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For the last quarter-century, writer Peter Manso’s notes from an old interview for a now-defunct magazine have gathered dust, locked away in storage and largely forgotten. 

Then a resourceful journalist dug up a copy of the magazine, and Manso’s ancient interview rocketed into the headlines, gathering far more publicity today than it did when it first appeared in print. 

That’s because the interview subject now wants to run California—and he’d told Manso about things he’d just as soon not have people discussing. 

Manso, an internationally know writer who divides his time between Berkeley and Provincetown, Mass.—where his home once belonged to celebrated Marxist author John Reed—he was a 35-year old freelancer in 1977 when he interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger for Oui, a now-defunct sister publication of Playboy. 

The article appeared that August. 

The would-be governor was an apt interview candidate back then because he was starring in a just-released documentary, “Pumping Iron,” a film that became both a popular success and a cult hit. 

“The idea for the piece was mine,” said Manso, who was living in New York at the time. “The interviews stretched out over three or four sessions in Boston and New York. 

“I went with him to the [film’s] premiere in Boston, and I found him bright, charming, verbal, responsive, and clearly unusual.” 

Manso wasn’t all that surprised when Schwarzenegger talked openly about his sex life—receiving oral sex before winning the Mister Olympia title, partaking in a gangbang at his favorite gym, and his preference for large breasts. 

“That was just the 70s,” the writer said. “Not long after my piece on Arnie, another Berkeleyan, Bob Scheer, did an interview with Jimmy Carter in which he admitted to lusting after women in his heart. That’s just the way it was then.” 

What did surprise the interviewer was the way that, “at age 29, he’d figured out the course of the rest of his life. “Pumping Iron” would be his springboard to Hollywood.” 

The would-be actor also had a keen awareness that major Hollywood stars have a built-in half-life, and he would have to have a second career in business or politics.” 

Schwarzenegger’s often outrageous conduct towards women has been an open secret for years, Manso said. “This guy’s a narcissist. Arnold lives by Arnold’s rules,” he said. 

The muscleman turned-actor-turned-candidate generated headlines in England after he grabbed various portions of the anatomies of two women who interviewed him, and he’s said outrageous things even after he floated his first gubernatorial trial balloons. 

Because he’s a huge star overseas, Manso said the Oui flap has gathered headlines in London, India, Belgium, South Africa and elsewhere. 

Ever since the interview resurfaced in late August, Manso said he’s been swamped with requests for interviews. “I’ve done Good Morning America, CNN, Fox, NPR, and a lot of local TV in Boston.” An Associated Press interview appeared Sunday. 

Manso said Schwarzenegger’s response to the flap has gone through three distinct phases. 

“Initially, he said, ‘Oh, I used to say and do crazy and ludicrous things back then.’ Then, at the state fair in Sacramento, he said, ‘I have no memory of those things I said 25 years ago.’ And then Chris Matthews—a man who isn’t as smart as he thinks he is—gave him an out on ‘Hardball’ when he asked him, ‘Isn’t it possible you made those things up’” to promote “Pumping Iron?” “And he grabbed at it.” 

Manso said that “on one level” Schwarzenegger’s response “Is charming, energizing, even entertaining. But you’re a fool if you don’t see it as narcissism writ large. It’s really astonishing. How does he expect to get away with it?” 

The writer observed that those on the writ who made much of former President Bill Clinton’s sexual conduct and non-inhaling marijuana use have been strangely silent about Schwarzenegger’s admitted womanizing and his enthusiastic former use of hashish and marijuana. 

“The double standard employed in these matters is disgusting,” he said. 

Manso is no stranger to political flaps resulting from his interviews. A 1982 Playboy interview with New York Mayor Ed Koch appeared just as he announced his plans to run for governor of New York in 1982. Koch’s condescending remarks about Albany, the New York state capital—“life at its worst,” among others—are credited with costing him the election after they were reprinted on the front page of the New York Times. 

“He wasn’t planning to run at the time of the interview, and he realized it was his own fault. We became friends,” something he doesn’t expect will happen with the would-be California governor. 

Manso is best known for his biographies of actor Marlon Brando and writer Norman Mailer, and his latest book, “Ptown: Art, Sex, and Money on the Outer Cape,” has stirred up a fair amount of controversy, too, since its publication in July of 2002. 

A history of his alternate hometown in Massachusetts, the book has generated a storm of debate for its account of the transformation of the East Coast’s artist’s haven into a citadel of wealthy gays. 

Berkeley residents can brace for more of the same, because Manso’s training his literary sights on his other hometown as the subject for his next book. 

He’ll be returning to Berkeley later this month, ready to make up for lost time. 

“I’ve lost a week-and-a-half on my Berkeley book” because of the Schwarzenegger flap, Manso said.