The film industry operates on "high concept" -- the reduction of a film project's theme to a few words that, filmmakers hope, can draw the attention of financiers and positive responses from audiences.

Typically, a high-concept project involves a hero who overcomes internal and/or external conflicts to confront a big problem. "A high-concept screenplay can be sold without lengthy explanation ... ," says Jennifer Lerch in her book on screenwriting.

If one were to distill Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest movie -- "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" -- to its high concept, it would be something like this: "Arnold saves humanity from a destructive robot." If one were to apply the same notion to Schwarzenegger's campaign for governor of California, it would produce the same high concept: He's offering himself as the savior of the state from its robotic governor, Gray Davis.
Listen to what Schwarzenegger told television talk show host Jay Leno when he made his stunning announcement that he would seek the governorship in the Oct. 7 election in which voters will decide whether to recall Davis:

"The people are working hard," he told Leno. "The people are paying the taxes, the people are raising the families, but the politicians are not doing their job. The politicians are fiddling, fumbling and failing. Do your job for the people, and do it well; otherwise you are hasta la vista, baby."

Later statements by Schwarzenegger's advisers essentially confirmed this high-concept approach. When he was taking some heat from journalists and opponents for not taking specific positions on issues, such as the state budget deficit, Schwarzenegger's chief adviser, George Gorton, responded: "This is not a position election. This is a character election. People are looking at character here, they're looking for somebody who will go in and clean house."

Schwarzenegger's spokesman, Sean Walsh, echoed those words when he said, "Our strategy is to make it clear that Gray Davis is the problem in California. California wants a vital leader, someone who is tough enough to get the job done."

At some point, the actor's campaign will produce a quota of position papers on the budget and other issues to quiet demands of political journalists, but they will have little or nothing to do with the high-concept strategy of going over journalists' heads to directly sell Schwarzenegger as the cure for the state's ills. And given the dynamics of the situation -- a brief campaign period and the demand on voters to decide Davis' fate -- it may be a winner.

Journalists and rivals may complain as Schwarzenegger exploits his larger-than-life persona and bypasses ordinary campaign channels, but as long as it's working, one shouldn't expect the aspiring governor to deviate. And so far, it appears to be working. A Gallup Poll taken for CNN and USA Today over the weekend found that support for the Davis recall has soared to two-thirds of voters -- a 2-1 margin against the governor -- and that Schwarzenegger is leading the pack of candidates, even Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, by a wide margin.

With his magnetic personality, his glamorous aura and his willingness to spend millions of his own dollars, Schwarzenegger could simply suck all of the oxygen out of the arena, leaving Davis and other would-be successors gasping for breath, unable to gain any attention from media or voters. This is a very smart, very rich and very goal-directed, perhaps even ruthless, man, who's used to getting what he wants once he decides that he wants it.

Does that mean Schwarzenegger's ascendancy to the governorship is inevitable? No. But it's doubtful whether Davis and his advisers, for all their experience in negative campaigning, can do it by themselves. This is not just a Davis vs. Schwarzenegger contest, after all. The first question voters face is whether to keep Davis, so he's running against himself, not Schwarzenegger or any other rival.

Stopping the Schwarzenegger juggernaut may well depend on whether his saying or doing something irreversibly stupid or the emergence of a killer secret from his past. What's emerged so far -- the rumors of "womanizing" or the nude pictures from his bodybuilder days -- won't do it. It would have to be something that would destroy the appealing high concept of cleaning up the state's political mess.