Rocky 2 Special
All about Rocky 2 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 1979, Rocky Balboa returned to the screen in Rocky II, still in pursuit of the unattainable - the heavyweight championship. In essence, the story of Rocky, the pug who never learned the word "impossible".
Rocky II begins - literally - where the first film left off, with never-say-die Rocky maneuvering for a rematch with champ Apollo Creed. Reunited for the film are the original epic's entire cast with Stallone at the helm as writer and director.
Rocky II (1979)
Genre(s): Drama, Action, Romance and Sports
Directed by: Sylvester Stallone
Written by: Sylvester Stallone
Produced by: Irwin Winkler, Robert Chartoff, Arthur Chobanian
Country: USA
Language: English
Runtime: 119 min.
Color: Color (Technicolor)
Sound Mix: Dolby
Cast & Credits:
Sylvester Stallone .... Rocky Balboa
Talia Shire .... Adrian
Burt Young .... Paulie
Carl Weathers .... Apollo Creed
Burgess Meredith .... Mickey Goldmill
Tony Burton .... Duke (Apollo's Trainer)
Joe Spinell .... Tony Gazzo
Leonard Gaines .... Agent
Sylvia Meals .... Mary Anne Creed
Frank McRae .... Meat Foreman
Al Silvani .... Cutter
John Pleshette .... Director
Stu Nahan .... Announcer
Bill Baldwin .... Commentator (as Bill Baldwin)
Jerry Ziesmer .... Salesman
Summary / Synopsis:
In serious physical condition after the bout with Creed, Rocky enters the hospital accompanied by Adrian, Paulie and Mickey. As members of the press inquire about Rocky’s surprising showing in the ring, Apollo Creed and his entourage arrive. Creed is clearly ready to continue the fight then and there. He realizes his has not been a clear victory.
Following the fight, Rocky finds himself a genuine media personality. Although Apollo calls for a rematch, Balboa refuses. He has lost some of his vision in his battered right eye and realizes that any further attempts at boxing could result in even greater damage. Marrying Adrian and getting Paulie a job with his old boss Gazzo, Rocky sets out to enjoy the good life.
But the good life doesn’t come easy for the ex-boxer.
With Adrian now pregnant, Rocky sets out to provide her with the best of everything. Mr. and Mrs. Balboa and Butkus, one of the ugliest dogs in all of Philly, move into a new home. Rocky signs a lucrative commercial deal calling for him to advertise men’s cologne on television and begins spending money on maternity clothes, furniture and a new spiked collar for Butkus.
Once in the studio to do the commercials, rocky discovers that, in the world of Madison Avenue, honesty is not the best policy. As the cameras roll, he grapples with the exaggerated dialogue . . . finally halting as he comes to the line, "so don’t be punchy like me." Rocky turns to the director and, smiling quizzically, points out, "I ain’t punchy – I got what ya call a relaxed brain, but I ain’t punchy."
As a result of the ensuing argument, Rocky is fired. Now in debt, he attempts to stage an heroic comeback in the nine-to-five world. Without the benefit of a good education, however, he is turned down for every office job he applies for. Paulie helps land him a job at the local meat packing plant where Rocky had only recently trained for his match with Creed. The exhausting job is short lived. Rocky is fired as a result of a cutback in non-union jobs.
With a baby on the way and debts growing, Rocky takes a job as a cleanup man in Mickey’s gym. Reduced to such a menial position, the Italian Stallion is made the butt of many derisive jokes told by fellow fighters. He applies for a bank loan, and is turned down. Back against the wall, Rocky decides that fighting in the only world he knows. He plans to go back into the ring, despite his bad eye. He will fight Apollo Creed for the championship once again.
His wife is not at all pleased. Neither is his trainer, Mickey, who feels that Rocky, nearly blind in one eye, is setting himself up for a big defeat. He is a southpaw and a left-handed fighter is too easy to figure out. There is, however, a chance to pull it off. "To have a chance," Mickey says, "ya gotta change everythin’. Ya gotta learn to be a right-handed fighter . . . so as to throw Creed off and keep his jab outta ya bad eye."
Rocky reluctantly agrees to Mickey’s strategy. But as much as Rocky longs for the championship, he cannot bring himself to hurt Adrian. He knows that she hates the idea of his re-entering the ring. As a result, he trains poorly. His heart is just not in boxing. Paulie, noticing Rocky’s half-hearted attempts, berates the righter. "Ya head ain’t on right," he chastises. "I’ve been watchin’ . . . My sister got ya feelin’ so guilty ya goin’ around all over the place. This ain’t right what she’s doin’."
Paulie visits Adrian at the pet shop where she still works. "He’s gonna get hurt bad because of you!" he tells his sister. In an effort to combat Paulie’s hurtful words, Adrian fights back, working herself into a highly emotional state. This, combined with the amount of strenuous work she’d been doing earlier, causes her to collapse into her brother’s arms, having suddenly gone into premature labor. Rushed to the hospital, she gives birth to a baby boy, healthy in every respect. The premature birth, however, sends Adrian into a coma.
Rocky sits vigil in her hospital room for days, reading to her. Hoping against hope that she will reawaken, Rocky leaves the room only to kneel and pray in the hospital chapel. Mickey joins Rocky in his daily chapel visits and makes attempts at encouraging him back into his training. After what seems like an eternity, the impossible does happen. Sitting alone by Adrian’s bedside one night, Rocky notices a slight movement in his wife’s fingers, then a flutter of her eyes. They open. Rocky cradles her head in his arms. "I knew you’d come back," he says, thanking God.
The next day, surrounded by her husband, her baby and her friends, Adrian pulls Rocky to her bedside: "There’s only one thing I’d like you to do for me," she whispers. "Win."
Now with Adrian’s blessing, Rocky works out with a passion. As he runs from his neighborhood to the Philadelphia museum steps, he is joined by an ever-growing crowd of children running behind him and urging him on. In the quiet of the night in their respective places, both Rocky and Apollo Creed reflect on their contest. They understand each other completely.
When Rocky leaves home for the right, Adrian stays behind on orders from the doctor and Paulie stays with her. They will watch on television. Stopping at the church for a quick blessing, Rocky asks only that if he gets beaten that it not be too bad. At the Philadelphia Spectrum, sportscasters recount that Rocky Balboa is a 5-1 underdog and stress that Creed wants to draw blood early in the fight. Creed’s career boasts 47 wins and no losses. Rocky has had 44 wins and 21 losses. But, they remind the listeners, Rocky was the first man ever to knock Creed down.
And with this the big rematch begins – with two unique men fighting for their very lives. Rocky fans will remember this war of the titans, perhaps the single greatest match of all the five films, with all the ebb and flow of a gigantic tidal wave. And who can forget the final moments when both fighters nearly knock each other out and Rocky rises to beat Apollo by an instant.
Rocky’s indomitable sprit wins again.
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."
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