Sylvester Stallone knows that people, fans and critics alike, may be cynical about his sixth “Rocky” installment, “Rocky Balboa.” Especially after 1990’s “Rocky” tanked critically, financially, creatively — in pretty much every way.
“Not ‘may be.’ It’s what level of cynicism,” Stallone quips, laughing in a Four Seasons Hotel room a few hours after donating several pieces of “Rocky” memorabilia to the Smithsonian.
“I was cynical. Everyone. It’s human nature. It’s crazy but sometimes these crazy ideas provide an interesting dramatic situation, and you go, ‘I never would have thought of that’ or ‘That is so crazy but I might check it out.’ ”
The original “Rocky” from 1976 — which won the Oscar for best picture and made Stallone an overnight star playing the working-class Philadelphia boxer — and its sequel were classics. Chapters three and four in the 1980s made Stallone an even bigger star with two epic good guy vs. bad guy matchups. But the fifth chapter, in which Rocky has brain damage, goes bankrupt and throws down in a street fight with his protege, was a letdown for all parties involved.
Stallone even winces at its mention. There’s no way he could have ended an historical franchise on such a low note.
“It was just so off,” Stallone says. “It was like another movie entirely. If that had been the first ‘Rocky,’ there would never have been a ‘Rocky II’ — it just didn’t belong. Each Rocky had ended with a good taste in your mouth, that you could accept another one. ‘Oh, great, that was a nice ride.’ This one left nothing.
“So to try to do a sixth installment after a fifth failure, you try selling that one.”
And the actor did, setting out to write, direct and star in a sixth chapter in 1998. “It just was not met with much enthusiasm. At all,” he says. “It’s been a real struggle for seven years to get it done.”
But like Rocky, Stallone kept on punching. Round one may have gone to MGM when they turned him down, but he started gaining momentum when new head Harry Sloan came to power and Revolution Studios honcho Joe Roth wanted “Rocky Balboa” to be made, too.
The main plot of the new film is Rocky coming out of retirement, facing a cocky heavyweight champion (Antonio Tarver) in an exhibition and finding glory yet again. But to get there, Stallone needed something that would knock Rocky totally out of sync.
Stallone wrote three drafts that were essentially the George Foreman story, he says: Rocky’s son was in the Air Force, Rocky owned a youth center that was going under and he decided to spar to make money.
“It was OK but it wasn’t about something personal: trials and tribulations, grief, a real internal journey,” Stallone says. “It was about solving a financial problem, basically — a whole different thing.”
So he made Rocky a widower, and created a void where his beloved Adrian (played in the previous films by Talia Shore) was. The first part of the movie is spent with Rocky in mourning and living in the past, with his son Robert (Milo Ventigmilia) trying to live his own life, until an old friend snaps him out of it. “And now you can start the character like he was in ‘Rocky,’ at ground zero, and then work his way up.”
Since “Rocky” so mirrors Stallone’s own early upbringing, it would seem that Rockyand his son’s relationship might tend toward the actor’s reality, too, since the larger-than-life Stallone probably casts a pretty large shadow himself.
“I can’t deny that. Being my son is not easy and is does require a little bit of patience and acknowledgment that you’re always gonna be called an actor’s son,” says Stallone, whose real-life son Sage played Rocky Jr. in “Rocky V.” “Either you go out and do not try to follow my footsteps, but just stop blaming me. Go out there and accomplish something on your own. So we’ve had those conversations and he has his own little niche in the world, which is great.”
“But it’s not about being a star,” he adds. “You can be an accomplished salesman and you can have a son who does it. It’s like a work ethic from one generation to another. ‘I didn’t wreck anything for you.’ ”
The hardest sell to get “Rocky Balboa” made, though, was to convince the studio heads why Rocky would come back and fight one more time.
“I said, ‘It’s symbolism, guys. It’s a metaphor. It’s how he purges pain.’ Some people have to go climb a mountain, some people have to do that triathlon and burn themselves up in a desert,” Stallone says. “You gotta say, what is behind that? There’s no money, there’s incredible pain. What do they want?
“All things happen for a reason. What it is is this is a minor miracle that it got done. But also, the message it sends out is that you can do a simple character study and still make it financially rewarding for the parties involved.”
Punch-drunk love
The Smithsonian Air & Space Museum is currently hosting several pieces of “Rocky” memorabilia donated by Sylvester Stallone, including boxing shorts and shoes from “Rocky III,” a boxing robe from “Rocky” and his signature black hat.
