Rocky
Rocky (
1976) is a
motion picture written by and starring
Sylvester Stallone as underdog boxer,
Rocky Balboa. It tells the rags-to-riches
American Dream story of
Italian-American "Rocky Balboa", a slightly dull-witted but good-hearted "collection agent" for a
loan shark in
Philadelphia with a penchant for
boxing who gets a shot at the world heavyweight title. It was directed by
John G. Avildsen. The fighting scene in the movie was inspired by a real-life fight between
Muhammad Ali and
Chuck Wepner. The film was an unexpected
Sleeper hit, garnishing rave reviews, and launching Stallone to mega-stardom.
Rocky Balboa is a dead-end, "bottom of the barrel" Italian guy from south
Philadelphia who is going nowhere in life. He works days as an enforcer for a loan shark and as a boxer at night. With the nation's bicentennial coming up, and scheduled contender Mac Lee Green injured, the undefeated heavyweight champion
Apollo Creed (
Carl Weathers) searches for a new opponent for the match on the nation's birthday. With all the deserving competitors unavailable for one reason or another, Creed comes up with the perfect bout: he will fight the local underdog "Italian Stallion" Rocky, and by doing so give him a chance at the world title.
Creed sees the whole thing as a big joke, a spectacle, rather than a fight. And at first, his attitude seems justified. In the time leading up to the fight, Rocky trains with crusty,
1920s-era
bantamweight fighter Mickey Goldmill, played by
Burgess Meredith, but Rocky initially shows little in the way of either ability or true desire.
However, soon Rocky falls in love with his best friend's sister, Adrian (
Talia Shire), and a newfound focus and determination is sparked within him. After rededicating himself to intense training, Rocky is truly ready to take his million-to-one shot at the title.
Nonetheless, the night before the match, Rocky admits to Adrian that he knows he cannot actually win. But the important thing is that he is going to prove that he can make it through all 15 rounds of the bout, and not be knocked out. Rocky explains:
"(I)t really don't matter if I lose this fight. It really don't matter if this guy opens my head either, 'cause all I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody's ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I'm still standin', I'm gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood." [
1]
In the first round, at the Philadelphia
Spectrum, Creed treats the match as a joke, until Rocky catches him with a left hook that throws Creed on his back and knocks him down. In his entire professional boxing career, no one had ever knocked Creed down let alone in the first minute. From that point on, Creed takes the match seriously, and the fighters beat each other bloody. Neither man will back down, even when Rocky's eyes have swelled shut, he manages to break Creed's ribs going into the 15th round. Creed hits as hard as he can, knocking Rocky down more than once, but Rocky refuses to stay down and ultimately does fight Creed for all fifteen rounds. As the fight ends, Creed, disbelieving but respectful of what Rocky has done, embraces Rocky and says to him in exhaustion, "Ain't gonna be no rematch." Rocky, having accomplished his mission, answers back, "Don't want one."
At the conclusion of the fight, Rocky has proved himself to all those who had doubted him before, including both his trainer, Mickey, and himself. True to his word about what his goal for the fight was, he shows no concern whatsoever over the judges' forthcoming decision. As reporters try to interview Rocky, he seeks only to find and embrace Adrian. Adrian finally fights her way through the crowd and into the ring and, as Creed is being announced the winner by
split decision, Rocky takes her in his arms and the two celebrate their love for one another — Rocky having demonstrated that one man can stand in the face of overwhelming odds, and in so doing, having shown himself to be a true champion.
Given the inevitable comparison between the outspoken Apollo Creed and the real-life outspoken
Muhammad Ali, one interesting detail is the cameo appearance of
Joe Frazier, a former world
heavyweight champion who fought Ali three times, as himself. Frazier accuses Creed of "dodging him" prior to the start of the match with Rocky. Stallone invited all boxing heavyweight champions to participate in the cameo, with Joe Frazier being the only one who accepted the invitation. In that year's
Academy Awards, Ali had a little comic scene of confronting Stallone onstage which ended amiably to make it clear that he was not offended by the film.
Other characters included
Burt Young as Adrian's brother, Paulie, and
Thayer David as the fight's promoter and ringside announcer. Los Angeles television sportscaster
Stu Nahan played himself.
Lloyd Kaufman, founder of the longest running independent film company
Troma, makes an appearance as a drunk.
Rocky won the
1976 Academy Award for Best Picture and earned Stallone a nomination for
Best Actor.
John G. Avildsen also won the award for
Best Director, and Richard Halsey and Scott Conrad won the
Academy Award for Film Editing. Not until
Crash 29 years later would a Best Picture recipient receive only two other awards.
The pivotal scene where Rocky discusses the fight with Adrian and decides to 'go the distance' was almost not filmed. The production was running over time and budget and the producers only allowed the scene to be shot with a single camera and only one take. Reportedly Stallone was so nervous about filming the scene in a single take that he got himself drunk in order to complete it.
Conrad's film editing award was most likely earned by the fact that the final fight scene was fought in reverse order, with the actors starting out in heavy
make-up, which eventually wore off as the scenes were shot. [
2]
The
American Film Institute placed
Rocky at number 78 of its
"100 Greatest Movies of All Time" list, and #4 at
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers.
In
2006,
Sylvester Stallone's original screenplay for
Rocky was selected by the
Writers Guild of America as the 78th best screenplay of all time.
The success of
Rocky spawned four sequels, though none were as critically acclaimed as the original ("
Rocky III" was more successful in terms of real, uninflated dollars, but only just). Production of a sixth installment in the series, to be titled
Rocky Balboa, and again starring and directed by Stallone, was announced by MGM/Sony in October 2005 and is expected to be released on December 22, 2006.[
3]
The film was made on an extremely low budget of $1.1 million, and was shot in only 28 days.
The famous dramatic ending of
Rocky was not the original ending. The ending went through a few changes and finally Stallone wrote and kept the final piece that concludes
Rocky.
One legacy of the original movie is the theme music that was composed by
Bill Conti, which was used as the theme for
Citytv Toronto newscast
CityPulse throughout the 1980s (along with cues from "
Rocky II"), and is often played at sporting events. Canadian jazz trumpeter
Maynard Ferguson put "
Gonna Fly Now" on the pop charts with an instrumental disco rendition from his 1977 album,
Conquistador. The original version of "Gonna Fly Now" (or "Gonna Fly" as it is called in the film's end credits), which underscores the training montage in the film, made it to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977.
Another legacy of the
Rocky movies is a statue of Stallone, as Rocky Balboa, that long stood in front of
Wachovia Spectrum (formerly known as the Philadelphia Spectrum), the arena where the first Balboa-Creed fight took place in the original movie. This statue was briefly moved to the top of the steps of the
Philadelphia Museum of Art in the 1990s before being moved back to the Spectrum. The statue has recently been in storage and is currently on its way back to the Art Museum area.
At the Art Museum, tourists and residents alike still make the run up the museum's front steps, the
Rocky Steps, mimicking the famous scene where Rocky sprints up the steps at the end of his training run. A set of footprints on a metal plate are embedded in the concrete at the spot where Rocky stood. Several TV shows have paid homage to the "Rocky Run", an example being "
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air".
Garrett Brown's
Steadicam, a camera attached to a weighted system of pulleys so that it would not shake while its operator ran, was used for the first time in this movie, during Rocky's training run up the flights of stairs.
The first Rocky video game was released by
Coleco for
Colecovision in the early
1980's. [
4] Another was released in
1987 for the
Sega Master System. More recently, a Rocky video game was released in 2002 for the
Nintendo Gamecube,
Sony Playstation 2, and
Microsoft Xbox, and a sequel released in 2004 for the
Sony Playstation 2 and
Microsoft Xbox.
Comedic actor
Kevin James, who is a big fan of the Rocky films, has spoofed many scenes in his sitcom "The King of Queens." In episode #24 of season 1, Doug loses his temper with Arthur and begins a screaming rampage as Arthur is leaving his house. This was taken directly from the original Rocky movie where Rocky is screaming at Mick as Mick is leaving Rocky's apartment. The scene is referenced further as Doug chases down Arthur and makes peace with him.
That above-referenced scene actually was not supposed to have any dialogue after Meredith left the house. But Stallone improvised on-the-fly with the screaming which made for a more effective scene.
Tony Burton (Apollo's trainer) is the only minor character to appear in all six Rocky films.
In
Steven J. Schneider's
1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die it says the film is "unfairly dismissed as schmaltz," while
Rolling Stone's
Peter Travers called it "corny as hell."
*
Rocky: US$117.3 millionRocky II: US$85 million
Rocky III: US$120.2 million
Rocky IV: US$125.4 million
Rocky V: US$40 millionThese figures reflect only movie theater ticket sales in the United States. The most profitable of the films by far was the original
Rocky, which had a production budget of only US$1.1 million.
*
Official Rocky Anthology site*
Movie Tour Guide.com - Maps and directions to Rocky Filming Locations*
Rocky Balboa Movie Soundboard*
BalboaPension.Org - parody-based fan fiction on the life and times of Rocky Balboa.
