People often make fun of the way Sylvester Stallone says the name "Adrian" in this film. They often make fun of the way he talks, out of one side of his mouth. If you look into his background, you'll find out why he talks that way. When his mother was giving birth to him, doctors used forceps to pull him out and thus, they severed a nerve in his cheek, resulting in paralysis of the right side of his face. That's why he talks out of one side of his mouth and his speech is slightly slurred. But, forgive my ramblings, lol. 45 years ago, on Nov. 21, 1976, the ultimate underdog story hit the big screen in the form of Rocky.
He didn't seem to have great success at films. He was still a pretty big, unknown face. Which is what made him perfect for the role of fourth-rate boxer Rocky Balboa
Before landing a role that would get him grade A notoriety, he starred in a series of low budget films that barely made it to the big screen. He appeared in a soft-core porn film called The Party At Kitty and Stud's and later The Lords of Flatbush. In 1974, he moved to Los Angeles, hoping to find some acting work there. Then, he was inspired by watching the 03/24/1975 boxing match between Chuck Wepner, known as "The Bayonne Bleeder" and Muhammad Ali. All bets were against Wepner and lasted 15 rounds until he was knocked out by Ali. He also managed to get a few hits in on Ali, making Wepner the first fighter to take down Ali
In a documentary called The Rocky Story, Stallone mentioned this. "I saw a man they called 'The Bayonne Bleeder', who didn't have a chance at all, against the greatest fighting machine, supposedly, that ever lived. And for one brief moment, this supposed stumblebum turned out to be magnificent. And the fact that he lasted and knocked the champion down... I said 'Boy, if this isn't a metaphor for life.'" It was then that the inklings of the story of Rocky came to be. The film-to-be, titled Rocky, would be about a fourth-rate boxer named Rocky Balboa who's working as a bodyguard for a loan shark, who's taken out of obscurity and given a chance to fight the reining heavyweight champion Apollo Creed. Along the way, Rocky falls in love with Adrian Pennino (Talia Shire), who works the pet shop near his home in Philadelphia and the sister of his best friend Paulie (Burt Young)
Stallone wrote the script in three days, but he said that "maybe 10% actually made it to film". The cinematic trends of the time had the main characters being anti-heroes, not exactly perfect. Rocky was to be a down on his luck boxer past his age of perfection working as a bodyguard for a local loan shark. His coach Mickey (Burgess Meredith) was a racist man with a temper worse than what is seen on screen. In the original script, Rocky was to throw the fight against Apollo because he no longer wanted to be in the dirty, sleazy world of professional boxing. But his then wife, Sasha Czak, didn't like that direction and Stallone re-wrote the script to resemble the film seen in theatres
During a casting call, Stallone made mention of this script to the producers, who seemed genuinely interested and told him to bring it by the next chance he got. United Artists loved it and wanted to start filming it and financing it, but only on one condition. Stallone couldn't play the protagonist. They wanted someone like Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds or even James Caan to play the title role. They offered Stallone $300,000 for the script. Stallone refused, sticking to his original notion of him playing this role. "I thought 'Alright, you've managed poverty very well. You've got this down to a science. You don't really need much to live on.'" So I thought 'You know what? I know in the back of my mind if I sell this script and it does very, very well, I'm gonna jump off a building if I'm not in it.' There's no doubt about it. I'm gonna leap in front of a train. I'm gonna be very upset. So this is one of those things where you just roll the dice, and you fly by the proverbial seat of your pants and say 'Alright, I gotta try it. I gotta just do it. I may be totally wrong, and I'm gonna be taking a lot of people down with me, but I just believe in it.'"
Stallone was cast as the lead role as producers Irvin Winkler and Robert Chartoff got the green light to go ahead and start filming. The budget was just over $1 million, a large fortune at the time. Director John C. Avildsen hit the streets of Philadelphia in a van, using the newly invented Steadicam, invented by Garrett Brown, to get clear shots of Rocky running through the city in the early morning hours. Stallone recalls in an interview "Finally my legs basically gave out, and I'm writhing on the ground, and I want to rise up and say 'John, I'm dying here,' and he goes 'Use it! Use the pain.'"
The other scenes of him training were just as brutal, if not worse. The scenes where he's punching slabs of meat in the slaughterhouse where Paulie works were just as brutal. "I don't know if anyone's hit a bull lately. They're hard, they're real hard. So my knuckles are flattened out. ...I don't know what they're good for anymore, I guess kind of like a table leg now. They're pretty flat, they're pretty even, they really don't function as a hand much anymore." Stallone said
Stallone was able to cut costs dramatically by casting his father, Frank Stallone as the bellringer, his brother, Frank Stallone Jr, as a street corner singer. His then wife, Sasha, was the on-set photographer. There were two last-minute hirings that would also make the movie: Talia Shire as Adrian Pennino and Carl Weathers as Apollo Creed. When speaking of Shire's audition, Stallone said "We just read, and I felt the earth move. I really felt a tremendous vitality and kinship. I love her." Stallone realized that the relationship between Adrian and Rocky would be a defining characteristic of the film. "These two people are two halves that absolutely need to fit together. And I'm starting to realize that this is the key to the film. This is the heartbeat. The whole movie is going to be based on the discovery of these two people, the love." he continued
Carl Weathers brought the same outgoing personality as his character Apollo Creed would possess. Stallone knew he chose the right man after reading lines and even doing some boxing training. Weathers managed to get a few blows on Stallone during auditions. "Then he sits back down and he goes 'Mr. Avildsen, I could do much better if you had a real actor reading with me'. He goes 'Well, Carl, that's Rocky. That's the guy who wrote the script.' He goes 'Maybe he'll get better.'" Stallone said. Originally, the end was supposed to be a somber moment where he went through the crowd looking for Adrian and they walk to the locker room together in silence "being anonymous forevermore". But, of course, that didn't sit well with Stallone. "We thought 'Boy, wouldn't it be interesting to catch a man's life at the quintessential, seminal moment?'"
He re-wrote the final scene to show Adrian running into the ring and her and Rocky exchanging "I love you's" and the film fading to black on a freeze frame of Rocky's battered but ecstatic face. "We all hit this absolute maximum of elation and celebration that can only be sustained for an infintisemal moment in time. And that's how we froze the original Rocky. He went out at the height. His life will never be more rewarding or more important or valid than that second." Stallone said
Strangely, despite the sleeper status Rocky had after its release on 11/21/1976, it became the highest grossing film of that year, raking in more than $225 million globally. It received 10 Academy Award nominations and won three, beating out the films Network, Taxi Driver, All the President's Men and Bound for Glory for Best Picture. This film spawned multiple sequels and even the highly successful Creed spinoff series. This, in turn, turned Stallone into a well-known name. He would also star in the highly successful Rambo series and a few other action films, such as Tango & Cash, Cobra, Cliffhanger. One of the prouder moments of Stallone's career was when Rocky was shown at the Director's Guild of America. Stallone, who was there with his mother, thought the film had bombed because the fight scenes didn't get a response; the jokes went right over the heads of the crowd. As he and his mother left the theatre, moviegoers at the bottom of the stairs started applauding for the film.
Stallone recalled "I just completely came apart. So there will never be a moment like that, ever. When you find the right components in your life, the right people that gel with you, then you feel as though you're invincible. It may be a fallacy, but you at least feel as though you can take all that life has to dish out."
