Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone might seem like besties today as they carve pumpkins together on Instagram. But they were Hollywood rivals in the 1980s and 1990s, competing for similar action-hero roles, and that rivalry caused Stallone to make one of the biggest mistakes of his career: “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.”
“I had heard Schwarzenegger was going to do that movie and I said, ‘I’m going to beat him to it,’” Sly told The Hollywood Reporter. “I think he set me up.”
Schwarzenegger confirmed that the story of the setup ― something of an urban legend in Hollywood ― was exactly how it happened.
“It’s 100 percent true,” Schwarzenegger told the magazine. “In those days we did all kinds of crazy things to get ahead in our rivalry. Luckily for us and everyone else, today, we root for each other. Thank God, because we sure don’t ever need another ‘Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.’”
The two have told variations of the tale before; Schwarzenegger said at a festival in 2017 that he found the script “so bad” but leaked that he had “tremendous interest” to see if Stallone would bite.
“And he went for it!” Schwarzenegger gloated. “He totally went for it.”
“Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot” was a critical bomb and has a 14% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Critic Roger Ebert called it “utterly lacking in even the smallest morsel of redeeming value.”
Schwarzenegger and Stallone have since set aside their rivalry and starred in several films together. And as that Instagram post last month showed, they totally hang out as well.
In his Hollywood Reporter interview, Stallone called his one-time frenemy “very wise” and said they now laugh about the old times.
“I told him: ‘We are the last two tyrannosaurus,’” Stallone said. “We’re the last two meat eaters, and there’s not much beef left out there. So we better enjoy each other.”