Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (91 page)

Stallone paid $20 to see the fight, which was broadcast by closed-circuit TV to select movie theaters around the country. If Stallone knew anything about the 30–1 underdog Wepner, he must have expected him to lose early and lose big. But Wepner stunned the boxing world by lasting round after round. In the ninth round, he even managed to knock Ali down—the only fighter ever to do so while Ali was champ. Suddenly, the crowds that had been yelling “Ali! Ali! Ali!” started yelling “Chuck! Chuck! Chuck!” And though Wepner got clobbered in the later rounds and lost in a TKO just seconds before the end of the 15th and final round, he was seen as the real winner that night, because he had nearly gone the distance with the best boxer in the world when nobody thought he could do it.

Stallone had his character. After a marathon four-day writing session—he wrote in pen on a legal pad, and his wife, Sasha, typed it up—he had the first draft of the script he titled simply
Rocky.

When he wasn’t writing, Stallone was still auditioning for movie roles. His luck was as bad as ever, but as he was leaving yet another fruitless audition with a producer named Robert Chartoff, Stallone happened to mention that he was also a writer. Chartoff had liked Stallone’s work in
Lords of Flatbush;
he thought the young actor had the potential to be another Marlon Brando. He agreed to have a look at the
Rocky
script, and enjoyed it so much that he asked his partner, Irwin Winkler, to read it, too.
Rocky
was exactly the kind of script they were in the market for, one that could serve as a big-budget vehicle for an established star like Ryan O’Neal, Steve McQueen, or Burt Reynolds. The two producers decided to buy it. They offered Stallone $75,000 for the script—a small fortune in the mid-1970s.

Stallone said no. By now he’d been turned down for so many parts that he wasn’t about to let this one get away. And since he
owned the script, for once
he
was in control of who got the part. He kept saying no, even as Chartoff and Winkler upped their offer to $125,000, then $200,000, and finally $255,000. Even if they offered him $1 million, Stallone told them, the script wasn’t for sale…unless
he
could play Rocky.

At the time, Stallone had barely $100 to his name, and Sasha was pregnant with their first child. He was in no position to turn down $255,000, but he did it anyway and held his ground.
Rocky
was about a million-to-one shot, about an ordinary man who goes the distance. Stallone was determined to go the distance, too—he wanted his own million-to-one shot. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life wondering “What if?” Sasha backed his decision—“Go for it,” she told him.

Chartoff and Winkler didn’t want to let the
Rocky
script get away. They finally agreed to Stallone’s terms—he would play Rocky Balboa. But since he was an unknown actor with nonexistent boxoffice appeal, a big budget production was out of the question.
Rocky
would have to be a low-budget film instead. And to save on up-front expenses, Stallone let them have the script for nothing and agreed to act in the film for “scale”—the actor’s equivalent of minimum wage. In exchange for accepting so little money up front, Stallone would receive a percentage of the profits if the film ever made any money, which was doubtful.

Chartoff and Winkler had a deal with United Artists that allowed them to approve almost any film they wanted to make, as long as the budget was kept under $1 million. But the studio could still kill a project if it really wanted to.

A movie about a past-his-prime fighter who falls in love with a wallflower who works at a pet store? Who gets a shot at the world championship and
loses
the big fight? Starring a nobody? The top brass at United Artists still needed convincing. Chartoff and Winkler sent them a copy of
The Lords of Flatbush
to familiarize them with Stallone’s work. The only problem: Though Stallone is identified by name in the film’s credits, it’s never completely clear
which
of the film’s four main actors he is. One of the other actors,
a man named Perry King, had light brown hair and leading-man good looks. The studio heads concluded that
he
was Stallone. He didn’t look Italian—so he must be from northern Italy, they figured. Satisfied that Perry King had the star quality to carry the film, United Artists gave
Rocky
the green light. The executives didn’t realize who the real Sylvester Stallone was until they saw the finished film…and Perry King wasn’t in it.

Making the film on such a limited budget was quite a challenge, but it is also one of the things that made the film unique.

• With no money to pay big stars, little-known actors like Talia Shire (Rocky’s girlfriend, Adrian), Burt Young (Adrian’s brother, Paulie), and former Oakland Raiders linebacker Carl Weathers (heavyweight champ Apollo Creed) were cast in the supporting roles. Shire was only cast after the first choice for Adrian, actress Carrie Snodgress, asked for too much money. Burgess Meredith, who played Rocky’s trainer and manager, Mickey, was the only well-known actor cast in the film. And at this late stage in his career, the 69-year-old Meredith was best known for playing the Penguin in the
Batman
TV series.

• Instead of hiring a top film composer, the producers had to settle for a young composer named Bill Conti. To show Conti what kind of music he wanted, director John Avildsen played a record of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony over some footage of Stallone and Weathers boxing. Conti came up with “Gonna Fly Now
,
” one of the most memorable movie themes of all time.

• The fight scenes were filmed in an entirely new way. To save money (and because director Avildsen thought the fight scenes in other boxing films looked fake), instead of just filming Stallone and Weathers boxing away at random until there was enough usable footage to edit into a fight sequence, Stallone choreographed every individual punch in the fight. Then he and Weathers rehearsed the punches for weeks on end before filming began. The result was one of the most realistic fight scenes ever filmed; boxing movies have been filmed that way ever since.

The entire film was shot in 28 days for just over $1 million. It was
finished on time and only a little over budget, which was a good thing, because United Artists had insisted that Chartoff and Winkler pay for any cost overruns out of their own pockets, which they did by taking mortgages out on their homes. The studio also reserved the right to fire Stallone after 10 days if they didn’t like his work.

United Artists need not have worried—though even Chartoff and Winkler themselves had expected
Rocky
to be little more than a marginally successful “B movie,” the kind of film that got second-billing at drive-in theaters, it became one of the hottest films of 1976, earning both critical praise and a whopping $117 million at the box office. Nominated for 10 Academy awards,
Rocky
won Oscars for Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Picture—a surprise winner over the heavily favored
All the President’s Men
. The film made Sylvester Stallone a rich man and established him as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Together,
Rocky
and its five sequels have earned more than $1 billion at the box office, making it one of the most successful film franchises in Hollywood history.

The most famous
Rocky
scene of all—Rocky running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art—came about by chance after a cameraman named Garrett Brown invented something he called the “Brown Stabilizer.” The device, which held a camera steady even when the camera operator was moving, allowed for much smoother filming than was possible with traditional handheld techniques. To demonstrate the capabilities of his invention, now known as the Steadicam, Brown shot some test footage of his girlfriend running up and down the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps. When
Rocky
director John Avildsen saw the footage, he called Brown and asked him, “How did you shoot that footage, and where are those steps?”
Rocky
was one of the first films to include scenes filmed with a Steadicam, including footage of Stallone running up those same steps. More than 30 years later, the “Rocky Steps” remain the second most popular tourist destination in Philadelphia after the Liberty Bell.

“There is no way to look at the past. Don’t hide from it. It will not catch you if you don’t repeat it.”

—
Pearl Bailey

 

“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.”

—
Mark Twain

 

“A certain amount of opposition is a great help. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.”

—
John Neal

 

“It’s useless to hold a person to anything he says while he’s in love, drunk, or running for office.”

—
Shirley MacLaine

 

“We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same.”

—
Carlos Castaneda

 

“If fear alters your behavior, you’re already defeated.”

—
Brenda Hammond

 

“No man was ever wise by chance.”

—
Seneca

 

“There’s no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.”

—
Martin Scorsese

 

“Opportunities are like buses: There’s always another one coming.”

—
Richard Branson

 

“A few observations and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.”

—
Alexis Carrel

 

“The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.”

—
Edward R. Murrow

 

“Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands—and then eat just one of the pieces.”

—
Judith Viorst

 

“In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.”

—
Walter Cronkite

 

“All experience is great provided you live through it. If it kills you, you’ve gone too far.”

—
Alice Neel

1. Salinger

2. Pei

3. Tolkien

4. Lewis

5. Barnum

6. Eliot

7. lang

8. Auden

9. Escher

10. Lovecraft

11. Skinner

12. Foyt

13. Marshall

14. Baracus (Mr. T)

15. Wells

16. Morgan

17. Sabathia

18. Knight

19. Hughley

20. Reynolds

21. cummings

22. Ewing

23. Griffith

24. Milne

25. Richardson

26. Mencken

27. O’Rourke

28. Barrie

29. Hooker

1. Fl
orida and
Rh
ode Island. (If you thought of
Wy
oming as well, that’s incorrect, because “y” is acting as a vowel.)

2.
bustle, subtle, sublet, bluest

3.
Tuesday

4.
The Seven Dwarfs (Grumpy, Dopey, Sneezy, Sleepy, Bashful, Doc, and Happy)

5.
Donny Osmond, because unlike Marie, his name has a set of double letters, which you’ll find in all of the words he likes.

6.
11 + 11/11

7.
Each can be preceded by “HIGH” to form a common word or phrase.

8.
The closest the pilot can be is 100 miles. However, if he flew over the North Pole, then he’d instantly be traveling south, so the farthest distance is 300 miles.

9.
successfully, unsuccessfully

10.
They’re all movie lines:

11.
If you’re adding the numbers on a clock—starting at 4:00, if you add 9 hours, it will be 1:00.

12.
You have one $50 bill, one $5 bill, and four $2 bills.

13.
An equal.