Roger Callard – Bodybuilding Legends Podcast With John Hansen [S1E2]

 John talks to Roger Callard, one of the top bodybuilders in the 1970’s. Roger was good friends and trained with Arnold Schwarzenegger at the original Gold’s Gym in Venice, California and he talks about his memories of competing in the Golden Age of Bodybuilding.

Roger won the IFBB Mr. International contest in 1978 and he competed against some of the best bodybuilders in the 1970’s. Roger talks about being involved in the movie “Stay Hungry” in 1975 and stealing Mike Katz’s t-shirt in the movie “Pumping Iron”.

John Hansen:

All right, welcome to season one episode two of the Bodybuilding Legends Podcast, brought to you by Old School Labs.

 John Hansen:

We are continuing our discussion about the movie Pumping Iron, since this is the 40th anniversary of that movie. And today’s guest is one of the guys who was out at Gold’s Gym. He’s one of the original crew of the original Gold’s Gym out in Venice, California. His name is Roger Callard, and Roger was one of the top bodybuilders during the 1970s. He was featured very extensively in Joe Weider’s Muscle Builder magazine, and he’s also a training partner and a good friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ken Waller and a lot of those guys.

 John Hansen:

We had a great discussion with Roger. Roger is also a great athlete. He went to Michigan State University, and he played football and wrestling and boxing and track and field, and he was a really great athlete. Then he moved to California in the early 1970s, around 1972. Started training with Arnold, and started competing in bodybuilding, and won the Mr. International contest in 1978. He competed against Mike Mentzer and Robby Robinson and Danny Padilla and Pete Grymkowski and a lot of the greats.

 John Hansen:

He’s got a great personality, and it was great hearing from Roger about some of the old stories of bodybuilding and training with Arnold, making the movie Stay Hungry. And he even talks about stealing Mike Katz’s T-shirt. So we’ve got a great interview coming up. Here’s Roger Callard.

Interview With Roger Callard

 John Hansen:

All right, we’re back with our guest Roger Callard, and Roger was one of the mainstays in the golden age of bodybuilding in the 1970s. He was a training partner and good friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the golden era, and competed in the IFBB Mr. America and Mr. International. And he won the Mr. International in 1978. So we’re here to talk about the movie Pumping Iron. Roger, welcome.

Roger Callard:

Hey, how are you doing John?

 John Hansen:

I’m good. Great to talk to you.

Roger Callard:

Thanks, good to be on.

 John Hansen:

Well Roger, let’s talk about those days. We talked on the phone a little bit last week, you said that those were some amazing times back in the 1970s. Now, you’re originally from Michigan, and I remember when Arnold wrote several things about you, and he always said you were a great athlete. So tell us a little bit about your athletic background.

Roger Callard:

I was a all-around athlete actually. I played baseball with Steve Garvey. At Michigan State my coaches won 12 Super Bowls, Brad Van Pelt, Joe DeLamielleure, Bill Simpson, Rich Vansaw. We didn’t have a great record, but we drafted about 11 guys, and we were a very physical team, and we were probably one of the forerunners of weight training in that era because… It’s a funny story, George Perles was our defensive back coach and he came up to me and he goes, “Callard come over here.” And I walked over, and he goes, “You’re getting too big.”

Roger Callard:

And I said, “Well, I have the highest vertical leap on the team, right?” He goes, “Yeah.” I said well, “I have the fastest 40 on the team too, right?” He goes, “Yeah.” I said, “Well, I don’t think I’m getting musclebound.” He kind of walked away and scratched his head. And a year or so later he went to the Pittsburgh Steelers with Chuck Knoll, and really made a 180 as far as his ideology as to training. And I don’t know if you remember, but Mike Webster was on that team, and the offensive line, you had to bench 500 to be on the line.

Roger Callard:

So we were right at the cusp of when people thought that there was such a thing as musclebound. They wouldn’t let Muhammad Ali workout with weights, and Roberto Durán who was a friend of mine used to work out with weights all time. And Ali would do it when Angelo and all those guys didn’t see him. So we were really at the cusp of when people thought that there was such a thing as musclebound. There was a myth, and now all of a sudden guys like Bobby Fischer, chess players were working out. Basketball players, finesse guys, but they told Steve Garvey he was too big when he went to the Dodgers, they wanted him to lose weight. Well, look at the guys now. They’re basically bodybuilders swinging some lumber.

 John Hansen:

Yes, exactly. So what sports were you in Roger? You were in baseball, football.

Roger Callard:

I played everything, I played football, basketball, baseball, track. Your good athletes in that era played everything, and I could throw 100 miles an hour. I could vertical leap over four feet. I used to bruise my elbow on the rim. I mean, I’m 5’10”, ourselves figure it out. But that was my main impetus is that I wanted to be a better athlete, and what’s funny is Kent Kuehn was about 27, maybe he was even older than that, and he was at Michigan State. I met him and he said, “What are you doing?” I said, “Well, I’m playing football.” He goes, “Man,” he says, “You should be a bodybuilder. You’ve got great shoulders, great legs. Things that guys would kill to have.” That’s what Joe Weider used to say to me too.

Roger Callard:

So I ended up entering Mr. Michigan, and I think I came in second or third place, and then the next year I won it. But my main thing was to run faster, jump higher, punch harder, hit the ball further. It was all about athletics because as I mentioned before we don’t run faster, we run longer. We take longer strides because our knee speed is pretty much set, so sprinting and basically all of the sports is technique and power. So that was my main focus was to become a better athlete.

 John Hansen:

So what got you into competing in bodybuilding in the early ’70s because bodybuilding was kind of a cult thing back then, right? In the ’70s.

Roger Callard:

Well no, there were guys like Sergio Oliva was from Chicago, he used to come around.

 John Hansen:

Oh yeah?

Roger Callard:

Fred Lowe  was an Olympic lifter from Michigan State. So we were kind of a hotbed of… Larry Pacifico was a powerlifter.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, I know Larry.

Roger Callard:

Norbert Schemansky had won the Olympics, I think at 42. He was the oldest guy to ever win a gold medal. So Michigan was kind of a bed of weight training. The whole Midwest really, from New York all the way to Ohio and Pennsylvania, Michigan. We had guys like Vic Seipke, Ron Thompson, Ron Gibson is from there, Don Ross.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, Don Ross was from Michigan, yeah.

Roger Callard:

And then later Samir and Tom Platz went to Michigan State too. So Michigan really put out some very quality bodybuilders. Historically if you look back at it we produced some great athletes and some great bodybuilders. We didn’t just make cars and grow cherries.

 John Hansen:

So when did you come out to California Roger?

Roger Callard:

I came out June 22nd, 1972 right after I got out of college. I had a tryout with the Chargers and Don Coryell was the coach and I saw a guy get hurt, I saw the coach step over the guy, call another guy’s number. And I said, “You know what? I’m going to Santa Monica. I’m going to be in the movies and I’m going to work out.” I’d already talked to Dave Draper on the phone. I was at a party one night and I snuck into a room and I used somebody’s phone and I called, because he was listed. So I was called him and Dave was very nice, and Dave and I became really good… We actually did a lot of woodworking together.

Roger Callard:

Dave was really the guy who started instinctive training. I mean, Weider coined all those terms, what those were, were our workouts. They weren’t his ideas, they were our ideas, and Dave was really a forerunner in instinctive training. In other words he’d go in there and he’d go, “Okay, I did arms yesterday, I feel like I want to do a little more.” Sergio would do that too, and you just kind of got in tune with your body and trained what you felt you needed, and you stopped when you felt you needed to. It wasn’t a stiff regimen, and that’s how a lot of people end up getting hurt, because they go into the gym thinking, “Today I’ve got to outdo my PR.”

Roger Callard:

And your body’s not like that. It doesn’t work like that. You know, It’s like a car. If it’s a cold morning it takes longer to warm up.

 John Hansen:

Right, right. So when you went to Santa Monica and started training out there, what gym did you go to? Was it Gold’s Gym?

Gold’s Gym and the Golden Age

Roger Callard:

Yeah, yeah. Just the little on 10th and Pacific, the little hole in the wall, but it was beautiful. I mean, the skylights and there was no girls allowed, but there were a couple of girls that came in there and that was it. It was a little upstairs mezzanine where they had showers in the bathroom, and then there was a trap door where you could go up on the roof and you could sunbathe up there. But the gym had a lot of skylights and louvered windows, and the breeze would come in off the beach, it was great. And we’d open the back door and the front door.

Roger Callard:

It was a small eclectic group of guys from all over the world, and we ate together, we trained together, we went to parties together, we competed against each other. I don’t think that’ll ever be duplicated again.

 John Hansen:

Yeah. Yeah, I was…

Roger Callard:

And we fed off each other John. If one guy needed calves he’d train with this guy, if another guy needed arms he’d train with that guy. If a guy needed muscularity he’d talk to Zabo or if you needed advice on technique you’d talk to Frank Zane. And then Arnold wanted calves and shoulders, so he trained with me in legs, and I wanted the arms and back. So it was a symbiotic exchange really going on throughout the whole gym.

 John Hansen:

When did you first meet Arnold? What year was that Roger?

Roger Callard:

Soon as I got there. I had already had an article in Muscle Builder or whatever it was, the old magazine. It wasn’t the Hoffman magazine, but I can’t remember what it was. Anyway, Strength & Health or something, and they go, “Oh, you’re the guy with the shoulders.” I was wearing a plaid shirt. They go, “Oh, you’re the guy with the shoulders.” Waller and I were football players, so we hit it off, and Arnold was very friendly. And Arnold had hurt his knee in Hungary-

 John Hansen:

Right, ’72 yeah.

Roger Callard:

And I’d hurt my back and he goes, “Roger, why don’t we train together.” So we did legs together, and it’s kind of funny because we squatted on a Smith machine so that we didn’t rock forward because he had a bad knee and my back was hurting. And we would hide the place that we were putting on from Waller because Waller was the manager, because he said we were bending the machines. So we’d see if Waller was looking, and we’d slide the 25 off and put a 25 in behind it. So it looked like it was 225 and it was 275. And he’d come out there, and the madder he got the higher his voice would get. “I told you guys.” We’d go, “Oh come on Ken, relax.” He goes, “You’re going to bend the God damn machine.”

Roger Callard:

And we did bend it a little bit because we had our feet out in front of us. We would look see if he… because he had that little office, and he didn’t have a straight on view. So when he wasn’t looking we’d slide a 25 on and put the 45 over real quick, so it looked like it was just 225. But we had a great time those days. We used to… Arnold and I used to play so many games on him. We’d go… He lives on California around 20th, so we’d drive both our cars down to the beach. I would grab my pickup, take him back to his place, and then we would run down to the beach and drive back in his car. So, we’d do that at night so people didn’t know we were running, because we’d come into the gym the next day and we’d be all veins popping out and they go, “What the hell are you guys doing?” “Oh nothing, just lying on the beach.”

Roger Callard:

So we were really the first guys to do a lot of aerobics. Running, actual running. And the other thing we would do is we would go to a party right before the show. Guys had been dieting for like 12 weeks, and we would make a point of eating cake right in front of them. And then we would sneak outside and throw it up, and then come back and eat some more.

 John Hansen:

Throw it up?

Roger Callard:

And the look on these guys’ faces John because they were like, “What are you doing?” It mentally broke guys down because they couldn’t understand how we were eating cake. Because they’d been dieting for three months, they hadn’t even come close to a freaking cake, let alone seeing some guy that’s in shape eating one. But that’s the kind of shit we did. We had fun, we laughed, we went to the-

 John Hansen:

It seemed like you and Arnold really got along personality wise. You seemed like you guys were pretty good friends for a while.

Roger Callard:

Yeah. Well, I think he… I was the All-American kind of guy that he never could be, and I taught him the lingo and the phraseologies. I’d say something like it’s a whole new ball game, and the next thing I’d hear the next week, “It’s a whole new ball game.” He would be reiterating it. Although he could never say my name, Callard. “Oh, you’re Cal or California.” He couldn’t. Like, “Arnold.” Weider was the same way, “Roger Call-ard.” “Joe, it’s Callard. What the hell? Sometimes I think he’d mispronounce your name on purpose, just so people wouldn’t… He was funny, he was weird.

Training Routines

 John Hansen:

How was your training back then Roger? Did you guys… You obviously were training for contests, but in the off season how would you train, and what was your lifestyle like?

Roger Callard:

Well, we did two-a-days the last 12 weeks. The last six weeks we would do nine workouts a week. So one day we’d come in, in the morning and do maybe chest and back, and then come in at night and do legs whatever. We were doing nine workouts a week for about maybe six to eight weeks. But during the off season we would come in, train for an hour, hour-and-a-half at the most, and we’d go to the beach. We’d go eat, but we’d do a little running, but not much.

Roger Callard:

What Arnold and I figured out, and Zane is that we didn’t cut down for a contest, we actually got bigger. We got in shape three months before the show and put on muscle, so you come in full. The mistake that guys make today and still, they want to cut. When you cut, you cut muscle because your body can’t do two things at once. You can’t lose fat and water and not lose muscle. And that’s the mistake a lot of people make in conditioning. They think I’ll work out and I’ll lose weight. You’ll gain freaking weight because the larger muscles will need fuel, you’re hungry. You’re better off going out and running for an hour, and losing the fat, and then going to the gym and trying to put muscle on because your body can’t do two things at once.

Roger Callard:

And what we would do is we would get in shape three months before the show. And now we would gain muscle for the show. We would come in full, and that’s why we were able to outpose guys. If you’re dieting for six, eight weeks and you got to a show, you cramp up, you’re so sore the next day you can hardly walk. That’s really the mistake that almost every bodybuilder makes, is they try to cut down for the show. It’s a lazy man’s way of doing it. And you know when we started training for a show? The day after it was over.

 John Hansen:

Really?

Roger Callard:

Yeah, Casey was the same way. We started training for the show the day that the show was over. That whole year we were training for that show.

 John Hansen:

So, were you guys bulking up then at all in the off season, or no, not really?

Roger Callard:

No. No, no. If you have a stone, why would you put sand over the stone and then take the sand off? What’s the point? Bulk up. You know what bulk is? Fat and lard. It doesn’t mean you’re big. That’s why guys wouldn’t run, they were afraid their arms would get small. Well, guess what? Their arms were small. It has nothing to do with it. Once you get the fat off and you find out what’s underneath, it’s like… Anybody could be a cut up supermarket chicken like he was, but it takes a bodybuilder to have big full muscles. Anybody can be ripped and look like him or the guy… or whatever his name. Big deal, you got ripped, but you weigh 130, 40, 50 pounds. For what? You’re Bruce Lee, okay. Great.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, because Arnold was huge back then, right? ’72, ’73 , ’74, those were probably his…

Roger Callard:

Well, when we were training it was his biggest, I thought. Actually, he wasn’t as big as what people thought. He would come into a show about 225 at the most.

 John Hansen:

Wow, that’s amazing. You look at pictures of him even now and you can’t even imagine hew was only 225, especially with his height, 6’1″, 6’2″.

Roger Callard:

Well, he didn’t have big legs. His legs were not big. He had a good cut in them, but he didn’t have great legs, and he didn’t have wide shoulders. He had thick deltoids, but they weren’t wide, and huge arms and huge back and huge chest. But if you analyze his body he didn’t have great forearms, he didn’t have great calves I can tell you that.

 John Hansen:

He didn’t have great calves?

Roger Callard:

No, no. He had them done in Mexico.

 John Hansen:

Really? Okay, I heard that rumor.

Roger Callard:

Really. Really. Anyway, he had great arms, great chest, great back. It’s like Franco, if Franco’s not Arnold’s best buddy he never wins Mr. Olympia. First of all that’s not a good body. His arms were not good, his back was great, his chest was great, but that’s it. The legs weren’t good, the calves were not good. He was bowlegged. He was a musclebound… He was a freak as far as strength, but as a… Danny Padilla and Mohamed Makkawy had better bodies as a short guy. They were more complete.

Roger Callard:

And Samir, if Samir doesn’t bulk up and try to beat Lee Haney he would have probably been the greatest Mr. Olympia of all time. But he made the… John, he weighed 183 pounds. 187 pounds when he won Mr. Olympia.

 John Hansen:

Wow, that’s amazing.

Roger Callard:

187.

 John Hansen:

Yeah.

Roger Callard:

And then he tried to go up to 220. Well, what happened? He lost everything. You don’t get weighed on stage, nobody goes up and measures you. Nobody goes up and sees how strong, nobody arm wrestles you. Nobody has a tape measure, it’s an optical illusion.

 John Hansen:

Right. So when you started competing in California Roger, what was the goal? Because I know everybody today wants to turn pro and everything, but back then it was more about titles, right? You wanted to win maybe the Mr. America or Mr. Universe.

Mr International, Mr Olympia and Competing against the Best Bodybuilders

Roger Callard:

I just wanted to be the best in my weight class, and I was. And I think I was pretty underrated. I beat Mentzer, I beat Samir. Actually, Robby and I beat everybody in the Olympia, and Robby beat Frank Zane because we were judged on the same judging system, the 200 point system. It was the only time at the ’76 Mr. International, and Robby and I outscored everybody. I think Robby beat… I don’t remember who won that year, was it Frank or Franco? I think it might have been Frank.

 John Hansen:

In ’76?

Roger Callard:

I can’t remember if it was… I think it was ’76.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, Franco won the-

Roger Callard:

We outscored everybody. I beat everybody else. And that was the last time they did it because it showed that the amateurs were as good as the professionals.

 John Hansen:

So, what did they do? They were scoring it using a points system?

Roger Callard:

A 200 points system.

 John Hansen:

Okay.

Roger Callard:

Yeah, it was the first time they judged amateurs and pros using the same system, and they never did it again because Robby and I beat everybody except… I remember Arnold, we came off the stage and he goes, “Roger, you guys got a better applause than the guys in the Olympia.” And I go, “Yeah. Yeah, we did.” And a lot of people think that’s still one of the best contests. I know the guy Frank Meyers, the Pope, that’s all he talks about is that contest.

 John Hansen:

So that was the ’76 Olympia, right?

Roger Callard:

There’s also big contests that Arnold and… ran in the early ’70s. I think they were some of the best really. Well, the sport was pure then John. It wasn’t about the money. It wasn’t about drugs. It was about the love of the sport, the passion, the love of doing what you were doing. And that era will never be duplicated, and I think that’s… Why do you think the ’70s are so popular in every way? Styles, because it was a time where we questioned everything and we were passionate about, we protested. There was violence in the streets, but there was a purity going on because our country was finding out who we are.

Roger Callard:

And I’ll tell you bodybuilding changed the fricking world, it really did. It made the armed forces, US Armed Forces seem like… Can you imagine other countries looking at our athletes and our… That’s really what the Olympics are about and bodybuilding and professional sports. You’re showing off your arsenal. This is something that we could turn John… and Billy Graham and all these guys into warriors if we wanted to. That’s what other countries see. It changed the world in ways that I don’t think historically we’re able to grasp even yet. But I know that it did because I saw the change. I was right there at the pulse of it.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, and people may not realize, those that weren’t around back in the ’70s, but not too many people even worked out back then. If you saw a guy walking down the street with a muscular build that was very unusual, and the gym…

Roger Callard:

Well, let’s put it this way John, it was weird to work out and it was cool to smoke dope.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, yeah.

Roger Callard:

Now, what is it now? It’s cool to do both I guess, I don’t know. But we’ve gone so far, the pendulum has swung so far that now everybody mentions it in their bio. What do you do? “Oh, I work out, I lift weights.” Nobody talked about lifting, working out in the early ’60s. People don’t realize it hasn’t gone on that long, and they don’t know anything, but I was the reason that there’s four categories because I was supposed to go to the Mr. Universe and they ended up sending Mike Katz. They ended up sending two heavyweights. And I told Tommy and Joe Weider, I said…

Roger Callard:

Well, no. They sent Kal Szkalak and Mike Mentzer, and I said, “Joe, why are you putting off the decision to who’s the best in our country to an international body? You’re not sending the best team. The best team is your best guy in each division. If you can’t make the decision in the United States, you can’t send a guy because he’s your head writer and you don’t want to… ” And what happened? Kal beat Mike. And then Danny Padilla didn’t go because they sent Mike Katz and Ken Waller. They sent two heavyweights.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, that was a big controversy.

Roger Callard:

With Robby.

 John Hansen:

Right.

Roger Callard:

So him and I both got screwed, and then the next year, of course after my article, they come up with four categories, which didn’t help me any. But categories and stuff weren’t like that. They were height categories. There wasn’t even weight categories. I was 195-pound middleweight for Christ’s sake. I actually won the USA as a heavyweight because I was 200 pounds, but I was a 195-pound middleweight. So a lot has changed that people don’t realize. We were the institutors of that. People just don’t know the history.

 John Hansen:

Yeah. No, not at all.

Roger Callard:

Any history. They know how to Google, that’s about it.

 John Hansen:

Right…

Roger Callard:

I got in an argument with-

 John Hansen:

… with the drugs, because I know drugs are a problem in bodybuilding today, but back then did you guys just use them for competitions? I know it was probably much, much less than what they’re doing today.

Roger Callard:

The steroids?

 John Hansen:

Yeah.

Roger Callard:

No, the only time we were even using… and they weren’t illegal, they were legal. We only used them maybe eight weeks before the show. Like I said, we were in shape three months before the show. So steroids really didn’t play a huge factor like people think. It was the training, the technique, and I still believe that our techniques that we did are the best. You can dress a monkey up in a suit and say, “This is a new thing.” It’s still a monkey in a suit. There’s nothing new about all these trainers, weight loss, The Biggest Loser. You know what? These trainers are full of shit, they don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground by working out.

Roger Callard:

You can make the guy lose weight, doesn’t mean you know how to train anybody or throwing a bunch of tires or bouncing on a ball, are you kidding me?

 John Hansen:

I know, it’s ridiculous.

Roger Callard:

Because you invent something new doesn’t mean it’s good. All these ropes and all this bullshit that they’re doing. Kettle balls, all that stuff that they’re doing, it’s just inertia stuff that’s going to get you hurt because they don’t know anything about training. There’s such a misconception about weights, and people think if they want to get faster at something they have to do the weight training faster. The opposite is true. If you want to build speed you slow it down and you pause.

Roger Callard:

Look at a frog how he jumps. He jumps with his ass against the back of his calves. If we were a frog we could dunk the full length of the court. Basketball players bend their knees three or four inches when they jump. They don’t go all the way down. People have no idea how to train for power.

 John Hansen:

You should talk about that-

Roger Callard:

You really want to train for power, you pause, you stop. Look at the Olympic lifters. If they can clean that weight, if they can wallow down and clean it, they can usually lift it.

 John Hansen:

Right, right. That’s a good point.

Roger Callard:

But most people couldn’t squat with 225 and go all the way, sit down and stop. They’d be stuck. They can go down and stick their ass out and go halfway down with three or 400. But if they go all the way down with 225, 240, they’re stuck. Mousetrap. Pausing any movement all the way down, see how heavy you go. And they go, “I’ll have to go lighter.” You’re not going lighter, you’re just realizing that you’re not that strong. “I’ll have to go lighter.” No, you’ll have to use a weight that you can actually fricking use.

Roger Callard:

When you bench press for competition what do you do? You pause on the bottom. You’ve got to stop. You don’t go down and touch your chest and come back up, bounce it.

 John Hansen:

Right. Right, right. So when you and Arnold were training, you guys did a lot of volume, but it really wasn’t really heavy weights, right?

Roger Callard:

Oh, sure it was.

 John Hansen:

Oh, it was? Okay.

Roger Callard:

Sure it was. We’d do 15 reps of 315 on the bench.

 John Hansen:

Wow, okay.

Roger Callard:

I did 15 reps of 225 behind the neck. Bent-over row with 275, 225. We were fucking strong.

 John Hansen:

And pretty high volume too, right Roger?

Roger Callard:

I did 50 reps with 300 pounds all the way down the squat.

 John Hansen:

Really? Wow.

Roger Callard:

It’s still a record at Michigan State.

 John Hansen:

Really? Wow.

Roger Callard:

To this day, right now. No one’s broke that record.

 John Hansen:

Wow, that’s crazy.

Roger Callard:

You know how I did it?

 John Hansen:

No.

Roger Callard:

I ran a mile in four minutes and 28 seconds. I averaged four 67 second quarters, and I would do that immediately after squatting. The record was 21, so I said, “Well, if I start running a mile as fast I can and I just keep adding reps, I’ll be able to do 50 reps. First I did 25, then I did 30, then I did 40 then I did 50. I could have done probably 60, 70. But I was running a mile. I don’t know if you know anything about track, but if you run a quarter in 70 seconds, you’re hauling ass. If you’re running 60 seconds you’re probably 1% of the population.

Roger Callard:

Now, you do four of those together back to back, and that’s not a high school record, 4:28 for the mile. It’s hauling… It’s a sprint. The mile is no longer a distance race, it’s a sprint. Like that guy from Mogadishu, whatever his name… The guy who ran the 1:41 in the half mile. That’s two 50-second quarters. Roger Bannister was the first guy to run a four-minute mile. He could only run a quarter, open quarter in 53 seconds, but he could run four of them in under 60 seconds. And I think he ran his last quarter in like 54 seconds.

Roger Callard:

A lot of strength training is about endurance, and that was my point. Power has nothing to do with strength and endurance. Most powerlifters couldn’t dunk a basketball or run one lap on the track. So really, what’s the point. I wanted to do something respectable 50 times. How many people can squat with 300 pounds all the way down? Not very many. Now do 50 reps.

 John Hansen:

Unbelievable.

Roger Callard:

Or do 50 anything. Just do 50 full squats and wave your hand around 50 times. Lift your ass up 50 times. Whatever it is.

 John Hansen:

Right, right, right.

Roger Callard:

It makes you think.

Movies and acting

John Hansen:

Hey Roger, let’s talk about 1975, the year they filmed Pumping Iron. But before they filmed Pumping Iron they were filming Stay Hungry, and you were in that movie. So tell us a little bit about that experience because they had a lot of bodybuilders from Gold’s Gym go out there and…

Roger Callard:

Stay Hungry was great because now you got Sally Field, who’s Gidget, who really hadn’t done much other than playing Gidget. Jeff Bridges came from a pedigree family, really hadn’t done that much. You got Richard Englund, Freddy Krueger. You got… what’s his name? The guy from Magnum, Roger… The black guy, what was his name? Roger…

 John Hansen:

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Roger Callard:

He was in it. The other guy… I mean, great actors after great actors, and really it was a pivotal point in Sally Field’s career, and she was actually dating Burt Reynolds at the time because Burt Reynolds had just done The End with Dom DeLuise. And Bob Rafelson hadn’t done anything since Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider and Marvin’s Garden. So it was really a pivotal thing for Arnold, Sally Field and Jeff Bridges and Bob Rafelson. Everybody that was in that film, it was really a showcase for them.

Roger Callard:

George Butler and Charles Gaines were great. They were really nice guys, and it was really kind of Charles Gaines’ story.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, it was his book. Yeah.

Roger Callard:

Yeah, because his family was kind of well-to-do and he was involved with weight training, and he had to buy a piece of real estate, and he ends up being introduced to this world of bodybuilding.

 John Hansen:

That was pretty much Charles’ story then, huh?

Roger Callard:

Birmingham was a very interesting city. It was very interesting because we’d just undergone the racial tumult stuff. The black people there were very friendly, Southern Hospitality. It was a great time, and we were all there together. It was a lot of fun.

 John Hansen:

How long were you guys out there for? How many weeks were you out there?

Roger Callard:

I can’t remember. I don’t know, a month or two, something like that. We were there a long time because and I-

 John Hansen:

You were rooming with Mike Katz, right?

Roger Callard:

… were training for Mr. America at the time and Randy.

 John Hansen:

And your roommate was Mike Katz when you guys were up there, right?

Roger Callard:

My roommate was Mike Katz. Oh my God was he funny. He laughed. He wanted me to send his shoes back on the plane or something. He had these huge feet. I go, “Mike, go buy a pair of Keds. It’s going to cost me more to send them on an airplane than they’re worth. Do they have some sentimental value or something? Come on.” He wanted me to send them back on the plane. Mike and I were in Sports Illustrated together when they did the piece on bodybuilding.

 John Hansen:

Oh yeah, in ’74. Yeah.

Roger Callard:

Because he had played for the Jets and I was from Michigan State, and we kind of had that color thing going like the Celtics, the green and white thing. So we hit it off, and when he came to California we hung out together. I had this old ’53 ford and the bands on it were loose. We were driving somewhere and he goes, “Won’t this thing go any faster?” And I said, “Mike, this thing is run by a rat on a treadmill, and I’m low on cheese.” And he laughed, we laughed. We got a lot of laughs about that. But people don’t realize he was kind of wooden and stiff because he’d broken his neck with the Jets.

 John Hansen:

Wow.

Roger Callard:

So he was lucky to even work out.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, really.

Roger Callard:

Because they didn’t have… Nowadays, he probably would have been able to keep playing or had a career. Back then when you had a spinal neck injury that was it. They wouldn’t clear you.

 John Hansen:

Wow, I didn’t know that.

Roger Callard:

And that was the reason he was kind of stiff, but Arnold and I would tease him because he’d wear these shirts and they looked like they were mediums or something. The buttons were just ready to rip. So Arnold and I go, “Well, let’s wait until he goes to sleep to see if his chest stays up.” We turned on the lights and then sure enough his chest was always up like that.

 John Hansen:

That’s also what was so great about that era was you guys all hung out together, and you partied together, it was so low key, and you had so much fun. And I think when people watch the movie Pumping Iron now, I think that’s what they really get out of it. It just seemed like so much fun, and it was just such a great time back then.

Roger Callard:

Well, I was kind of mad because I was in St. Louis that summer working out. Then I came back and then they’d already finished filming. And then George and Charles Gaines decided that they needed another scene. So they put the football thing in there. And Rob, of course Robby and I and Waller were the only ones who could play football.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, tell us about the T-shirt, because you said that was all your idea, right?

Roger Callard:

That was my idea because I was rooming with Mike, and I knew he wasn’t in shape, and after we’d work out he’d always be looking for his shirt because he wanted to put it on. Well, you know the guys from California, we’re running around in tank tops. We’re in shape the whole time, we don’t give a shit if you’re looking at us because we’re in shape. But when a body builder’s not in shape, you’re a little vain. You’re a little… You’re like a guy with a robe. You might take it off and you want to put it right back on. Well, that’s how he was with that sweatshirt because it was kind of like his security blanket, and it really hit home in the movie.

Roger Callard:

But I liked Mike so much because he was such a good family man. He was just a good guy. It wasn’t like an underhanded thing, it was more of a funny thing. You know what I mean? But the movie made it look like Waller was a prankster and all these things. Arnold actually hid Sergio’s posing trunks on him, so he had to use a different color.

 John Hansen:

Oh, really?

Roger Callard:

Yeah. I mean, we did shit like that. It was gamesmanship.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, you were rooming with Mike in Stay Hungry, and then you told Waller he should hide his T-shirt when you get out there because he’s not really in shape.

Roger Callard:

Yeah.

 John Hansen:

Yeah.

Roger Callard:

Yeah, so Waller wasn’t the bad guy, it was me. He was just the initiator. I was the initiator. He was the guy who actually did it.

 John Hansen:

Right, so then they filmed that football scene where you guys were planning to do that. They filmed that after the whole contest was over with.

Roger Callard:

No, the Universe I don’t think was over.

 John Hansen:

Oh, it wasn’t.

Roger Callard:

They hadn’t gone and done that yet.

 John Hansen:

Oh, okay.

Roger Callard:

I don’t think so. No, that part was real. Actually there was no… People think there was a script. There was no script for that movie. It was just everybody ad-libbing.

 John Hansen:

What did you think of the movie when you first saw it, Roger?

Roger Callard:

It was all right. I was kind of pissed off that I wasn’t there. It made me mad that I… I wished I wouldn’t have went to St. Louis, but I thought it was good. There was hammy stuff like Ed running and jumping in Arnold’s arms and all that goofy shit. A lot of guys when the camera rolls they do shit, you know what I mean? It’s like a guy in a bar, he’s going to say something stupid. “Oh, you’re a bodybuilder. You’re probably not strong and all this bullshit.”

Roger Callard:

When the camera is rolling the guys who aren’t actors and aren’t used to being on film, they do egotistical things. What I would call egotistically motivated. And I saw a little bit of that because I know all those guys well. So yeah, that part was a little corny some of it.

 John Hansen:

Are you surprised now 40 years later what a iconic film that is and what a big impact it had? It was kind of a small film when it was released. I remember I actually saw it in the theater in 1977, there was like five people in there. And now 40 years later it’s the film about bodybuilding.

Roger Callard:

I was in Montana and I went behind a gas station to take a leak, and I hear some guy say, “Didn’t you used to be Roger Callard?” I turn around, and there’s this guy with his shirt off. And he’s out there, he looks like the Wild Man from Borneo or something. He’s grabbing tires, and I go, “What are you doing here?” And he goes, “Oh, I have some bad luck. I’m recycling tires so I can get some money to get back on the road.” And I go, “How did you recognize me?” He said, “Well, I saw your back.”

 John Hansen:

Really?

Roger Callard:

And I realized John, at that point this fucking magazine, this whole thing is getting out there. I didn’t realize the… There was no internet, there were no cellphones. You don’t realize the power of the media, and now suddenly, this is 1978, I’m realizing this is going around the world. People actually read these things, and the circulation is astronomical, it’s exponential.

Roger Callard:

So, am I surprised? A little. That kind of surprised me, but then now with the internet and all the different publications. And I think we are harkening back to pure era, and that’s kind of what Bruce Ebel’s trying to do with that natural Mr. America that I’m involved with and Frank Zane’s involved with. Because we want to bring back kind of a classical look like Zane or myself or Samir. Guys from that era didn’t look like androids. We looked like guys who could do stuff. We could run, we could jump, we could hit a baseball.

Roger Callard:

And I think that’s why we’re instituting an athletic portion into the Mr. America as well.

 John Hansen:

Oh, really? Okay.

Roger Callard:

Almost like in the inception when guys had to do… And I think we need to go back to that. It can’t just be a guy up there posing. Why do you think CrossFit is so compelling? Have you seen that guy who won five of them in a row? He looks like Rich… What was his name? Rich… Can’t think of his last name, but he could have been a professional bodybuilder. Strong as hell. That’s what we need to promote, and that’s kind of what I was trying to do when I was competing, and when I was training. Just to do something, that’s why I did the 50 reps. I wanted to do something that in 50 years, 40 years people look at scratch their head and go, how the hell did he do it?

 John Hansen:

Tell us a little bit about your acting career too Roger because I know you were in a lot of movies, and you’ve been in that for a long time.

Roger Callard:

Well, what happened was when I was in high school my football coach was the drama coach. He goes, “I want you guys to come out for the junior-senior play.” And I go, “Coach, I don’t want to be in… That’s a bunch of… I don’t want to be in the band, I don’t want to be in the choir, I don’t want to be in the… ” He goes, “The cheerleaders are going to be in the play.” Like, “Okay, I’m in.” So there was this one cheerleader I wanted to get next to, and I ended up winning the dramatics award. We did a thing called The Mouse That Roared about this little country that had this Q-bomb and kind of held the world at ransom.

Roger Callard:

That kind of bit me, the bug right there, because I was voted by my peers. So when I came to California, Arnold already knew that I knew about acting, so whenever he would go to an acting class he would take me, or if he went to a publicist company or something he didn’t understand, he would take me with him because he knew that I knew the machinations and inner workings of the business. So that’s really how I got started and then we were down at the beach, and a guy named came around, he goes, “Do you guys want to be in a movie?” I go, “Well, who’s in it?” And he goes, “Kurt Russell.” I said, “Oh, great.”

Roger Callard:

And then Kurt and I became friends and Kurt was actually a hell of a baseball player. I don’t know if you know… that’s why he’s such a good golfer. He was drafted by the Texas Rangers.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, he had an interview with someone recently and he was talking about that.

Roger Callard:

Oh, he was a hell of a baseball player like Garvey, and he tore up his knee or his shoulder, and that’s why he went back to Disney, started doing all those World’s Strongest Man, The Computer Will Finish You and that whole series. Because before that all he’d done was Gallagher. His dad John Russell was in the film business too, I think he was a director. I know Mike Preece a good friend of mine knew him, but he’s from the Valley, but he was a hell of a baseball player. And his buddy that was in the movie ended up writing Fame.

Roger Callard:

That’s how I kind of got started, and then I started doing guest starring, I did Wonder Woman and Barnaby Jones and Streets of San Francisco and Man Called Sloane. I just wanted someone episodic, and then I started getting lead guest star roles.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, some of those 1970s TV series they featured a lot of bodybuilders, right? Like you said, Streets of San Francisco, I remember that one that Arnold was-

Roger Callard:

Well, there was a few of… Well, that one was because Mike Preece who was a friend of Walter Hill’s. Mike, his mother was the head of the Script Supervisors Union, and he became a director and he came down to the beach and he said I’m doing Streets of San Francisco, would you and Arnold like to be in it? And we said yeah, sure of course. And then a lot of us worked in that. And then there was a guy named Joe Corso from San Francisco who was in the show.

Roger Callard:

Yeah, that turned out to be actually a pretty good show because that was one of Mike Preece’s first films, and I did about 10 shows with him because he ended up doing Dallas and Falcon’s Crest and Hunter. He became huge TV… I did a lot of Walker, Texas Rangers with him, and he was also a friend of Brad Harris’s. It was kind of a small community of actors and bodybuilders at that time at the gym, especially at Gold’s any given day. And of course there was guys like Clint who worked out, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Blake, Vince… the guy who played Ben Casey, what was his name? Vince Edwards. Vince Edwards and…

 John Hansen:

He was out at Vince’s Gym mostly, right? Or were they going to Gold’s?

Roger Callard:

They would come over to Gold’s too. Tony Franciosa, I mean, just a ton of actors that work out that would come to the gym. Gregory Hines, you name it.

   Arnold and Fame

 John Hansen:

And then when Arnold-

Roger Callard:

Even Isaac Hayes used to come to the gym.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, he was a big bodybuilding fan.

Roger Callard:

Yup, LL Cool Jam, all those guys.

 John Hansen:

And then when Arnold’s career took off you were in a lot of his movies, right?

Roger Callard:

Yeah, I did seven of his films.

 John Hansen:

Wow. Yeah, I remember you were in Twins, you were in Red Heat.

Roger Callard:

Running Man.

 John Hansen:

Yeah.

Roger Callard:

Yeah, we did a bunch of stuff.

 John Hansen:

So when you saw Arnold really take off in Hollywood, were you surprised knowing him all those years in Gold’s? Could you see-

Roger Callard:

No, because I was with him when we walked into the publicity company. He was a publicity stunt that worked. We went in and we met with a guy named Mark Landia with a company called ICPR, and Arnold and I sat down, and Arnold says, “What do you do?” And Mark said, “Well Arnold, we elect presidents, we elect governors, we elect actors. We put you in the right side of issues. We say things about you that if you said would sound braggadocious. We put you on the right talk shows, we put you in the right newspapers, we get you the right agent.” And at the end of that the guy Mark Landia said, “What do you want Arnold?” And Arnold said, “I want everyone in America to know my name in a year.” It cost him $2,000 a month, and this is ’75.

 John Hansen:

Wow, $2,000 a month.

Roger Callard:

And that’s when it took off. That’s when it took off. I remember when he met Maria, he came, he goes, “Roger, I just met this really nice girl named Maria Shriver. I really like her.” And I go, “Do you know her uncle is JFK?” And he goes, “Who is JFK?” I go, “You idiot. John Fitzgerald Kennedy.” He goes, “Are you kidding me?” He didn’t know.

 John Hansen:

Wow, really?

Roger Callard:

And then that year ’78, she shows up at the Olympia in Columbus, sneaks off and meets him. I was doing a seminar the next day and I’d just won the International, and for some reason Arnold didn’t have a room for us. So I went up to him, I go, “Arnold, what the hell is going on? I don’t have a room.” And Maria came out and she goes, “Look at him, he’s mad.” I go, “Arnold get this little rich brat out of my face and get me a room.” He goes, “Oh, come on Roger come in. You can have the other side of the suite.” She never forgot that, that I told her off because I didn’t give a shit.

Roger Callard:

Well, what’s funny, my dad knew Joe Kennedy. They didn’t realize it until we did Red Heat in Chicago. We were at the Merchandise Mart and they were giving us a tour of the building, Arnold and I and Maria, and I hear, “Roger, Roger.” I looked over and it’s my cousin who has a crystal shop there. And Arnold and Maria looked at me like, “What’s your cousin doing here?” And I said, “Well, our family has known them for a lot of years. My dad knew Joe,” she had no idea. And they go, “Well, what’s this crystal shop? And that’s a lot of money right there isn’t it?” And my cousin said, “Yeah, it’s $5.2 million worth of crystal on the floor. And they looked at me like who the hell are you?

Roger Callard:

They had no idea my dad knew Joe because Maria, she was a little baby. She doesn’t know. She was 10 years younger than we were, but she didn’t know that much about Joe, and my dad was born in 1897. He was in the Navy. He knew… Well, when Joe Kennedy purchased Merchandise Mart in 1929, it was the largest real estate purchase in the world. Square footage, bigger than the Pentagon. And it was notable because he bought it for 29 million, less than what it took to build it during the depression. And that’s really where he made a lot of his money besides booze.

Roger Callard:

I knew about that business too because my dad was involved with that, but it was kind of funny because they had no idea my connection, and the fact that Michigan was where the booze came in from Canada. That was the scene in the Untouchables, remember the movie with Sean Connery where everybody scrambles at the border, that was the UP in Michigan. My dad was one of those guys. He was one of those untouchables.

 John Hansen:

Really? Wow.

Roger Callard:

Yeah. So there’s a lot of history.

 John Hansen:

Going back to your bodybuilding years Roger, who were the guys you really were real good friends with and hung around with? Arnold, Ken Waller.

Roger Callard:

Manny Perry, Denny Gable, Kent Kuehn, Bill Grant, Frank Zane. Frank and I were good friends. Ken Waller of course, but Frank and I did a lot of stuff together. Actually, Zabo and I did a lot of stuff together and Dave Draper, I was good friends with Casey Viator.

 John Hansen:

Oh yeah? Okay.

Roger Callard:

Yeah, there were a lot of guys that we were friends with. There’s almost too many to mention. Those are just the famous guys, but there were a lot of other people that came and went. There were a lot of people coming out from New York, from Europe. It was an exodus. Every summer there was somebody new.

 John Hansen:

Who really impressed you as a bodybuilder Roger? I know you mentioned Sergio Oliva a little earlier, but-

Roger Callard:

Sergio, I think, was the most gifted of all time if you look at the silhouette of his body. He was 5’9″ and the shape. What people forget he was the Pan American Games 198 pound Olympic lifting champ. He was strong as hell. He was very powerful. I mean, he got shot with a .357 Magnum and he still lived.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, three times.

Roger Callard:

Yeah, I mean think if that didn’t happen to him… and he came back in his 50s and he was still good. After he’d gotten shot. He’s an amazing guy. I liked Sergio.

He came up to me one time and he goes, “You know,” and he had this little accent. He goes, “You know Roger, you’re really good.” And to me that was the greatest compliment I ever got because when I won the USA he was guest poser up in San Francisco. I’d actually known him since the 60s. I saw him do 50 reps on the bench with 300 pounds. I stopped counting at 40 reps. He was so freaking strong John, just the way…

 John Hansen:

Yeah, I used to see Sergio because I grew up in Chicago so I used to see him come to the shows and this is like in the early 1980s. And I started to tell people today how amazing he’s looked and it’s hard to describe.

Roger Callard:

No, they have no idea.

 John Hansen:

Yeah.

Roger Callard:

Well, again people think that everything gets better because of… And that’s not true. There are classics. It’s like a car. The ’65 Corvette, you look at that body style, and bodybuilders, athletes the same. It has nothing to do with getting better and this and that. Great athletes come from all eras. Just because it’s happening now doesn’t mean they’re the best. They’re just the best right now.

 John Hansen:

What’d you think of Danny Padilla? Because I know you got a show down in ’77, right? When he won the America.

Roger Callard:

Well, I think that I got robbed in that show because Franco wanted a little man to win, and they actually had me ahead, and Franco had college teammate change his vote, because Danny was not in shape for the show.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, he was light and chewing gum and everything.

Roger Callard:

… And I was supposed to win, and I did win, but they gave it to him. And he knows it too.

 John Hansen:

Yeah.

Roger Callard:

Yeah. Well, I didn’t take a lot of crap, and I didn’t play the game, and Weider and Franco rigged the show. Everybody knows that.

 John Hansen:

How’d you get along with Weider?

Roger Callard:

Donald Long wrote a big article about how it was a travesty of justice.

 John Hansen:

How’d you get along with Joe Weider, Roger?

Roger Callard:

I liked Joe even though he screwed me in ways, but he was like a playful guy. Ben, I didn’t care for, but Joe was funny. Joe was very funny. He had a good heart, but he screwed people over. He screwed me over a few times, but I still liked him. He was very comical. He was very comical. We used to do a lot of touring, and we’d go around to malls, around to that big mall in Kansas City. I had to demonstrate a bunch of equipment and I’d never even seen it. And I told Joe, I said, “Don’t just… Let me figure out what this stuff is.” And Joe hated public speaking, he was very afraid of it. And he’d get up there and his voice would start shaking, “And now here’s Roger.” And as I’m walking by, I go, “You son of a bitch.” And I get up there and I just wing it. I had no idea what this crusher or anything was.

Roger Callard:

So we go back to our hotel and we got a suite and he’s over on one side and I’m over on the other, and he comes over he goes, “You know Roger, I was quite a bodybuilder when I was young.” And he takes the cover off the lamp and he goes, “Look at my most muscular.” And I’m laying in bed and he’s posing, it’s like midnight. I go, “Joe, turn the fucking light off.” And he goes, “Oh, you body builders. You’ve got no sense of humor.” We laughed so freaking hard about that.

Roger Callard:

He goes, “You know Roger, it was hard being a Jew growing up in Montreal. I had to fight every day.” I go, “Come on Joe, you didn’t fight anybody.” “While I was doing my bodybuilding courses I had it all over the house and my mother went crazy because the ink was drying everywhere.” And he’d laugh like… He thought that was just so funny that he had all of his stuff. But I knew the history of his whole thing. He grew up in Montreal, and it probably was hard being a Jew in Montreal. He probably did get the shit beat out of him. And then he moved to New York, and then out to LA.

Roger Callard:

But he wasn’t the architect of bodybuilding. He rode on our backs basically is what he did, and then went around and spread the seeds of the IFBB. But all of that Weider principles were just all of our articles that we wrote. Somebody transcribing our workouts, instinctive training and giant sets and super sets. Well, that was all our stuff. But yeah, I liked Joe. I always liked Joe. When he was sick at the end I remember I was down at the beach, and he called me over and I sat with him. And then Betty wanted me to set up a dinner for him, and my wife got cancer and I wasn’t able to go. And then Joe died a few years later or a year later.

Roger Callard:

But yeah, I used to go to his house, and I did a lot of work for him, because I was a carpenter and he loved that. I built a lot of his cabinets for the artwork that he had, and pedestals. Did a lot of work on his house. I was always over there.

 John Hansen:

You went to a lot of Arnold’s parties too, right? I remember seeing a picture of you and Waller were at his 30th birthday party.

Roger Callard:

Well, Joe loaned me the money to get into Screen Actors Guild. He loaned me the money. And I said, “Well, I’ll pay you back.” He goes, “Don’t worry about it.” I go, “No, I’ll pay you back.” And it was the best thing I ever did, but Joe loaned me the money.

 John Hansen:

Wow, that’s great.

Roger Callard:

No, Joe and I were good friends. I always liked Joe even though we had our differences.

 John Hansen:

How were the parties at Arnold’s house?

Roger Callard:

The parties?

 John Hansen:

Yeah, when Arnold always had parties at his house.

Roger Callard:

Oh, they were great. We all had them. We had them at my house, we had them at his house. They great, I mean, Chuck Norris would be there, the Cassidys, Jack Nicholson, Clint and the who’s who of whoever was around. Well, Jake Bloom was Stallone’s manager, and he was Arnold’s manager. The guy who did The Lords of Flatbush was a friend of mine, and he ended up dying, but that really launched Henry Winkler and Sly and Dennis Leary? It was three or four guys that were in The Lords of Flatbush.

 John Hansen:

Henry Winkler?

Roger Callard:

Who?

 John Hansen:

Henry Winkler.

Roger Callard:

Henry Winkler and Stallone, but then there was another guy too.

 John Hansen:

Perry King, right?

Roger Callard:

Who?

 John Hansen:

Perry King?

Roger Callard:

I don’t know. I can’t remember his name. It was about three or four guys that were in it, and they all, that was their beginning. So it was a very small community really, and Hollywood is a small community. It’s not the big thing that people think it is. And in a lot of ways my association with Arnold and the bodybuilders hurt me in acting because it’s like putting a round peg in a square hole. They categorize you, they pigeonhole you. They see you as one thing, and I was really a much better actor than the roles I was given, but I was typecast.

 John Hansen:

Yeah. When did you move out of California, Roger?

Roger Callard:

2010 I moved back to Michigan. My wife was… cancer in 2008, and they said that there was nothing more they could do for her. So we came back here to Michigan and she lived another three years.

 John Hansen:

Okay.

Roger Callard:

I figured if I was going to go through something like that I wanted to be back in an environment like this where I could mentally and physically deal with it. As it turned out it was a great decision. Yeah, I’m very happy to be where I’m at. I’m working with… I’m developing a weight machine, I’m developing a protein powder I’m writing songs for a couple of movies, I’m writing scripts. I’m much more productive.

 John Hansen:

Really?

Roger Callard:

Yeah, I’m much more productive John, then I was over there.

 John Hansen:

Yeah. So you’re still sort of involved with the movies a little bit, huh?

Roger Callard:

Definitely, yeah. I’m going to do a movie here in the fall in Charlevoix in upper Michigan. So yeah, I got tied into the movie community here, which is… there’s quite a few people actually. Jeff Daniels is from here, Tom Selleck, Gilda Radner, Robin Williams. I mean, there were a lot of great actors from here as well.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, yeah.

Roger Callard:

It’s a great state, Michigan. It’s a beautiful state. It’s like New York. I mean people, they think New York is New York City, and they think Michigan is Detroit, and nothing could be further from the truth. You go upstate New York and upstate Michigan, it’s beautiful.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, totally different. Right.

Roger Callard:

Totally different. It’s like LA, that’s not California. Drive up to Santa Barbara, go up to Big Sur. A lot of our preconceptions about locales is tied to a big city. People think you have to be… that’s another thing. That people think that they have to be from those places to be famous. I always tell them, places don’t make people famous, people make places famous.

 John Hansen:

Right.

Roger Callard:

Larry Bird was from French Lick, and Magic Johnson was from Lansing. You don’t have to be from LA or New York or Philadelphia. You can be from a little speck on the map.

 John Hansen:

Well, I wish you the best of luck with all your new projects Roger. I hope you’re successful in all of them.

Roger Callard:

Thank you John. Thank you, and I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to tell a few stories. It’s a history really. People, they don’t realize what has transpired to make things the way they are today. We walk on a lot of men’s shoulders. I always say that if you’re on a bus or you’re somewhere, there’s greatness all around you. We just know who they are, and you open the door for somebody, if he opens the door for you say thank you. He might be a war hero. He might be… You don’t know who he is. I never trivialize a man’s or woman’s kindness, and that’s what we do nowadays. We take a lot of things for granted.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, like we were talking about last week when we talked on the phone that really was a magical time in bodybuilding, and like you said it will probably never be repeated again, and it really was the ground work for changing physical fitness in America. That movie and…

Roger Callard:

Changing the ideology of the world really, because now a concept of what we thought was weird suddenly became the norm. I mean look at our bodies now compared to the guys, and it’s a pretty vast difference. But I think if you took those pictures in a bar and you asked some girls who would they rather be with, they’d pick our pictures. It just shows how far we’ve gone. I don’t know, I don’t like the direction it’s going in to be honest with you. I don’t know, it doesn’t seem healthy to me. I don’t think a lot of them are going to be around in 50 years or 40 years.

 John Hansen:

Well, hearing your stories about the way you guys used to train and how athletic you were and how functional you were and how you guys looked great all time. I think that’s the ideal. That’s the bodybuilding ideal.

Roger Callard:

It has to be a lifestyle. You can’t diet. There’s no such thing as dieting. It has to be sound nutrition. Nothing will last unless it’s a lifestyle, and that’s really what that era was about is that we didn’t have a lot of money, but we did it because we loved it, and we all came to that Mecca so to speak because we knew that the best would gather there. It was almost like we were following, like the wise men following the star. We went there because we knew that the best were going to be there, and if we wanted to be the best we kind of felt like that’s where we had to go to achieve it.

Roger Callard:

It might not have been the case, but it certainly made that era something very special, because now you have these guys from all over the world gathering in this little small gym, and that minuscule subculture changed the world.

Gold’s Gym

 John Hansen:

The original Gold’s was only about a little over 3,000 square feet, right?

Roger Callard:

I don’t even think it was that big John.

 John Hansen:

Really? Wow, that’s just amazing when you think about it.

Roger Callard:

I would think it wasn’t much more than 50×50.

 John Hansen:

Wow, really? That’s crazy.

Roger Callard:

Yeah, it was less than 3,000. I actually remodeled that building, because I know there were 16-foot ceilings. Because Brian Abadie and I actually remodeled it for Ken Sprague.

 John Hansen:

Right.

Roger Callard:

And I think one of the Jacksons bought the house. I don’t know if it was Randy Jackson, one of The Jackson 5 bought the house.

 John Hansen:

Bought the building?

Roger Callard:

Yeah, it wasn’t that big John, it was small.

 John Hansen:

Wow, that’s incredible.

Roger Callard:

It’s like when you go back to your house where you were born, it’s smaller than what you thought.

 John Hansen:

Right, right.

Roger Callard:

It always seemed big when you were young.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, or your school that you went to when you were young. It’s the same thing.

Roger Callard:

Yeah, they’re small, they’re tiny.

 John Hansen:

All right Roger. Well, I just want to thank you again for joining us for this interview. There’s a lot of great stories, and to celebrate the 40th anniversary, and you were around during that time, so it was really great getting your stories and your input.

Roger Callard:

Well, thank you. I was lucky to be a part of a tremendous era, and again, there were a lot of guys that I didn’t mention. I should have mentioned, but they know who they are, and we were all a part of that time and I’m just thankful that I was there. It’s kind of one of those moments in life when you’re almost outside yourself and you know that this is a special time. And that’s what that time was. We all knew it was going to be special, we just didn’t know how special. I think historically it’ll grow in time even more, and the impact when it’s studied will even be more impactful than what it is today.

 John Hansen:

Yeah, absolutely. I agree.

Roger Callard:

Well, thank you John.

 John Hansen:

All right Roger.

Roger Callard:

Thank the producer and everybody, and good luck with your podcast and your popularity out there. I hope it grows, and I think these stories need to be told too.

 John Hansen:

Yes. I do too. It’s close to my heart. This is my passion, so it’s great talking to guys like you I grew up reading about. Great hearing the old stories.

Roger Callard:

Well, when you talk to Mike tell him I’m sorry. It was a long time ago.

 John Hansen:

Okay.

Roger Callard:

Tell him I still love him.

 John Hansen:

All right, I will.

Roger Callard:

All right.

 John Hansen:

Thanks again.

Roger Callard:

Tell him I got more cheese now for my car, I’ll be fine.

 John Hansen:

Right.

Roger Callard:

All right man, you guys have a good one.

 John Hansen:

All right Roger. Take care. Thanks again.

Roger Callard:

Goodnight.

 John Hansen:

Goodnight. All right, thank you for joining us for another edition of the Bodybuilding Legends Podcast. Thank you to Roger Callard for his great interview. Next week we will have an interview with 1974 Mr. World Bill Grant, and Bill Grant was also one of the crew from the Gold’s Gym in Venice, California. From the golden era of bodybuilding Bill’s going to tell us about how he made it out to California and started training out there, and how he competed in the 1975 Mr. Olympia out in Pretoria South Africa. So we’re going to have a great interview next time with Bill Grant, 1974 Mr. World.

 John Hansen:

Thanks again to old school labs for sponsoring the Bodybuilding Legends Podcast. Visit them at oldschoollabs.com put in legends12 for a 12% discount off your order, or you can visit them at amazon.com. Old School Labs, supplements that make sense. We’ll see you guys next time.