A year ago, Sylvester Stallone had $106 in the bank. His wife was pregnant, his bull mastiff was starving and he couldn't pay the rent on his seedy Hollywood apartment. What to do?
Well, one answer was that Stallone, a sometime actor-turned-screenwriter, could sit down and in 3 1/2 days write a screenplay with a meaty starring role in it for himself, persuade someone to film it, and wind up a millionaire. Improbable? Pessimists might say so, and advise Stallone to try something more sure, like the Irish Sweepstakes. Impossible? Well, no, because you see, there's this new movie, called ''Rocky.''
That's Stallone up there as ''Rocky,'' Rocky Balboa, a tender-hearted, down-and-out Philadelphia club fighter known as ''The Italian Stallion,'' who almost becomes heavyweight champion of the world. And the words Stallone is mouthing on screen are the words he wrote in 3 1/2 days and sold to producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff on the condition that he would play ''Rocky,'' and not Burt Reynolds, or James Caan, or Ryan O'Neal, who were being mentioned for the part.
The film was shot in 28 days (''The gestation time for a water bug,'' Stallone says wryly), on a shoestring $1 million budget, and now, with critics split down the middle with some raving and other deploring, and United Artists predicting ''Rocky'' will gross more than $40 million, Stallone is finally smiling. You see, he has 10 percent of ''Rocky.''
That's enough to make anyone jubilant, and he is. In an interview the other day in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, the 30-year-old actor, known as ''Sly'' to his friends, laughed repeatedly, rolled off a steady stream of one-liners, snapped his fingers to recorded rock music, answered his constantly ringing telephone with the greeting, ''City Morgue,'' and said, gleefully, several times in his basso profundo voice, ''I am one of the great bull artists of all time!'' There is none of the brooding intensity of Al Pacino or Marlon Brando, with whom he is being compared. What Sylvester Stallone radiates is boyish mischief.
One of the few ways to make him get serious is to ask how his own life compares with Rocky's. ''There are certain parallels,'' he replied, chewing on a yellow pencil. ''Rocky had drive, and intelligence, and the talent to be a fighter, but nobody noticed him. Then when opportunity knocked, everybody said, 'Hey, there's Rocky, he's good.' That's what happened to me. The fact that we both went the distance when we were finally given the opportunity, that's the main parallel.''
''It's funny,'' he goes on, his big brown bassethound eyes growing sad, ''there's a great herd of people who were holding back compliments for years that are now coming forth and saying, 'I like you.' It happened to Rocky, too. I feel like saying to them, 'Where were you when I was living in Hotel Barf, eating hot and cold running disease?' They say, 'Oh, we were holding it back, Sly, because we didn't want you to get a swelled head.'''
All of a sudden, Stallone remembered he had forgotten to take his vitamin pills. He swallowed 44 of them, his nightly ration of the 113 he says he takes every day. As Stallone sees it, his body is a temple. He lifts weights regularly, which accounts for his muscular pumped-up upper body that is out of proportion with the rest of his body. He obviously likes people to notice his efforts: The snug black T-shirt he was wearing emphasized his 46-inch chest and his bulging, 16-inch biceps.
''You know,'' he said, returning to the subject of ''Rocky,'' ''if nothing else comes out of that film in the way of awards and accolades, it will still show that an unknown quantity, a totally unmarketable person, can produce a diamond in the rough, a gem. And there are a lot more people like me out there, too, people whose chosen profession denies them opportunity. When that happens, their creative energies begin to swirl around inside, and erode them, and they become envious, vindictive persons who turn to drink. I, myself, turned to fighting; I averaged a fight in New York City once every four or five weeks. Now when I reflect back on it, I know it was just a release for creative energy.''
Stallone, whose only leading role before ''Rocky'' was in a 1974 low budget flop called ''The Lords of Flatbush'' (he was also in ''Capone'' and ''Death Race 2000''), turned to screenwriting out of frustration at not being able to get good acting jobs. He was also influenced by his mother, who dabbled in astrology and predicted he'd make his first big success as a writer. Stallone sold a few scripts, mainly to television, before conceiving the idea of ''Rocky,'' which was inspired by an actual championship fight in 1975 between Chuck Wepner, know as ''The Bayonne Bleeder,'' and Muhammad Ali, the world champion.
''I was watching the fight in a movie theater,'' he said, ''and I said to myself, 'Let's talk about stifled ambition and broken dreams and people who sit on the curb looking at their dreams go down the drain.' I thought about it for a month. That's what I call my inspiration stage. Then I let it incubate for 10 months, the incubation stage. Then came the verification stage, when I wrote it in 3 1/2 days. I'd get up at 6 A.M. and write it by hand, with a Bic pen on lined notebook sheets of paper. Then my wife, Sasha, would type it. She kept saying, 'You've gotta do it, you've gotta do it. Push it, Sly, go for broke.'''
Actually, there were two more drafts of ''Rocky'' after the first one, during which Stallone hung ''muscle and skin'' on his characters. ''In the first draft, I always try for a skeletal structure,'' he said. ''Then I begin to inject humor and idiosyncrasies. You know, I just don't believe these guys who say it takes them 19 years to write something. I just force myself to put it down and get it done.''
From the beginning, Stallone intended to play ''Rocky.'' Although there was much interest in Hollywood for his script, the money men all wanted a name actor in the part. The bidding went up to $265,000, but Stallone refused to sell, unless he could play the lead.
''I never would have sold it,'' he says now. ''I told my wife that I'd rather bury it in the back yard and let the caterpillars play 'Rocky.' I would have hated myself for selling out, the way we hate most people for selling out. My wife agreed, and said she'd be willing to move to a trailer in the middle of a swamp if need be.''
Finally, Stallone got his way. He even wangled parts for members of his family. His father, Frank, a retired beautician and real estate dealer, plays the timekeeper in the fight scene; his 26-year-old brother, Frank, Jr., who recently signed a recording contract with RCA, plays a street corner singer; and his bull mastiff, Butkus, plays the dog. ''They work cheap,'' Stallone said, laughing. ''But I'm worried about Butkus - he'll always have problems with dialogue.''
The actor said that while he hadn't yet been able to fathom Butkus's creative process, he knew definitely that his own was not ''The Method.'' ''I think I'm an instinctual actor,'' he said. ''I don't understand terms like 'tuning your instrument.' I'm not an oboe or a bass fiddle. I'm a very rehearsed actor. I learn my lines ahead of time so that I know mine and everyone else's far in advance. That way I can give the illusion that I am ad libbing and be comfortable on the set. So many actors these days learn their lines at the last minute, or use cue cards. I just couldn't do that; I'd be too uncomfortable.''
The 5-foot-10-inch, 175-pound actor, who had never had any formal boxing instruction, went into training six hours a day for five months before ''Rocky'' began filming. He got up at dawn to run five miles on the beach, shadow-boxed around the apartment, and worked out at a gym, where he punched the punching bag, did pushups, and had a medicine ball thrown into his stomach. He was preparing for the film's climax, the championship fight, which he and director John Avildsen choreographed punch-for-punch. ''There were 14 pages of left, right, right, left, left hook,'' he said. ''What looked like haphazard throwing of punches was an exact ballet.''
Because of the rugged, he-man quality of his character in ''Rocky,'' Stallone has been hailed as the first leading man in a long time who projects the image of a Real Man. Is he as macho off the screen as he is on? ''If macho means I like to look good and feel strong and shoot guns in the woods, yes, I'm macho,'' he replied, smiling. ''I don't think that even women's lib wants all men to become limp-wristed librarians. I don't know what is happening to men these days. There's a trend toward a sleek, subdued sophistication and a lack of participation in sports. In discos, men and women look almost alike, and if you were a little bleary-eyed, you'd get them mixed up. I think it's wrong, and I think women are unhappy about it. There doesn't seem to be enough real men to go around.''
Does that mean he is a great admirer of those two other movie tough guys, Marlon Brando and Al Pacino? He hesitates. Finally, ''They seem very intense. I definitely admire them, but the actor I love is Peter O'Toole. He is so free. I know this man was probably just out there chasing the script girl, and then when the cameras start rolling, he turns on such power. I am in such awe of him.''
Swabbing his lips with chapstick, Stallone said he had a trilogy in mind for ''Rocky/'' In Part II, Rocky would go to night school and enter politics and eventually become Mayor of Philadelphia. And in Part III, he would be framed by the political machine because he was too honest, impeached and wind up back in the ring at 37, broken down but happy.
In fact, a happy, upbeat ending, a striking feature of ''Rocky,'' will probably be incorporated into all of Stallone's future scripts. ''I've really had it with anti-this and anti-that,'' he said. ''That silver cloud always has to loom I want to be remembered as a man of raging optimism, who believes in the American dream. Right now, it's as if a big cavernous black hole has been burned into the entertainment section of the brain. It's filled with demons and paranoia and fear. Where are all the heroes? Even the cowboys today are perverts - they all sleep with horses. Let other people suffer and do all those pain things and put their demons up on the screen. I'm not going to.''
More chapstick, more thought. And then: ''People require symbols of humanity and heroism. Yet today, a man brings his family into a theater, and there he sees a man pull out his knife and cut a kid's head off, and a woman is being run over by a Ford Mustang and the man in the theater says, 'Is there anybody here I can identify with? Is there anything here I want to see?' And the answers are no, no. But he sees 'Rocky' as a simple man, a man he can identify with, a man who doesn't curse and who likes America, a man who's a real man. That's what people want to see these days.''
Using his own upbeat, anyone-can-make-it-to-the-top formula, Stallone's own life story might serve as material for a movie. He's thinking about calling it ''From Roaches to Riches.'' The elements: Born to a bickering Italian couple in Hell's Kitchen . . . farmed out to foster homes while parents worked . . . grew up in Monkey Hollow, Md., where his mother ran a health spa . . . was a juvenile delinquent who attended 12 schools by the time he was 15, and was kicked out of most of them.
After high school in Philadelphia, where he had been a star fullback and discus thrower, Stallone enrolled at the American College in Leysin, Switzerland. Finding that money was scarce, he teamed up with classmate Prince Paul of Ethiopia to open a hamburger stand for the student, who had never tasted them before. Another part-time job required him to shoo men away from the girls' dormitory. He soon found, however, that it was more profitable to look the other way, 2 francs an hour, to be exact. ''I earned my plane fare home that way,'' he said, smiling.
He flew to the University of Miami, where he studied drama for two years, then moved to New York to become an actor. Instead, he found work cleaning lions' cages at the Central Park Zoo, and ushering at the Baronet Theater, where he was fired for trying to scalp a ticket to ''M.A.S.H.'' for $20. The sucker turned out to be Walter Reade, who owned the theater.
Now that the money is about to roll in, what does Stallone plan to do with it? ''I want to bank a lot of it for my kid [Sage, a 6-month-old-boy],'' he said. ''And I want to build myself a pyramid, which is the purest, most powerful structure ever devised. And I'd like to buy land in California, and maybe start some workshops for actors, and eventually get into a position where I could use actors who are not established stars.''
And no doubt he will use some of that money to move Sasha and Sage out of the 1 1/2 bedroom apartment with the punching bag in the living room and the roaches in the kitchen that they now rent for $215 a month ''in the pancreas of Hollywood.'' Stallone plans to remain on the West Coast, though, ''because I died in New York, and I was reborn in Hollywood, and I owe my allegiance to that town.''
Stallone has not yet decided on his next movie, but is eager to play the starring role in ''Superman,'' a $25 million production with Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman. Stallone is also interested in doing a film about Edgar Allen Poe, in which the author would be portrayed ''not as a dour dipsomaniac, but as a rogue, a real rake.'' And if both of these fall through, he may do a film he has written himself, called ''Sinsilver,'' about a Hassidic Jew in the Old West, and based on ''a reinterpretation of the Communist Manifesto.''
Sinsilver, no doubt, will triumph over great odds and the film will have a happy ending. Doesn't this kind of naive movie give false hopes to unfortunate people?
''What do you mean?'' Stallone bellowed. ''A peanut farmer has just become President of the United States. That's the greatest inspiration story of all time. He didn't come from wealth, he made his wealth. He went to his mother with dirt on his overalls and said, 'I'm going to be President.' He's understated, a common man, and that's why he won. I always say, 'If you lead with your heart, lead with your heart, and it will carry you much further than your brains will.'''
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
Friday, February 19, 2016
Sylvester Stallone: Is It Time To Save ‘Rocky’ From His Creator?
Sylvester Stallone is getting what many would call well-deserved recognition for his seventh time to play the famous Rocky Balboa character in 2015’s Creed.
There is a distinct possibility he could win a Golden Globe for supporting actor and go on to get a second Oscar nomination (his first being for the 1976 original).
It’s an undoubtedly powerful performance and a character that Sylvester Stallone knows quite well. However, a recent interview with Variety gives cause for concern, at least for Rocky fans.
The detailed interview, which also finds Stallone wisely hanging it up as Rambo, settles on the topic of the Rocky series and, more specifically, possible plans for the inevitable Creed II.
The long and short of it is this: he’s prepared to go forward regardless of how schedules shake out. That means director Ryan Coogler, who is largely credited with Sylvester Stallone turning in such a real performance and for the movie earning rave reviews, would not necessarily be involved.
Furthermore, Stallone has an ambitious — some would say face palming — idea of bringing back Carl Weathers and doing something “like The Godfather 2,” he says, where part of the story takes place in the past and part in the present.
Commenters and fans of the new film have already started expressing their displeasure, pointing out such a decision would devalue Adonis Creed, who managed to win over audiences on the back of Coogler’s script and Michael B. Jordan’s performance.
Since the Rocky character has nothing left to lose but his life with (SPOILER ALERT) both Adrian and Paulie being gone and his son pursuing his own life, redirecting emphasis to Rocky Balboa would kill what could be a burgeoning franchise before it really has a chance to get started.
There is also the issue of age.
Sylvester Stallone and Carl Weathers are neither one the physical specimens they used to be, and to dip back into the past to tell their stories, they would have to be.
Outside of recasting the two roles or using CGI, which has seldom been convincing when it comes to de-aging characters, the technique would be awkward at best.
Unfortunately, Sylvester Stallone has a long history of taking positive momentum that he has developed as a serious actor and turning it into one misstep after another.
Go back in time to the writer-director-actor’s resume via IMDb.
He followed Rocky with F.I.S.T. and Paradise Alley, two decent films that never found the traction they should have. That forced him back to Rocky II in 1979, which he followed with the underrated Nighthawks and Victory.
So far, so good.
Unfortunately for Sly, they didn’t pack the box office punch of Rocky, so he returned to the character again for Rocky III. While the first three films are all held in somewhat high regard by critics, there was a clear lessening in acceptance from I to III.
And that’s when it started getting really bumpy.
After following Rocky III with the hit film First Blood, he proceeded to run off a string of movies that were horribly received by critics and, in some cases, his audience.
Staying Alive (as director), Rhinestone, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Rocky IV, Cobra, Over the Top, Rambo III, Lock Up, Tango & Cash, Rocky V, Oscar, and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, were all massive failures artistically.
In spite of this, Rocky IV and the Rambo films managed to keep Sly relevant at the box office.
It didn’t make them good films, though.
Eventually, he would end up with another film that was both successful and well-reviewed in Cliffhanger, but he followed that with The Specialist, Judge Dredd, and Assassins, to name a few.
After 1997’s Cop Land, it would be a long time before audiences saw Sylvester Stallone in another good film, with much of his career relegated to direct-to-video action films like Avenging Angelo and Eye See You.
It wasn’t until 2006 that he would come back strong with Rocky Balboa and Rambo, only to squander that opportunity with The Expendables series, Bullet to the Head, Escape Plan, and Grudge Match.
Now he has more awards buzz for Creed, and what does he want to do? The Expendables 4 and Creed II without the man, who was close to instrumental in its success and awkward aging effects to boot.
There comes a time when every good thing must end. Rocky is now past that point, in spite of going out on a marvelous note. Unfortunately, it is now up to fans to save the character from his creator and Sylvester Stallone from himself.
'Rocky Isn't Based on Me,' Says Stallone, 'But We Both Went the Distance'
A year ago, Sylvester Stallone had $106 in the bank. His wife was pregnant, his bull mastiff was starving and he couldn't pay the rent on his seedy Hollywood apartment. What to do?
Well, one answer was that Stallone, a sometime actor-turned-screenwriter, could sit down and in 3 1/2 days write a screenplay with a meaty starring role in it for himself, persuade someone to film it, and wind up a millionaire. Improbable? Pessimists might say so, and advise Stallone to try something more sure, like the Irish Sweepstakes. Impossible? Well, no, because you see, there's this new movie, called ''Rocky.''
That's Stallone up there as ''Rocky,'' Rocky Balboa, a tender-hearted, down-and-out Philadelphia club fighter known as ''The Italian Stallion,'' who almost becomes heavyweight champion of the world. And the words Stallone is mouthing on screen are the words he wrote in 3 1/2 days and sold to producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff on the condition that he would play ''Rocky,'' and not Burt Reynolds, or James Caan, or Ryan O'Neal, who were being mentioned for the part.
The film was shot in 28 days (''The gestation time for a water bug,'' Stallone says wryly), on a shoestring $1 million budget, and now, with critics split down the middle with some raving and other deploring, and United Artists predicting ''Rocky'' will gross more than $40 million, Stallone is finally smiling. You see, he has 10 percent of ''Rocky.''
That's enough to make anyone jubilant, and he is. In an interview the other day in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, the 30-year-old actor, known as ''Sly'' to his friends, laughed repeatedly, rolled off a steady stream of one-liners, snapped his fingers to recorded rock music, answered his constantly ringing telephone with the greeting, ''City Morgue,'' and said, gleefully, several times in his basso profundo voice, ''I am one of the great bull artists of all time!'' There is none of the brooding intensity of Al Pacino or Marlon Brando, with whom he is being compared. What Sylvester Stallone radiates is boyish mischief.
One of the few ways to make him get serious is to ask how his own life compares with Rocky's. ''There are certain parallels,'' he replied, chewing on a yellow pencil. ''Rocky had drive, and intelligence, and the talent to be a fighter, but nobody noticed him. Then when opportunity knocked, everybody said, 'Hey, there's Rocky, he's good.' That's what happened to me. The fact that we both went the distance when we were finally given the opportunity, that's the main parallel.''
''It's funny,'' he goes on, his big brown bassethound eyes growing sad, ''there's a great herd of people who were holding back compliments for years that are now coming forth and saying, 'I like you.' It happened to Rocky, too. I feel like saying to them, 'Where were you when I was living in Hotel Barf, eating hot and cold running disease?' They say, 'Oh, we were holding it back, Sly, because we didn't want you to get a swelled head.'''
All of a sudden, Stallone remembered he had forgotten to take his vitamin pills. He swallowed 44 of them, his nightly ration of the 113 he says he takes every day. As Stallone sees it, his body is a temple. He lifts weights regularly, which accounts for his muscular pumped-up upper body that is out of proportion with the rest of his body. He obviously likes people to notice his efforts: The snug black T-shirt he was wearing emphasized his 46-inch chest and his bulging, 16-inch biceps.
''You know,'' he said, returning to the subject of ''Rocky,'' ''if nothing else comes out of that film in the way of awards and accolades, it will still show that an unknown quantity, a totally unmarketable person, can produce a diamond in the rough, a gem. And there are a lot more people like me out there, too, people whose chosen profession denies them opportunity. When that happens, their creative energies begin to swirl around inside, and erode them, and they become envious, vindictive persons who turn to drink. I, myself, turned to fighting; I averaged a fight in New York City once every four or five weeks. Now when I reflect back on it, I know it was just a release for creative energy.''
Stallone, whose only leading role before ''Rocky'' was in a 1974 low budget flop called ''The Lords of Flatbush'' (he was also in ''Capone'' and ''Death Race 2000''), turned to screenwriting out of frustration at not being able to get good acting jobs. He was also influenced by his mother, who dabbled in astrology and predicted he'd make his first big success as a writer. Stallone sold a few scripts, mainly to television, before conceiving the idea of ''Rocky,'' which was inspired by an actual championship fight in 1975 between Chuck Wepner, know as ''The Bayonne Bleeder,'' and Muhammad Ali, the world champion.
''I was watching the fight in a movie theater,'' he said, ''and I said to myself, 'Let's talk about stifled ambition and broken dreams and people who sit on the curb looking at their dreams go down the drain.' I thought about it for a month. That's what I call my inspiration stage. Then I let it incubate for 10 months, the incubation stage. Then came the verification stage, when I wrote it in 3 1/2 days. I'd get up at 6 A.M. and write it by hand, with a Bic pen on lined notebook sheets of paper. Then my wife, Sasha, would type it. She kept saying, 'You've gotta do it, you've gotta do it. Push it, Sly, go for broke.'''
Actually, there were two more drafts of ''Rocky'' after the first one, during which Stallone hung ''muscle and skin'' on his characters. ''In the first draft, I always try for a skeletal structure,'' he said. ''Then I begin to inject humor and idiosyncrasies. You know, I just don't believe these guys who say it takes them 19 years to write something. I just force myself to put it down and get it done.''
From the beginning, Stallone intended to play ''Rocky.'' Although there was much interest in Hollywood for his script, the money men all wanted a name actor in the part. The bidding went up to $265,000, but Stallone refused to sell, unless he could play the lead.
''I never would have sold it,'' he says now. ''I told my wife that I'd rather bury it in the back yard and let the caterpillars play 'Rocky.' I would have hated myself for selling out, the way we hate most people for selling out. My wife agreed, and said she'd be willing to move to a trailer in the middle of a swamp if need be.''
Finally, Stallone got his way. He even wangled parts for members of his family. His father, Frank, a retired beautician and real estate dealer, plays the timekeeper in the fight scene; his 26-year-old brother, Frank, Jr., who recently signed a recording contract with RCA, plays a street corner singer; and his bull mastiff, Butkus, plays the dog. ''They work cheap,'' Stallone said, laughing. ''But I'm worried about Butkus - he'll always have problems with dialogue.''
The actor said that while he hadn't yet been able to fathom Butkus's creative process, he knew definitely that his own was not ''The Method.'' ''I think I'm an instinctual actor,'' he said. ''I don't understand terms like 'tuning your instrument.' I'm not an oboe or a bass fiddle. I'm a very rehearsed actor. I learn my lines ahead of time so that I know mine and everyone else's far in advance. That way I can give the illusion that I am ad libbing and be comfortable on the set. So many actors these days learn their lines at the last minute, or use cue cards. I just couldn't do that; I'd be too uncomfortable.''
The 5-foot-10-inch, 175-pound actor, who had never had any formal boxing instruction, went into training six hours a day for five months before ''Rocky'' began filming. He got up at dawn to run five miles on the beach, shadow-boxed around the apartment, and worked out at a gym, where he punched the punching bag, did pushups, and had a medicine ball thrown into his stomach. He was preparing for the film's climax, the championship fight, which he and director John Avildsen choreographed punch-for-punch. ''There were 14 pages of left, right, right, left, left hook,'' he said. ''What looked like haphazard throwing of punches was an exact ballet.''
Because of the rugged, he-man quality of his character in ''Rocky,'' Stallone has been hailed as the first leading man in a long time who projects the image of a Real Man. Is he as macho off the screen as he is on? ''If macho means I like to look good and feel strong and shoot guns in the woods, yes, I'm macho,'' he replied, smiling. ''I don't think that even women's lib wants all men to become limp-wristed librarians. I don't know what is happening to men these days. There's a trend toward a sleek, subdued sophistication and a lack of participation in sports. In discos, men and women look almost alike, and if you were a little bleary-eyed, you'd get them mixed up. I think it's wrong, and I think women are unhappy about it. There doesn't seem to be enough real men to go around.''
Does that mean he is a great admirer of those two other movie tough guys, Marlon Brando and Al Pacino? He hesitates. Finally, ''They seem very intense. I definitely admire them, but the actor I love is Peter O'Toole. He is so free. I know this man was probably just out there chasing the script girl, and then when the cameras start rolling, he turns on such power. I am in such awe of him.''
Swabbing his lips with chapstick, Stallone said he had a trilogy in mind for ''Rocky/'' In Part II, Rocky would go to night school and enter politics and eventually become Mayor of Philadelphia. And in Part III, he would be framed by the political machine because he was too honest, impeached and wind up back in the ring at 37, broken down but happy.
In fact, a happy, upbeat ending, a striking feature of ''Rocky,'' will probably be incorporated into all of Stallone's future scripts. ''I've really had it with anti-this and anti-that,'' he said. ''That silver cloud always has to loom I want to be remembered as a man of raging optimism, who believes in the American dream. Right now, it's as if a big cavernous black hole has been burned into the entertainment section of the brain. It's filled with demons and paranoia and fear. Where are all the heroes? Even the cowboys today are perverts - they all sleep with horses. Let other people suffer and do all those pain things and put their demons up on the screen. I'm not going to.''
More chapstick, more thought. And then: ''People require symbols of humanity and heroism. Yet today, a man brings his family into a theater, and there he sees a man pull out his knife and cut a kid's head off, and a woman is being run over by a Ford Mustang and the man in the theater says, 'Is there anybody here I can identify with? Is there anything here I want to see?' And the answers are no, no. But he sees 'Rocky' as a simple man, a man he can identify with, a man who doesn't curse and who likes America, a man who's a real man. That's what people want to see these days.''
Using his own upbeat, anyone-can-make-it-to-the-top formula, Stallone's own life story might serve as material for a movie. He's thinking about calling it ''From Roaches to Riches.'' The elements: Born to a bickering Italian couple in Hell's Kitchen . . . farmed out to foster homes while parents worked . . . grew up in Monkey Hollow, Md., where his mother ran a health spa . . . was a juvenile delinquent who attended 12 schools by the time he was 15, and was kicked out of most of them.
After high school in Philadelphia, where he had been a star fullback and discus thrower, Stallone enrolled at the American College in Leysin, Switzerland. Finding that money was scarce, he teamed up with classmate Prince Paul of Ethiopia to open a hamburger stand for the student, who had never tasted them before. Another part-time job required him to shoo men away from the girls' dormitory. He soon found, however, that it was more profitable to look the other way, 2 francs an hour, to be exact. ''I earned my plane fare home that way,'' he said, smiling.
He flew to the University of Miami, where he studied drama for two years, then moved to New York to become an actor. Instead, he found work cleaning lions' cages at the Central Park Zoo, and ushering at the Baronet Theater, where he was fired for trying to scalp a ticket to ''M.A.S.H.'' for $20. The sucker turned out to be Walter Reade, who owned the theater.
Now that the money is about to roll in, what does Stallone plan to do with it? ''I want to bank a lot of it for my kid [Sage, a 6-month-old-boy],'' he said. ''And I want to build myself a pyramid, which is the purest, most powerful structure ever devised. And I'd like to buy land in California, and maybe start some workshops for actors, and eventually get into a position where I could use actors who are not established stars.''
And no doubt he will use some of that money to move Sasha and Sage out of the 1 1/2 bedroom apartment with the punching bag in the living room and the roaches in the kitchen that they now rent for $215 a month ''in the pancreas of Hollywood.'' Stallone plans to remain on the West Coast, though, ''because I died in New York, and I was reborn in Hollywood, and I owe my allegiance to that town.''
Stallone has not yet decided on his next movie, but is eager to play the starring role in ''Superman,'' a $25 million production with Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman. Stallone is also interested in doing a film about Edgar Allen Poe, in which the author would be portrayed ''not as a dour dipsomaniac, but as a rogue, a real rake.'' And if both of these fall through, he may do a film he has written himself, called ''Sinsilver,'' about a Hassidic Jew in the Old West, and based on ''a reinterpretation of the Communist Manifesto.''
Sinsilver, no doubt, will triumph over great odds and the film will have a happy ending. Doesn't this kind of naive movie give false hopes to unfortunate people?
''What do you mean?'' Stallone bellowed. ''A peanut farmer has just become President of the United States. That's the greatest inspiration story of all time. He didn't come from wealth, he made his wealth. He went to his mother with dirt on his overalls and said, 'I'm going to be President.' He's understated, a common man, and that's why he won. I always say, 'If you lead with your heart, lead with your heart, and it will carry you much further than your brains will.'''
Well, one answer was that Stallone, a sometime actor-turned-screenwriter, could sit down and in 3 1/2 days write a screenplay with a meaty starring role in it for himself, persuade someone to film it, and wind up a millionaire. Improbable? Pessimists might say so, and advise Stallone to try something more sure, like the Irish Sweepstakes. Impossible? Well, no, because you see, there's this new movie, called ''Rocky.''
That's Stallone up there as ''Rocky,'' Rocky Balboa, a tender-hearted, down-and-out Philadelphia club fighter known as ''The Italian Stallion,'' who almost becomes heavyweight champion of the world. And the words Stallone is mouthing on screen are the words he wrote in 3 1/2 days and sold to producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff on the condition that he would play ''Rocky,'' and not Burt Reynolds, or James Caan, or Ryan O'Neal, who were being mentioned for the part.
The film was shot in 28 days (''The gestation time for a water bug,'' Stallone says wryly), on a shoestring $1 million budget, and now, with critics split down the middle with some raving and other deploring, and United Artists predicting ''Rocky'' will gross more than $40 million, Stallone is finally smiling. You see, he has 10 percent of ''Rocky.''
That's enough to make anyone jubilant, and he is. In an interview the other day in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, the 30-year-old actor, known as ''Sly'' to his friends, laughed repeatedly, rolled off a steady stream of one-liners, snapped his fingers to recorded rock music, answered his constantly ringing telephone with the greeting, ''City Morgue,'' and said, gleefully, several times in his basso profundo voice, ''I am one of the great bull artists of all time!'' There is none of the brooding intensity of Al Pacino or Marlon Brando, with whom he is being compared. What Sylvester Stallone radiates is boyish mischief.
One of the few ways to make him get serious is to ask how his own life compares with Rocky's. ''There are certain parallels,'' he replied, chewing on a yellow pencil. ''Rocky had drive, and intelligence, and the talent to be a fighter, but nobody noticed him. Then when opportunity knocked, everybody said, 'Hey, there's Rocky, he's good.' That's what happened to me. The fact that we both went the distance when we were finally given the opportunity, that's the main parallel.''
''It's funny,'' he goes on, his big brown bassethound eyes growing sad, ''there's a great herd of people who were holding back compliments for years that are now coming forth and saying, 'I like you.' It happened to Rocky, too. I feel like saying to them, 'Where were you when I was living in Hotel Barf, eating hot and cold running disease?' They say, 'Oh, we were holding it back, Sly, because we didn't want you to get a swelled head.'''
All of a sudden, Stallone remembered he had forgotten to take his vitamin pills. He swallowed 44 of them, his nightly ration of the 113 he says he takes every day. As Stallone sees it, his body is a temple. He lifts weights regularly, which accounts for his muscular pumped-up upper body that is out of proportion with the rest of his body. He obviously likes people to notice his efforts: The snug black T-shirt he was wearing emphasized his 46-inch chest and his bulging, 16-inch biceps.
''You know,'' he said, returning to the subject of ''Rocky,'' ''if nothing else comes out of that film in the way of awards and accolades, it will still show that an unknown quantity, a totally unmarketable person, can produce a diamond in the rough, a gem. And there are a lot more people like me out there, too, people whose chosen profession denies them opportunity. When that happens, their creative energies begin to swirl around inside, and erode them, and they become envious, vindictive persons who turn to drink. I, myself, turned to fighting; I averaged a fight in New York City once every four or five weeks. Now when I reflect back on it, I know it was just a release for creative energy.''
Stallone, whose only leading role before ''Rocky'' was in a 1974 low budget flop called ''The Lords of Flatbush'' (he was also in ''Capone'' and ''Death Race 2000''), turned to screenwriting out of frustration at not being able to get good acting jobs. He was also influenced by his mother, who dabbled in astrology and predicted he'd make his first big success as a writer. Stallone sold a few scripts, mainly to television, before conceiving the idea of ''Rocky,'' which was inspired by an actual championship fight in 1975 between Chuck Wepner, know as ''The Bayonne Bleeder,'' and Muhammad Ali, the world champion.
''I was watching the fight in a movie theater,'' he said, ''and I said to myself, 'Let's talk about stifled ambition and broken dreams and people who sit on the curb looking at their dreams go down the drain.' I thought about it for a month. That's what I call my inspiration stage. Then I let it incubate for 10 months, the incubation stage. Then came the verification stage, when I wrote it in 3 1/2 days. I'd get up at 6 A.M. and write it by hand, with a Bic pen on lined notebook sheets of paper. Then my wife, Sasha, would type it. She kept saying, 'You've gotta do it, you've gotta do it. Push it, Sly, go for broke.'''
Actually, there were two more drafts of ''Rocky'' after the first one, during which Stallone hung ''muscle and skin'' on his characters. ''In the first draft, I always try for a skeletal structure,'' he said. ''Then I begin to inject humor and idiosyncrasies. You know, I just don't believe these guys who say it takes them 19 years to write something. I just force myself to put it down and get it done.''
From the beginning, Stallone intended to play ''Rocky.'' Although there was much interest in Hollywood for his script, the money men all wanted a name actor in the part. The bidding went up to $265,000, but Stallone refused to sell, unless he could play the lead.
''I never would have sold it,'' he says now. ''I told my wife that I'd rather bury it in the back yard and let the caterpillars play 'Rocky.' I would have hated myself for selling out, the way we hate most people for selling out. My wife agreed, and said she'd be willing to move to a trailer in the middle of a swamp if need be.''
Finally, Stallone got his way. He even wangled parts for members of his family. His father, Frank, a retired beautician and real estate dealer, plays the timekeeper in the fight scene; his 26-year-old brother, Frank, Jr., who recently signed a recording contract with RCA, plays a street corner singer; and his bull mastiff, Butkus, plays the dog. ''They work cheap,'' Stallone said, laughing. ''But I'm worried about Butkus - he'll always have problems with dialogue.''
The actor said that while he hadn't yet been able to fathom Butkus's creative process, he knew definitely that his own was not ''The Method.'' ''I think I'm an instinctual actor,'' he said. ''I don't understand terms like 'tuning your instrument.' I'm not an oboe or a bass fiddle. I'm a very rehearsed actor. I learn my lines ahead of time so that I know mine and everyone else's far in advance. That way I can give the illusion that I am ad libbing and be comfortable on the set. So many actors these days learn their lines at the last minute, or use cue cards. I just couldn't do that; I'd be too uncomfortable.''
The 5-foot-10-inch, 175-pound actor, who had never had any formal boxing instruction, went into training six hours a day for five months before ''Rocky'' began filming. He got up at dawn to run five miles on the beach, shadow-boxed around the apartment, and worked out at a gym, where he punched the punching bag, did pushups, and had a medicine ball thrown into his stomach. He was preparing for the film's climax, the championship fight, which he and director John Avildsen choreographed punch-for-punch. ''There were 14 pages of left, right, right, left, left hook,'' he said. ''What looked like haphazard throwing of punches was an exact ballet.''
Because of the rugged, he-man quality of his character in ''Rocky,'' Stallone has been hailed as the first leading man in a long time who projects the image of a Real Man. Is he as macho off the screen as he is on? ''If macho means I like to look good and feel strong and shoot guns in the woods, yes, I'm macho,'' he replied, smiling. ''I don't think that even women's lib wants all men to become limp-wristed librarians. I don't know what is happening to men these days. There's a trend toward a sleek, subdued sophistication and a lack of participation in sports. In discos, men and women look almost alike, and if you were a little bleary-eyed, you'd get them mixed up. I think it's wrong, and I think women are unhappy about it. There doesn't seem to be enough real men to go around.''
Does that mean he is a great admirer of those two other movie tough guys, Marlon Brando and Al Pacino? He hesitates. Finally, ''They seem very intense. I definitely admire them, but the actor I love is Peter O'Toole. He is so free. I know this man was probably just out there chasing the script girl, and then when the cameras start rolling, he turns on such power. I am in such awe of him.''
Swabbing his lips with chapstick, Stallone said he had a trilogy in mind for ''Rocky/'' In Part II, Rocky would go to night school and enter politics and eventually become Mayor of Philadelphia. And in Part III, he would be framed by the political machine because he was too honest, impeached and wind up back in the ring at 37, broken down but happy.
In fact, a happy, upbeat ending, a striking feature of ''Rocky,'' will probably be incorporated into all of Stallone's future scripts. ''I've really had it with anti-this and anti-that,'' he said. ''That silver cloud always has to loom I want to be remembered as a man of raging optimism, who believes in the American dream. Right now, it's as if a big cavernous black hole has been burned into the entertainment section of the brain. It's filled with demons and paranoia and fear. Where are all the heroes? Even the cowboys today are perverts - they all sleep with horses. Let other people suffer and do all those pain things and put their demons up on the screen. I'm not going to.''
More chapstick, more thought. And then: ''People require symbols of humanity and heroism. Yet today, a man brings his family into a theater, and there he sees a man pull out his knife and cut a kid's head off, and a woman is being run over by a Ford Mustang and the man in the theater says, 'Is there anybody here I can identify with? Is there anything here I want to see?' And the answers are no, no. But he sees 'Rocky' as a simple man, a man he can identify with, a man who doesn't curse and who likes America, a man who's a real man. That's what people want to see these days.''
Using his own upbeat, anyone-can-make-it-to-the-top formula, Stallone's own life story might serve as material for a movie. He's thinking about calling it ''From Roaches to Riches.'' The elements: Born to a bickering Italian couple in Hell's Kitchen . . . farmed out to foster homes while parents worked . . . grew up in Monkey Hollow, Md., where his mother ran a health spa . . . was a juvenile delinquent who attended 12 schools by the time he was 15, and was kicked out of most of them.
After high school in Philadelphia, where he had been a star fullback and discus thrower, Stallone enrolled at the American College in Leysin, Switzerland. Finding that money was scarce, he teamed up with classmate Prince Paul of Ethiopia to open a hamburger stand for the student, who had never tasted them before. Another part-time job required him to shoo men away from the girls' dormitory. He soon found, however, that it was more profitable to look the other way, 2 francs an hour, to be exact. ''I earned my plane fare home that way,'' he said, smiling.
He flew to the University of Miami, where he studied drama for two years, then moved to New York to become an actor. Instead, he found work cleaning lions' cages at the Central Park Zoo, and ushering at the Baronet Theater, where he was fired for trying to scalp a ticket to ''M.A.S.H.'' for $20. The sucker turned out to be Walter Reade, who owned the theater.
Now that the money is about to roll in, what does Stallone plan to do with it? ''I want to bank a lot of it for my kid [Sage, a 6-month-old-boy],'' he said. ''And I want to build myself a pyramid, which is the purest, most powerful structure ever devised. And I'd like to buy land in California, and maybe start some workshops for actors, and eventually get into a position where I could use actors who are not established stars.''
And no doubt he will use some of that money to move Sasha and Sage out of the 1 1/2 bedroom apartment with the punching bag in the living room and the roaches in the kitchen that they now rent for $215 a month ''in the pancreas of Hollywood.'' Stallone plans to remain on the West Coast, though, ''because I died in New York, and I was reborn in Hollywood, and I owe my allegiance to that town.''
Stallone has not yet decided on his next movie, but is eager to play the starring role in ''Superman,'' a $25 million production with Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman. Stallone is also interested in doing a film about Edgar Allen Poe, in which the author would be portrayed ''not as a dour dipsomaniac, but as a rogue, a real rake.'' And if both of these fall through, he may do a film he has written himself, called ''Sinsilver,'' about a Hassidic Jew in the Old West, and based on ''a reinterpretation of the Communist Manifesto.''
Sinsilver, no doubt, will triumph over great odds and the film will have a happy ending. Doesn't this kind of naive movie give false hopes to unfortunate people?
''What do you mean?'' Stallone bellowed. ''A peanut farmer has just become President of the United States. That's the greatest inspiration story of all time. He didn't come from wealth, he made his wealth. He went to his mother with dirt on his overalls and said, 'I'm going to be President.' He's understated, a common man, and that's why he won. I always say, 'If you lead with your heart, lead with your heart, and it will carry you much further than your brains will.'''
Monday, October 12, 2015
ON THE SLY
Stallone’s origin story is so fantastical it seems like something that came from a comic book. His New York feels both more dangerous than now yet also wildly innocent. Stallone once slept in the Port Authority for three weeks before he got in a fight over a bench and was arrested. When Stallone penned Rocky, he was living in a walk-up on 56th and Lexington. His rent was $71 a month, which he could barely afford; he lived off of $30 a week in unemployment benefits.
“There was an old crumbling building,” he says. “It sat above the subway. It was literally crooked. It was basically a haven for homeless and hobos. You’d step over them to get into your room.” He was married at the time to an aspiring actress, Sasha Czack, and the couple would often wake to the sight of cockroaches drowning in the toilet bowl. Their electricity had been cut off, and Stallone recalls writing Rocky by candlelight. He references Edgar Allan Poe’s work ethic. (Illiterate? Hardly.) A bidding war broke out over the script, and Stallone was offered $315,000 to sell—a fortune at the time—but no one wanted him to act in the thing. Cockroaches be damned, Stallone rejected every offer until he found a buyer willing to take a risk on an unknown. In the end, he was paid a paltry $20,000 for the script—the Writer’s Guild minimum at the time. But he got his shot at the title fight.
It’s a cliché to call his a Cinderella story, but it’s true—right down to playing dress-up. Stallone wore a now-chic leather jacket over a white cable-knit sweater to the 1976 premiere of Rocky. When it came time for the Academy Awards, Rocky was nominated for best picture in a category that somehow included All the President’s Men, Network, Bound for Glory and Taxi Driver. Talk about a good year. There’s a famous photo of Stallone and the producers of Rocky right after they won the top prize. Stallone, all smiles, has his fist raised above his head. You’ll notice he’s not wearing a bow tie.
Sylvester Stallone at the Academy Awards
Stallone explains: “We were pulling into the driveway where the Oscars were being presented. It was a rented tux. The tie explodes on the way and the driver goes, ‘Wanna borrow my tie?’ I said, ‘Nah, I don’t think it’ll matter.’ I flipped my collar out. At that time it was the Italian style. It was as though I had walked in wearing the scarlet letter and I had scarlet fever. People were appalled. I mean, appalled.” Imagine the stir he would have caused if he’d shown up, like Jared Leto, with ombré hair.
Fame came fast, and hard. There were evenings at Studio 54. And white suits. And floor-length fur coats. So many fur coats. Stallone was working nights at the time on a movie called Nighthawks. “The sun would go down,” he says. “My lunch break would be from one to two. I would go to Xenon or Studio 54 every night.” To be clear, Stallone went to Studio 54 for lunch.
“It became like a country club,” he says. Mick Jagger, Halston, Martin Scorsese, Norman Mailer—he hung out with them all. Stallone sets the scene: “There was a giant spoon on the ceiling and you’d see the moon and the moon would take a gigantic dose of cocaine. And it would trickle down and sparkle and people were dancing and you’d look around and there’s Bianca.” The VIP room was in the basement. That’s where Stallone became friendly with Andy Warhol, who went on to paint him several times. “Andy always had his camera, which he would fire from the hip as though he was a gunslinger.”
Talk about whiplash. Stallone had earned just $1,400 the year beforeRocky came out. Now he was hanging out at the Factory until five in the morning? It was too much. He gave a bunch of interviews, and he started to hate the sound of his own voice. “I would pontificate on everything from tuberculosis to time warps”—topics he knew nothing about. “I was trying so hard to distance myself from the Rocky image.” It all came to a head in a July 1982 Rolling Stone cover story. The cover line read: “The Trouble With Sylvester Stallone.” “In the pictures,” he says, “I’m just sad-looking. My interview was so boring, the writer said he was suffering from AWOL—Asleep With Open Lids.” When Stallone sat down to write Rocky III, the story came easily to him. It was a story about Rocky becoming an ego-maniacal, self-obsessed dick. And it was autobiographical.
If an interview from 1982 still haunts him—and Stallone quotes the article freely from memory—you can imagine the unseen scars he carries from a contentious relationship with his father. At 11, Stallone broke his collarbone jumping off the roof of his house. He was kicked out of a handful of schools. “You weren’t born with much of a brain,” his father told him, “so you better start using your body.” The line was so damaging, Stallone wrote it into the original Rocky.
Stallone’s father, an Italian immigrant, moved the family from New York to the DC area in 1950, where he opened a beauty school. “The name Stallone means horse or stallion,” he says. “They were horse people, but peasants. He was going to break away from the Stallone mold. He became a beautician.” Stallone laughs. “He was about as much a beautician as I would be a biophysicist. He had thick hands, like mine. Like baseball mitts. He was Rambo.”
Was he around to see your success?
“Yes, he was. And he was conflicted by it.”
How so?
“He had aspirations and dreams, too. If two normal parents all of a sudden give birth to Tom Brady and go, God, where did that come from? But if you’re a tough guy and your son is playing tough characters, you go, ‘I could kick my son’s ass… Why didn’t I get all of that?’ ”
Did he come to the Oscars?
“He didn’t show up.”
You invited him?
“Yeah. It was a real rough relationship. He taught me to be very combative. Rejection can really turn you into a winner, or it can expose you as a real loser. I was in the rejection business. Show business is that. My father, because he was so difficult, made me very, very resilient. And spiteful. In other words, I’m gonna do it in spite of you.”
Stallone pulls out his iPhone to show me another photo. There he is as a young man in Hell’s Kitchen, wearing a wide-lapel shirt, sitting on a pile of bricks. “I was born in that room,” Stallone says, pointing to a run-down brownstone in the background. “You can see the neighborhood I came from. I keep photos only to remind me of the journey. I feel like our memory fades. And you are what you are.”
Watch Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone in the First Trailer for Rocky Spinoff Creed
So. Many. Chills.
The first trailer for upcoming Rocky spinoff Creed just debuted and it's nothing short of intense. Scheduled to hit theaters on Nov. 25, Creed stars Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed, the son of Rocky Balboa's (Sylvester Stallone) former enemy in the octagon, Apollo Creed. Though Apollo died before Jordan's character was born, boxing runs through his blood, leaving him no choice but to seek out Stallone as a potential trainer.
"I've been fighting my whole life. It's not a choice for me," the Fantastic Four star explains in the trailer. "Every punch I've ever thrown has been on my own."
Warner Bros.
It's not until Stallone finds Jordan standing in his restaurant looking at an old photo of his father and Rocky duking it out that it gets real.
"I heard about a third fight between you and Apollo, behind closed doors," Jordan tells Stallone.
"How do you know all this?" the 68-year-old actor asks, to which Jordan dramatically responds, "I'm his son."
Boom.
Jordan and Stallone are joined by Dear White People's Tessa Thompson, Jordan's fellow The Wire alum Wood Harris and The Cosby Show's Phylicia Rashad. Check out the trailer above!
Monday, August 17, 2015
Everton crowd set to feature in new Rocky movie 'Creed' with famous Evertonians Sylvester Stallone and Tony Bellew
Everton fans who attend Monday night's game against West Brom could find themselves in a Hollywood blockbuster if they remain in their seats during half-time at Goodison Park.
Boxer Tony Bellew, who is a lifelong fan of the Toffees, has arranged for a film crew to capture the scenes in the stands as part of new Rocky movie 'Creed'.
The 32-year-old has landed a major part in the film, which begins shooting in Philadelphia later this month.
Boxer and lifelong Evertonian Tony Bellew has landed a major part in the new Rocky movie 'Creed'
Sylvester Stallone claims to be an Everton fan after attending the club's draw with Reading in January 2007
Stallone will appear on the big screens at Goodison Park during half time of Everton's match with West Brom
Everton fans attending Monday's clash with West Brom could find themselves in the Hollywood blockbuster
On Monday afternoon, ahead of their clash against the Baggies, Everton confirmed there will be a film crew present at half-time by tweeting: 'Remember to stay in your seats at HT to star alongside @TheSlyStallone and @TonyBellew in the new 'Rocky' film. #EFC.'
Bellew plays Pretty Boy Porter, the best pound-for-pound fighter on the planet and the man standing in the way of Adonis Creed - the son of late former heavyweight champion Apollo Creed.
Sylvester Stallone, who claims to be an Everton fan after attending the club's 1-1 draw with Reading in January 2007 following an invite from Blues shareholder and Planet Hollywood owner Robert Earl, reprises his role as legendary boxer Rocky Balboa to train Creed Junior for the most important bout of his life.
Bellew is unable to attend the Premier League clash against the Baggies but he was keen to involve his fellow Evertonians in his latest project after witnessing the raucous reception given to a scarf-waving Stallone eight years ago.
In a message to those who will be inside the ground on Monday, Bellew said: 'I would like you to stay in your seats at half-time and keep any eye on the big screens for a very special guest to make a welcome return to Goodison Park.
'Be sure you make as much noise as possible - go absolutely nuts at half-time - to help us create a brilliant atmosphere. I have seen firsthand what kind of noise Evertonians create – it will be perfect for the scene.'
Bellew, wearing the Everton crest on his shorts, celebrates victory over Nathan Cleverly at the Echo Arena
Stallone reprises his role as Rocky Balboa to train Creed Junior for the most important bout of his life
The Hollywood star holds aloft an Everton scarf during his appearance at Goodison Park seven years ago
Sylvester Stallone: All Films Considered
A rocky career for the Italian Stallion
For more than 30 years, Sylvester Stallone has been a Hollywood icon. Arriving as a star in 1976 with his breakout performance in Rocky, Stallone showed audiences that he could be tough, tender and believable as an underdog who makes his grab for greatness. Stallone was also responsible for writing the script to Rocky, showing Hollywood that he was a creative force, interested in telling stories both in front of and behind the camera.
Stallone's career continued to skyrocket though the ‘70s and early ‘80s with Rocky 2 and 3, Nighthawks, and most notably First Blood, the first in the successful Rambo franchise. But, while at his peak, Stallone tried to branch out from action adventure films by co-writing and directing the critical disaster Staying Alive, the unnecessary sequel to Saturday Night Fever. It was one of several mistakes in a career that has had many peaks and valleys.
While 1985 gave Stallone two big hits with Rambo First Blood Part 2 and Rocky IV, the rest of the ‘80s were a string of mostly forgettable generic movies. With commercial flops like Over the Top and critically dismissed (although commercially successful) movies like Cobra and Lock Up, Sly lost most of the acclaim Rocky and First Blood had given him.
After a brief comeback with Cliffhanger and Demolition Man, Stallone stumbled again with the box office failures Judge Dredd and Daylight. He regained some critical respect with Cop Land, but the movie was not a hit with audiences. Stallone closed out the ‘90s by winning the Razzie award for Worst Actor of the Century for "95% of everything he's ever done."
From 2000 through 2005, Stallone did little to change his career status with a series of unimpressive flops like Driven, Get Carter and D-Tox. Finally, in 2006, Stallone returned to the character that made him star and reminded everyone just how good he could be. Rocky Balboa (written and directed by Stallone) was a solid hit with critics and audiences.
And now Stallone is back in front of and behind the camera with The Expendables. Featuring an all star cast of badasses from the past (Dolph Lundgren) as well as some new blood (Jason Statham), The Expendables looks like a throwback to the fun action movies of the ‘80s. In many ways Stallone is still the underdog he first brought to life in the Rocky films all those years ago. We'll see Friday if he can win again.
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