April 13, 2010

I saw "Rocky" with my dad on April 13, 1977. A life-altering experience.

This is the fourth time I’ve written about my yearly celebration of “Rocky" Day: here’s my most detailed piece on the subject, and you can find two much briefer Wall of Paul entries here and here. Rather than rehashing my undying affection for this tender, humanistic little blockbuster - the incongruence of those words is one of the things I find so remarkable about the movie - I think I’ll just show you the original “Rocky” trailer, then…you know…discuss.

Those of you who didn't exist, or were too young to care, in 1977 are likely shocked by the tone of that. Hell, I'm sure a lot of people who were aware of the movie back then have forgotten the type of vibe it generated. When “Rocky” was originally released, you see, Sylvester Stallone was an actor, and it appeared that he had an exciting big-screen career ahead of him.

Comparing him to Nicholson, De Niro, and Brando was a little too enthusiastic. But he's a charismatic, almost Chaplin-esque presence in “Rocky,” as well as in the much less effective, though often sweet and very funny, “Rocky II.” Those first two performances as the Italian Stallion are wonderfully entertaining, self-deprecating, and full of subtle shadings. Hard as it is to believe at this point, Stallone really could act.

You couldn’t help but love Stallone back in the day, because he seemed just as astonished as you were by the home run he hit with “Rocky.” In early 1974, with his acting career basically stalled, he and his pregnant wife were living in a filthy hovel, surviving largely on bananas and water. So, out of sheer desperation, he decided to write a screenplay…then refused to sell it to a slobbering United Artists for $265,000 because they wouldn’t let him star in it!

UA was considering Burt Reynolds for the role, which was the 1975 version of considering Will Smith for a part in 2010. Movie executives were always considering Burt Reynolds. But Stallone held out until he was paid a little over 30 grand for both the screenplay and his services as an actor.

In “The Official Rocky Scrapbook,” a quickie cash-in he penned when his dream film suddenly became a cultural touchstone, Stallone explains, via extra-chunky prose, what he was aiming for when he sat down to write “Rocky”: “What did I really enjoy seeing up on the screen? I enjoyed heroism. I enjoyed great love. I enjoyed stories of dignity, of courage, of man’s ability to rise above his station and take life by the throat and not let go until he succeeded. Yet no one was making films like that. “They” would call that corny, outdated, and thirtyish, or a throwback to the forties or the unrealistic fifties.”

How that guy made the transition from “Rocky” to utterly imbecilic, pandering horse shit like “Cobra,” which he also wrote, although it appears to have been invented on the spot by a cliché generator tuned to “lowbrow,” with a special assist from the guys at product placement…

…is a question best left answered by Stallone himself. But he’s not talking right now because he’s getting a lid-lift, new cheek implants, and another set of hair plugs.

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It says a great deal about “Rocky”’s feet-planted generosity that I can still watch the picture and get lost in an endearing character, rather than mourning the performances that could have been. Stallone certainly isn’t the only 70s icon to embrace The Big Sell Out – Hello, Steve Martin! – but his is a particularly sad self-negation, a man distancing himself from his own heart in favor of polo ponies, private jets, and, undoubtedly, a very long series of blow jobs.

There’s that famous line in “Rocky,” in which trainer Mickey tells the sweating, muscle-bound boxer he'll eventually pass through the fire and be able to “eat lightning and crap thunder!” Who could have ever guessed in 1977 that Stallone would so quickly start eating money and crapping movies? I sure wasn't expecting it.

Sometimes I feel like my soul wants to sigh.

Paul Tatara