Lines about Rocky: Izvestia publishes an excerpt from Stallone's autobiography
The film franchise about the loser boxer Rocky Balboa has brought Sylvester Stallone three Oscar statuettes, millions of dollars and immortal fame. In his memoirs, the actor recalls a difficult childhood with an abusive father and an emotionally distant mother, years of poverty and humiliation, working as a lion cage cleaner, an usher at a cinema, and a fish carver at a grocery store. The book is published by Alpina Publishing house on November 2. Izvestia exclusively publishes a fragment of his autobiography.
Sylvester Stallone. "The steps." The fragment
I imagined life as a boxing ring. When you decide to go out for him, life will hurt you if you don't fight. You will be beaten, knocked down. But you have no right to complain. You went out there yourself, so now figure out how to survive.
This character definitely has to be a fighter, no matter what his dreams are. What if he's a fighter in the truest sense of the word? Maybe he's a boxer? I thought.
I desperately wanted to play such a role. A role that could embody the image of a Forgotten Man. Society has labeled him a thug, but at heart he is a good guy who, like everyone else, is trying his best to build a decent life and get a legitimate portion of respect. I've never seen such a character before. And I certainly would never have gotten a role like this if I hadn't written it myself.
For a few moments, I wondered if everything I'd been through in my life was part of some kind of preordained plan. The plan was to take me through the bottom of the deepest bottom, where the only chance of survival was to figure out how to show everyone, including myself, what each of us has hidden deep inside.
Whether that was true or not, time was running out.
I started scribbling like crazy. My brain was on fire. I smoked cigarette after cigarette and drank liters of black coffee to stay awake and keep my mind clear. When my hands cramped—and after hours of writing, this was not surprising—I stood up, put my palms on the floor, stepped on my fingers, and stood until they straightened.
I believe in doing everything quickly. I know that everything I create will be imperfect, but my goal is to keep up the pace. Fan the fire! I'm afraid that if I slow down, doubts may creep in, and this will lead to disaster. That's why I keep pushing myself to the limit to get my idea to the finish line as quickly as possible. Many writers work completely differently. They strive to make everything perfect. But not me. I know that I can always come back to correct mistakes and refine the idea. For me, the inner fire is more important, I need a passion for the "big idea" that will push out all the right words.
Winston Churchill once said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. I feel about the same way about writing. Writing is painful. This is a fight that you want to end as soon as possible. The longer I write, the less I admire the story or idea, and the more technical, the more mechanical the writing process begins to seem. Many writers adore him, but I'm not one of them.
When the sun came up, I was still writing. Sasha woke up and asked if I was okay. I mumbled something unintelligible, saying that everything was fine. I was in a daze. She brought me food, but I was in the flow, and hunger didn't bother me. I handed her about 40 handwritten pages and asked her to start typing them out. After writing for hours, my scribbles were, let's say, almost impossible to decipher—even for myself.
I plowed non-stop for two and a half more days. Cigarette after cigarette. More coffee. The pages flew one after the other. My hands were cramping.
By the middle of the third day of non-stop work, I reached the finish line. I had a first draft of the script, which I called Rocky. It was raw, that's for sure, but everything was in place, right in front of me. I jumped up and shouted, "Yes! Yes! Yes!", and then he fell to his knees and began to knead his exhausted fingers. It took Sasha the rest of the day to reprint the last pages. I was sitting on the floor, my head propped on my hand, my brain completely burned out, and that's the last thing I remember. I fell into a coma-like sleep.
I woke up a few hours later. I sat down and looked around. Sasha was not there. I didn't hear the sound of a typewriter. She must have finished. I went into the bedroom and leaned against the door frame.
"Well, what do you say?"
She looked at me, looking away.
— What do you think, Sasha?
"I don't know," she replied, not looking me in the eye.
"I don't know?" What does it mean? Come on, tell me.
—I really...— she said softly.
- what?
"I don't like him."
I was speechless.
- why?
"He's just a bully,— she said. — Knocks out debts and does not do anything good. He's kind of mean.
It was the exact opposite of what I had planned and expected.
Was she right?
It was a punch in the gut.
I prayed that she was wrong.
Convinced that this was my last chance, I sat down heavily on a kitchen chair and clenched my fists. What did I miss? Did you overestimate this story? Was he in too much of a hurry to complete it? I took the manuscript and began to read it slowly.
Sasha was right…
* * *
Many people think that the inspiration for Rocky's image was Muhammad Ali's fight with Chuck Wepner. This is not the case at all. The real inspiration was a real heavyweight champion named Rocky Marciano, who fought in the late 1940s and early 1950s when I was still a kid. Marciano was exactly my size. The son of Italian immigrants, who grew up in a harsh industrial town. He only started boxing at the age of 25, which is unthinkable for champions. And he finished his career undefeated — the only heavyweight in history who succeeded. The perfect prototype for the hero I was creating. Besides, Rocky's name was right at hand. It couldn't be better.
Rocky Marciano
One of the problems with the first option was that it was impossible to find a single good and noble feature in Rocky. Those that were available were mostly repulsive. He was a former club fighter, and now he was making a couple of bucks by knocking out debts for a loan shark. People avoided him. I remember describing his face as badly disfigured. His nose was repeatedly broken, and there were rough scars on his forehead. He looked terrifying. His face is a real map of pain and failure. The only thing that saved him in any way was the care of a shy local girl named Adrian.
Initially, I placed a large-scale family conflict in the center of the story. Adrian was Jewish, so her mother hated Italian Rocky. Her brother Paul, a disgruntled accountant, considered Rocky a savage. However, Paul didn't care who his sister was dating, because to him, Adrian was a plain old maid, a worthless creature. Rocky didn't care, he just liked being around her. He thought she was beautiful and constantly protected her from her loud mother, who made Adrian feel like a jerk.
At the very end of this crooked first option, we learn that the loan shark Mr. Gazzo, for whom Rocky works, is actually his stepbrother. Gazzo gets into big trouble with the local gangsters, who almost beat him to death. Rocky appears at the very last moment and smears the gangsters on the pavement. As a reward, Rocky's loan shark stepbrother gives him some money so that he can buy out half of the share in the rundown pet store where Adrian works, and they live happily ever after.
Yes, now, looking at it in the light of day with a sober look, I realized that the script was no good. A complete failure. There was a lack of passion, compassion, empathy — in fact, everything you need if you want to catch the viewer alive. Besides, not much happened in this first version of Rocky. The action developed in an hour by a teaspoon. It was a little arthouse movie.
A shot from the movie "Rocky"
I had to be honest with myself again. The real problem with the first version of Rocky was that there was not a single likable feature in the hero, no dreams, no ambitions. He's resigned himself to flushing his life down the toilet—that's not something you really want to root for, is it? All those moments in which, as it seemed to me, the audience could recognize themselves were missing here.
Rocky's story needed to be expanded.
The "new" Rocky must have had a purpose in life sometime, no matter how realistic. At the time of our acquaintance with him, he should be alone. No one who would like to help him. Nothing and no one that he would be willing to fight for.
What if we make him a third‑rate boxer who never really gave his best and wasted precious time when he was young and at his peak? Many people could recognize themselves in this. We all dream of a second chance, don't we? But for it to work, you had to see Rocky in battle. Adding boxing scenes would inflate the budget, but it made the character much closer to the viewer.
Returning to the table, I began to rewrite the text. It was immediately clear that I now had a lot more room to maneuver. Interactions with new characters expanded Rocky's small world in all directions. Mickey's gym and the colorful characters that came with it appeared. There was a fight promoter and, of course, the amazing Apollo Creed and his team.
A shot from the movie "Rocky"
And then something wonderful happened. A battered boxer named Chuck Wepner went up against Muhammad Ali in a fight for the world heavyweight title. Wepner was a 40-1 outsider with no chance of winning, but he held out against Ali until the very end of the 15th and last round and knocked him down in the ninth (although technically it was a tripwire). It was all over the news.
It was too good to be true. Even if this fight had absolutely nothing to do with my story, it gave credibility to the very idea: a champion gives a chance to a loser, and a hopeless boxer is really capable of forcing a tough fight on a champion. The idea that a broken boxer from the street could stand up to the most famous fighter in the world was no longer just a fantasy — now it reflected reality.
I also believed that ordinary people could, in a sense, recognize themselves in a hero who takes on an incredibly difficult task and, even if nothing works out, has the right to be proud of themselves and look forward to the future with hope.
I finished rewriting the script in record time. Sasha spent another half day retyping, and I asked her again what she thought.
This time, she was thrilled.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
