Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa - Writing Wednesday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
Today, I will be talking about the one and only, Sylvester Stallone and his epic film series, Rocky. Why am I going to be talking about him? Well, me and my family have been getting hooked onto the Rocky series. So much so, that we've watched Rocky 1 that aired in the 1970s all the way up to his last film in the epic series called Creed, which aired in 2016, in the space of about a week. In case you're wondering the scale of that, each Rocky film is about 2 hours long and there are 7 films that Sylvester Stallone screen wrote in total. So, yes, we've consumed a lot of ROCKY in the space of nearly 7 days. It means we've watched 1 film every evening which has got to mean that it's good. And it definitely was!
When my parents suggested watching Rocky I was nearly disgusted. I thought that it was going to be this tacky, cringey, 1970s film that I was going to fall asleep watching. Yes, it was tacky, I'm not going to lie about that, but it was uplifting and after the mess of a week I had before, this film was just what I needed. Let me give you a brief run down of the story that stretched nearly 5 decades. Rocky is about an amateur boxer (called Rocky Balboa, surprise surprise) who gets to compete against heavyweight boxing champion, Apollo Creed. Brought up uneducated in the rough Bronx of New York City, Rocky fights to gain the recognition and the respect that he deserves from the people in order to become a boxing sensation. His greatest inspiration comes from Adrian, a shy woman working at a nearby pet shop, for whom he deeply falls in love with and his coach Mickey, who is harsh but provides elements of satire throughout the film. He finds it within himself an infectious fighting spirit that continues throughout Stallone's films. The story is based on heavyweight American boxer, Rocky Marciano, who was active between the years 1947-1956. He was the first heavyweight champion to have retired undefeated.
In many ways, the story of the underdog claiming glory in this way, is very reflective on the way Sylvester Stallone had to fight to get Rocky produced. Stallone, alongside Rocky Marciano, was also inspired by the fight between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepener that took place in Ohio in 1975, when Wepener lasted as long as he did in the match against all the odds. It took Stallone three and a half days to write his first script. I believe that the Rocky script took a long time to be accepted. When agents Craig T. Rumar and Larry Kubik from Hollywood, presented the script to Hollywood producers, it got rejected on many occasions. This was mainly because Stallone was adamant on becoming the lead role of Rocky Balboa but also Stallone had a facial paralysis after the nurses pulled him out with forceps during his birth, so his speech was very laboured and unclear. When it was eventually filmed it was created on the small budget of $1 million. It was expected to be a failure because there wasn't really a producer that also saw the interest in a plot about the underdog boxer. However, against what was initially expected, the first Rocky film earned $225 million, becoming the highest grossing film in the USA in 1976.
Sylvester Stallone had to train very hard in order to embody the muscular look of Rocky. Those famous one-handed press-ups that Stallone performs in Rocky can be tied in to his own training program. His equally famous running montages up the steps in Philadelphia, could encompass the regular jogs he went on along the beaches during filming. Now, at the age of 74 years old, Stallone is still seen lifting weights at the gym! This guy's passion and determination, despite his age, is something truly inspirational.
My favourite speech from Stallone is the one he delivers to his son in his second to last film, Rocky Balboa , that aired in 2006. I would like to end on this today because the message is very important. "In life, it isn't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, that's how winning is done!" If you haven't seen this motivational YouTube speech that went viral, I'll link it below. However, when Rocky was delivering that to his son, I couldn't help but think that he was talking to the world. We often get bogged down with blame for all the bad things that happen to us but that's when ego is talking. We must learn to take responsibility for ourselves and realise that we have enough self-worth to fight whatever life throws at us. In the midst of a pandemic, this was the message I needed to hear and maybe that applies to you too. This speech reminded me of Al Pacino's A Scent Of A Woman speech which I talked about before and I don't know how it didn't win an Oscar!
Vimal Kumar
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