Is Moscow Heat the movie to launch Russian bodybuilder Alexander Nevsky into a Schwarzenegger-esque stratosphere?

“I wanted to show Walter Hill my muscles.” Alexander Nevsky smiles and points to his arms, explaining why he refused the bandages that would keep him warm on the cold set of Hill’s 2002 boxing pic, Undisputed. Coming from the former Mr. World, this doesn’t come off as cocky, as it would for most uttering that line, but slightly endearing. The star, producer and co-writer of the upcoming Moscow Heat, the largest independently financed Russian film ever made, gives his star smile and slyly continues: “Later on, I realized I needed to take the bandages.”

It’s with this engaging attitude that Nevsky, a Russian bodybuilder who rose from the late-’80s and ’90s chaos known as the former Soviet Union, hopes to conquer the American market like his idol, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The first major step is Moscow Heat, which he put together with his friend and actor-writer Robert Madrid.

Directed by Jeff Celentano (Under the Hula Moon) and co-starring Michael York (Austin Powers) and Richard Tyson (Black Hawk Down), the film is a drama/actioner that centers around a murdered American cop and the subsequent chase that ensues, all the way to Russia, where the cop’s partner (Madrid) and a diplomat (York) search for the truth. There, they become entangled with local bad guys, led by Tyson. Nevsky plays a Russian official who helps York and Madrid’s characters navigate their way through Moscow’s labyrinthine underworld and political climes. It’s the real Moscow that Nevsky wants to show the West, the place where he was raised.

It was during those days as “a very tall and skinny kid” growing up in the lower-middle class area of the Russian capital that he knew he was destined for stardom, even though it meant getting kicked around first. Growing up in the “tougher” part of the city, he was bullied by the bigger kids. It was at this point he picked up boxing and, subsequently, bodybuilding. Soon, the tables were turned and it was the former skinny kid who was feared.

But as the kids stopped picking on the stronger, more dangerous Nevsky, there appeared another deterrent to his new life goal: his parents. His father, a university professor, and mother, an economist, weren’t very enthusiastic about their son’s new hobby. They’d rather him study (which he still did) and wondered what their son’s new fascination with bodybuilding was.

“I had posters... pirated, I’m sure,” Nevsky adds, noting Russia’s propensity at the time to bootleg everything from liquor to films. “In every [Moscow subway] station, you could buy huge posters of things like Arnold with the sword from Conan the Barbarian. As you can imagine, my walls were soon all covered. In fact, my parents started getting upset because they asked me, ‘Hey, why do your friends have all those posters of women on the wall, and you have all these muscle guys. Maybe there’s something wrong.’ No, I told them, I just want to be like them.”

It wasn’t long before he was. As the first bodybuilding icon in Russia, Nevsky virtually became the industry, using a variety of mediums to spread the sport’s ideals and competition news across the country. Soon his name was just as synonymous with bodybuilding in Russia as his idol Schwarzenegger’s.

“I published four books after my first documentary, which was like the Russian Pumping Iron. I was 21 years old at the time [in 1993] and that movie was premiered on the second channel of Russian TV. More than 100 million people watched it, confused, because it was the first time a bodybuilder came out on television and said something that wasn’t a grunt, [it was] something actually intelligent. And my point was that if I was skinny [before] and [now] I have all these muscles, and got an education and got all this fame, then you can do it too.” But alongside the physical part came the emotional side Nevsky knew to be critical to anyone who wanted to fulfill their dreams, especially in “the new Russia.

“In 1994… the Soviet Union wasn’t the Soviet Union anymore,” Nevsky says. “But at the same time, it wasn’t the new Russia yet. It was between times. And a lot of young people were confused. It was a time of Russian gangsters, kind of like an Al Capone and Godfather thing going on. My major point (to kids) was that they [didn’t have to go into crime], and to believe in yourself, love your family and do what you want to do, follow your dream. And later I realized that Schwarzenegger did the same thing here [in the U.S.] in the ’70s and ’80s.”

Feeling that he had conquered as much of Russia as he was going to, 1999 proved to be a watershed year for Nevsky. Eager to break into the U.S. film industry, he decided to move to Los Angeles. He had done some acting work in Russia, but it was a meeting with his idol, the current governor of Cal-e-for-nia, 11 years earlier that really sparked his dreams to come to the United States.

“I first met Arnold in 1988 when he and Walter Hill went to Russia to film Red Heat,” Nevsky recalls. “They were the first American production with official permission to shoot in Red Square. Arnold was in Russia for three days, at the Soviet Hotel, which was its actual name. I remember the day they shot. A lot of us were there because we had heard that Arnold was going to be there. Later, Arnold told me that he was surprised that so many people in Russia knew who he was because they never officially released his films there.”

Paralleling Schwarzenegger’s rise to fame by parlaying his bodybuilding fame into a film career was Nevsky’s plan all along. Although his current credits are modest (mostly parts in action films, like Undisputed, which focus on his physique more than character development), it is Moscow Heat that he hopes brings him to the greater attention of Tinseltown.

Written in four months by Nevsky and Madrid, who met at a gym two and half years earlier, the film is the first for their production company, Czar Pictures. Nevsky and his partner in Russia, Alexander Izotov, first hatched the idea. They were at a Golden Globes party, smoking cigars on the roof, when they saw the ubiquitous Schwarzenegger passing by, also smoking a stogie. Izotov turned to Nevsky and asked why they didn’t make a movie.

After writing the piece, Madrid wooed helmer Celentano, who directed him in 1995’s Under the Hula Moon. Izotov secured the financing and helped put together a solid cast with solid credits. Particularly estimable was landing York, whom they considered a coup for several reasons. “Michael York is one of my favorite actors, and working with him was an honor,” says Nevsky. They also recruited Tyson, who plays the head bad guy, Nikolay. “Richard was a perfect bad guy,” Nevsky recalls, “but off the set he was the nicest guy, with a great sense of humor.”

As much as success in America is important to Nevsky, there’s a more important audience for him: his first one. They are the Russian fans that still support him and will be there when the film has its August world premiere in Moscow (they’ve sent a request to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but Nevsky sadly acknowledges that he still hasn’t gotten a reply). If there’s one thing that irks Nevsky about Hollywood, it’s its still-mired-in-the-Cold War representation of the Russian people. “Rambo killed a lot of Russian people in his movies, [as did] Arnold, who killed Russians in Predator and Commando,” recalls Nevsky of these seminal ’80s action flicks. But Nevsky notes that as the Cold War ended, these unflattering portrayals of Russians didn’t. He counts films like Birthday Girl, Armageddon, Training Day, Gone in 60 Seconds and The Italian Job among those that he feels disrespected by.

“I want to tell you—and no offense to Hollywood movies, because I like them—[but] I never wanted to play that kind of role,” says Nevsky. “My first offer here was to be the villain on (the TV show) Battlebots. They wanted me to play that type of person. I remember, I went into casting and I didn’t know they wanted me to play that type of role. When you’re new here, they expect you to be happy [with] every offer they give you... But I cannot do anything like that because I have an audience [in Russia] and they will never expect me to do things like that.” It seems that if Nevsky commits to his fans here with the same respect, Moscow Heat won’t be the last time we hear of him.

by Alex Ferreyra