Sylvester Stallone steps back into the ring
Sylvester Stallone introduced the character of boxer Rocky Balboa in 1976. Now, all these years later, Stallone is about to appear on screen as Rocky for the SEVENTH time. Lee Cowan has our Sunday Profile:
"Yo! How ya' doin'!"
Go anywhere in Philly with Sylvester Stallone and you might as well be with Rocky himself.
Like the statue at the foot of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, at 69 Stallone is a fixture here. "I tell ya', I don't go, 'Hey, I look pretty good!'" he laughed. "I swear to you, I wish I was that noble."
It's as if Rocky was flesh and blood. People come here to pose, and run those famous steps. "I was always drawn to this place," Stallone said. "I thought it was the best-kept secret in Philadelphia."
"So what do you think when you stand up here now? It's become such an iconic thing," said Cowan.
"It's my favorite place ever. I swear. I feel like, you could do anything from up here. You can see your whole life out there."
Rocky has been Stallone's life -- much of it anyway.
The last time he played Rocky was nearly a decade ago - the sixth in a franchise some critics thought should have heard the bell long ago.
"Think about this scenario. You're 60 years old, you want to play a fighter. That's a tough sell!" he laughed.
The toughest sell of his life, as it turned out. But "The Italian Stallion" got one last fight, and Stallone got to give his character a fitting farewell.
"I thought 'I'm done,' and Rocky in a sense waves goodbye to the audience, and I was waving goodbye myself. It was sort of a mutual farewell."
But then, director Ryan Coogler -- a "Rocky" fan since childhood -- reached out to Stallone with an idea for "Creed," a boxing film that turns the spotlight onto the son of Rocky's longtime rival, Apollo Creed.
Played by Michael B. Jordan ("Fruitvale Station"), Creed's son has heart, but he needs a trainer and a mentor.
He got one in Stallone -- both on-screen and off-.
"Oh my God, did he take a beating!' said Stallone. "I sort of exacerbated the situation because I wanted him to get hit a little bit. I said, 'It's a right of passage, Mike. You have to get clocked.'"
"Because YOU did," said Cowan.
"I did! Mr. T, Dolph Lundgren, Carl Weathers, these are behemoths, and every one of them teed off on me at least once. Oh, absolutely! You went home trying to figure out why am I listening to country western music backwards and don't know my own zip code? It was -- oh my God!"
As a boy Stallone didn't really look the part of a guy who could take a punch. "I had a lot of nerve. But I didn't have a lot of physicality."
His birth in a small clinic in New York's Hell's Kitchen didn't go as planned.
"They put in forceps, 'cause I was twisted, and the forceps ... instead of under here, it caught me here, so I have this crooked mouth."
It damaged a facial nerve on his left side.
"And people say, 'Oh, you slur, you slur,' and I go, 'Yeah, because it only half-works. Give me a break, ya' know? I don't do it intentionally.
"People didn't understand what I was saying for many, many years. Still don't!" he laughs.
Some mistook that for stupidity, including his own father.
Rocky Balboa: "My dad told me, 'You weren't born with too much of a brain, so you better start using your body.' So I become a fighter!"
"That was actually something that your dad said to you?"
"Yeah. A lot! 'You weren't born with much of a brain, so you better develop your body.' And it stuck."
When he was 12 he saw "Hercules," staring Steve Reeves, and that changed everything.
"I flipped out. Flipped out. Out of that theater, I literally ran to a junkyard, where there was pieces of metal that resembled a barbell. And I started looking for drive shafts and wheel wells and brake drums and I started stringing things together with rope."
His family moved to Philly, where Stallone spent his teenage years bulking up, before heading to New York to give acting a go.
They were lean years, to say the least. He even sold his dog, because he couldn't afford dog food. "Absolutely! $50 at a 7-Eleven."
Eventually his bulk started paying the bills. He was cast in "Bananas" as the guy who mugged Woody Allen on the subway. He was also the mugger who GOT mugged by Jack Lemmon, in "The Prisoner of Second Avenue."
But nothing really clicked.
"That's when I realized I'm never going to make it in acting per se. I have to find some other niche, something."
That turned out to be writing. "All I did was write and write and write and write, maybe 30 screenplays, of which 29 are probably horrible, but it's the process of completing them that mattered."
He completed the screenplay for "Rocky" shortly after his 29th birthday, writing the world he remembered back in Philadelphia.
"Put it this way, all the clothes in 'Rocky,' were mine," he said. "Even the hat, everything was mine."
Studios loved his script, but Stallone had a condition: He refused to sell the rights to his film, unless HE was cast in the lead role.
Cowan asked. "You had no money and people were offering you hundreds of thousands of dollars? And you were turning it down?" Cowan said.
"Yeah. It went up to about $360,000, which is crazy!"
It turned out to be a sure bet. "Rocky" went on to win three Oscars, including Best Picture. Sequels started rolling out almost every few years.
But the fame took a toll on his personal life. Stallone went through a divorce, married actress Brigitte Nielson, but got divorced again after just 19 months.
All while Rocky was morphing into another character; Stallone calls Rambo "Rocky on caffeine."
The script for "First Blood" had been bouncing around for years. "I was the 11th choice," Stallone said.
"Yeah, they were just about ready to hire a chimp! And then I came along."
Again, Stallone had some demands. In the original script for "First Blood," Rambo dies. Stallone wanted the ending changed.
"There's a lot of vets, that look at this and say, 'There's no reason to go on. Look at this character representing us, and then in the end he gets shot?' I thought this was irresponsible on my part."
Rambo: "Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don't turn it off! It wasn't my war! You asked me, I didn't ask you! And I did what I had to do to win! But somebody wouldn't let us win! And I come back to the world and I see all those maggots at the airport, protesting me, spitting. Calling me baby killer and all kinds of vile crap! Who are they to protest me, huh? Who are they? Unless they've been me and been there and know what the hell they're yelling about!"
Col. Trautman: "It was a bad time for everyone, Rambo. It's all in the past now."
Rambo: "For you! For me, civilian life is nothing! In the field we had a code of honor: you watch my back, I watch yours. Back here there's nothing!"
It made millions at the box office. Within a few years, the man some thought was challenged as a child had written his way into two movie franchises.
As his characters matured, so did he. He married again -- this time happily -- and kept writing, even directing.
Cowan asked, "After the Rockys and the Rambos, did you feel that you were owned a little bit by those characters?"
"Totally. Still do," he replied. "But now I look at it as a privilege."
"But for a while though, you did want to distance yourself, right?"
"Yeah, I tried."
It never really worked -- certainly not with Rocky -- and he's at peace with that now. Sylvester Stallone knows he's as much Rocky -- as Rocky is Sylvester Stallone.
"I get really emotional," he said. "You know, you go, 'Damn, this has really been magical.'"
"It's been quite a ride, hasn't it?"
"Unbelievable ride. A lot has happened on these steps.
"Keep punchin', Philly! I owe ya'!"
To watch the trailer for "Creed" click on the player below.
For more info:
- "Creed" (Official site)