Rocky Special
All about Rocky Movie
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IMAGES:
Picture Gallery 1 Miscellaneous Pictures
Picture Gallery 2 Miscellaneous Pictures
Rocky Photos from Rocky 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Rambo Photos from First Blood, Rambo 1, 2, 3, 4
Other Movie Stills
Magazine Covers, Scans, Childhood
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In 1975, virtually unknown in Hollywood, Sylvester Stallone wrote a script in three days after attending a boxing match between the small-time underdog Chuck Wepner and the great Muhammad Ali. Inspired by the unique fight, Stallone created one of American film's most beloved characters - Rocky Balboa.
Sly Stallone sold the rights to make this film with the condition that he be cast in the title role. Producers offered him $150,000 to let Ryan O'Neal play the part.
Before Rocky, boxing pictures, an American staple, were dead. Films like City for Conquest with James Cagney, the original Body and Soul with John Garfield, Golden Boy with William Holden, and Jailhouse Rock with Elvis Presley were gathering dust while contemporary movie audiences were cheering to pictures like The Exorcist, Jaws, The Godfather and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
With Rocky came a nostalgic jolt back to the feel-good pictures of yesteryear. Rocky was an immediate sensation.
Rocky (1976)
Genre(s): Drama, Action, Romance and Sports
Directed by: John G. Avildsen
Written by: Sylvester Stallone
Produced by: Gene Kirkwood, Irwin Winkler, Robert Chartoff
Country: USA
Language: English
Runtime: 119 min.
Color: Color (Technicolor)
Sound Mix: Mono
Cast & Credits:
Sylvester Stallone .... Rocky Balboa
Talia Shire .... Adrian
Burt Young .... Paulie
Carl Weathers .... Apollo Creed
Burgess Meredith .... Mickey Goldmill
Thayer David .... Jergens
Joe Spinell .... Gazzo
Jimmy Gambina .... Mike
Bill Baldwin .... Bill Baldwin
Al Silvani .... Al Salvani
George Memmoli .... Ice Rink Attendant
Jodi Letizia .... Marie
Diana Lewis .... TV Commentator
George O'Hanlon .... TV Commentator
Larry Carroll .... TV Interviewer
Summary / Synopsis:
In a dark, seedy club, small-time fighter Rocky Balboa polishes off another nothing boxer, and gets a few dollars in winnings. Stepping out into the night, he walks through mean and broken-down streets, stopping to talk to the couple of people in the neighborhood who know him, including Adrian, his friend Paulie's overly shy sister, who works in the local pet shop. There, he picks up some pet food, and walks over to his tiny, run-down apartment where only his turtles wait for him.
Daylight brings him to his real job-working as a collector for a hood called Gazzo. Rocky, though, can't bring himself to break the bones of terrified dock workers, making Gazzo very displeased. Heading over to the gym to work out, Balboa finds that his things have been dumped out of his locker to make room for those of a new fighter. When he goes to yell at the owner-trainer, Mickey, the old man shouts back at him, telling him that he could have been great instead of a mere club boxer and hired hand for a cheap criminal.
Some happiness comes over Rocky's way when Paulie invites the bruiser over for Thanksgiving dinner with him and Adrian. She and Paulie quickly get into a fight, and the dinner never gets off the ground, but Adrian and Rocky do get the chance to go out on their first date. The fighter's charm brings her out of her shell, and the two quickly fall in love.
Meanwhile, Apollo Creed, the Heavyweight Champion of the World, has come to Philadelphia for a scheduled match. However, the man he was supposed to fight is unable to be there, and no one else is available. Apollo, however, gets the idea to put on a show that would drive the crowds wild- harp on the idea of America being the land of opportunity by offering a complete unknown the chance to beat him. Thumbing through a book of local fighters, he picks Rocky.
Rocky is called to the gym the following day where Mickey tells him that Creed's people want to hire him as a sparring partner for the champ. Balboa is eager to take the job, but once he gets to the office, he's told the truth- that he's being given the opportunity of a lifetime. With his one chance for recognition and self-respect in front of him, Rocky attends a press conference to tell everyone that he's accepting.
Rocky begins exercising on his own, and Paulie starts letting him into a meat-packing plant to practice punching against sides of beef. Mickey shows up at Balboa's apartment and begs him to take him on as a manager-trainer. Rocky can't believe that after six years of insults, the old man suddenly cares about him, but the boxer feels sorry for him and agrees to hire him. Almost immediately, Mickey puts him through grueling training, determined to bring out the best in Rocky.
The night before the big fight, Apollo is supremely self-confident, convinced that the whole thing will be over in a few rounds. Rocky, on the other hand, has become more introspective and realizes that he probably can't defeat the champ. However, if he can just go the full fifteen rounds with Creed- something that's never been done before- he'll know in his heart that he really is somebody.
As the fight begins, Rocky takes Apollo and everyone else off-guard, smashing away at the champ and racking up points. Creed starts taking the fight more seriously, and the two inflict more and more damage to each other as one round after another passes.
Rocky is slumped on the stool in the far corner of the boxing ring. Mickey works frantically to get Balboa ready for the fifteenth and final round, but Rocky is hurt badly. "I can't see nothin'," he says, "You gotta open my eye."
Mickey winces at the sight. "I can't." Rocky pleads with his trainer a second time. "Cut me, Mick, cut me." Mickey sighs and gives in. A second cornerman slits open Rocky's swollen eye and drains it of the blood. Rocky lurches back up into the ring and holds his own against an equally battered Apollo. In a near split-decision, Creed is given the final victory and retains the Championship title.
In the mass confusion following the fight, Adrian finally reaches Rocky after having waded through the wild crowds screaming his name. She climbs past Paulie and up into the ring itself, throwing her arms around Rocky's neck crying: "I love you!" He lovingly hugs and embraces her and declares his own love for her: "I love you!" As they hug each other in a locking grip, they continue declaring their love for each other. As they celebrate their victory in the face of defeat, the final, heart-lifting image freeze-frames on Rocky's swollen, messy and battered face next to Adrian's - Rocky Balboa is crowned the true champion in the eyes of the world that night.
Production Notes:
The story of how the original Rocky was initially conceived and then brought to the screen rivals any plot ever hatched for a movie.
It's creator, Sylvester Stallone remembers, "Early in my acting career I realized the only way I would ever prove myself was to create my own role in my own script. On my 29th birthday I had $106 in the bank. My best birthday present was a sudden revelation that I had to write the kind of screenplay that I personally enjoyed seeing. I relished stories of heroism, great love, dignity, and courage, dramas of people rising above their stations, taking life by the throat and not letting go until they succeeded. But I had so many ideas in my head I couldn't focus on any one. To cheer myself up, I took the last of my entertainment money and went to see the Ali-Wepner fight on closed circuit TV. (Chuck) Wepner, a battling, bruising club fighter who had never made the big time, was having his shot. It wasn't at all regarded as a serious battle. But as the fight progressed, this miracle unfolded. He hung in there. People went absolutely crazy. Wepner went 15 rounds and established himself as one of the few ever to go the distance with the great Ali. We had witnessed an incredible triumph of the human spirit and we loved it.
"That night," Sly continues, "Rocky Balboa was born. He is a man of the streets. People looked on him as the all-American tragedy, a man without much mentality and few social graces. But he has deep emotion and spirituality and good patriotism. And he has a good nature, although nature has not been particularly good to him. I have always seen him as a 20th Century gladiator in a pair of sneakers. Like so many of us, he is out of sync with the times. To all this, I injected doses of my own personal life, of my frustration at not getting anywhere."
Going on a three-and-a-half day writing marathon, he produced a screenplay that ultimately reached the active and experienced producing team of Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, knowledgeable filmmakers who, at the time, had already brought more than 25 films to the screen. They instantly sensed the magic in Stallone's work, asked for a few rewrites and the negotiating began with a reported $75,000 offer.
"I can't sell it outright," the almost penniless writer-actor explained. "I wrote it for me and I have to do it."
According the now familiar story, the price went up to $125,000. "I got a monumental headache," Stallone recalls. "I didn't know that much money existed. They kept insisting they needed a big name star, but the story was about not selling out, about having faith in yourself, about going the distance as a million-to-one shot." The actors in consideration for the role were huge box-office draws: Burt Reynolds, James Caan, and Ryan O'Neal.
Stallone refused to sell unless Winkler allowed him to star - a longshot gamble that worked, and helped establish the million-to-one ethos that infused the entire production. When the bid topped $300,000, Stallone said, "I would sooner burn the thing than have anyone else play Rocky Balboa. Not for a million dollars."
Finally, a deal was made between Stallone, Chartoff-Winkler Productions, and United Artists. "It was a gamble, and a labor of love, with everyone taking much less than their regular salaries."
In a few months, the unknown actor was in Philadelphia, ready to start shooting what would be his first starring role, in a movie whose budget matched his lowly status. "I walked out of the trailer the first time in those cold streets of Philadelphia, they said, 'Sylvester, are you ready?' And I said, 'No, but Rocky is.'"
For Stallone, the shoot was as tough as Rocky's 15 rounds with Apollo Creed. "We didn't have the money to shoot a normal union film at that time in Philadelphia, so we would travel in a van," he says, and the film crew would jump out whenever director John Avildsen saw a colorful location. They were working with a new tool - Garrett Brown's experimental Steadicam, enabling them to shoot moving objects in an exciting new way.
"John has me going up and down steps, through these curved corridors along the river," Stallone said. "One thing about John is that he would use the environment. We'd see a ship along the river and he'd tell me to 'jump out and run as fast as you can.'"
The training sequence, pulled together from sites all over the city, looks funny to Philadelphians, who recognize that it takes Rocky over a course of some 20 miles in a few minutes. To general audiences, though, the scene is a visual marvel - the Steadicam tracking shots were brand new, and Rocky's journey is a sprint through an urban landscape that is uniquely Philadelphia - gritty, quaint, industrial, modern, colonial, and finally, atop the Art Museum steps, even beautiful. All backed by one of the great movie scores - Bill Conti's classy brass sound, gladiatorial and stirring. The sequence is also enlivened by hundreds of ordinary Philadelphians, contributing spontaneous cameos. "He would have me. . .running down the street and people are throwing things at me. I had the orange thrown at me and people had no idea who I was. I was just some strange alien invader in a well-worn, tattered, baggy, incredibly ugly sweat suit running through their neighborhood, and they're throwing things at me," he said.
The movie had a budget of less than $950,000 and ran out of money quickly. A scene that was meant to feature 300 extras at an ice rink (when Rocky takes Adrian ice skating) ended up with Stallone and Talia Shire alone on the ice. And when Stallone admitted he couldn't skate, he jogged gingerly alongside Shire, in what turned out to be one of the movie's most touching scenes.
In the end, there was just enough film left for a final re-shoot of the ending, originally intended as just a long shot of Rocky and Adrian leaving an empty stadium hand in hand - an iconic image which ultimately became the shot used for the promotional posters. The unforgettable "Adrian!" "Rocky!" "Adrian!" finale was a last-minute addition, and there were so few people left that friends and crew had to crowd one corner of the ring to feign the appearance of a large mob.
There was no need to conjure up fake mob scenes when the movie opened. Test screenings showed that audiences loved the picture, and the crude promotional trailers released to the public created nationwide buzz around the little movie that could - "a movie for every nobody who ever needed somebody." The little below-radar movie, shot out of the back of a van on the streets of Philadelphia, was a monster hit ($117 million in bicentennial dollars), and an unlikely nominee for Best Picture.
On Oscar night, Rocky was a long shot again, against the favored Taxi Driver, Network and All the President's Men, movies that captured New York and Washington, D.C., just as resonantly as Rocky captured Philadelphia. And Rocky not only went the distance, it won.
"I know I'll never have a voice like that again, where I can just speak whatever I feel in my heart," Stallone says. "That's one thing I'll always cherish about that character, because if I say it you won't believe it, but when Rocky says it, you know it's the truth."
Notables:
Bette Midler turned down an offer for the role of Adrian.
Sylvester Stallone based his Rocky character on a little-known New Jersey club boxer named Chuck Wepner. In March 1975, Wepner challenged the then-heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali to a title fight in Cleveland, Ohio. He lasted almost the entire fifteen rounds and became one of the few challengers to Ali to knock him to the ground.
Awards for Rocky: The Film won 3 Oscars. Another 14 wins & 19 nominations
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