- The nearly fifty year prolific career of Sylvester Stallone, who has entertained millions, is seen in retrospective in an intimate look of the actor, writer, director-producer, paralleling with his inspirational life story.
- For nearly 50 years, Sylvester Stallone has entertained millions with iconic characters and blockbuster franchises, from Rocky to Rambo to The Expendables. This retrospective documentary offers an intimate look at the Oscar-nominated actor-writer-director-producer, paralleling his inspirational underdog story with the indelible characters he has brought to life.
- Sylvester Stallone paints and he writes. The star of the blockbuster franchise Rocky and Rambo. Sly has the famous Philadelphia Rocky statue right in his home.
Sly felt that things were getting really mundane and repetitive for him. He is afraid of being complacent. He decides to move back East to bring some adrenaline back into his house. Sly is a self-made man. He wasn't a great actor and didn't have the obvious charisma. He invented the actor who writes and directs himself. He was the first superstar to do it. He understood what people wanted to see him do.
Quentin Tarantino says that he was invested in the Sly story. Arnold Schwarzenegger says no one has created 3 successful movie franchises. This was not an accident and a result of genius.
Sly was born in the tough Hell's Kitchen section of New York in summer of 1946. His father Frank Sr. was a barber who came over from Italy and met his mother in New York. His mother Jackie was a cigarette girl at the Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe. Sly was born in a charity hospital and had an accident which paralyzed all the nerves on the left side of his mouth. He was hence born with a snarl. Sly's & Frank Stallone's parents fought all the time. The kids lived at a boarding house since the parents never had time for them. The kids were deprived and were not nurtured. But they got the respect and love of strangers.
They fell in love with movies as this was the only form of escapism for them. Sly wanted to grow up and be a hero. The guy who saves people. He would spend hours in front of the mirror imitating actors. Steve Reeves in Hercules was the perfect role model for Sly. The parents got divorced and Sly moved to Maryland with Frank Sr., while Frank went to Philadelphia with Jackie. Frank Sr. bought horses and Sly developed an affinity towards them and learned to play Polo. But his father didn't like Sly playing Polo and made him give up the game. Frank Sr. was very physical. Sly was a problem child and went to 13 schools in 12 years. He went to military school, but Sly was incorrigible. He started getting a bug for acting at the Devereaux School for wayward kids.
He got into serious acting at college. He acted in a stage play of "Death of a Salesman". A Harvard professor in the audience told him to take up acting as a career. Sly comes back to New York, but all the agencies reject him as he slurs and his eyes droop. The best he gets are off-off Broadway shows, where he had to be half naked. He was always cast in movies as a thug. John Herzfeld was a director. Sly started to write as he could not get what he wanted. So, he created it himself. Sly had 15-16 screenplays in 2 years. He partnered with John during this phase. They had the same insulated personalities and they clicked as a team.
They did a movie called Horses, where a cowboy and an Indian came up from their graves 100 years after they are hung. Frank Sr was cast as the Sherriff in the movie, who tracks them down and shoots them. It was a silent movie in 1971. Suddenly, Sly did an audition and landed a role in a movie. Henry Winkler meets Sly on the sets of "The Lords of Flatbush". Sly uses the opportunity to write his own dialogues for his scenes, which the director allows him to do. Sly realized that his fate was dependent on his writing skills. The Flatbush was the first movie where people liked his thug character.
Sly drives down to Hollywood and meets Henry, as he is the only person he knows. Henry is the big star of the Fonzie show. Sly doesn't get many auditions, so he starts to write. He is working on a derivative of Mean Streets and writing the character of a collection agent for the mob. But then on the advise of a woman he makes the character a bit soft. He has a girlfriend; he could hit people but stops almost short. Then, he added the fighting angle to the character, and it all came together. Sly was offered $265,000 for the script, he had to stay away from the cast. Sly said that he was writing the movie for himself. Sly wanted his shot greatness. But all of the desired actors refused the movie, and they were replaced with perfect actors for the parts like Talia Shire.
Budget was tight on the movie, but Sly used every obstacle as an opportunity. Rocky opens to bad reviews from the critics. At the premiere, 75% of the audience was gone in 20 minutes. But the movie opens in theaters and is a monster hit. The audience loved the underdog love story. Sly would never be unknown again. Rocky wins an Oscar.
Frank Sr contacts John with a script for the next Rocky movie called "Sonny". He was still competing with Sly. Fame wreaks havoc on families. The air at the top is thinner and it is lonely. Sly was expected to repeat the magic with his next movie. He did FIST, based on the formation of a trucker's union in America. The problem with Sly was that he wanted to rewrite the movies he starred in and came in confrontation with the people hired by the studios. FIST is a flop.
This inspires Sly to make his own movie. He did Paradise Alley, but it was a very niche film. The critic panned Paradise Alley as well. So, Sly writes Rocky II and ends up directing it as well. The story mimics Sly's life in both Rocky and Apollo Creed characters. Rocky II makes twice the amount of money that Rocky made. But the movie left no time to Sly for his own personal life.
Sly does Rocky III. By this time his agents and his managers are asking him to play safe and not take risks in his movie. But Sly feels that he is losing his own hunger by listening to what everybody else is saying. He decides to do the movie his own way with Hulk Hogan and Mr T. Rambo was an accident. He was a broken soldier from the war who returned home as a homicidal maniac. Sly rewrote the script and made Rambo more human and softer. Sly put stories from his real like into the movies that he wrote. The director wanted Rambo to die at the end of the movie, but Sly refused. He says that he didn't want every Vietnam vet to believe that there was no hope for them at all.
Rambo made Sly the perfect 80's star. Arnold Schwarzenegger was his only competition. With Rambo, Sly challenged Arnie on his own turf of action movies. Sly became a force in Hollywood. Rocky III and Rocky IV show Rocky as a comic book character with comic book villains. The real Sly was lost in those movies. Sly took a hit in Rocky IV and his heart hit his chest and started to swell. He went into Intensive care, but he survives.
Sly was a polo player but had to give up due to back surgeries. He had 5 surgeries during his career. Sly retook Polo when he was 40 years old. In one game, his father speared him in the back, and he went down and injured his back. Sly wrote his own son Sage into Rocky V. The tension between father son in the movie, was drawn from Sly's real life. The movie flops at the box office. Sly does a comedy in the farce genre called "Stop! Or my mom will shoot". People did not accept him in comedies. He is the hulking action figure and goes back to his roots.
Sly does Copland with De Niro. But the director doesn't have enough faith in Sly's abilities and how he wanted to shape the movie. The audience doesn't connect with the movie. Sly decides to become a specialist in his genre. Sly revives the Rocky franchise 19 years after the first movie. Rocky Balboa is written. The movie was about dealing with how to move on. Its not about how hard you are hit, its about how hard you are hit and still keep moving forward. Life is an addition till you are 40, after that it is subtraction. Sage dies in 2012.
Sly comes up with age-appropriate action movies, when he is too old to star in Rocky or Rambo. He creates The Expendables. He was inspired by the revival of rock and roll, when thousands of people came to see the stars of the old days. Sly gathered an all star cast for his movie, a once great group from the 80's, 90's and the 2000's thrown into one pot. He got injured on the sets and never recovered from it.
Sly always felt that he was rejected by his own father. He has 3 daughters, Scarlet, Sistine and Sophia. He regrets not having given attention to his real life with his family.
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