Sylvester Stallone's Last Fight
At 60, Sylvester Stallone is resurrecting the Italian Stallion with 'Rocky Balboa.' So how much does Sly have left in the tank?
By Pat Jordan
Sylvester Stallone, at 60, is too busy to kill coyotes these days. There are too many of them. Let them roam. He has more important things to worry about. A new movie, premiering December 22, Rocky Balboa. Stallone, as Rocky, has been climbing into a boxing ring for almost 30 years, ever since the original Rocky, in 1976, won three Oscars, including Best Picture. Rocky earned over $117 million and instantly made Stallone a wealthy and famous man. His next three Rockys earned an average of $110 million, but by the time Rocky V was made, 16 years ago, Stallone's fans had lost their enthusiasm. That film earned a mere $41 million, and it was assumed, by most people, that a stake had been driven into the heart of the Rocky franchise, and, not incidentally, Stallone's career. But Stallone, who describes his latest Rocky as a man who "goes against common sense," and has more "will" than "skill," refused to let Rocky die and has resurrected his alter ego for one last fight.
Stallone bellies up to the bar in Rocky V. |
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"I wanted to show I had balls at 60," he says. "So they couldn't write me off." He says Rocky V failed because it was too depressing. "Too much egotism, all that underbelly of Rocky's life. No one wants to see Superman on a drinking binge." So he created, in Rocky Balboa, a character who "wins his peace of mind, who deals with the frustrations of his youth as an old man, without screaming, the only way he knows how. Through his body. Rocky has always been a guy who's about giving and receiving pain, purging old pain with new."
Rocky, like Stallone, has always been less a cerebral character than a character who "listens to his gut," says Stallone. "Just 'cause society says I'm old doesn't mean I am. I'm pursuing happiness even if it makes the people around me unhappy. Sure, I made wrong turns in my life, but I want one more shot to go out on my terms. People said my time had come and gone. No one believed in this project. The producers of the previous Rockys said they had 'no interest. Never! Never! Rocky's dead.' But that's what movies are about. Going against unbelievable skepticism. It's about raging, blind optimism."
When Stallone talks about his latest film, he does so with the same "raging" enthusiasm he always has. He talks about his camera techniques (he directs as well as stars), how the fight scenes are so much more authentic than in the previous Rocky movies, which were all cartoonish Bams! Pows! and comically distorted facial reactions. Even the characters are more realistic, he says. "Local color from Philly. This one girl I saw on the street in front of a drug rehab. I stopped the car and said, 'You wanna be in a movie?' She said, 'I don't know about no fuckin' movie.' I said, 'Perfect.' "
Stallone describes a lot of the characters in Rocky Balboa as "19- to 20-year-old, hard-bitten druggies who don't know who I am. 'I heard you was good once,' they tell Rocky. 'Buy us a drink.' In one scene they call a woman I'm with a whore, so I slam this kid up against a car. It awakened new emotions in me." He means, in Rocky. Or does he?
Stallone is not unaware that his latest Rocky might be met with cynicism and derision. Already, before the movie's release, Stallone and his alter ego have become the butt of Hollywood jokes. David Letterman imagined some Rocky Balboa dialogue along the lines of "Yo, Adrian, got my Lipitor?" The Miami Herald claimed that the film was irrefutable proof "that mankind has officially run out of ideas."
When he told his wife, Jennifer Flavin, he was planning another Rocky, she said, "Why do you want to expose yourself to humiliation?" He replied, "I know I'm not what I usta be. But I'd rather do something badly I love, than feel bad because I didn't do something I love."
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