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Curtis is being a little unfair because its unlikely that Sly just at down at his typewriter for three days and an Oscar-winning script suddenly appeared.
Back in 1976, few people gave him the time of day. He was a relative unknown who made a living from bit parts. The Italian Stallion had popped up as a thug in Woody Allen's Bananas and as the main villain in low-budget classic Death Race 2000.
He'd also made a few films more at home on late night Channel 5, but the less said about them, the better. Sly was the perfect example of the American dream. An everyday Joe who suffered from Bells palsy, hence the slight disfigurement to his face. He knew that if he ever wanted to hit the big time, it was going to take more than just starring as a thug in a series of hit and miss movies. If he could prove himself as a scriptwriter and eventual director, then he would have enough power to put his vision on screen.
And so Stallone knocked up his age-old tale of an underdog boxer getting a shot at the big time against impossible circumstances.
As with all such movies, there had to be a working class hero, a Ben Kenobi-style mentor (okay, this was a year before Star Wars was released but you get the picture). There also had to be a love interest who would give him the courage to go on when things looked bleak and a mighty opposition to flesh out the David and Goliath-style clash.
With Stallone naturally taking the title role, Burgess Meredith shrugged off his Penguin persona from the Batman series as crusty old trainer, Mickey; Francis Ford Coppola's sister Talia Shire - still basking in the glory of the first two Godfather movies - played love interest, Adrian and Carl Weathers made a formidable opponent for his role as Apollo Creed.
Rocky may be a boxing movie on the surface, but strip off the boxing gloves and change the setting and you could set the whole thing in a Roman arena and call it Gladiator or set it in the future and call it Rollerball.
Of all Stallone characters that would follow - John Rambo, Judge Dredd, Kit Whatisname from Daylight -Rocky Balboa is the template for all Sly heroes. A bit thick, not too well read but with a good heart and the ability to make his actions speak louder than his words.
Many Stallone offerings may leave you cold with their relentless politics - read between the lines in Rocky IV and Rambo and you may as well be watching an advert for a US party trying to get into office. However, its often worth suffering a bit of preaching as the protracted finale that is Rocky II can leave even a rabid anti-boxing fan slack of jaw with its superbly staged fight scenes.
By the Nineties, Sly grew tired of playing the same old one dimensional heroes and yearned for more high fibre roles instead of the candy floss he was being offered.
Which is why he made CopLand, the 1998 drama which found Sly putting on the pounds and proving that in case you never knew or had forgotten, yes he is quite a good actor and with moneymen keen to give him huge sums of cash to write, direct and star in most of the sequels, who can blame him for reheating the Rocky formula four times?
© 2000 Roger Crow
