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Downloaded from
YTS.MX

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[birds singing]

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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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[Sly] Do I have regrets?
Hell yeah, I have regrets.

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But that also is what

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motivates me to overcome the regrets.

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-[claps]
-To, like, fix it.

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And I do that through painting,
or I do that through writing.

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'Cause I can't fix it physically.

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It's gone.

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You know, that fucking thing called time.

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Just… [whooshes]

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Gone. You know, I look at…
Like, of you're ever on a train,

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in every window… [whooshing]
…scenery is going by.

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It's like a photo. Wham, wham, wham.

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And you're never coming that way again.

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And that's what your life is. Whoosh!

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Snapping images seen whipping by.

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And you can't… It's gone.

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[feedback-heavy electric guitar plays]

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["To Hell With Poverty"
by Gang of Four playing]

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[song fades out]

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[faint birdsong]

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[Sly] It's really easy
to become complacent.

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I thought, "I gotta do something drastic."

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Everything is getting
kind of mundane, repetitive.

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I can feel myself
withering a little bit, drying up,

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like an old fig that fell off a tree.
You know, you're drying up.

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Jesus, what am I gonna be around for?
Another 20 years?

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I don't wanna be complacent for 20 years.

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So I said, "Well, you really
want to get the adrenals going?"

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"Leave."

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And that's why I gotta move east.

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Nothing, I think, inspires you
than taking your house or your history,

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balling it up. You know…

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[whooshes]

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Who is this man, Sylvester Stallone?

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Artist, writer, poet, performer,

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enormous celebrity.

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How does that happen?

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Sly is a guy who always
will go down his own path.

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And if that path doesn't exist,
he'll run the road himself.

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He was a self-creator.

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[man 1] Ostensibly, he didn't
appear to be a great actor.

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He didn't have obvious charisma.

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But he invented something else.

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An actor who writes and directs himself.

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He's not the first person to do it,
but he was the first superstar to do it.

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He really understood
what people wanted to see him do.

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I was invested in the Stallone story

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as if it were my story.

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It was my daydream of…
of what could happen in a career.

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There is no one that has
stepped into three franchises.

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The genius behind that.

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This was not an accident.

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[producer] Can you show me some of those
cassettes that you found while packing up?

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Yeah, I got some.

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Let's see.

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This is New York Times.

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[tape player thunks]

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[woman] Could you do me a favor?

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I start off by quoting
from your press release,

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and then you pick up the story
where I leave off. Right? Okay.

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"Sylvester Stallone was born in the tough
Hell's Kitchen section of New York

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in the sweltering summer of 1946."

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[car horns honking]

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[soft instrumental music playing]

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[Sly] Holy shit.

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I never, ever, ever thought
I would come back here.

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I was born in Hell's Kitchen.
I was New York.

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I haven't been here in 65 years.

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You guys livin' here?

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[man] No, I'm 45th.

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-Yeah?
-Yeah.

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-I used to live here.
-You lived in this block here?

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-Yeah, absolutely.
-What was the neighborhood like then?

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-It was rough.
-Yeah?

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Well, it was really
Hell's Kitchen back then. Yeah.

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I remember, the window was always open.

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[chuckles] So you learn a lot
about human nature,

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and you're observing life.

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You're watching a movie.

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"Hey, when you coming over?"
"I'm coming over tomorrow."

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"Shut your friggin' window."

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It's back and forth.

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I remember my father, like,
always wearing, like, an Italian T-shirt,

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and, like, just… it looked like
something out of an Arthur Miller play.

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View from the Bridge, it was…
That's my life.

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My father came to New York.
That's where he met my mother.

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He's a barber
transitioning into "cosmetology"

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'cause there was
more money as a hairdresser.

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Our father was also very self-conscious
because I don't think he was educated.

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Any kind of slight or insult would, like…

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He'd go off.

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Our mother was pretty bad too.

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She was pretty handy with
the old hairbrush and the shower brush.

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She had long nails that'd never break.
She'd go, "Come here, you!"

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My mother was a cigarette girl
at Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe.

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That's primarily where
the money was coming from.

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My father told me that…
she just was afraid to have a kid.

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Even though she was nine months pregnant,
she kept riding around on the bus.

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And she'd gone into labor.

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Somebody smart enough
to get her off the bus,

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they carry her into a charity ward.

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And that's where I was
brought into the world,

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via this accident,

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which kind of paralyzed
all the nerves on the side of my mouth.

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So I was born with this snarl.

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[soft music playing]

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[Sly] She was quite eccentric, colorful,

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very, very, very outspoken
and unpredictable.

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I know I've got a certain kind of…

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ferocity from my father, no question.

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Our mother and father,
it was like clockwork.

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I'd be up in bed, and you'd just
hear them screaming and yelling.

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My father… [snarling]

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And I was petrified… 'cause, I mean,
I could just feel the reverberation.

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I think they both were so self-absorbed
with their own stuff, my parents,

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that they just pawned us off.

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The majority of the time
I was living in a boarding house.

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Basically 12 months a year,

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never went home,
'cause they just didn't have time.

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They were both working.

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And people say, "Oh, you feel deprived
and you weren't nurtured."

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I thought, "Yeah, that's true."

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And maybe the nurturing comes from

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the respect and love of strangers.

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To feel embraced and loved

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by an audience,

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it's insatiable.

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I wish I could get over it,
but… you can't.

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[Frank] I think movies for me and him
were total, absolutely escapism.

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[projector whirring]

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I would spend untold hours in theaters,
and I don't care what it was,

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I'd sit there
and watch this thing five, six times

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and then go home at four in the afternoon.

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That's the life I wanted to lead.
That's the ideals. Grandeur.

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That's hard work, and triumphs over evil.

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I always had hero worship.

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I wish I could be the guy
who saved the bus full of children.

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That's who I want to be.
I want to be the guy who

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saves people.

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I would stay alone in my parents' room,

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and they had a cheap Woolworth's
three-dollar, $2.99 mirror.

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I would sit there
and do things all day in the mirror,

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whether it be imitation…

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While someone is singing, I'm lip-syncing.

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Or go see a movie like Hercules,

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and I'd come back
and try to imitate Steve Reeves.

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[epic "Hercules" score playing]

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[Sly] The moment in Hercules Unchained,
when he steps up,

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and he pulls the temples down,

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and this… ridiculously handsome,

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well-built, perfect male role model…

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That did it.

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I go, "There it is. That's the road."

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'Cause I finally had
a role model that I idolized.

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-And my destiny to fulfill!
-[loud thunderclap]

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My father realized
he's not going to make it in New York,

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so they took off to Maryland.

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[Frank] We came from broken marriage.

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I mean, I came home from school
and no one was home.

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My mother had taken off.

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They went to court. It was terrible.

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I went with my mother in Philadelphia,

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and my brother stayed
with my father in Maryland.

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Complete country and crickets,
pretty isolated,

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and there were only horses.

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[tense electric guitar music builds]

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I've been… For some reason,
I had an affinity with horses

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since I was five or six years old.

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Not good horses,
just horses my father would buy.

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Twenty dollars, $25.

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He didn't have much money, but somehow
he got involved with a polo team.

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And everyone in polo had
beautiful horses, great trailers, ranches.

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We had a… [chuckles] …a dump.

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The horses, most of 'em
had medical problems.

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Some of 'em, if you pulled up
too quickly, they'd go blind.

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So I started playing polo,

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but sandlot kind of polo, like, low level.

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But I learned. Anyway, I started
getting better and better and better.

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And then when I was 13,
I was starting to get ranked.

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I'm gonna get nationally ranked.

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My father

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wasn't liking that so much.

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And in the middle of a game,

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I was going for a nearside backhand,

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and I didn't do anything wrong,

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he goes,
"You're pulling too hard on the horse!"

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I said, "I know what I'm doing."
He goes, "You don't!"

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"You don't know what you're riding."
Screaming from the stands.

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And finally I pulled the horse up
to get ready for another throw,

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and he comes out of the stands,

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grabs me by the throat,
throws me on the ground,

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takes the horse, and walks off the field.

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And I laid there and I went,

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"I never want to see
a horse again in my whole life."

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I was raised by a very…

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physical father. You know? I mean…

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So I was no stranger to serious pain.

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And I think it just became,
"I'm not gonna break."

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No matter what he did, you know?
I'm just not going to break.

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[Frank] I think my father was jealous.

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My brother, he was a problem guy.

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He was truant. He'd get in fights.

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He wasn't a good student,
and he got thrown out of all his schools.

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[Sly] I went to 13 schools in 12 years.

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They put me in a military school.
I don't think I was there for a month.

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[Frank] Well, he was kind of incorrigible.
He got in a lot of trouble.

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He went to Devereux School,

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which was kind of a school
for wayward kids, I guess.

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And that's where he kind of
started getting the little bug for acting.

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And then he went to college.

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That's when he got serious
about the acting stuff.

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There was an opportunity to audition…

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I don't even know why, but I did.

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…for Death of a Salesman.

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And I got it.

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[Sly on tape]
I was on stage and I was feeling…

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I wasn't feeling nervous at all.

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I felt in control of the situation
because this comes naturally,

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this comes easily to me.

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There was a Harvard professor
in the audience who came up and said,

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"You should think of this as… a career."

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I go, "Come on." He goes, "Yeah."

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"You should really study this.
You have something."

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And that moment

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changed the course of my life.

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[gentle instrumental music plays]

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[Sly on tape] And I landed in New York
the day of Woodstock.

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I said, "It's about time
for me to apply myself."

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[energetic guitar music playing]

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I didn't even know what kind of city
I was living in. I wasn't part of it.

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Very much alone and very dedicated
to trying to find my way.

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I've hustled on these streets.
I know how to survive on these streets.

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00:14:27,575 --> 00:14:32,371
I've slept in doorways and bus stops
and train stations and libraries.

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00:14:32,454 --> 00:14:34,915
I mean, freezing cold, I get it.

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I would go to agencies.

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I go to every one of these places.
"I'd like to be a client."

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"We're not accepting anything."

241
00:14:44,008 --> 00:14:46,844
I'd push the picture in,
and they'd push it out. [chuckles]

242
00:14:47,428 --> 00:14:50,055
I tried out and they'd say,
"No, you slur."

243
00:14:50,139 --> 00:14:52,391
"Your eyes droop.
You're this, you're that."

244
00:14:53,058 --> 00:14:55,811
The best I would get
would be off-off Broadway

245
00:14:55,895 --> 00:14:57,771
where you had to be half-naked.

246
00:14:57,855 --> 00:15:00,816
That's the only kind of crap
I was getting. It was terrible.

247
00:15:00,900 --> 00:15:04,570
They said, "It's just not gonna work.
Maybe you'll be an extra."

248
00:15:04,653 --> 00:15:07,990
So I started to buy into that,
I'd go, "Hmm."

249
00:15:08,073 --> 00:15:10,284
Because every time I was cast,

250
00:15:10,367 --> 00:15:11,952
it was always for a thug.

251
00:15:12,036 --> 00:15:14,246
-Watch it, will ya?
-Sorry, man, I didn't see ya!

252
00:15:14,330 --> 00:15:16,040
[man 2] They wouldn't give him leads.

253
00:15:16,123 --> 00:15:20,127
Or he'd be doing stage work,
or he'd be the prop man,

254
00:15:20,210 --> 00:15:22,212
but they never gave him respect.

255
00:15:22,296 --> 00:15:26,050
[Sly] I was so
self-consumed and insulated,

256
00:15:26,926 --> 00:15:29,553
and John… he was the same way.

257
00:15:31,931 --> 00:15:35,100
Sly started to write
because he couldn't get what he wanted,

258
00:15:35,184 --> 00:15:37,061
so he'd create it himself.

259
00:15:39,063 --> 00:15:40,731
And it wasn't anything like,

260
00:15:40,814 --> 00:15:44,151
"You thought about it,
and you were gonna do it." Just do it!

261
00:15:45,736 --> 00:15:48,656
[Sly] I said this is no good.
I don't want to act anymore.

262
00:15:48,739 --> 00:15:51,867
Maybe what I can do
is write all my frustrations

263
00:15:51,951 --> 00:15:53,285
and make screenplays.

264
00:15:54,620 --> 00:15:56,413
[Sly] I got a job as an usher.

265
00:15:56,497 --> 00:15:59,291
I could watch films all day long.

266
00:16:00,250 --> 00:16:02,670
And I would take a little
inexpensive tape recorder,

267
00:16:02,753 --> 00:16:05,381
record the soundtrack and the dialogue,

268
00:16:05,464 --> 00:16:07,883
and go home
and try to replace the dialogue.

269
00:16:07,967 --> 00:16:10,928
[Sly] That's what I started to do.
I wrote and wrote for a couple years

270
00:16:11,011 --> 00:16:13,472
until I had 15, 16 screenplays.

271
00:16:14,056 --> 00:16:18,310
[subway tracks rattling and squealing]

272
00:16:18,394 --> 00:16:21,146
[Sly] John and I, we were definitely
on a different wavelength,

273
00:16:21,230 --> 00:16:24,441
wanting to write our own stuff,
wanting to produce our own stuff.

274
00:16:24,525 --> 00:16:26,735
So every Friday, Saturday and Sunday

275
00:16:26,819 --> 00:16:29,697
was spent with
a bottle of Boone's Farm wine.

276
00:16:29,780 --> 00:16:34,868
Never went to a bar, a restaurant, a club.
That's when the writing really started.

277
00:16:37,329 --> 00:16:40,290
We'd discuss aspirations, dreams,

278
00:16:40,374 --> 00:16:42,084
but also movies.

279
00:16:42,584 --> 00:16:46,505
We would break in, sneak in somehow,

280
00:16:46,588 --> 00:16:48,382
to every movie in New York.

281
00:16:48,465 --> 00:16:51,135
Never paid for a ticket, ever.

282
00:16:51,218 --> 00:16:53,012
[up-tempo jazz music playing]

283
00:16:56,265 --> 00:17:00,394
[Sly] There was no possibility
in our minds for failure.

284
00:17:00,477 --> 00:17:04,189
Like, "Oh, what if we don't make it?"
Never entered the conversation.

285
00:17:04,273 --> 00:17:08,777
That's how driven and adamant
and committed to the concept…

286
00:17:08,861 --> 00:17:12,448
"Yeah, there's got to be a place for us,
because we're so weird."

287
00:17:12,531 --> 00:17:13,907
We have to fit in somewhere.

288
00:17:13,991 --> 00:17:16,410
We had to do something.
We had to make our own fate.

289
00:17:17,494 --> 00:17:20,831
That's why we said,
"We gotta do this movie called Horses."

290
00:17:22,291 --> 00:17:25,753
A cowboy and an Indian
come up from their grave,

291
00:17:25,836 --> 00:17:27,546
100 years after they were hung.

292
00:17:27,629 --> 00:17:29,631
[Sly] Got in a car, went to Maryland.

293
00:17:29,715 --> 00:17:31,091
We rented guns.

294
00:17:31,175 --> 00:17:34,094
When you see us, like,
shooting at the car, it's real ammo.

295
00:17:34,178 --> 00:17:36,263
I said, "What am I, crazy?"

296
00:17:36,346 --> 00:17:41,852
His father was reincarnated
as a sheriff who came to track us down.

297
00:17:42,644 --> 00:17:45,064
Of course, my father's in the movie.
My father shoots them.

298
00:17:45,147 --> 00:17:50,110
[Sly] The part where he kills us,
he enjoyed this a little too much.

299
00:17:50,194 --> 00:17:53,363
"I wanna shoot you, and then
I wanna come over and shoot you again."

300
00:17:53,447 --> 00:17:57,201
I said, "Is this sort of personal now?
A little biblical?"

301
00:17:59,495 --> 00:18:02,748
[Frank] It's a silent movie. I said,
"Sly, why don't you have any sound?"

302
00:18:02,831 --> 00:18:03,957
"Couldn't afford it."

303
00:18:04,041 --> 00:18:07,252
So you thought you were
going to shop a silent movie in 1971?

304
00:18:09,421 --> 00:18:11,715
[John] Doesn't matter
if it hasn't been done before.

305
00:18:11,799 --> 00:18:15,928
And he had, most importantly, a voice.
He wanted his voice to be heard.

306
00:18:16,762 --> 00:18:21,850
[Sly] In high school, I was considered
like a poster boy for how not to write.

307
00:18:21,934 --> 00:18:24,853
"Sylvester, you like to come up and read?"
I go, "Nah. No, thanks!"

308
00:18:24,937 --> 00:18:27,272
He goes, "Yes.
'Cause no one else wants to."

309
00:18:28,273 --> 00:18:31,401
The rejection, that's my encouragement.

310
00:18:31,485 --> 00:18:32,528
It's a challenge.

311
00:18:32,611 --> 00:18:35,614
Are you going to accept
their evaluation of you

312
00:18:35,697 --> 00:18:37,366
or are you going to evaluate yourself?

313
00:18:38,659 --> 00:18:42,579
[John] Sly always wanted to be an actor,

314
00:18:43,372 --> 00:18:46,416
but he always had to write.

315
00:18:46,500 --> 00:18:47,918
He wants to be an actor,

316
00:18:48,001 --> 00:18:50,504
and he needs someone to give him a role.

317
00:18:50,587 --> 00:18:53,132
He wasn't cast in things.

318
00:18:53,215 --> 00:18:58,846
He invented parts for himself
because he was probably deemed uncastable.

319
00:18:58,929 --> 00:19:01,640
[Sly] I had given up on acting.
I was done.

320
00:19:01,723 --> 00:19:05,310
But John Herzfeld
asked me to help him audition.

321
00:19:05,394 --> 00:19:08,981
In the audience is a guy
who's monitoring the class

322
00:19:09,064 --> 00:19:12,568
who was going to eventually
write and direct Lords of Flatbush.

323
00:19:13,360 --> 00:19:15,320
That was the beginning.

324
00:19:15,404 --> 00:19:18,365
It's a matter of just being
in the right place at the right time.

325
00:19:19,324 --> 00:19:22,744
I first met Sly on The Lords of Flatbush.

326
00:19:23,537 --> 00:19:27,332
[Sly] We were kind of just a real odd…
A really odd couple.

327
00:19:27,416 --> 00:19:30,335
He's Jewish, intellectual, Ivy League.

328
00:19:30,419 --> 00:19:32,546
I'm… [chuckles] I am what I am.

329
00:19:33,130 --> 00:19:38,594
And you couldn't get two people
more culturally opposite.

330
00:19:38,677 --> 00:19:43,557
He took me to his walk-up apartment
off of Lexington Avenue

331
00:19:43,640 --> 00:19:45,934
with his gigantic dog.

332
00:19:46,018 --> 00:19:51,064
And he painted
the windows black so he could write.

333
00:19:53,233 --> 00:19:57,029
I read the screenplay,
and it was pretty simplistic.

334
00:19:57,112 --> 00:20:00,991
So I said,
"Let me be myself in this scene."

335
00:20:01,074 --> 00:20:03,660
For example,
when I'm sitting behind the girl.

336
00:20:03,744 --> 00:20:05,954
"Mr. Rosiello, what are you doing?"

337
00:20:06,038 --> 00:20:07,664
"I don't know, I'm just sitting."

338
00:20:07,748 --> 00:20:10,209
"I'm sliding up because the sun
is getting in my eye… my eye…"

339
00:20:10,292 --> 00:20:12,002
"My eyes, I can't see."

340
00:20:12,085 --> 00:20:14,213
And then she goes back to teaching.

341
00:20:14,296 --> 00:20:16,131
A moment later, I slide close to the girl.

342
00:20:16,215 --> 00:20:18,550
I got my arm around her.
She goes, "Mr. Rosiello!"

343
00:20:18,634 --> 00:20:21,094
"I don't know what it is!
The sun keeps following me."

344
00:20:21,178 --> 00:20:24,932
"I'm going here, I'm going there."
Just doing all this nonsense, winging it.

345
00:20:25,682 --> 00:20:27,517
And I realized this is…

346
00:20:27,601 --> 00:20:30,562
this is an opportunity
that they allowed me.

347
00:20:30,646 --> 00:20:33,565
I'm going to say whatever I want
throughout the whole film.

348
00:20:33,649 --> 00:20:37,861
Sly was always rewriting the script,

349
00:20:37,945 --> 00:20:40,489
improving the scenes he was in.

350
00:20:40,572 --> 00:20:43,450
Lords of Flatbush was really
the first time we got a sense

351
00:20:43,533 --> 00:20:45,869
of Sylvester Stallone's voice
before Rocky.

352
00:20:45,953 --> 00:20:49,289
The best scene in the movie, if not
one of the best scenes in '70's cinema,

353
00:20:49,373 --> 00:20:50,332
as far as I'm concerned,

354
00:20:50,415 --> 00:20:52,834
is the scene where he's persuaded
by his fiancée, Maria Smith,

355
00:20:52,918 --> 00:20:56,588
to buy an engagement ring that
this dumb lug obviously cannot afford.

356
00:20:56,672 --> 00:20:58,882
The girl that just walked out of there,

357
00:20:58,966 --> 00:21:01,969
if you ever show her a $1,600 ring again,

358
00:21:02,052 --> 00:21:04,513
you know what's going to be
written on your tombstone? Huh?

359
00:21:04,596 --> 00:21:06,682
You know what's going to be
written on your tombstone?

360
00:21:07,391 --> 00:21:12,104
"I was dumb enough to show
Frannie Malincanico a $1,600 ring."

361
00:21:12,187 --> 00:21:14,773
Stanley is an interesting character
in that movie,

362
00:21:14,856 --> 00:21:16,566
but you don't necessarily like him.

363
00:21:16,650 --> 00:21:19,236
He's just… He's such a lug.

364
00:21:19,319 --> 00:21:21,571
But in that scene
he makes you fall in love with him

365
00:21:21,655 --> 00:21:26,034
'cause you realize the extent
to how much he actually loves Frannie.

366
00:21:26,118 --> 00:21:29,705
It's our first glimpse
of the musicality or the sound

367
00:21:29,788 --> 00:21:31,581
of Sylvester Stallone's dialogue.

368
00:21:31,665 --> 00:21:32,666
Damn.

369
00:21:32,749 --> 00:21:38,213
At that point, I knew forever
my fate was determined on the pen.

370
00:21:38,297 --> 00:21:41,174
'Cause I knew I was so hard to cast.

371
00:21:41,258 --> 00:21:43,385
I was always cast as a thug.

372
00:21:43,468 --> 00:21:45,804
I go, "Okay, that's true. I am."

373
00:21:45,887 --> 00:21:49,391
But I'm also nice.
I'm… I'm kind of a soft touch.

374
00:21:49,474 --> 00:21:51,059
If you could put that together,

375
00:21:51,143 --> 00:21:53,103
that would really be a great character.

376
00:21:53,186 --> 00:21:56,315
And I didn't have that opportunity
until Rocky came around.

377
00:21:56,398 --> 00:22:00,902
But the precursor was Stanley Rosiello
in The Lords of Flatbush,

378
00:22:00,986 --> 00:22:03,322
where I saw there's a tough goon,

379
00:22:03,405 --> 00:22:07,451
motorcycle jacket, greasy hair, cigarette,
but you really liked him.

380
00:22:07,534 --> 00:22:10,329
[twangy electric guitar music playing]

381
00:22:21,173 --> 00:22:22,799
[Sly] One thing led to another.

382
00:22:24,885 --> 00:22:27,721
If they hadn't offered me the part,
if I didn't get good reviews,

383
00:22:27,804 --> 00:22:29,639
I never would've made enough,
made 1,300 bucks,

384
00:22:29,723 --> 00:22:35,312
just enough to get a $40 car
and drive… 11 days to Hollywood.

385
00:22:37,731 --> 00:22:41,526
The only one I knew in LA
was Henry Winkler,

386
00:22:42,069 --> 00:22:44,237
who is now a big star as the Fonz.

387
00:22:48,033 --> 00:22:50,202
My car breaks down on Hollywood and Vine.

388
00:22:50,285 --> 00:22:53,455
Just boom, stops. Like, it was prophetic.

389
00:22:54,373 --> 00:22:57,000
And the first phone call
I made was to Henry.

390
00:22:59,836 --> 00:23:02,005
[mimics Sly]
"Yeah, you gotta come pick me up."

391
00:23:02,547 --> 00:23:04,049
"My car broke down."

392
00:23:04,132 --> 00:23:06,968
"I'm here, right in the middle
of Sunset Boulevard."

393
00:23:07,052 --> 00:23:08,553
I said, "I will be right there."

394
00:23:08,637 --> 00:23:12,015
I went and got him
and this mountain of a dog.

395
00:23:12,099 --> 00:23:16,895
All of his clothes in the car somehow,
sitting on suitcases.

396
00:23:16,978 --> 00:23:20,440
[Sly] He obviously couldn't take me
to his house. I got a dog, a wife.

397
00:23:20,524 --> 00:23:22,526
He pointed me
in the direction of this motel,

398
00:23:22,609 --> 00:23:25,695
and I ended up there
for, like, three nights.

399
00:23:25,779 --> 00:23:29,199
And then I found some dump
way in the Valley,

400
00:23:29,282 --> 00:23:31,868
one street away from Balboa Boulevard.

401
00:23:33,912 --> 00:23:35,288
All right.

402
00:23:36,164 --> 00:23:37,332
[tape player clicks]

403
00:23:37,416 --> 00:23:41,545
[Sly on tape] I had been introduced
to Gene Kirkwood, the executive producer.

404
00:23:41,628 --> 00:23:45,257
And we had talked
and then I had given him the idea, Rocky,

405
00:23:45,340 --> 00:23:48,176
and we developed it,
and lo and behold, it came out.

406
00:23:48,260 --> 00:23:53,265
And it was a series of circumstances
which are really, I guess, a bit unusual,

407
00:23:53,348 --> 00:23:55,851
because I had a very limited track record.

408
00:23:55,934 --> 00:23:58,019
-So it was…
-How about no track record?

409
00:23:58,103 --> 00:24:01,356
…a benevolent and wonderful
chain of mistakes that came out.

410
00:24:01,440 --> 00:24:04,109
Yeah, you know,
it's simplifying everything.

411
00:24:04,192 --> 00:24:06,820
[emotional music playing]

412
00:24:10,365 --> 00:24:13,243
[Sly] I was there for,
actually, an acting audition,

413
00:24:13,326 --> 00:24:15,704
and things were going not too well.

414
00:24:16,872 --> 00:24:19,749
And on the way out,
the door was just about closing,

415
00:24:19,833 --> 00:24:21,418
I lean back in the door and I go,

416
00:24:21,501 --> 00:24:25,839
"Oh, by the way, I write a little bit."
And he goes, "Really? Come back in."

417
00:24:27,299 --> 00:24:28,717
[Sly] I started writing,

418
00:24:30,302 --> 00:24:33,763
and I started doing
something derivative of Mean Streets.

419
00:24:33,847 --> 00:24:37,517
I want to do a collector. I want to do
that kind of gritty street thing.

420
00:24:37,601 --> 00:24:41,021
And I'm knocking it out,
dog sitting there on the desk,

421
00:24:41,104 --> 00:24:45,025
and I'm working, I'm smoking cigarettes,
and I'm pounding coffee away.

422
00:24:45,817 --> 00:24:47,569
And it's coming together.

423
00:24:47,652 --> 00:24:49,738
-[rubbing hands]
-It's just… It's working.

424
00:24:50,238 --> 00:24:51,823
But there is…

425
00:24:53,158 --> 00:24:56,453
a… a thuggery about Rocky.

426
00:24:56,536 --> 00:24:59,331
At the time, my friend, she was typing it,

427
00:25:00,290 --> 00:25:01,249
she started crying.

428
00:25:01,333 --> 00:25:05,212
She goes, "I hate Rocky.
I hate him. He's cruel."

429
00:25:05,921 --> 00:25:08,381
"He… He hits people. He beats them up."

430
00:25:08,465 --> 00:25:11,301
I said, "What if you stop short of it?
Like, maybe he almost did."

431
00:25:11,384 --> 00:25:14,054
"He could have,
that's his job, but he doesn't?"

432
00:25:14,137 --> 00:25:15,472
"That'd be nice."

433
00:25:15,555 --> 00:25:17,849
I said, "What if he had
a girlfriend or something?"

434
00:25:17,933 --> 00:25:19,559
"Yeah, that's nice."

435
00:25:19,643 --> 00:25:21,353
So I go back. [makes whooshing sound]

436
00:25:21,436 --> 00:25:23,271
Start writing that. "Girlfriend. Nice."

437
00:25:23,355 --> 00:25:28,151
But he's not a fighter now.
He's just a guy. There's really no story.

438
00:25:28,235 --> 00:25:32,531
He's just a guy, like, on the fringe,

439
00:25:32,614 --> 00:25:34,366
a, um… a bum.

440
00:25:35,075 --> 00:25:36,201
He's a bum!

441
00:25:36,284 --> 00:25:40,205
And now I hearken back
to On the Waterfront. He's Terry Malloy.

442
00:25:41,248 --> 00:25:44,209
Bang. Marty, movie, Mean Streets. Whoosh!

443
00:25:44,292 --> 00:25:47,212
Boom. [imitates gears whirring] Mix it up.

444
00:25:47,295 --> 00:25:49,464
And then throw your spin on it.

445
00:25:50,173 --> 00:25:53,343
And then it all came together
once he became a fighter.

446
00:25:57,222 --> 00:25:59,766
[Sly on tape] I had $106,
the rent was $300.

447
00:25:59,849 --> 00:26:03,645
I had that kind of dilemma.
I could hear the wolf at the door.

448
00:26:05,105 --> 00:26:07,482
I wrote it in three days.

449
00:26:08,942 --> 00:26:12,153
Then, of course, I went back
and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote it.

450
00:26:13,446 --> 00:26:16,366
I'm a big believer,
when I write, to not worry about

451
00:26:16,449 --> 00:26:17,784
the flawed aspect of it.

452
00:26:17,867 --> 00:26:20,328
I know that maybe 90% is worthless,

453
00:26:20,412 --> 00:26:23,999
but the idea that you have
a beginning, middle, and an end

454
00:26:24,082 --> 00:26:25,500
is very important to me.

455
00:26:25,584 --> 00:26:29,546
Producers are going, "We'd like
to cast Ryan O'Neal. He likes to box."

456
00:26:29,629 --> 00:26:31,339
"Or Burt Reynolds."

457
00:26:31,423 --> 00:26:33,633
I go, "No, I'm writing it for me."

458
00:26:36,970 --> 00:26:40,307
[interviewer] They liked the script,
but were so desperate not to have you,

459
00:26:40,390 --> 00:26:43,685
that they kept offering increasingly large
sums of money to go away, didn't they?

460
00:26:43,768 --> 00:26:47,063
[Sly chuckling] You're right.
It went up to about $265,000.

461
00:26:47,147 --> 00:26:49,316
-Not to appear in the film.
-[Sly] Right, to stay away.

462
00:26:49,399 --> 00:26:53,361
I knew that if I sold it,
even for $500,000,

463
00:26:53,445 --> 00:26:55,071
I knew that after the money was gone

464
00:26:55,155 --> 00:26:57,198
I would become very bitter
for having sold out.

465
00:26:57,282 --> 00:26:58,700
What is healthier?

466
00:26:59,743 --> 00:27:01,077
To live under the illusion

467
00:27:01,161 --> 00:27:05,373
and still have a little glimmer of hope
that you could have been great,

468
00:27:05,457 --> 00:27:08,168
or actually have
an opportunity to be great

469
00:27:08,251 --> 00:27:11,212
and then you blow it,
and you realize you're a failure.

470
00:27:12,172 --> 00:27:16,551
So I think that the easier route
is to live under the illusion and say,

471
00:27:16,635 --> 00:27:20,597
"You know, if I'd had that chance,
I would have beaten all of them."

472
00:27:22,307 --> 00:27:24,934
I walked into that trailer
for the first time

473
00:27:25,018 --> 00:27:27,270
under the cold streets of Philadelphia

474
00:27:28,229 --> 00:27:30,482
and I knew this was the moment of truth.

475
00:27:32,651 --> 00:27:34,903
And they said, "Sylvester, are you ready?"

476
00:27:35,487 --> 00:27:37,280
I said, "No."

477
00:27:37,364 --> 00:27:38,615
"But Rocky is."

478
00:27:39,199 --> 00:27:41,534
What happened was something extraordinary.

479
00:27:41,618 --> 00:27:45,246
We knew this thing was taking place.

480
00:27:45,330 --> 00:27:47,332
[crowd cheering faintly]

481
00:27:47,415 --> 00:27:50,752
[Sly] All the actors I wanted,
every one of them fell out,

482
00:27:50,835 --> 00:27:54,255
and they were replaced
with perfect actors.

483
00:27:55,382 --> 00:27:58,385
Apollo Creed? There's only
one guy in the world who could do that.

484
00:27:58,468 --> 00:28:00,929
He had the voice, the size,
the thing, the arrogance.

485
00:28:01,012 --> 00:28:04,182
We were gonna use Ken Norton,
but he fell out two nights before,

486
00:28:04,265 --> 00:28:05,809
and I thought, "Oh, boy."

487
00:28:05,892 --> 00:28:07,936
[melancholy music playing]

488
00:28:08,019 --> 00:28:10,271
[Sly] I really believe
in divine intervention.

489
00:28:12,399 --> 00:28:18,154
Talia Shire was also a last-minute choice
because we couldn't find the right person.

490
00:28:20,573 --> 00:28:24,202
She comes in,
and as soon as that door opened,

491
00:28:24,285 --> 00:28:26,955
it was like this light. Wham.

492
00:28:27,872 --> 00:28:30,834
And I walked up to her
and she had this blue-black hair

493
00:28:30,917 --> 00:28:33,753
and these… these eyes looking like this.

494
00:28:34,546 --> 00:28:36,464
I went, "I love this girl."

495
00:28:36,548 --> 00:28:39,634
I love this character, this thing.

496
00:28:39,718 --> 00:28:41,302
There's something here.

497
00:28:41,386 --> 00:28:44,222
I'm not even going to question it.
You don't have to read.

498
00:28:44,806 --> 00:28:46,599
You are it.

499
00:28:46,683 --> 00:28:49,686
The same thing happened
all the way down the line.

500
00:28:50,729 --> 00:28:54,274
[Sly] Rocky is not
a fight story by any means.

501
00:28:54,816 --> 00:28:56,943
It's a simple character study
of a man who…

502
00:28:57,026 --> 00:28:58,027
A love story.

503
00:28:58,111 --> 00:28:59,279
…who should be cynical.

504
00:28:59,362 --> 00:29:01,448
-It's a love story.
-But he's incapable of it.

505
00:29:01,531 --> 00:29:02,490
[tapping on tape player]

506
00:29:02,574 --> 00:29:04,242
-Love story.
-He accepts life.

507
00:29:05,869 --> 00:29:09,330
-Simply, that's his, uh, his lot in life.
-Say it.

508
00:29:10,415 --> 00:29:14,586
One thing he wants more than anything else
is not to grow old alone.

509
00:29:14,669 --> 00:29:15,712
Say it.

510
00:29:16,796 --> 00:29:20,133
[producer] That young guy there
could not get to the place of love.

511
00:29:20,216 --> 00:29:22,594
-He could not say it out loud.
-[Sly] No.

512
00:29:22,677 --> 00:29:23,928
Yeah, you're right.

513
00:29:24,512 --> 00:29:26,723
I couldn't say it back then.

514
00:29:26,806 --> 00:29:27,807
[tape player clicks]

515
00:29:33,354 --> 00:29:36,983
[Sly] I'm sitting there waiting to do
a scene with Adrian on the ice.

516
00:29:38,902 --> 00:29:41,404
"Guess what?
The 300 extras have been cut."

517
00:29:41,488 --> 00:29:43,948
How many do I have? He goes, "None."

518
00:29:44,032 --> 00:29:45,992
And how long do we have to shoot?

519
00:29:46,075 --> 00:29:47,327
"Maybe two hours."

520
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:50,705
And I went, "Wow."

521
00:29:51,331 --> 00:29:52,832
"This could be even better."

522
00:29:55,335 --> 00:30:00,006
Rocky really observes, and he sees
things that other people don't see,

523
00:30:00,089 --> 00:30:01,299
trying to bring her out.

524
00:30:01,382 --> 00:30:06,095
[Talia] He was exploring
vulnerability, nurturing,

525
00:30:06,179 --> 00:30:07,972
transformation.

526
00:30:08,056 --> 00:30:11,100
So we have to begin a character here

527
00:30:11,184 --> 00:30:12,560
to go there.

528
00:30:12,644 --> 00:30:14,437
[Rocky] You know
how I got started in fighting?

529
00:30:14,521 --> 00:30:16,439
-[Adrian] No.
-[Rocky] My old man.

530
00:30:16,523 --> 00:30:20,151
He was never too smart. He says to me,
"You weren't born much of a brain,

531
00:30:20,235 --> 00:30:23,571
so you better start using your body."
Right? So I become a fighter.

532
00:30:23,655 --> 00:30:25,573
-You know what I mean?
-Yeah. [laughs]

533
00:30:25,657 --> 00:30:27,492
Why you… Why you laughing?

534
00:30:28,868 --> 00:30:31,704
My mother, she said the opposite thing.

535
00:30:31,788 --> 00:30:33,915
What'd she say?
What'd she say, the opposite?

536
00:30:34,707 --> 00:30:37,085
[sighs] She said, "You weren't born
with much of a body,

537
00:30:37,168 --> 00:30:38,837
so you better develop your brain."

538
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:40,296
Did she say that?

539
00:30:40,380 --> 00:30:42,382
[emotional music playing]

540
00:30:43,299 --> 00:30:44,843
Adrian was extraordinary.

541
00:30:44,926 --> 00:30:46,719
He wrote that woman,

542
00:30:46,803 --> 00:30:49,514
a woman who was oppressed and discarded.

543
00:30:50,974 --> 00:30:55,812
He would lift Adrian
to a moment of freedom and beauty.

544
00:30:56,896 --> 00:30:57,772
And love.

545
00:30:59,107 --> 00:31:03,194
[Sly] What Talia did… is elevate it

546
00:31:03,278 --> 00:31:05,697
from a boxing film to a love story.

547
00:31:05,780 --> 00:31:08,992
And her boyfriend happened to be a boxer.

548
00:31:09,075 --> 00:31:12,328
He finally had something to fight for.

549
00:31:12,412 --> 00:31:15,164
It wasn't money. It was pride.

550
00:31:15,748 --> 00:31:18,376
"I want you to be proud."

551
00:31:19,335 --> 00:31:23,131
I… I want you to say, "That's my man."

552
00:31:23,214 --> 00:31:24,924
And that's why he said at the end,

553
00:31:25,008 --> 00:31:27,051
"I don't wanna be
another bum from the neighborhood."

554
00:31:27,135 --> 00:31:31,055
"I don't care if I get beaten to a pulp.
I want you to be proud."

555
00:31:33,057 --> 00:31:35,393
That's all I want to do,
is go the distance.

556
00:31:39,689 --> 00:31:44,569
That's what I liked about the character.
He just somehow always kept it inside.

557
00:31:44,652 --> 00:31:48,323
He never shared his grief
or his disappointment with anyone,

558
00:31:48,406 --> 00:31:49,782
just himself.

559
00:31:49,866 --> 00:31:54,704
The only time he ever lets it out
is when Mickey leaves the apartment.

560
00:31:57,165 --> 00:31:59,751
The scene, the way it was written,
I come out of that bathroom

561
00:31:59,834 --> 00:32:01,878
and look pensively and then go after him.

562
00:32:01,961 --> 00:32:06,215
I said, "John, please just do me a favor.
Keep the cameras running, the sound going,

563
00:32:06,299 --> 00:32:10,470
and let's just see if Rocky
can sum up his life in two minutes."

564
00:32:10,970 --> 00:32:13,389
First time we did this, and it was great,

565
00:32:13,473 --> 00:32:16,726
John goes, "Oh, was that a take?"

566
00:32:16,809 --> 00:32:18,227
I went, "Was that a take?"

567
00:32:19,562 --> 00:32:20,521
"That was

568
00:32:21,689 --> 00:32:23,691
an improvisation."

569
00:32:24,609 --> 00:32:26,986
"And I can't do it again. It's an improv."

570
00:32:27,070 --> 00:32:30,073
The energy is not there. You know, it's…

571
00:32:30,156 --> 00:32:33,326
Okay, what did I do before?
Did I hit the door here?

572
00:32:33,409 --> 00:32:36,412
I said, "Fuck it, I gotta
start from scratch. What did I do?"

573
00:32:36,913 --> 00:32:39,415
And then I started
thinking about my father.

574
00:32:39,499 --> 00:32:41,542
Listen to me. I want to be your manager.

575
00:32:41,626 --> 00:32:45,713
[Sly] So I had to throw out the best take…

576
00:32:45,797 --> 00:32:48,091
But you can't buy
what I'm going to give you.

577
00:32:48,174 --> 00:32:50,551
I mean, I've got pain
and I've got experience.

578
00:32:50,635 --> 00:32:52,762
I got pain and I got experience too…

579
00:32:52,845 --> 00:32:56,391
[Sly] …and replace it
with something even more volatile,

580
00:32:56,474 --> 00:32:57,767
my relationship with my father.

581
00:32:57,850 --> 00:32:59,644
I needed your help about ten years ago.

582
00:32:59,727 --> 00:33:01,938
Ten years ago, you never helped me none.

583
00:33:02,021 --> 00:33:04,440
-You didn't care.
-Well, if you wanted help…

584
00:33:05,191 --> 00:33:07,610
I say, if you wanted help,
why didn't you ask?

585
00:33:07,694 --> 00:33:09,404
Why didn't you just ask me, kid?

586
00:33:09,487 --> 00:33:12,073
[Rocky] Look, I asked,
but you never heard nothin'!

587
00:33:12,156 --> 00:33:14,867
[Sly] And when I wrote it,
it was just one line,

588
00:33:14,951 --> 00:33:18,538
and I got there and went,
"I need to talk about me."

589
00:33:19,205 --> 00:33:20,081
Me.

590
00:33:20,164 --> 00:33:22,250
And I'm going to put it in Rocky's body.

591
00:33:22,333 --> 00:33:25,003
So I was just turning 30, and I said,

592
00:33:25,086 --> 00:33:29,924
"You come up here and you offer this?
Well, I'm past my prime. What prime?"

593
00:33:30,008 --> 00:33:33,177
"I'm gonna sit there, get an opportunity,
I'm gonna fall on my face."

594
00:33:33,261 --> 00:33:35,847
Like I thought the movie,
I was going to bomb.

595
00:33:35,930 --> 00:33:38,808
"Why couldn't you have
been here when I needed you?"

596
00:33:39,851 --> 00:33:44,689
If I can take my frustration and voice it,

597
00:33:45,398 --> 00:33:49,986
I have a funny feeling
that there's millions of people

598
00:33:50,611 --> 00:33:54,365
that have that same frustration,
that were passed over.

599
00:33:55,074 --> 00:33:56,034
Overlooked.

600
00:33:56,117 --> 00:33:57,368
I'm gonna get that!

601
00:33:58,870 --> 00:34:00,872
And you wanna be ringside to see it?

602
00:34:00,955 --> 00:34:02,832
Do you? You wanna help me out?

603
00:34:02,915 --> 00:34:04,625
Do you wanna see me get my…

604
00:34:04,709 --> 00:34:07,462
[Sly] I could never say that
to the man's face.

605
00:34:07,545 --> 00:34:10,798
It would have been so disrespectful.

606
00:34:10,882 --> 00:34:13,801
And you don't want a dialogue.

607
00:34:13,885 --> 00:34:16,220
[somber music playing]

608
00:34:17,930 --> 00:34:22,643
[Sly] Everyone is going to assume
this old man is done.

609
00:34:22,727 --> 00:34:24,729
-And then, bang…
-[claps hands]

610
00:34:24,812 --> 00:34:28,316
That door opens,
Bill Conti's cue comes in,

611
00:34:28,399 --> 00:34:30,443
and there's hope.

612
00:34:31,319 --> 00:34:35,156
There it is, there is
what everybody ever wanted

613
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:38,284
that was shunned or denied an opportunity.

614
00:34:38,826 --> 00:34:40,787
"Come on. Come on back."

615
00:34:40,870 --> 00:34:45,208
[discordant electric guitar music builds]

616
00:34:49,253 --> 00:34:53,299
Oh my God.
This is the theater where Rocky premiered.

617
00:34:54,133 --> 00:34:56,177
The same theater I ushered at.

618
00:34:56,260 --> 00:35:00,181
The first review we got out of New York
by Vincent Canby was scathing,

619
00:35:00,264 --> 00:35:02,225
so I didn't know what to expect.

620
00:35:04,310 --> 00:35:07,438
We screen Rocky
five days before the release.

621
00:35:07,522 --> 00:35:09,649
It was an afternoon matinée.

622
00:35:09,732 --> 00:35:13,027
I was sitting there with him,
and all of a sudden he's going, "Oh shit."

623
00:35:14,779 --> 00:35:18,199
Twenty minutes into it,
the audience, three-quarters were gone.

624
00:35:19,826 --> 00:35:21,536
And the studio heads are going…

625
00:35:22,870 --> 00:35:25,456
And I'm getting lower in the seat.
I'm going, "Oh shit."

626
00:35:25,540 --> 00:35:28,167
Talk about a crestfallen look.
He said, "Oh God."

627
00:35:28,251 --> 00:35:30,837
He thought, "Man,
this is going to be a bomb."

628
00:35:33,297 --> 00:35:37,135
So, when it did open,
my confidence was not soaring.

629
00:35:38,094 --> 00:35:41,514
In here is where they had
the premiere of Rocky.

630
00:35:41,597 --> 00:35:44,725
I remember I was standing across
the street over there in a trench coat.

631
00:35:44,809 --> 00:35:46,352
My brother goes,

632
00:35:46,435 --> 00:35:49,522
"This could be the best day
or the worst day of your life."

633
00:35:49,605 --> 00:35:51,774
-I go, "Yeah, this is it."
-[flashbulb pops]

634
00:35:51,858 --> 00:35:54,610
[Sly] And if this didn't go,
there was no second chance.

635
00:35:54,694 --> 00:35:55,820
[thundering boom]

636
00:35:55,903 --> 00:35:58,156
[grunting]

637
00:35:58,239 --> 00:35:59,365
[camera shutter clicks]

638
00:35:59,448 --> 00:36:03,494
[Sly] When everyone's inside,
I go to the back, and I'm standing there.

639
00:36:04,537 --> 00:36:07,290
It's almost like it's a still painting.

640
00:36:07,373 --> 00:36:08,541
[subway tracks screeching]

641
00:36:08,624 --> 00:36:12,461
No one is moving.
Everyone is listening to every word.

642
00:36:12,545 --> 00:36:15,256
[thudding and grunting]

643
00:36:15,339 --> 00:36:17,175
[Sly] Like, boom. Riveted.

644
00:36:17,258 --> 00:36:19,760
[subway tracks screeching and rattling]

645
00:36:20,887 --> 00:36:22,555
[echoing thud]

646
00:36:23,723 --> 00:36:27,727
[audience roars, fades]

647
00:36:28,561 --> 00:36:30,313
[Sly] When he knocks Apollo down,

648
00:36:31,981 --> 00:36:33,524
whole theater went up,

649
00:36:33,608 --> 00:36:36,903
and the producers all look,
and it's like, "Holy shit."

650
00:36:37,612 --> 00:36:41,449
The audience is participating
like it's a real sporting event.

651
00:36:41,532 --> 00:36:43,326
We blurred the lines.

652
00:36:44,535 --> 00:36:47,330
You could hear the cheers from the inside

653
00:36:47,413 --> 00:36:49,332
outside on the street from the theater.

654
00:36:49,415 --> 00:36:55,004
We just assumed he would be a joke
out there fighting against Creed.

655
00:36:55,755 --> 00:36:58,507
But when he knocks him on his back
in the first round,

656
00:36:58,591 --> 00:37:02,595
that kind of excitement,
it was almost unheard of.

657
00:37:02,678 --> 00:37:05,681
-[audience cheering loudly]
-["To Hell With Poverty" plays]

658
00:37:05,765 --> 00:37:08,267
Nobody, nobody,
remembers that Rocky loses.

659
00:37:08,351 --> 00:37:12,605
I mean, the movie is rigged
to make you feel like he's won.

660
00:37:12,688 --> 00:37:15,441
It was one of the really
glorious moments of…

661
00:37:15,524 --> 00:37:18,653
of an audience reacting
to the drama onscreen.

662
00:37:18,736 --> 00:37:22,198
The movie opens up number one.
Everyone was talking about…

663
00:37:22,281 --> 00:37:23,574
"This movie has heart."

664
00:37:23,658 --> 00:37:26,452
"It is emotional. It made me cry."

665
00:37:26,535 --> 00:37:28,246
"It made me inspired."

666
00:37:29,705 --> 00:37:33,709
To see that fairy-tale story come to life,
it just turned the audience on.

667
00:37:35,378 --> 00:37:37,505
Something happened, something magical.

668
00:37:38,089 --> 00:37:40,591
[Frank] It's the last picture
of him being unknown.

669
00:37:41,509 --> 00:37:44,720
[Sly] And there's never going to be
another private moment again.

670
00:37:45,388 --> 00:37:48,516
[man 1] And here comes Rocky himself,
Sylvester Stallone!

671
00:37:49,725 --> 00:37:53,771
Literally, a complete
transformative moment in life,

672
00:37:53,854 --> 00:37:55,940
but forever. Like, wham!

673
00:37:57,608 --> 00:37:59,402
[man 2] And the winner is…

674
00:38:00,236 --> 00:38:01,404
Rocky.

675
00:38:08,160 --> 00:38:10,705
The star of Rocky,
Sylvester "Sly" Stallone.

676
00:38:10,788 --> 00:38:12,873
[woman] Please welcome Sylvester Stallone.

677
00:38:12,957 --> 00:38:15,251
[audience applauding]

678
00:38:28,347 --> 00:38:31,183
[Arnold] So he was hailed as an actor,
he was hailed as a writer,

679
00:38:31,267 --> 00:38:34,854
he was hailed for just being a visionary
and all of this stuff,

680
00:38:34,937 --> 00:38:36,314
and, bang, there he was.

681
00:38:36,397 --> 00:38:39,275
From that point on,
he could do nothing wrong.

682
00:38:40,318 --> 00:38:41,485
[music fades out]

683
00:38:44,822 --> 00:38:47,700
[Sly on tape]
I'm torn apart sometimes thinking that…

684
00:38:47,783 --> 00:38:50,202
what is it all about,
and is it really all worth it?

685
00:38:50,286 --> 00:38:53,831
I go through a very gloomy period
that perhaps I'm deceiving myself.

686
00:38:53,914 --> 00:38:56,876
I collect my thoughts and all I have to do
is look in the mirror.

687
00:38:56,959 --> 00:39:01,881
I'm kind of like the living embodiment of
what happened to Rocky has happened to me.

688
00:39:02,381 --> 00:39:04,050
[Sly] Within a week,

689
00:39:04,133 --> 00:39:07,303
they were saying things about me
that I know I could never live up to.

690
00:39:07,386 --> 00:39:10,639
And then they were
saying things that… that were…

691
00:39:11,807 --> 00:39:14,810
I guess… a little infuriating.

692
00:39:16,479 --> 00:39:20,107
[Quentin] The first time I ever heard
anything about Rocky was a radio spot.

693
00:39:20,191 --> 00:39:24,278
"Every once in a while,
a new actor emerges,

694
00:39:24,362 --> 00:39:27,865
and he becomes one of the most talked
about sensations in the film business."

695
00:39:28,574 --> 00:39:30,242
"That was Marlon Brando."

696
00:39:30,326 --> 00:39:33,079
"That was Al Pacino.
That was Robert De Niro."

697
00:39:33,162 --> 00:39:34,830
"And this year…" [chuckles]

698
00:39:34,914 --> 00:39:38,501
"…the actor that everyone will be
talking about is Sylvester Stallone."

699
00:39:38,584 --> 00:39:40,336
Who the fuck is Sylvester Stallone?

700
00:39:40,419 --> 00:39:42,296
Then I finally see a TV spot.

701
00:39:42,380 --> 00:39:46,425
Stanley from Lords of Flatbush
is Sylvester Stallone?!

702
00:39:47,009 --> 00:39:51,013
He's the greatest actor to come out
since Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando?

703
00:39:51,097 --> 00:39:52,431
Wow. Okay.

704
00:39:52,515 --> 00:39:55,434
Fairly presumptuous of you
to expect to be able to star in it,

705
00:39:55,518 --> 00:39:58,229
because your career up to then
had been small parts, right?

706
00:39:58,312 --> 00:40:01,148
[chuckles] That's kind of you
to even say small.

707
00:40:01,232 --> 00:40:04,693
But I felt that, jeez,
if I was going to go down,

708
00:40:04,777 --> 00:40:07,154
at least into professional obscurity,

709
00:40:07,238 --> 00:40:10,908
I wanted to at least have the opportunity
to say to myself, "Well, you tried."

710
00:40:10,991 --> 00:40:13,369
If nothing else, I had a good home movie.

711
00:40:13,452 --> 00:40:15,204
My parents would enjoy it.

712
00:40:15,287 --> 00:40:17,748
[somber music playing]

713
00:40:17,832 --> 00:40:22,169
[John] Rocky comes out.
A few months later, Sly's dad calls me.

714
00:40:22,253 --> 00:40:24,046
"John, can I come over and see you?"

715
00:40:24,130 --> 00:40:25,423
He says, "I got a script."

716
00:40:26,173 --> 00:40:29,093
"I got the real Rocky."
"What do you mean?"

717
00:40:29,176 --> 00:40:31,137
"I wrote the real Rocky."

718
00:40:32,721 --> 00:40:34,306
"You wrote a boxing movie?" "Yeah."

719
00:40:34,390 --> 00:40:36,809
"Did you give it to Sly?"
"No, I want you to read it."

720
00:40:36,892 --> 00:40:39,061
"Maybe you can make it."
"No, that's… Frank."

721
00:40:39,145 --> 00:40:44,859
"Why don't you give it to Sly to read?
But I think that area has been done."

722
00:40:46,861 --> 00:40:49,155
He was still competing with Sly.

723
00:40:50,573 --> 00:40:53,075
[Frank] He goes, "Hey, I'm writing
a script called Sonny."

724
00:40:53,159 --> 00:40:55,911
Sly goes, "What's that about?"
"It's like Rocky, Sonny."

725
00:40:55,995 --> 00:40:58,747
Sly goes, "You can't do that, Dad.
It's my creation."

726
00:41:00,249 --> 00:41:03,335
I think my father was jealous.
I said, "What are you jealous of?"

727
00:41:04,086 --> 00:41:07,089
"He worked his ass off.
You didn't help him. He did this."

728
00:41:09,758 --> 00:41:13,846
Success can really
wreak havoc on a family.

729
00:41:13,929 --> 00:41:17,725
Unbeknownst to me, my career was just
canceled overnight when Rocky came out.

730
00:41:17,808 --> 00:41:19,894
All of a sudden, I became Rocky's brother.

731
00:41:19,977 --> 00:41:23,063
[Sly] It was hard on him.
My brother is very, very creative,

732
00:41:23,147 --> 00:41:26,525
and he was
pretty traumatized by my success.

733
00:41:27,109 --> 00:41:30,571
[Frank] No one was expecting him
to be, like, an American icon.

734
00:41:32,740 --> 00:41:34,658
[Sly] Once you get to your dream,

735
00:41:35,367 --> 00:41:37,328
you realize, this wasn't my dream.

736
00:41:37,411 --> 00:41:39,246
My dream has not made…

737
00:41:39,330 --> 00:41:41,290
It's not turned out the way I thought.

738
00:41:41,373 --> 00:41:43,375
It comes also with, uh…

739
00:41:44,460 --> 00:41:45,836
like, a storm front

740
00:41:47,046 --> 00:41:50,591
that you're constantly battling
because you're disappointed.

741
00:41:50,674 --> 00:41:51,717
You go, "Oh shit."

742
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:56,597
"I thought once I made it to the top
of the mountain, it was all blue skies."

743
00:41:56,680 --> 00:41:58,140
It's not.

744
00:41:58,224 --> 00:42:01,519
The air is thinner. It's precarious.

745
00:42:02,269 --> 00:42:05,272
There's not many people up there.
It's pretty lonely.

746
00:42:05,356 --> 00:42:09,068
So sometimes going to the mountain
is not as… all it's cracked up to be.

747
00:42:09,151 --> 00:42:13,239
I think when Stallone
became famous with Rocky,

748
00:42:14,365 --> 00:42:19,161
he wasn't expecting the downside
that can happen with celebrity.

749
00:42:19,245 --> 00:42:20,996
[bombastic fanfare plays]

750
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:24,041
[announcer] From Hollywood,
it's the Dinah! show.

751
00:42:24,124 --> 00:42:26,293
And he wasn't expecting people to say,

752
00:42:26,377 --> 00:42:28,963
"Now you have to do it again,
now you have to prove it again."

753
00:42:29,046 --> 00:42:30,464
[announcer] And you're invited

754
00:42:30,548 --> 00:42:32,716
along with Rocky himself,
Sylvester Stallone.

755
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:35,886
[Dinah] This is your second film
and everybody, all the world,

756
00:42:35,970 --> 00:42:39,890
is waiting to see
what happens with Sylvester Stallone.

757
00:42:39,974 --> 00:42:42,601
-Yeah.
-Was he, uh, a one-time shot?

758
00:42:45,312 --> 00:42:47,773
[Sly] Right after Rocky,
people had built me into something

759
00:42:47,856 --> 00:42:50,734
perhaps bigger than
I should have been built into.

760
00:42:52,027 --> 00:42:55,322
Right away, they were
beginning to question my ability.

761
00:42:55,406 --> 00:42:56,907
I was looking at many scripts.

762
00:42:56,991 --> 00:42:59,243
Nothing was interesting.
Then F.I.S.T. came along.

763
00:42:59,326 --> 00:43:01,662
This would be a true departure from Rocky.

764
00:43:01,745 --> 00:43:04,582
A film that deals with
the American labor movement,

765
00:43:04,665 --> 00:43:07,668
the conception of
a very powerful trucking union.

766
00:43:07,751 --> 00:43:11,005
It's a fantastic odyssey, I believe.

767
00:43:11,088 --> 00:43:16,969
That area in the wake of Rocky
is him struggling to figure out

768
00:43:17,052 --> 00:43:21,390
how to both maybe repeat that
and differentiate himself from it.

769
00:43:21,473 --> 00:43:25,269
Stallone, at that time,
was such a huge star.

770
00:43:25,352 --> 00:43:28,814
The first thing he wanted to do
was he wanted to rewrite the picture.

771
00:43:28,897 --> 00:43:31,650
[Wesley] I think a lot of the problems
on the sets of some of his films

772
00:43:31,734 --> 00:43:34,695
have to do with the fact
that he has a sense of,

773
00:43:34,778 --> 00:43:38,324
like, what is working for a movie,

774
00:43:38,407 --> 00:43:41,577
and is at odds with the people
who've been hired by the studios

775
00:43:41,660 --> 00:43:43,120
to make these things.

776
00:43:43,203 --> 00:43:47,958
A gigantic issue with Sly, he didn't want
to die at the end of the movie.

777
00:43:48,042 --> 00:43:49,710
[Sly] I think he did something very wrong.

778
00:43:49,793 --> 00:43:52,171
He killed the hero off in the end

779
00:43:52,254 --> 00:43:54,590
and let evil triumph,

780
00:43:54,673 --> 00:43:56,008
which you can't do that.

781
00:43:56,091 --> 00:43:57,718
That may happen in reality a lot,

782
00:43:57,801 --> 00:43:59,720
but when people go in and pay good money,

783
00:43:59,803 --> 00:44:03,307
they sometimes like
to see righteousness pay off.

784
00:44:03,390 --> 00:44:05,893
[Quentin] To promote F.I.S.T.,
he does one of those Playboy interviews.

785
00:44:05,976 --> 00:44:09,897
He pontificates that he doesn't think
it's possible for him ever to have a flop,

786
00:44:09,980 --> 00:44:11,815
that that will actually never happen,

787
00:44:11,899 --> 00:44:14,526
that it's not possible
for him to have a flop.

788
00:44:14,610 --> 00:44:16,987
[man] Despite its flaws,
I found a lot to admire in F.I.S.T.

789
00:44:17,071 --> 00:44:19,365
But many critics didn't agree with me,

790
00:44:19,448 --> 00:44:22,493
and their disagreement
was a personal insult for Sylvester.

791
00:44:22,576 --> 00:44:25,704
[Sly] When they start calling F.I.S.T.
J.U.N.K., I take that personally.

792
00:44:25,788 --> 00:44:28,957
I gave up the best of myself
for that film.

793
00:44:29,041 --> 00:44:30,292
I really worked hard.

794
00:44:30,376 --> 00:44:35,047
And so for some men, in 500 words,
to completely discredit all that effort,

795
00:44:35,130 --> 00:44:39,051
I would love to make an appointment
with them in any alley that they choose.

796
00:44:39,134 --> 00:44:41,387
[man] The success of Rocky
and the mistakes of F.I.S.T.

797
00:44:41,470 --> 00:44:45,057
have combined to inspire
Sylvester Stallone to make his own movie.

798
00:44:45,140 --> 00:44:47,768
All his own.
Writing, directing, and acting.

799
00:44:48,352 --> 00:44:51,063
Originally, Paradise Alley
was like the father of Rocky.

800
00:44:51,146 --> 00:44:53,565
I had written that in 1972.

801
00:44:53,649 --> 00:44:55,818
And no one ever wanted to touch it.

802
00:44:55,901 --> 00:44:57,319
A little too weird.

803
00:44:57,403 --> 00:44:59,238
So I went out and I wrote Rocky.

804
00:44:59,321 --> 00:45:02,324
Then the time came
when I wanted to do Paradise Alley

805
00:45:02,408 --> 00:45:04,535
and it dealt with the ring again.

806
00:45:04,618 --> 00:45:07,496
I thought, if I can make this
not as serious as Rocky,

807
00:45:07,579 --> 00:45:10,082
but really kind of like a carnival…

808
00:45:10,165 --> 00:45:13,210
The rain and the colors
and the characters,

809
00:45:13,293 --> 00:45:16,839
a little bit more would transcend
your normal wrestling match.

810
00:45:16,922 --> 00:45:19,758
[Sly] Back then, I was a young guy
trying to make something

811
00:45:19,842 --> 00:45:21,760
kind of clever and entertaining.

812
00:45:21,844 --> 00:45:24,054
I didn't really do my research

813
00:45:24,138 --> 00:45:27,433
and realize it was
such a niche kind of film.

814
00:45:27,516 --> 00:45:30,477
This is not broad-based.
It's kind of weird.

815
00:45:31,019 --> 00:45:34,356
1946, odd music, odd this, odd that.

816
00:45:34,940 --> 00:45:39,027
That I was setting myself up
for a disaster,

817
00:45:39,111 --> 00:45:40,279
and disaster struck.

818
00:45:41,029 --> 00:45:43,157
[Quentin] He wasn't expecting
F.I.S.T. to not do well,

819
00:45:43,240 --> 00:45:45,701
and he wasn't expecting
the critics who championed Rocky

820
00:45:45,784 --> 00:45:48,787
to turn viciously against Paradise Alley.

821
00:45:48,871 --> 00:45:50,289
He didn't handle it well.

822
00:45:50,372 --> 00:45:54,126
He started popping off,
challenging critics to fight.

823
00:45:55,961 --> 00:45:59,506
[Sly] Some days I wake up in the morning
and go, "I got this."

824
00:45:59,590 --> 00:46:01,550
And other days I go, "I don't have it."

825
00:46:01,633 --> 00:46:03,761
I don't feel it. It's not there.

826
00:46:03,844 --> 00:46:04,887
I'm flying blind.

827
00:46:04,970 --> 00:46:08,182
It's like going into a fight
and saying, "I don't know…"

828
00:46:09,433 --> 00:46:12,936
I've just learned that that will pass.

829
00:46:13,020 --> 00:46:14,730
Just hang in there.

830
00:46:14,813 --> 00:46:19,234
Don't have your anxiety attacks.
Let that fear… That's all part of it.

831
00:46:19,318 --> 00:46:22,946
That's what makes it interesting,
is you're afraid of it.

832
00:46:23,030 --> 00:46:25,616
The success story
of the character, Rocky Balboa,

833
00:46:25,699 --> 00:46:29,661
is strikingly similar to the success story
of the star, Sylvester Stallone.

834
00:46:29,745 --> 00:46:34,041
And nowadays, Stallone is putting
the finishing touches on Rocky II

835
00:46:34,124 --> 00:46:36,084
as writer, director, and star,

836
00:46:36,168 --> 00:46:40,547
with no noticeable anxiety about
the perennial dangers of doing a sequel.

837
00:46:40,631 --> 00:46:44,092
In fact, as usual,
Stallone is completely confident.

838
00:46:44,676 --> 00:46:46,804
[Sly] John Avildsen
wanted to go off Rocky.

839
00:46:46,887 --> 00:46:50,224
He goes to the Playboy Mansion,
he gets drunk, he starts using drugs.

840
00:46:50,307 --> 00:46:53,227
In other words, the downside of success.

841
00:46:53,310 --> 00:46:55,187
This is not that guy.

842
00:46:55,270 --> 00:46:59,233
This is the guy
who continues to just push and push

843
00:46:59,316 --> 00:47:00,651
and takes everyone with him.

844
00:47:00,734 --> 00:47:03,445
-A really idealistic individual.
-[all cheering]

845
00:47:03,529 --> 00:47:06,573
[Sly] See, John Avildsen
didn't like the script for Rocky II,

846
00:47:06,657 --> 00:47:07,991
so I ended up directing it.

847
00:47:08,075 --> 00:47:10,410
-I don't know.
-[reporter] How about a statement, Rocky?

848
00:47:10,494 --> 00:47:12,871
I don't know. I'm at a loss for words.

849
00:47:13,539 --> 00:47:15,123
-Rocky!
-Get back!

850
00:47:16,250 --> 00:47:19,670
[Quentin] One of the things that made
Rocky I and Rocky II so powerful was

851
00:47:19,753 --> 00:47:22,881
the way Stallone was able
to tell his story.

852
00:47:22,965 --> 00:47:27,636
He is channeling his life story
into both Rocky and Apollo Creed.

853
00:47:28,220 --> 00:47:32,182
Apollo Creed is stomping around his house
reading hate mail to his wife.

854
00:47:32,266 --> 00:47:35,561
That's probably Sylvester Stallone
stomping around his mansion

855
00:47:35,644 --> 00:47:37,896
reading Pauline Kael's
review for Paradise Alley.

856
00:47:37,980 --> 00:47:40,524
He's putting under the microscope
the whole concept of celebrity,

857
00:47:40,607 --> 00:47:42,276
to one degree or another.

858
00:47:43,861 --> 00:47:47,406
[Sly] The story is, in a sense,
better than the first one

859
00:47:47,489 --> 00:47:50,701
because it deals with
much more identifiable subjects.

860
00:47:50,784 --> 00:47:54,246
Rocky was a loner, now he has
a different kind of responsibility.

861
00:47:54,329 --> 00:47:58,375
He has the kind of responsibility
and problems that everyone in the audience

862
00:47:58,458 --> 00:48:02,212
who has been married or thinking
about getting married can identify with.

863
00:48:02,796 --> 00:48:05,716
[Wesley] I mean,
nobody thinks of Rocky as family movies,

864
00:48:05,799 --> 00:48:10,596
and yet, like, at their core is
this relationship between him and Adrian.

865
00:48:10,679 --> 00:48:15,058
The tug-of-war between having
this relationship and building this family

866
00:48:15,142 --> 00:48:18,437
and having this job that he has to do.

867
00:48:20,814 --> 00:48:23,483
[Adrian] When did you get home?
I thought you were at work.

868
00:48:23,567 --> 00:48:26,028
No, I… ain't at work no more.

869
00:48:26,111 --> 00:48:29,323
I got, uh… I got canned today.

870
00:48:30,324 --> 00:48:31,325
Oh.

871
00:48:32,576 --> 00:48:33,619
What happened?

872
00:48:33,702 --> 00:48:36,121
Now, do you give up your destiny

873
00:48:37,122 --> 00:48:39,833
for a "promise" that you made?

874
00:48:40,417 --> 00:48:41,501
What are you gonna do?

875
00:48:41,585 --> 00:48:45,839
I don't know.
I was, uh… thinking about fighting.

876
00:48:45,923 --> 00:48:47,925
[striking punching bag]

877
00:48:48,008 --> 00:48:50,302
You can be whatever you wanna be.
You don't have to fight.

878
00:48:50,385 --> 00:48:53,013
Well, you know, I am a fighter.

879
00:48:53,096 --> 00:48:55,933
Not too good, but that's what I do.

880
00:48:56,516 --> 00:48:59,519
Well, Rocky, you gave me your word
you wouldn't fight anymore.

881
00:49:02,272 --> 00:49:03,982
You see him in the lowest point.

882
00:49:04,066 --> 00:49:07,194
He's, like, in this
horrible little basement.

883
00:49:07,277 --> 00:49:08,904
He's there under a light.

884
00:49:08,987 --> 00:49:11,531
There's something about this guy who's…

885
00:49:11,615 --> 00:49:14,493
He's destined to do something,

886
00:49:14,576 --> 00:49:18,538
and he's being held back
for the wrong reasons.

887
00:49:18,622 --> 00:49:21,625
When he finally says, "I never asked you
to stop being a woman,

888
00:49:21,708 --> 00:49:23,961
please don't ask me
to stop being a man. I can't."

889
00:49:24,044 --> 00:49:26,713
He says, I love this woman,

890
00:49:26,797 --> 00:49:29,299
but she will not love what I will become

891
00:49:29,383 --> 00:49:31,969
if I don't at least try.

892
00:49:36,848 --> 00:49:39,351
[Arnold] Rocky II, that went
through the roof again.

893
00:49:39,434 --> 00:49:43,522
Doubled the amount of money
the first one made, and it just went…

894
00:49:44,022 --> 00:49:47,025
I mean, just bananas all over the world.

895
00:49:47,109 --> 00:49:49,820
So people now were really hustling him.

896
00:49:51,363 --> 00:49:58,078
Sly climbed the ladder, I would say,
very quickly in show business.

897
00:49:59,246 --> 00:50:04,793
Very few actors have the discipline
to produce and to direct.

898
00:50:04,876 --> 00:50:08,880
You have to think about it
24 hours a day, seven days a week.

899
00:50:08,964 --> 00:50:10,966
[melancholy music playing]

900
00:50:12,217 --> 00:50:16,847
Filmmaking is something
I understand and embrace.

901
00:50:18,306 --> 00:50:20,934
But it comes at a great price.

902
00:50:21,018 --> 00:50:25,105
When you're a truly absorbed filmmaker,

903
00:50:25,188 --> 00:50:28,108
act, write, and direct,
and produce and all at one time,

904
00:50:29,067 --> 00:50:30,485
there's no time for anything else.

905
00:50:30,569 --> 00:50:32,779
Just pieces and bits
and scraps for family.

906
00:50:32,863 --> 00:50:34,823
"What happened today?"
"Don't wanna talk about it."

907
00:50:34,906 --> 00:50:37,951
That's reality. When you come home,
it's almost not reality.

908
00:50:38,035 --> 00:50:40,495
It's a terrible conundrum.

909
00:50:45,459 --> 00:50:47,461
When you're younger…
"Gotta fill the house with art."

910
00:50:47,544 --> 00:50:49,046
"Gotta fill the house with children."

911
00:50:49,129 --> 00:50:52,007
"Gotta fill…" Well, now it's full.

912
00:50:52,090 --> 00:50:53,759
Children have moved on,

913
00:50:53,842 --> 00:50:56,803
and you're left
with this big, hollow, kind of…

914
00:50:57,637 --> 00:50:58,555
Mmm.

915
00:50:58,638 --> 00:51:00,640
[birds singing]

916
00:51:04,269 --> 00:51:08,023
It's just, it doesn't serve you anymore

917
00:51:08,106 --> 00:51:10,942
as a source of inspiration.

918
00:51:11,026 --> 00:51:15,155
I wasn't moving 'cause…
"Oh wow, I want another beautiful view."

919
00:51:15,238 --> 00:51:18,992
Anytime changing that paradigm,
which you become used to,

920
00:51:19,076 --> 00:51:24,831
it's literally to jumpstart
that process again.

921
00:51:26,750 --> 00:51:29,086
[Sly on tape] It's so hard to do a sequel.

922
00:51:29,169 --> 00:51:30,837
It's harder and harder, each one.

923
00:51:30,921 --> 00:51:34,674
It's always exhausting. People are
always in your ear all the time,

924
00:51:34,758 --> 00:51:36,676
then you get the criticism.

925
00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:40,680
And you say, "Is the pleasure
really gonna be worth the pain?"

926
00:51:41,223 --> 00:51:43,558
Every film becomes more and more difficult

927
00:51:43,642 --> 00:51:48,355
because you don't have
the freshness of a hungry artist.

928
00:51:50,273 --> 00:51:53,318
Before Rocky III, I developed fear.

929
00:51:54,027 --> 00:51:57,322
Maybe I'm not what I was.
Maybe it was luck.

930
00:51:57,405 --> 00:51:58,949
There's no passion involved.

931
00:51:59,032 --> 00:52:01,118
It's a good deal,
it's good money, it's good that.

932
00:52:01,201 --> 00:52:02,494
You start getting protected.

933
00:52:02,577 --> 00:52:05,413
The agencies… "keep this
and keep that and do this film."

934
00:52:05,497 --> 00:52:07,791
"It's safe. It's safe. It's safe."

935
00:52:07,874 --> 00:52:09,793
And after a while you realize,

936
00:52:09,876 --> 00:52:13,922
"I'm doing nothing good
because I'm listening to other people."

937
00:52:14,005 --> 00:52:17,050
You wake up after a few years
thinking you're a winner, but you're not.

938
00:52:17,134 --> 00:52:19,886
And Rocky III was an example of that.

939
00:52:19,970 --> 00:52:22,430
We got cars, we've got money!

940
00:52:22,514 --> 00:52:24,599
We got everything but the truth.

941
00:52:24,683 --> 00:52:26,143
What's the truth, damn it?

942
00:52:26,226 --> 00:52:28,061
I'm afraid! All right?

943
00:52:28,728 --> 00:52:31,481
You wanna hear me say it?
Wanna break me down? I'm afraid!

944
00:52:31,565 --> 00:52:32,858
What?

945
00:52:32,941 --> 00:52:37,195
You'll never have a fighter ever say,
"I'm afraid. I'm a coward."

946
00:52:37,279 --> 00:52:40,365
And then she turns it around.

947
00:52:40,448 --> 00:52:42,492
"I'm afraid too.
Nothing wrong with being afraid."

948
00:52:43,577 --> 00:52:46,955
[Talia] And then out of that
could come courage.

949
00:52:47,038 --> 00:52:50,709
Maybe the courage not to do
all those things everybody's telling…

950
00:52:50,792 --> 00:52:55,714
the manager's telling you to do,
the people who are handling you.

951
00:52:55,797 --> 00:52:59,843
Maybe courage is another thing.
What about going the distance?

952
00:53:00,886 --> 00:53:04,264
[Sly] I said, "Sly, get back,
start listening to yourself a little bit."

953
00:53:04,347 --> 00:53:06,057
"Just trust your instincts."

954
00:53:06,141 --> 00:53:10,645
Every decision I wanted to do,
like I wanted to use Mr. T,

955
00:53:11,479 --> 00:53:14,482
I wanted Survivor
to do "Eye of the Tiger,"

956
00:53:14,566 --> 00:53:16,443
I wanted Hulk Hogan,

957
00:53:16,526 --> 00:53:20,405
and everything was met with,
"That's ridiculous, that's ridiculous."

958
00:53:20,488 --> 00:53:22,741
I go, "I know. It is ridiculous."

959
00:53:22,824 --> 00:53:26,703
But it's theatrical.
It's interesting. It's different.

960
00:53:31,249 --> 00:53:34,211
[propulsive rock music playing]

961
00:53:37,631 --> 00:53:40,717
[Sly] I'm a grinder.
I just grind and grind, you know?

962
00:53:40,800 --> 00:53:45,013
I just try to outwork myself,
outwork my insecurities.

963
00:53:45,096 --> 00:53:48,350
I become indifferent
to, uh, the threat of failure

964
00:53:48,433 --> 00:53:50,602
because I know that no matter what,

965
00:53:50,685 --> 00:53:52,896
even if it's not a bona fide success,

966
00:53:52,979 --> 00:53:56,149
it'll be good for you
to at least continue to push yourself.

967
00:53:56,942 --> 00:53:59,819
90% of the journey is tumultuous and ugly.

968
00:53:59,903 --> 00:54:02,405
But to get to those nuggets,
you have to go through it.

969
00:54:02,489 --> 00:54:04,032
You may not get there,

970
00:54:04,115 --> 00:54:06,368
but you can be better off
than doing nothing.

971
00:54:09,663 --> 00:54:12,999
He keeps wanting to create.

972
00:54:13,500 --> 00:54:14,918
He's never sitting back.

973
00:54:15,001 --> 00:54:18,213
He doesn't want to say,
"I regret. I could have. I should have."

974
00:54:18,296 --> 00:54:20,257
"Oh, only if I did."

975
00:54:23,009 --> 00:54:25,762
He always knew where he wanted to be.

976
00:54:26,304 --> 00:54:28,098
It's not like an accident.

977
00:54:28,181 --> 00:54:30,600
Him becoming an action hero
was an accident.

978
00:54:32,519 --> 00:54:36,231
The original Rambo was a homicidal maniac.

979
00:54:36,314 --> 00:54:40,902
He was a vicious casualty from the war.

980
00:54:40,986 --> 00:54:42,862
He came back broken.

981
00:54:42,946 --> 00:54:47,826
There's nothing he could do to earn
his way back into America's good graces.

982
00:54:47,909 --> 00:54:49,953
So I said, "If I'm gonna
get involved with this,

983
00:54:50,036 --> 00:54:51,788
I want to rewrite the screenplay."

984
00:54:51,871 --> 00:54:54,207
"And I want him to go right to the edge."

985
00:54:55,417 --> 00:54:56,751
-[gasps]
-[grunts]

986
00:54:56,835 --> 00:55:00,463
Bring a certain
kind of feral ferocity to it

987
00:55:01,131 --> 00:55:02,424
that even shocks me.

988
00:55:02,507 --> 00:55:07,137
When it's like, there's just
this contorted face and rage.

989
00:55:07,220 --> 00:55:09,431
-[boy panting]
-[Rambo grunts]

990
00:55:09,514 --> 00:55:12,767
[Sly] I don't have to look far
to figure out where that came from.

991
00:55:12,851 --> 00:55:14,602
[suspenseful music swells]

992
00:55:14,686 --> 00:55:17,939
My father was Rambo, in reality.

993
00:55:18,023 --> 00:55:20,984
Nothing was ever settled verbally.

994
00:55:21,067 --> 00:55:23,945
It was usually a physical ultimatum.

995
00:55:24,904 --> 00:55:26,614
The way you turn a fork.

996
00:55:26,698 --> 00:55:28,533
If he's eating like this…

997
00:55:31,161 --> 00:55:32,620
you know you're gonna get it.

998
00:55:34,289 --> 00:55:36,541
You did not mess with this guy.

999
00:55:37,625 --> 00:55:41,212
That look, it was just…
It was genetic. He'd go… [grumbles]

1000
00:55:44,132 --> 00:55:46,718
I saw an opportunity to do

1001
00:55:46,801 --> 00:55:50,055
what I consider, like,
the first pure action film.

1002
00:55:50,138 --> 00:55:54,142
That being that this thing
is completely done kinetically.

1003
00:55:54,225 --> 00:55:56,102
There's just… there's so much movement

1004
00:55:56,186 --> 00:55:58,855
that dialogue can't be handled
by the star.

1005
00:55:58,938 --> 00:56:01,149
It has to be handled
by Trautman and other people.

1006
00:56:01,232 --> 00:56:05,612
I mean, you are
really drawn into this loner,

1007
00:56:05,695 --> 00:56:08,656
solitary figure who feels abandoned.

1008
00:56:08,740 --> 00:56:11,409
Whatever he was acting was deep inside,

1009
00:56:11,493 --> 00:56:14,412
so much deeper than what's on the page.

1010
00:56:15,163 --> 00:56:18,708
He has a good way of writing dialogue
that's both witty and rhythmic,

1011
00:56:18,792 --> 00:56:22,087
but also seems a bit
like improvisation to some degree.

1012
00:56:22,712 --> 00:56:26,049
[John] Sly has a unique gift
in the words he writes.

1013
00:56:26,132 --> 00:56:28,927
They're simple, they're true.

1014
00:56:29,010 --> 00:56:32,514
There's an intent behind
things he writes and says.

1015
00:56:33,098 --> 00:56:37,852
[Sly] Started really reading up on vets
and their actual words,

1016
00:56:38,436 --> 00:56:41,272
situations, traumas.

1017
00:56:42,148 --> 00:56:47,028
And I thought,
"Wow, if I could put a couple of beats

1018
00:56:47,779 --> 00:56:51,825
from about 20 different guys' lives,
jumble them up…"

1019
00:56:52,575 --> 00:56:55,870
Because Rambo hasn't spoken in years,

1020
00:56:55,954 --> 00:56:58,748
so he's not coming out fluid.

1021
00:56:58,832 --> 00:57:02,710
It's just this rush, this purging.

1022
00:57:02,794 --> 00:57:06,464
So I remember
I had heard stories about this guy,

1023
00:57:07,882 --> 00:57:11,970
about going into Saigon,
carrying a shoeshine box.

1024
00:57:12,053 --> 00:57:13,721
"Shine, please. Shine. Shine."

1025
00:57:13,805 --> 00:57:15,807
[Rambo] I said no. He kept asking, yeah.

1026
00:57:15,890 --> 00:57:19,936
And Joey said, "Yeah."
And I went to get a couple beers.

1027
00:57:20,019 --> 00:57:21,688
And the box was wired.

1028
00:57:21,771 --> 00:57:24,732
[Sly] "I went to get a couple of beers.
The shine box was wired."

1029
00:57:24,816 --> 00:57:26,776
"The kid opened it. Joey…"

1030
00:57:26,860 --> 00:57:29,112
"It blew his body all over the place."

1031
00:57:29,195 --> 00:57:31,489
"And there he is laying there
going, 'Where are my legs?'"

1032
00:57:31,573 --> 00:57:33,575
My friend! It's all over me!

1033
00:57:33,658 --> 00:57:36,661
Got blood and everything.
I'm trying to hold him together.

1034
00:57:36,744 --> 00:57:39,956
I put him together,
his fucking insides keep coming out.

1035
00:57:40,039 --> 00:57:41,791
And nobody would help!

1036
00:57:42,417 --> 00:57:45,170
Nobody helped.
He's saying, "Please, I wanna go home…"

1037
00:57:45,253 --> 00:57:47,964
"Where the fuck are my legs?"
You can't make that shit up.

1038
00:57:49,632 --> 00:57:52,510
You cannot make that kind of writing up.

1039
00:57:53,011 --> 00:57:57,849
It took me a while
to really absorb all these stories

1040
00:57:57,932 --> 00:58:04,606
and put it in this kind of crazy monologue

1041
00:58:04,689 --> 00:58:06,900
that was not in the screenplay.

1042
00:58:06,983 --> 00:58:08,943
I had read David Morrell's original book.

1043
00:58:09,027 --> 00:58:10,820
The whole point of the book is

1044
00:58:10,904 --> 00:58:13,781
if you take this
super weapon killing machine,

1045
00:58:13,865 --> 00:58:15,783
when the war is over,

1046
00:58:15,867 --> 00:58:18,828
keeping that switch
turned off isn't so easy.

1047
00:58:18,912 --> 00:58:22,457
That entire concept is
thrown away in First Blood.

1048
00:58:22,540 --> 00:58:25,835
The changing of it
from Rambo murdering the posse

1049
00:58:25,919 --> 00:58:27,962
to wounding the posse was Stallone's idea.

1050
00:58:28,046 --> 00:58:31,382
[Sly] At the very end, originally,
the way it was in the script,

1051
00:58:31,466 --> 00:58:35,678
I am shot by Colonel Trautman,

1052
00:58:35,762 --> 00:58:37,180
and I die in slow motion.

1053
00:58:37,263 --> 00:58:39,516
And I said to the director,
"This is not good."

1054
00:58:39,599 --> 00:58:43,937
I don't want everyone
who was a Vietnam vet

1055
00:58:44,020 --> 00:58:46,731
to see this film and then me shot,

1056
00:58:46,814 --> 00:58:51,528
and realize, "Oh, so there's
no hope for me at all. None."

1057
00:58:52,153 --> 00:58:56,324
And I left. And they were screaming
that if I don't come back,

1058
00:58:56,407 --> 00:58:58,159
it was a breach of contract.

1059
00:58:58,243 --> 00:58:59,536
[gunfire]

1060
00:58:59,619 --> 00:59:01,955
[Sly] They screen it in Las Vegas.

1061
00:59:02,038 --> 00:59:06,584
It tested so badly,
they put in the one that you see,

1062
00:59:06,668 --> 00:59:12,173
because at that time they were losing
20,000 vets to suicide a month.

1063
00:59:12,257 --> 00:59:14,801
I said, "I don't want
to be part of that. I don't."

1064
00:59:14,884 --> 00:59:16,553
And I'm not going to.

1065
00:59:16,636 --> 00:59:20,306
["Golden Brown" by the Stranglers playing]

1066
00:59:22,976 --> 00:59:25,562
[Sly] Around the mid '80s,
I started doing Rambo.

1067
00:59:25,645 --> 00:59:28,648
And this character
kind of started something.

1068
00:59:32,610 --> 00:59:35,780
[Wesley] First thing that
comes to mind is physicality.

1069
00:59:36,948 --> 00:59:41,327
I think the thing
that made Stallone a perfect '80s star

1070
00:59:41,411 --> 00:59:45,456
was that everything
about that decade was about excess.

1071
00:59:50,503 --> 00:59:54,632
But his body and the chaos it can make,
the carnage it can cause…

1072
00:59:54,716 --> 00:59:58,428
People loved watching him push himself.

1073
00:59:58,511 --> 00:59:59,596
[grunting]

1074
01:00:00,430 --> 01:00:03,474
[Wesley] Even when it was
almost self-parodying, people went

1075
01:00:03,558 --> 01:00:07,520
because he was
the ultra version of himself.

1076
01:00:09,522 --> 01:00:12,859
Arnold Schwarzenegger
was his only competition.

1077
01:00:15,403 --> 01:00:20,033
[Arnold] Sly, all of a sudden with Rambo,
he stepped into my arena.

1078
01:00:20,116 --> 01:00:23,369
All of a sudden he was ripped,
and everyone talking about his body.

1079
01:00:25,288 --> 01:00:27,957
And so that created
competition, of course.

1080
01:00:28,583 --> 01:00:31,169
At that point, we were like little kids.

1081
01:00:31,252 --> 01:00:32,920
Who uses bigger knives?

1082
01:00:33,004 --> 01:00:36,424
Who uses the biggest guns
and holds them in one arm and…

1083
01:00:36,507 --> 01:00:38,926
[imitates gunfire] You know, like that.

1084
01:00:39,010 --> 01:00:42,013
And who has more muscles,
who has more muscle definition,

1085
01:00:42,096 --> 01:00:43,723
who has less body fat?

1086
01:00:43,806 --> 01:00:47,185
I mean, stupid stuff
that we would be fighting over.

1087
01:00:47,769 --> 01:00:50,229
Now we look back
and we laugh at the whole thing.

1088
01:00:50,938 --> 01:00:54,233
We learned the effect of having muscles.

1089
01:00:54,317 --> 01:00:58,363
The effect is that
people buy in twice as much.

1090
01:00:58,446 --> 01:01:03,534
This is what really gave
action movies a whole new boost.

1091
01:01:03,618 --> 01:01:05,453
-[gunfire]
-[Arnold] A whole new push.

1092
01:01:05,536 --> 01:01:06,954
-[gunfire]
-[engine revs]

1093
01:01:07,872 --> 01:01:10,041
I was really committed
to making that genre

1094
01:01:10,124 --> 01:01:11,793
something that would be lucrative

1095
01:01:11,876 --> 01:01:15,088
and would travel
around the world, and it did.

1096
01:01:15,171 --> 01:01:17,799
[man 1] There's something irresistible
about Sylvester Stallone.

1097
01:01:17,882 --> 01:01:19,509
[man 2] From underdog to champion…

1098
01:01:19,592 --> 01:01:24,222
…and have earned Stallone both
worldwide fame and a personal fortune.

1099
01:01:24,305 --> 01:01:29,394
[man 3] Stallone knows he got where he is
because he knows what it is to make a hit.

1100
01:01:29,477 --> 01:01:31,521
[crowd clamoring]

1101
01:01:33,189 --> 01:01:34,816
[Arnold] I always was trailing Sly.

1102
01:01:34,899 --> 01:01:36,234
I was always a step behind.

1103
01:01:36,317 --> 01:01:37,985
He was always making bigger grosses.

1104
01:01:38,069 --> 01:01:40,321
And then a year later,
I made the same grosses.

1105
01:01:40,405 --> 01:01:42,573
But by that time,
he made bigger grosses again.

1106
01:01:42,657 --> 01:01:43,574
This is how it went.

1107
01:01:43,658 --> 01:01:45,618
And he was up and up and up and up.

1108
01:01:45,702 --> 01:01:48,830
Sly now couldn't stop, really.

1109
01:01:48,913 --> 01:01:52,417
Not just actor or director,
but a force in Hollywood.

1110
01:01:53,751 --> 01:01:56,421
[interviewer]
People are always telling me, your fans,

1111
01:01:56,504 --> 01:01:59,006
it's got to be
Rocky or it's got to be Rambo.

1112
01:01:59,090 --> 01:02:01,467
Now, is that a frustration
for you as an actor?

1113
01:02:01,551 --> 01:02:02,552
It's double-edged.

1114
01:02:02,635 --> 01:02:07,223
It's frustrating,
but being able to find not one,

1115
01:02:07,306 --> 01:02:09,767
but a couple characters
to be so identified,

1116
01:02:09,851 --> 01:02:11,102
so embraced,

1117
01:02:11,185 --> 01:02:13,896
that you realize
you've accomplished something,

1118
01:02:13,980 --> 01:02:15,273
that's kind of unusual.

1119
01:02:15,356 --> 01:02:17,233
I've always believed in sequels,

1120
01:02:17,316 --> 01:02:20,903
because I think quite often
this story can't be told in two hours.

1121
01:02:20,987 --> 01:02:23,614
Why not keep going on?
If the audience likes it, why not?

1122
01:02:23,698 --> 01:02:25,116
[rock music playing]

1123
01:02:25,825 --> 01:02:28,494
[Sly] I tell people,
don't diminish sequels.

1124
01:02:28,578 --> 01:02:32,039
Because it's ten times harder
to come up with something

1125
01:02:32,123 --> 01:02:36,169
that can keep that interest
and heat and magic going.

1126
01:02:36,252 --> 01:02:38,671
[explosions]

1127
01:02:38,755 --> 01:02:41,215
[Quentin] So, and then,
in Rocky III and Rocky IV,

1128
01:02:41,299 --> 01:02:46,304
when the character becomes less
like the real story of Sylvester Stallone

1129
01:02:46,387 --> 01:02:48,639
and more like a comic book character.

1130
01:02:48,723 --> 01:02:50,850
And not only is he a comic book character,

1131
01:02:50,933 --> 01:02:53,478
he's seemingly fighting
comic book villains,

1132
01:02:53,561 --> 01:02:56,272
like as if torn from
the pages of Marvel Comics.

1133
01:02:56,355 --> 01:03:01,110
The absurdity of what the stakes are
in this movie sort of take over.

1134
01:03:01,194 --> 01:03:04,572
It's about giving the audience
the ultra Stallone experience

1135
01:03:04,655 --> 01:03:08,868
within the contained box
of the Rocky brand.

1136
01:03:08,951 --> 01:03:10,536
[intense music builds]

1137
01:03:12,455 --> 01:03:15,708
[John] He's fighting,
he's directing, he's writing,

1138
01:03:15,792 --> 01:03:17,627
he's doing everything,

1139
01:03:17,710 --> 01:03:21,172
which is very hard to do
in a very physical movie.

1140
01:03:22,131 --> 01:03:25,218
[Sly] Dolph Lundgren, he pulverized me.

1141
01:03:25,301 --> 01:03:26,803
[audience cheering]

1142
01:03:26,886 --> 01:03:29,180
[Sly] Later that night,
my heart started to swell,

1143
01:03:31,098 --> 01:03:33,726
which happens when
the heart hits the chest.

1144
01:03:35,436 --> 01:03:38,189
And then my blood pressure went up to 260.

1145
01:03:38,940 --> 01:03:42,985
And they thought I was
going to be talking to angels.

1146
01:03:43,069 --> 01:03:45,071
[music peaks and fades out]

1147
01:03:45,154 --> 01:03:48,741
[wind whistling]

1148
01:03:51,744 --> 01:03:53,830
[Sly] Next thing I know,
I'm in intensive care

1149
01:03:53,913 --> 01:03:55,206
where I'm surrounded by nuns.

1150
01:03:55,289 --> 01:03:57,333
And I thought, "Okay, that's curtains."

1151
01:03:58,584 --> 01:04:01,212
Dolph Lundgren put me
in the hospital for nine days.

1152
01:04:01,295 --> 01:04:03,589
I basically summarized it in Rocky IV,

1153
01:04:03,673 --> 01:04:05,675
like when you're beaten to the ground

1154
01:04:05,758 --> 01:04:08,344
and you're praying someone
knocks you on the chin

1155
01:04:08,427 --> 01:04:10,012
so you just don't suffer anymore,

1156
01:04:10,096 --> 01:04:13,474
there's a small voice inside you
that says, "Give me one more round."

1157
01:04:16,602 --> 01:04:19,355
[Sly] I push it. That's why
I've had five back operations.

1158
01:04:20,022 --> 01:04:23,317
I knew. You should know after the first
back operation not to do it again.

1159
01:04:24,235 --> 01:04:25,194
[chuckles]

1160
01:04:25,278 --> 01:04:27,864
Probably end up with another one
'cause I know…

1161
01:04:27,947 --> 01:04:30,199
I say I'll never do that again, but I do.

1162
01:04:30,283 --> 01:04:32,451
I do. I don't know why, but I do.

1163
01:04:34,579 --> 01:04:38,332
I've always been thrown
in a world of turmoil

1164
01:04:38,416 --> 01:04:42,336
and kind of, like, a lot of physicality.

1165
01:04:42,420 --> 01:04:43,921
I guess you could call it violence.

1166
01:04:44,005 --> 01:04:46,507
[low rumbling]

1167
01:04:49,260 --> 01:04:51,637
[hoofbeats echoing]

1168
01:04:59,395 --> 01:05:01,272
[horse whinnying]

1169
01:05:01,355 --> 01:05:02,523
[echoing thud]

1170
01:05:06,068 --> 01:05:09,864
[Sly] My father was in the army,
and he was in the cavalry.

1171
01:05:09,947 --> 01:05:11,532
I don't know what army he was in,

1172
01:05:11,616 --> 01:05:14,493
but they had a cavalry in World War II
along the Mexican border.

1173
01:05:14,577 --> 01:05:16,662
So he learned to play
kinda like sandlot polo.

1174
01:05:16,746 --> 01:05:18,664
So I spent a great deal of time…

1175
01:05:18,748 --> 01:05:21,125
So I became a horseman
and I played for a while,

1176
01:05:21,208 --> 01:05:23,210
and it is a wicked game.

1177
01:05:23,294 --> 01:05:25,713
[Frank] Sly became
an excellent polo player.

1178
01:05:25,796 --> 01:05:28,049
He could have been
like a six-, seven-goal player

1179
01:05:28,132 --> 01:05:30,426
if it wasn't for
my father browbeating him.

1180
01:05:30,509 --> 01:05:31,928
And that's why he quit polo.

1181
01:05:33,971 --> 01:05:37,475
[Sly] I started playing again
when I was about 40.

1182
01:05:38,392 --> 01:05:42,104
So I said, "Okay, let me do it right."
Now I've made it, Dad,

1183
01:05:42,688 --> 01:05:47,276
I'm gonna field my father
a super team with ten-goal players,

1184
01:05:47,360 --> 01:05:49,111
and we'll play against each other

1185
01:05:49,195 --> 01:05:51,405
in the Wellington,
the number one field in the world.

1186
01:05:51,489 --> 01:05:54,116
[melancholy rock music plays]

1187
01:05:57,995 --> 01:06:02,041
[man] Sly Stallone shows the world
how good he is with horse and mallet,

1188
01:06:02,124 --> 01:06:04,418
out to impress the polo elite.

1189
01:06:08,422 --> 01:06:10,967
[Sly] So I'm out there, playing well.

1190
01:06:11,884 --> 01:06:14,720
My father, we're going neck and neck,

1191
01:06:17,932 --> 01:06:19,892
and I go out for a nearside.

1192
01:06:23,020 --> 01:06:24,021
My father

1193
01:06:24,522 --> 01:06:26,524
spears me in the back.

1194
01:06:28,067 --> 01:06:29,944
Hit me so hard,

1195
01:06:31,821 --> 01:06:33,155
I went down.

1196
01:06:33,239 --> 01:06:34,657
Entertainment Tonight is there.

1197
01:06:34,740 --> 01:06:37,535
The horse walked right over,
I don't know how it didn't kill me.

1198
01:06:37,618 --> 01:06:40,121
But I see myself getting up,
and the first thing was like…

1199
01:06:40,204 --> 01:06:41,288
[groans]

1200
01:06:44,125 --> 01:06:46,460
And I think, "He just rode away."

1201
01:06:47,503 --> 01:06:51,090
Today has been maybe, probably,
the best thrill of my life.

1202
01:06:51,173 --> 01:06:54,427
Finally have gotten to play together

1203
01:06:54,510 --> 01:06:57,054
in a quality polo game
such as we had today.

1204
01:06:57,138 --> 01:07:01,392
If you notice, the first cheap shot,
and only cheap shot in the game,

1205
01:07:01,475 --> 01:07:04,729
was administered
from my father… to his son.

1206
01:07:07,815 --> 01:07:09,025
[Sly] That was it.

1207
01:07:09,108 --> 01:07:11,527
I never played polo again
from that moment on.

1208
01:07:11,610 --> 01:07:12,987
I sold everything.

1209
01:07:13,070 --> 01:07:15,531
I sold every horse, the ranch, the truck,

1210
01:07:15,614 --> 01:07:17,283
and that was the end.

1211
01:07:20,828 --> 01:07:23,080
[waves lapping gently]

1212
01:07:23,164 --> 01:07:25,249
[birds squawking faintly]

1213
01:07:28,586 --> 01:07:32,339
[Sly] Basically, when we're born,
we're soft clay.

1214
01:07:33,340 --> 01:07:37,845
And a heavy-handed sculptor
starts to put dents in it,

1215
01:07:37,928 --> 01:07:40,431
and that's in our mold.
That's what we are.

1216
01:07:40,514 --> 01:07:44,060
And you just can't correct
those distortions.

1217
01:07:44,685 --> 01:07:46,520
And that's what develops personality.

1218
01:07:46,604 --> 01:07:49,398
Not a lot of people can overcome.
It takes work.

1219
01:07:50,316 --> 01:07:53,527
[gentle music playing]

1220
01:08:03,287 --> 01:08:07,958
[John] I think what he was going for
in Rocky V is he wants to make sure

1221
01:08:08,042 --> 01:08:11,921
that he never loses who he was,
where he came from.

1222
01:08:12,004 --> 01:08:16,884
He wanted to get back to his roots, but
I don't think he did it the way he hoped.

1223
01:08:21,305 --> 01:08:23,766
[Sly] At that time,
with Rocky V, I thought,

1224
01:08:24,558 --> 01:08:26,519
if I lost everything,

1225
01:08:26,602 --> 01:08:30,898
could I actually go back
and start over again?

1226
01:08:31,816 --> 01:08:34,819
Not without someone helping me.

1227
01:08:35,361 --> 01:08:36,821
I realized I'm over.

1228
01:08:36,904 --> 01:08:39,490
That's why Tommy
is more important than my own family,

1229
01:08:39,573 --> 01:08:43,035
because he's gonna bring me glory again.

1230
01:08:43,786 --> 01:08:45,704
He was almost too personal.

1231
01:08:46,872 --> 01:08:51,085
[John] His son, Sage, he put him in it.
He wrote him in it.

1232
01:08:52,419 --> 01:08:56,841
He wanted to give him this opportunity
that was so hard for Sly to get.

1233
01:08:59,009 --> 01:09:01,720
[producer] How did you write the scene
in the basement with your son?

1234
01:09:01,804 --> 01:09:04,807
He's saying, you're invested
in the boxing, but you're not seeing me.

1235
01:09:04,890 --> 01:09:07,935
Is that something
you drew upon from your own experience?

1236
01:09:08,018 --> 01:09:09,311
Unfortunately, yes.

1237
01:09:09,395 --> 01:09:12,398
You said I would be number one to you.
You said that and you lied.

1238
01:09:12,481 --> 01:09:14,483
You lied to me and you lied to Mom!

1239
01:09:14,567 --> 01:09:16,735
I never lied to you.

1240
01:09:16,819 --> 01:09:18,195
Tommy needed my help.

1241
01:09:18,279 --> 01:09:19,572
So did I.

1242
01:09:21,115 --> 01:09:24,160
[Sly] I try to take
something that actually

1243
01:09:25,119 --> 01:09:28,289
is what I wish I had done in real life,

1244
01:09:28,956 --> 01:09:31,625
but I wasn't able to do that in reality.

1245
01:09:32,334 --> 01:09:37,590
And so, quite often,
I would do it theatrically,

1246
01:09:38,090 --> 01:09:39,133
magically.

1247
01:09:40,509 --> 01:09:42,553
[Adrian] If there's something
you want to pass on,

1248
01:09:42,636 --> 01:09:45,806
pass it on to your son, for God sakes!

1249
01:09:45,890 --> 01:09:50,477
[Sly] Her speech, when I'm losing my son
and I'm having a nervous breakdown…

1250
01:09:50,561 --> 01:09:54,356
"I didn't want this. I just want us
to be back to where we started."

1251
01:09:54,440 --> 01:09:56,025
She tears me a new one.

1252
01:09:57,193 --> 01:09:58,736
"Save your son."

1253
01:09:59,778 --> 01:10:01,071
A lot of that is true.

1254
01:10:01,155 --> 01:10:04,825
You know, unfortunately,
you put things before your family,

1255
01:10:05,784 --> 01:10:12,124
and the repercussions are
quite radical and devastating.

1256
01:10:13,125 --> 01:10:15,628
I try to impart my beliefs,
my philosophies,

1257
01:10:15,711 --> 01:10:20,466
that all the grandeur, all the fanfare,
all the international acclaim,

1258
01:10:20,549 --> 01:10:22,843
means nothing
when you can't sleep at night,

1259
01:10:22,927 --> 01:10:27,056
when you have no one next to you,
when you don't have your flesh and blood.

1260
01:10:27,139 --> 01:10:31,644
[Sly on tape]
Rocky V might have been just too personal.

1261
01:10:32,436 --> 01:10:35,439
It just didn't land
with the audience at all.

1262
01:10:36,565 --> 01:10:39,193
I used to tell people, I said,
"Don't ever watch the second half

1263
01:10:39,276 --> 01:10:41,445
of any biography about a star."

1264
01:10:41,528 --> 01:10:44,073
Because it's always,
"And here at the pinnacle,

1265
01:10:44,156 --> 01:10:47,451
and he had the world in his hand.
And then…"

1266
01:10:47,534 --> 01:10:49,870
"Well, stay tuned for the fall."

1267
01:10:49,954 --> 01:10:52,873
-[camera shutters clicking]
-[reporters] Sly! Sly!

1268
01:10:52,957 --> 01:10:57,461
If I knew I had to do
25 films my whole life, that's it,

1269
01:11:00,005 --> 01:11:02,132
you'd choose a lot different than this.

1270
01:11:02,216 --> 01:11:04,802
[Johnny Carson] Now all of a sudden,
you're doing a farce.

1271
01:11:04,885 --> 01:11:06,720
That's like 180 degrees.

1272
01:11:06,804 --> 01:11:08,847
[Sly] Farce. It's a dead art form.

1273
01:11:09,640 --> 01:11:13,060
Farce is not really comedy.
It's little… [chuckles]

1274
01:11:13,143 --> 01:11:14,311
It's so fast.

1275
01:11:14,395 --> 01:11:16,897
You just really step out of your box

1276
01:11:16,981 --> 01:11:18,732
and you do farce,

1277
01:11:18,816 --> 01:11:20,276
you're really asking for it.

1278
01:11:20,359 --> 01:11:22,111
[chuckling] You know what I mean?

1279
01:11:22,695 --> 01:11:26,115
If you're hungry,
you always try to expand.

1280
01:11:26,198 --> 01:11:29,868
It was natural for Sly to feel like,
"I want to get into comedies."

1281
01:11:30,619 --> 01:11:32,663
[producer]
Which one took you furthest from--

1282
01:11:32,746 --> 01:11:33,956
-Who I am?
-[producer] Yeah.

1283
01:11:34,039 --> 01:11:37,126
[Sly] Without a doubt. That. That.

1284
01:11:37,209 --> 01:11:38,919
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.

1285
01:11:39,003 --> 01:11:42,006
[Arnold] There was a script
that was offered

1286
01:11:42,089 --> 01:11:44,383
to his agent and to my agent.

1287
01:11:44,466 --> 01:11:47,845
When I read the script, I said,
"This, I don't think I could sell,"

1288
01:11:47,928 --> 01:11:50,055
but I'm not gonna tell them I'm out of it.

1289
01:11:50,139 --> 01:11:53,434
And so they called right away, the studio.
They said, "Arnold wants the script."

1290
01:11:53,517 --> 01:11:58,188
So Sly was going so nuts
about the fact that I want to do it,

1291
01:11:58,272 --> 01:12:01,692
he then committed to the movie,
and then he did the movie.

1292
01:12:01,775 --> 01:12:02,776
And the rest is history.

1293
01:12:02,860 --> 01:12:05,904
[Wesley] He was making movies
that didn't make any sense for him

1294
01:12:05,988 --> 01:12:08,574
or didn't appear
to be making sense for him.

1295
01:12:09,199 --> 01:12:13,162
I mean, those are movies where he is
thoroughly Sylvester Stallone in them.

1296
01:12:13,245 --> 01:12:15,956
It's just that the environment
didn't seem right.

1297
01:12:16,040 --> 01:12:20,586
[Sly] I can't really disassociate myself
from what I am, and I tried for a while.

1298
01:12:20,669 --> 01:12:23,505
Doing the comedies,
even though it was kind of an adventure,

1299
01:12:23,589 --> 01:12:25,632
it really was a wasted effort.

1300
01:12:25,716 --> 01:12:27,634
I could've done
much better things with my time.

1301
01:12:27,718 --> 01:12:29,511
I think people felt very disillusioned.

1302
01:12:29,595 --> 01:12:32,806
They said, "Look, why don't you do
maybe what you're meant to do?"

1303
01:12:32,890 --> 01:12:34,975
Going back to my roots, you might say.

1304
01:12:35,059 --> 01:12:38,937
[chuckling] Then I became considered
to be, like, monosyllabic.

1305
01:12:39,021 --> 01:12:40,898
And the less I did verbally

1306
01:12:40,981 --> 01:12:42,441
and the more I did physically

1307
01:12:42,524 --> 01:12:44,026
was the way I was known.

1308
01:12:44,651 --> 01:12:48,197
He really is just like
this hulking action figure

1309
01:12:48,280 --> 01:12:50,115
who really doesn't speak.

1310
01:12:50,199 --> 01:12:51,867
He's playing the lead in an action movie,

1311
01:12:51,950 --> 01:12:56,038
and this one is set in prison,
and another one, it's set on a train.

1312
01:12:56,121 --> 01:13:00,167
To the point where I said,
"Okay, action, action, action."

1313
01:13:00,250 --> 01:13:02,044
"What are you doing?"

1314
01:13:02,127 --> 01:13:04,171
[Quentin] His characters stopped
being less character

1315
01:13:04,254 --> 01:13:06,006
and more just the leading man.

1316
01:13:06,090 --> 01:13:07,966
And Cop Land brought us back to that.

1317
01:13:08,050 --> 01:13:10,260
[gentle music playing]

1318
01:13:10,344 --> 01:13:12,930
[Sly] I was not deriving
any pleasure anymore.

1319
01:13:13,013 --> 01:13:16,934
I felt that the challenges
were that of physical challenge,

1320
01:13:17,017 --> 01:13:20,312
and nothing to do with
any reliance upon character work,

1321
01:13:20,396 --> 01:13:24,566
where you are
totally dependent upon how you act.

1322
01:13:26,276 --> 01:13:28,404
And so I thought, you know,
I have to stop this.

1323
01:13:28,487 --> 01:13:31,407
I have to try to go back
to what I enjoy more,

1324
01:13:31,490 --> 01:13:34,118
and the premise is
interacting with other actors.

1325
01:13:34,201 --> 01:13:36,412
And then when Miramax came with Cop Land,

1326
01:13:36,495 --> 01:13:38,497
they said, "This is going to be difficult,

1327
01:13:38,580 --> 01:13:41,500
because you're going
to have to completely divest yourself

1328
01:13:41,583 --> 01:13:44,420
of what you've used
for the past ten years."

1329
01:13:44,503 --> 01:13:47,214
Which is, you have to gain 30 pounds.

1330
01:13:47,297 --> 01:13:50,884
You have to be
incredibly obsequious, fawning, shy.

1331
01:13:51,552 --> 01:13:54,263
Time for me to turn inside out.

1332
01:13:54,346 --> 01:13:57,641
To literally show what I have
inside on the outside.

1333
01:13:57,724 --> 01:14:00,602
[interviewer] So this is your chance
to be taken seriously as an actor?

1334
01:14:00,686 --> 01:14:05,190
Well, I would like to be able
to know that I had an opportunity

1335
01:14:05,274 --> 01:14:08,152
to work with great actors,
and see if I could hold my own.

1336
01:14:08,235 --> 01:14:10,779
-Excuse me.
-Moe, I apologize. He just walked in.

1337
01:14:10,863 --> 01:14:12,364
I'm sorry for rushing in like this.

1338
01:14:12,448 --> 01:14:14,616
[Sly] When I do the scene with De Niro,

1339
01:14:14,700 --> 01:14:16,618
been waiting for this scene for 20 years.

1340
01:14:16,702 --> 01:14:20,706
Everyone's going, "Oh, this is gonna be
a bloodbath. This is gonna be terrible."

1341
01:14:21,415 --> 01:14:23,750
What is this? You came to me, to my…

1342
01:14:23,834 --> 01:14:25,419
[Sly] And I'm doing my lines,

1343
01:14:25,502 --> 01:14:29,590
and I feel that Bobby
is not giving me enough "Bobby."

1344
01:14:29,673 --> 01:14:32,468
I really wanted him
to lay into me, the character.

1345
01:14:33,218 --> 01:14:36,972
I really want him
to hit me hard as I need to be hit

1346
01:14:37,055 --> 01:14:39,683
for me to feel as though I'm…

1347
01:14:40,809 --> 01:14:42,436
playing the character properly.

1348
01:14:42,519 --> 01:14:45,355
I need to walk
out of this room demolished.

1349
01:14:46,648 --> 01:14:51,528
I said, "I'm gonna go off the page.
I'm going to try to get under his skin."

1350
01:14:51,612 --> 01:14:54,281
So we're doing the scene,
and we get to the final line.

1351
01:14:54,364 --> 01:14:55,908
"I can't help you anymore."

1352
01:14:55,991 --> 01:14:58,076
Now, I know that he's thinking,

1353
01:14:58,160 --> 01:15:01,038
"Okay, that's a wrap."
I go, "Wait, whoa, wait a minute."

1354
01:15:01,121 --> 01:15:05,083
"You said if I needed help,
you would be here."

1355
01:15:05,167 --> 01:15:06,168
"I could come up here…"

1356
01:15:06,251 --> 01:15:08,504
He goes, "Hey, it's over.
Everything's over."

1357
01:15:08,587 --> 01:15:11,215
"No, but it's not over.
I did what you wanted me to do."

1358
01:15:11,298 --> 01:15:13,050
"I did exactly what you asked."

1359
01:15:13,133 --> 01:15:15,260
"Now you're saying
it doesn't matter anymore?"

1360
01:15:15,344 --> 01:15:17,429
"Just give me a chance.
Listen, hear me out."

1361
01:15:17,513 --> 01:15:19,640
He goes, "Shut-- You deaf fuck!"

1362
01:15:19,723 --> 01:15:21,266
Listen to me, you deaf fuck.

1363
01:15:21,350 --> 01:15:23,560
I offered you a chance
when we could've done something.

1364
01:15:23,644 --> 01:15:26,772
I offered you a chance
to be a cop, and you blew it!

1365
01:15:26,855 --> 01:15:29,233
[claps] Fuck yeah! Thank you, Bobby.

1366
01:15:32,528 --> 01:15:34,071
But that bombed.

1367
01:15:34,154 --> 01:15:35,364
That didn't do well.

1368
01:15:36,198 --> 01:15:40,285
[Quentin] He's carrying the movie, but
through this physicality as a character.

1369
01:15:40,369 --> 01:15:42,871
Everybody else has the fireworks,
everybody else has big speeches.

1370
01:15:42,955 --> 01:15:47,876
It's all down to the minutiae of…
the ephemera of his characterization.

1371
01:15:49,294 --> 01:15:53,215
[Wesley] Something about
how restrained Stallone is being…

1372
01:15:53,298 --> 01:15:56,301
He is playing something deep in here.

1373
01:15:57,761 --> 01:16:02,015
I wish that James Mangold had
more faith in what Stallone was doing,

1374
01:16:02,099 --> 01:16:05,018
because that sadness
is there for a reason.

1375
01:16:05,102 --> 01:16:07,646
I think that the movie
kind of lets him down.

1376
01:16:07,729 --> 01:16:10,899
[John] I don't think he got
the credit he deserved for that film.

1377
01:16:10,983 --> 01:16:12,859
That was frustrating to him.

1378
01:16:12,943 --> 01:16:15,195
[melancholy music playing]

1379
01:16:15,279 --> 01:16:18,115
[Sly] I started to get
disenchanted with myself.

1380
01:16:18,198 --> 01:16:23,620
I go, "Well, maybe that's
a natural migration into obsolescence."

1381
01:16:23,704 --> 01:16:25,539
Maybe that's the journey. You know?

1382
01:16:25,622 --> 01:16:29,418
Everyone can't be, you know,
at the top of their game forever.

1383
01:16:31,712 --> 01:16:34,172
I realized that at that point,

1384
01:16:34,256 --> 01:16:36,383
it's important to stay in your own lane,

1385
01:16:36,466 --> 01:16:38,218
to become a specialist.

1386
01:16:39,678 --> 01:16:40,887
Like an artist.

1387
01:16:40,971 --> 01:16:43,348
You have that style, you're a Rothko,

1388
01:16:43,432 --> 01:16:46,226
and no one can do
Rothko better than Rothko.

1389
01:16:47,644 --> 01:16:51,440
Everyone goes,
"Oh, we can do the full spectrum."

1390
01:16:51,523 --> 01:16:53,317
"We can be anything." No, you can't.

1391
01:16:54,067 --> 01:16:57,321
You have certain manifest
weaknesses and great strengths.

1392
01:16:57,404 --> 01:16:59,448
And I said, focus on the strengths.

1393
01:16:59,531 --> 01:17:02,534
Don't sit there and try to do Shakespeare
when you look like me.

1394
01:17:03,535 --> 01:17:07,623
[Wesley] He has these two characters
he can always go back to,

1395
01:17:07,706 --> 01:17:11,084
to get whatever adoration
or sense of legitimacy

1396
01:17:11,168 --> 01:17:12,419
that he feels he's lost.

1397
01:17:12,502 --> 01:17:14,921
He can get that back
anytime he plays Rocky

1398
01:17:15,005 --> 01:17:16,340
and anytime he plays Rambo.

1399
01:17:16,423 --> 01:17:18,884
Those characters are
always going to be there for him.

1400
01:17:18,967 --> 01:17:21,803
And it's a place
he can always go back to to reset.

1401
01:17:21,887 --> 01:17:24,640
[Sly] In a film like Rocky VI,

1402
01:17:24,723 --> 01:17:29,853
which, to me, is my proudest
accomplishment in my entire career,

1403
01:17:29,936 --> 01:17:33,357
because we're following Rocky V,

1404
01:17:33,440 --> 01:17:34,941
it's 19 years later.

1405
01:17:35,484 --> 01:17:40,489
Rocky has missed an entire generation
that's grown up, have no idea who he is.

1406
01:17:40,572 --> 01:17:44,951
That character had meant so much
to myself and so many other people,

1407
01:17:45,035 --> 01:17:48,622
and to leave it on that dour note

1408
01:17:48,705 --> 01:17:49,956
just killed me.

1409
01:17:50,040 --> 01:17:54,044
So I spent endless hours
writing, rewriting,

1410
01:17:54,127 --> 01:17:56,254
writing, writing, writing Rocky Balboa.

1411
01:17:56,338 --> 01:17:59,633
Producer goes, "Over our dead body.
Told you before, it'll never happen."

1412
01:17:59,716 --> 01:18:00,967
Heads of studios.

1413
01:18:01,051 --> 01:18:04,763
They rejected, rejected, rejected.
"Rocky's done and you're done."

1414
01:18:04,846 --> 01:18:07,516
I mean, it was brutal.
Nobody wanted to make it.

1415
01:18:07,599 --> 01:18:10,602
They laughed. You know?
Even my wife said, "Please don't."

1416
01:18:10,686 --> 01:18:13,563
But she didn't quite understand
what I was going for.

1417
01:18:13,647 --> 01:18:15,315
I wasn't doing a boxing movie.

1418
01:18:16,400 --> 01:18:21,029
I was doing a movie about
how to deal with moving on

1419
01:18:21,113 --> 01:18:24,157
when the things
you love the most have left you.

1420
01:18:24,783 --> 01:18:28,245
And I use it symbolically
with Adrian being gone,

1421
01:18:28,328 --> 01:18:31,331
that you had that horrible
feeling in your stomach

1422
01:18:31,415 --> 01:18:33,875
that your life has been so incomplete,

1423
01:18:33,959 --> 01:18:36,503
and you can't go on without…

1424
01:18:36,586 --> 01:18:39,673
You just never achieved
what you thought you should've achieved.

1425
01:18:39,756 --> 01:18:41,133
You never loved her enough.

1426
01:18:41,216 --> 01:18:44,594
You never gave people the respect,
you never said thank you.

1427
01:18:44,678 --> 01:18:47,764
You talked about
this stuff in the basement,

1428
01:18:49,182 --> 01:18:50,559
which is regret.

1429
01:18:51,393 --> 01:18:55,772
And I go, "Man, I have a lot of that."
And this is what the movie's about.

1430
01:18:55,856 --> 01:18:59,651
He's fighting to purge himself of pain,

1431
01:19:00,235 --> 01:19:01,319
of the past.

1432
01:19:01,403 --> 01:19:05,031
He says, quote, "I want to replace
old pain with new pain."

1433
01:19:05,115 --> 01:19:07,284
-Meaning, I want to get hit.
-[strikes palm]

1434
01:19:07,909 --> 01:19:11,621
And maybe I'll forget
about the stuff in the basement.

1435
01:19:12,205 --> 01:19:15,375
[Sly on tape] I was talking to my son
what the future was all about.

1436
01:19:16,626 --> 01:19:20,380
And I thought, life is undefeated.
You can't beat it.

1437
01:19:21,381 --> 01:19:23,467
You just have to go on the defense.

1438
01:19:26,386 --> 01:19:30,849
That inspired the line,
"No one punches harder than life."

1439
01:19:32,350 --> 01:19:36,480
I have a habit of… adding words.

1440
01:19:36,563 --> 01:19:37,647
We're doing the scene,

1441
01:19:37,731 --> 01:19:40,609
I would get three-quarters
of the way through, and they'd go,

1442
01:19:40,692 --> 01:19:43,653
"Why did you add that word?
It was okay before."

1443
01:19:43,737 --> 01:19:47,616
This is the one take where it was
consistent all the way through.

1444
01:19:47,699 --> 01:19:48,992
It's simple.

1445
01:19:49,075 --> 01:19:52,496
The message is as plain as can be.

1446
01:19:53,038 --> 01:19:55,832
And it isn't, like, hysterical.

1447
01:19:55,916 --> 01:19:58,001
But you used to fit right here.

1448
01:19:58,835 --> 01:20:01,129
I'd hold you up and say to your mother,

1449
01:20:01,213 --> 01:20:03,840
"This kid's going to be
the best kid in the world."

1450
01:20:03,924 --> 01:20:06,802
"This kid's going to be somebody better
than anybody ever knew."

1451
01:20:06,885 --> 01:20:09,429
You see that he's talking from love.

1452
01:20:09,513 --> 01:20:10,889
He loves this kid.

1453
01:20:10,972 --> 01:20:13,433
The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows.

1454
01:20:13,517 --> 01:20:15,602
It's a very mean and nasty place.

1455
01:20:15,685 --> 01:20:17,479
And I don't care how tough you are,

1456
01:20:17,562 --> 01:20:19,147
it will beat you to your knees

1457
01:20:19,231 --> 01:20:21,650
and keep you there permanently
if you let it.

1458
01:20:21,733 --> 01:20:23,735
You, me, or nobody

1459
01:20:23,819 --> 01:20:25,862
is going to hit as hard as life.

1460
01:20:25,946 --> 01:20:27,989
But it ain't about how hard you hit.

1461
01:20:28,073 --> 01:20:31,701
It's about how hard you can get hit
and keep moving forward.

1462
01:20:31,785 --> 01:20:34,663
How much you can take
and keep moving forward.

1463
01:20:38,750 --> 01:20:41,628
[Sly] I've always wanted to take Rocky I

1464
01:20:41,711 --> 01:20:43,839
and this one and put it together

1465
01:20:43,922 --> 01:20:46,049
and show how fast life goes by.

1466
01:20:47,133 --> 01:20:51,888
Life is addition up until age 40,
and after that it's subtraction.

1467
01:20:51,972 --> 01:20:53,974
Your children are moving out,

1468
01:20:54,057 --> 01:20:58,228
your friends are moving on,
some dying, job is gone.

1469
01:20:58,854 --> 01:20:59,729
Gone.

1470
01:20:59,813 --> 01:21:00,981
It's loss.

1471
01:21:02,482 --> 01:21:04,442
[melancholy music playing]

1472
01:21:09,781 --> 01:21:11,825
[Sly] There's a line in the movie that…

1473
01:21:11,908 --> 01:21:15,245
"I'm so glad he's born
because now I can live through your eyes."

1474
01:21:15,328 --> 01:21:18,331
That, I think, is what fathers
look to their children for.

1475
01:21:18,415 --> 01:21:21,001
It's an extension of…
It's a slice of immortality.

1476
01:21:21,084 --> 01:21:23,336
As long as he's alive,
your memory will always be alive.

1477
01:21:23,420 --> 01:21:25,922
That you did something right.
I mean, you hope for that.

1478
01:21:36,433 --> 01:21:38,435
[birds singing]

1479
01:21:40,270 --> 01:21:42,188
[interviewer]
You have a successful Rocky series

1480
01:21:42,272 --> 01:21:44,190
and you have a successful Rambo series,

1481
01:21:44,274 --> 01:21:47,152
but after all these successes,
at some point people say to you,

1482
01:21:47,235 --> 01:21:50,447
"Well, maybe you're
too old to play these parts."

1483
01:21:50,530 --> 01:21:53,450
And all of a sudden your agent says,
"Maybe we can't help you."

1484
01:21:53,533 --> 01:21:55,619
[Sly] That fourth crossroad.

1485
01:21:55,702 --> 01:21:59,414
Okay, do I listen to them,
or how do you feel?

1486
01:21:59,497 --> 01:22:00,999
Do you feel still competitive?

1487
01:22:01,082 --> 01:22:04,836
Is there, as Rocky would say,
stuff in the basement?

1488
01:22:04,920 --> 01:22:08,548
And I go, "Yeah, but I just
have to do it age-appropriate."

1489
01:22:08,632 --> 01:22:11,051
That's when I came up
with The Expendables.

1490
01:22:13,219 --> 01:22:16,598
I went to this rock and roll revival.

1491
01:22:17,766 --> 01:22:20,477
I'm telling my wife,
"God, these guys are so great."

1492
01:22:20,560 --> 01:22:24,022
And my wife is looking at me.
I said, "It's gonna get better."

1493
01:22:24,105 --> 01:22:25,190
Boom.

1494
01:22:25,273 --> 01:22:30,278
Out comes this guy, Dockers,
baggy-ass canvas-type pants

1495
01:22:30,362 --> 01:22:34,115
that he's been sitting on so long,
the back looks like a fucking accordion.

1496
01:22:34,199 --> 01:22:37,160
Holy shit, this is genius.

1497
01:22:37,243 --> 01:22:41,623
The place is sold out.
Everyone on stage is… done.

1498
01:22:41,706 --> 01:22:44,000
But the fact that thousands of people came

1499
01:22:44,084 --> 01:22:48,380
to see this collection of former greats,

1500
01:22:48,463 --> 01:22:50,966
I said, "There's gotta be something here."

1501
01:22:51,049 --> 01:22:53,510
I said, "Let me start doing that
with action guys."

1502
01:22:53,593 --> 01:22:55,136
[dramatic music playing]

1503
01:22:55,220 --> 01:22:58,473
[Sly] And that… made it an event.

1504
01:23:00,058 --> 01:23:02,602
As opposed to,
"Stallone in The Expendable,

1505
01:23:02,686 --> 01:23:03,645
is the expendable."

1506
01:23:03,728 --> 01:23:08,525
No, he's part of this once-great group.

1507
01:23:08,608 --> 01:23:13,738
"Shit. Just out of morbid curiosity,
I've got to see this."

1508
01:23:14,531 --> 01:23:18,743
[Arnold] What a great concept,
to have all these action heroes

1509
01:23:18,827 --> 01:23:21,538
from the '80s, the '90s, 2000s,

1510
01:23:21,621 --> 01:23:23,873
everyone together, thrown into one pot.

1511
01:23:26,501 --> 01:23:29,087
[Wesley] There's something
about Stallone at this age,

1512
01:23:29,170 --> 01:23:31,297
accepting his experience,

1513
01:23:31,381 --> 01:23:33,216
that he's survived this long.

1514
01:23:33,299 --> 01:23:37,303
I mean, I don't know if he should… I mean,
should he still be alive? I don't know.

1515
01:23:39,097 --> 01:23:41,933
[Arnold] It's not uncommon
for an action hero

1516
01:23:42,017 --> 01:23:44,436
to get injured on the set.

1517
01:23:44,519 --> 01:23:48,440
But I think it is clear
that Sly drove it to the extreme.

1518
01:23:49,441 --> 01:23:50,817
I thought it was too much.

1519
01:23:52,861 --> 01:23:54,779
[Sly] Having the family
there the whole time.

1520
01:23:54,863 --> 01:23:56,990
It was hard on them

1521
01:23:57,073 --> 01:24:00,660
because I was so stressed and beat up

1522
01:24:00,744 --> 01:24:03,747
and bronchitis and thrush
and fractured neck.

1523
01:24:03,830 --> 01:24:05,623
It was just on and on and on and on.

1524
01:24:05,707 --> 01:24:07,876
So, they were not enjoying this.

1525
01:24:08,418 --> 01:24:10,503
[woman] He's been working nights.
Hasn't slept at all.

1526
01:24:10,587 --> 01:24:12,255
Now he's gotta work all night again.

1527
01:24:12,338 --> 01:24:15,592
He's gotta just get home
and be operated on right away.

1528
01:24:16,468 --> 01:24:20,388
Truthfully, I never fully recovered
from Expendables 1.

1529
01:24:20,472 --> 01:24:24,726
It did such a number on my body,
I've never been the same.

1530
01:24:24,809 --> 01:24:26,061
Never.

1531
01:24:26,144 --> 01:24:28,229
And you go, "Was it really worth it?"

1532
01:24:28,313 --> 01:24:30,857
Are you doing this for people's approval?

1533
01:24:31,858 --> 01:24:36,488
Really? That's almost like a child needing
a pat on the head by their father.

1534
01:24:36,571 --> 01:24:38,114
That's constant encouragement.

1535
01:24:38,198 --> 01:24:39,199
But it's true.

1536
01:24:42,702 --> 01:24:44,662
[projector whirring]

1537
01:24:44,746 --> 01:24:48,291
[producer] This film has stayed with you
for a long time. Why is that?

1538
01:24:49,375 --> 01:24:52,504
[Sly] This film here
reminds me of my father.

1539
01:24:54,089 --> 01:24:57,383
[man in film] You never called me.
You never said my name.

1540
01:24:58,968 --> 01:25:00,970
I'd have walked, I'd have crawled.

1541
01:25:01,471 --> 01:25:03,014
I'd have done anything.

1542
01:25:04,766 --> 01:25:08,311
It's not my fault. I won't be blamed!

1543
01:25:11,064 --> 01:25:15,985
This is the most… extraordinary film

1544
01:25:16,069 --> 01:25:17,946
about zeroing in

1545
01:25:18,029 --> 01:25:23,535
on what's really at the core of need,

1546
01:25:23,618 --> 01:25:24,994
human need.

1547
01:25:26,704 --> 01:25:29,415
Love. Requited love.

1548
01:25:30,083 --> 01:25:31,709
You're not mine!

1549
01:25:33,002 --> 01:25:34,587
We're not connected!

1550
01:25:35,171 --> 01:25:36,339
I deny you!

1551
01:25:37,423 --> 01:25:41,219
None of you will get my kingdom.
I leave you nothing and I wish you plague!

1552
01:25:41,302 --> 01:25:44,097
May all your children breech and die!

1553
01:25:45,974 --> 01:25:47,892
[Sly] When you've been rejected,

1554
01:25:48,810 --> 01:25:52,522
love is a powerful, powerful agent.

1555
01:25:55,400 --> 01:25:57,402
I wasn't given a shot, really.

1556
01:25:57,485 --> 01:26:00,238
In my childhood, everything was…

1557
01:26:01,489 --> 01:26:02,532
Hm.

1558
01:26:02,615 --> 01:26:04,909
It was not good.

1559
01:26:04,993 --> 01:26:08,413
So in my world, the Stallone film world,

1560
01:26:09,664 --> 01:26:12,709
what wouldn't normally happen can happen.

1561
01:26:13,585 --> 01:26:17,046
That this loser fighter
is gonna become a winner.

1562
01:26:20,216 --> 01:26:25,221
I was blessed with an ability
to deflect this bitterness

1563
01:26:25,305 --> 01:26:27,432
into what I wish…

1564
01:26:27,515 --> 01:26:29,893
what I wish had happened.

1565
01:26:29,976 --> 01:26:33,354
I wish I had a father like Rocky.

1566
01:26:33,438 --> 01:26:35,982
You can sit there
and actually film yourself. Look at this.

1567
01:26:36,065 --> 01:26:37,358
[Sly hums cheerful tune]

1568
01:26:37,442 --> 01:26:39,485
-There you go.
-Isn't that amazing?

1569
01:26:39,569 --> 01:26:42,071
I said, "Dad's dying. He's going to die."

1570
01:26:42,155 --> 01:26:44,365
"And you haven't
talked to him in a long, long time."

1571
01:26:44,449 --> 01:26:46,075
So, love you.

1572
01:26:46,159 --> 01:26:47,452
[kisses]

1573
01:26:47,535 --> 01:26:48,536
You take care.

1574
01:26:48,620 --> 01:26:50,246
-[kisses] Yes.
-And here's Frank.

1575
01:26:50,330 --> 01:26:55,501
I arranged for him to be with my father
a few weeks before he died.

1576
01:26:55,585 --> 01:26:56,961
[Frank Sr.] Come here, son.

1577
01:26:57,754 --> 01:27:01,174
[tearfully] Oh!
This is the best day of my life.

1578
01:27:01,257 --> 01:27:02,550
[Sly] I love you, Daddy.

1579
01:27:02,634 --> 01:27:03,843
[both crying]

1580
01:27:08,014 --> 01:27:09,599
[Sly] He's on his deathbed.

1581
01:27:09,682 --> 01:27:11,392
He goes, "You know, Sly."

1582
01:27:11,476 --> 01:27:12,852
I go, "Yeah, Dad?" He goes…

1583
01:27:14,187 --> 01:27:17,774
"You should learn
to love and forgive people."

1584
01:27:19,359 --> 01:27:20,360
I said, "Really?"

1585
01:27:21,110 --> 01:27:22,528
"That just come to you now

1586
01:27:22,612 --> 01:27:25,365
as the fucking angels
are about to whisper in your ear?"

1587
01:27:25,448 --> 01:27:28,326
He goes, "Yeah, you should learn…"
He starts laughing.

1588
01:27:28,409 --> 01:27:30,912
I said, "You bastard." What are you…

1589
01:27:30,995 --> 01:27:33,164
Now you're telling me to be kind?

1590
01:27:33,248 --> 01:27:36,376
Like, you just had an epiphany
on the way out?

1591
01:27:36,459 --> 01:27:38,211
He goes, "Yeah, I did."

1592
01:27:38,294 --> 01:27:40,463
"Just remember those words,
you little bastard."

1593
01:27:40,546 --> 01:27:41,381
I went, "Thank you."

1594
01:27:41,464 --> 01:27:43,800
[melancholy music playing]

1595
01:27:54,102 --> 01:27:58,439
[Sly] My children…
Well, I get really emotional about it.

1596
01:28:00,024 --> 01:28:01,651
There's always that regret.

1597
01:28:03,444 --> 01:28:04,612
I…

1598
01:28:06,155 --> 01:28:08,074
could have learned so much more

1599
01:28:09,075 --> 01:28:12,704
if I hadn't been so self-absorbed

1600
01:28:12,787 --> 01:28:16,791
and dealing with other people.

1601
01:28:16,874 --> 01:28:21,838
You think about
what you should have done at this age.

1602
01:28:22,797 --> 01:28:25,383
And now they're this age.

1603
01:28:25,466 --> 01:28:26,759
What did I mess up on?

1604
01:28:26,843 --> 01:28:29,929
I'm there making a stupid movie

1605
01:28:30,430 --> 01:28:32,724
instead of making their life.

1606
01:28:34,559 --> 01:28:37,603
They make me happy.
They make me really sad.

1607
01:28:39,314 --> 01:28:41,774
They bring me emotion.

1608
01:28:46,863 --> 01:28:48,698
I had to almost lose it

1609
01:28:49,824 --> 01:28:51,242
to respect it.

1610
01:28:54,579 --> 01:28:56,706
So the act of loving my children now,

1611
01:28:56,789 --> 01:29:01,586
actually taking such stock
and value of the time…

1612
01:29:01,669 --> 01:29:02,712
Jesus.

1613
01:29:03,880 --> 01:29:07,967
It's so… callous and brutal.

1614
01:29:08,051 --> 01:29:12,263
And it sneaks up on you, and you go,
"Okay, time to check out, Sly."

1615
01:29:12,347 --> 01:29:13,765
"Whoa! I was just born!"

1616
01:29:13,848 --> 01:29:15,600
"No. No."

1617
01:29:15,683 --> 01:29:19,771
Now it's a matter of,
I wanna be the juggler.

1618
01:29:19,854 --> 01:29:22,106
A really good juggler. You know, just…

1619
01:29:22,774 --> 01:29:25,902
family, life, children, wife, you know?

1620
01:29:25,985 --> 01:29:28,404
Art, just everything. Just… in balance.

1621
01:29:30,198 --> 01:29:31,407
[tape player clicks]

1622
01:29:31,491 --> 01:29:33,743
[Sly on tape] There's an old saying that

1623
01:29:34,410 --> 01:29:38,414
the child becomes the father to the man.

1624
01:29:38,498 --> 01:29:41,042
And the children I create,
Rocky and Rambo,

1625
01:29:41,125 --> 01:29:43,294
have now become my father.

1626
01:29:43,961 --> 01:29:46,005
They're taking care of me.

1627
01:29:46,089 --> 01:29:49,842
The beauty of being able to play those two

1628
01:29:50,593 --> 01:29:53,805
is, literally, that's
the entire spectrum of life.

1629
01:29:53,888 --> 01:29:55,765
The disenfranchised,

1630
01:29:55,848 --> 01:29:59,227
the one that's just friendless and lonely,

1631
01:29:59,310 --> 01:30:02,271
and the one here that embraces everything,

1632
01:30:03,106 --> 01:30:06,359
loves humanity, and is loved by humanity.

1633
01:30:06,442 --> 01:30:08,528
And I relate so well to both of them.

1634
01:30:10,780 --> 01:30:13,157
[Rambo] I lived in a world of death.

1635
01:30:14,826 --> 01:30:17,161
I tried to come home.

1636
01:30:18,871 --> 01:30:21,290
[Sly] Rambo has been mortally wounded,

1637
01:30:21,916 --> 01:30:26,129
and now he's returned home
to sit in his father's rocking chair.

1638
01:30:26,212 --> 01:30:29,215
He sees his life ebbing before him.

1639
01:30:30,800 --> 01:30:34,053
I started regretting the idea

1640
01:30:34,971 --> 01:30:38,349
that this is the way
this warrior goes out.

1641
01:30:40,101 --> 01:30:41,477
When they pull away,

1642
01:30:41,561 --> 01:30:43,479
the chair was still.

1643
01:30:44,272 --> 01:30:50,194
I had them start to CGI
that the chair was still rocking slightly.

1644
01:30:50,278 --> 01:30:51,863
So, he's still alive.

1645
01:30:51,946 --> 01:30:54,031
But the way I shot it, it wasn't.

1646
01:30:54,115 --> 01:30:58,870
And I so believe
that we don't see our heroes

1647
01:30:59,745 --> 01:31:02,790
die before our eyes.

1648
01:31:02,874 --> 01:31:08,463
That there's always
some mystical quality about them.

1649
01:31:10,256 --> 01:31:14,469
I realized with Rambo,
he'll never have home.

1650
01:31:15,303 --> 01:31:16,804
That's the tragedy of that character.

1651
01:31:16,888 --> 01:31:20,141
[emotional music playing]

1652
01:31:21,767 --> 01:31:23,394
[Sly] Without home,

1653
01:31:23,936 --> 01:31:28,774
without that family,
without the love of wife or children,

1654
01:31:31,152 --> 01:31:32,069
what's this?

1655
01:31:33,196 --> 01:31:35,907
These are just pictures,

1656
01:31:36,657 --> 01:31:41,412
film images
of something that never existed.

1657
01:31:42,246 --> 01:31:43,915
This is not life.

1658
01:31:45,249 --> 01:31:47,126
This is artwork.

1659
01:31:47,210 --> 01:31:50,254
This is configurations of imagination.

1660
01:31:51,547 --> 01:31:52,882
That's real.

1661
01:31:53,966 --> 01:31:57,970
That lives and breathes
and dies and bleeds.

1662
01:31:58,054 --> 01:31:59,847
And you better take care of that.

1663
01:32:01,265 --> 01:32:04,101
[emotional music swells]

1664
01:32:14,195 --> 01:32:15,947
[Sly] But if you have no guidance,

1665
01:32:16,030 --> 01:32:19,534
and you have to go through life
devalued every inch of the way,

1666
01:32:19,617 --> 01:32:21,118
that leaves a hole.

1667
01:32:22,453 --> 01:32:24,705
And that hole is never filled.

1668
01:32:29,544 --> 01:32:34,215
What I can do
is fill it through imagination.

1669
01:32:36,842 --> 01:32:39,804
I want to somehow show hope.

1670
01:32:40,680 --> 01:32:44,141
I'm in the hope business,

1671
01:32:44,225 --> 01:32:46,769
and I just hate sad endings. Sorry.

1672
01:32:47,979 --> 01:32:49,105
Shoot me.

1673
01:32:56,487 --> 01:32:57,822
[music fades]

1674
01:32:59,865 --> 01:33:04,579
["Come On Up to the House"
by Tom Waits playing]

1675
01:33:10,042 --> 01:33:14,880
♪ Well, the moon is broken
And the sky is cracked ♪

1676
01:33:16,090 --> 01:33:19,594
♪ Come on up to the house ♪

1677
01:33:20,553 --> 01:33:25,725
♪ The only things that you can see
Is all that you lack ♪

1678
01:33:26,726 --> 01:33:30,271
♪ Come on up to the house ♪

1679
01:33:31,939 --> 01:33:36,694
♪ All your crying don't do no good ♪

1680
01:33:37,570 --> 01:33:40,781
♪ Come on up to the house ♪

1681
01:33:41,991 --> 01:33:47,371
♪ Come down off the cross
We can use the wood ♪

1682
01:33:47,455 --> 01:33:51,792
♪ You gotta come on up to the house ♪

1683
01:33:53,377 --> 01:33:57,465
♪ Come on up to the house ♪

1684
01:33:58,591 --> 01:34:02,261
♪ Come on up to the house ♪

1685
01:34:03,054 --> 01:34:08,309
♪ The world is not my home
I'm just a-passing through ♪

1686
01:34:08,392 --> 01:34:13,481
♪ You got to come on up to the house ♪

1687
01:34:19,528 --> 01:34:23,783
♪ Gotta come on up to the house ♪

1688
01:34:24,742 --> 01:34:29,288
♪ Gotta come on up to the house ♪

1689
01:34:29,872 --> 01:34:35,252
♪ The world is not my home
I'm just a-passing through ♪

1690
01:34:35,336 --> 01:34:40,216
♪ You gotta come on up to the house ♪

1691
01:34:40,925 --> 01:34:45,429
♪ Gotta come on up to the house ♪

1692
01:34:46,055 --> 01:34:52,687
♪ You gotta come on up to the house ♪

1693
01:34:53,562 --> 01:34:59,527
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪