
The idea is simple: give productions a financial reason to film in California, and keep that movie money flowing through the state’s economy while supporting tens of thousands of crew jobs.
This might not have happened had Arnold not made his one and only movie as a director. While Christmas in Connecticut was a cold turkey upon arrival, it did ultimately do some good.
Arnold, Stallone, and the Directing Rivalry
After suffering the big blow that was Christmas in Connecticut, Arnie did a couple of high-profile cameos before taking on one of his most ambitious projects to date, Die Hard director John McTiernan’s Last Action Hero. Which turned out to be almost as big of a disappointment as Christmas in Connecticut.
The meta-blockbuster was supposed to be a different kind of action extravaganza, but it turned into a catastrophic commercial failure. Columbia Pictures placed it directly in the path of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, and it ended up getting devoured. Many cinema historians mark Last Action Hero as the moment Hollywood shifted from the muscle-bound action era to a more IP-driven industry. Which is actually ironic considering all the IP jokes peppered throughout its runtime.
Back then, there was a fierce rivalry between Arnold and his now-pal Sylvester Stallone. And that may have been one of the main catalysts behind the Styrian Oak’s determination to become a director. He’d witnessed Sly being able to juggle both directing and acting with a deft hand. Stallone made his directorial debut with Paradise Alley, just two years after the release of Rocky. And it was a hit movie that has gone onto become a classic.
Sly also successfully directed Rocky II and Rocky III, both of which were huge box office phenomenons at that time. The Italian Stallion didn’t suffer significant shrapnel from a bomb until 1983, when he took on the Saturday Night Fever legacy sequel Staying Alive, starring John Travolta. It was the first time he wasn’t directing himself in front of the camera, instead giving all his attention to longtime friend Travolta. It proved to be a massive disaster, even if some cult fans have come around on it in the years since.
Stallone might have been knocked to the mat by Staying Alive’s reception both at the box office and by fans, but he wasn’t down for the count. He returned to the driver’s seat just two years later to helm Rocky IV, which became the highest-grossing film in that franchise for the time. He would also later direct Rocky Balboa in 2006 and then revive his ex-vet favorite John Rambo for the single-titled Rambo in 2008. Sly’s last directorial effort was 2010’s The Expendables, which spawned an all-new franchise for him and all his aging action pals.
Maybe it was Arnold’s jealousy of Sly’s successful directing career that spurred him into tricking Stallone into taking part in Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot. Whatever it was, Schwarzenegger proved to himself that maybe he couldn’t do everything. So far, he’s never tried to direct again.
Arnie Is Back for Christmas
Arnold hasn’t given up on Christmas, though. He made the full-on family holiday favorite Jingle All the Way back in the day, and now, this Yuletide season, he is playing Santa in The Man With the Bag. It’s not a “TV movie” per se. It’s going to debut on streaming. That’s different. But like Christmas in Connecticut, there won’t be any box office receipts to count. Let’s just hope Arnie has made a true Christmas classic this time out. I’m rooting that he really is back.
