Quentin Tarantino Once Shared He Found Sylvester Stallone’s ‘Rocky’ Very Influential to His Career
Quentin Tarantino found inspiration from a lot of sources when he became a filmmaker. But seeing what Sylvester Stallone did with Rocky had a significant impact on him as a youth.
How Sylvester Stallone inspired Quentin Tarantino
Sylvester Stallone has been very candid about the difficulties and challenges he faced getting Rocky to the big screen. Stallone wrote the Rocky script in 3 days out of desperation before bargaining with the studio to star in the feature. It was a success story that motivated many in the film industry such as Matt Damon.
It also had a hand in inspiring Tarantino’s own passions. So much so that he cheered Stallone on when Rocky was nominated for best picture.
“Rocky was a very important movie to me when I saw it at 12 or 13. It didn’t make me want to be a filmmaker, but it made me want to be involved in film. Stallone’s whole story of writing the Rocky screenplay was influential to me. He was like a people’s champion as far as I was concerned. I remember rooting for him at the Academy Awards, like somebody had snuck into Hollywood,” Stallone once told Inquirer.
Tarantino believed his success with his sophomore feature gave him the same validation that Stallone had with Rocky.
“When I did Pulp Fiction, I felt a similar way, like I had somehow gotten across the wall,” he said.
Sylvester Stallone turned down working with Quentin Tarantino twice
Stallone has always been interested in teaming up with Tarantino for a project. There were rumors years ago that Stallone was wanted for Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, alongside Schwarzenegger. But Tarantino would debunk those claims in an interview with Empire (via Playlist).
“I never threw any of those names around, alright,” Tarantino said.
In an interview with Ain’t It Cool News, Stallone remarked that he would’ve jumped at the chance to be in the film. He also confided they probably would’ve already collaborated on a different project if it wasn’t for scheduling issues.
“I would love to work with Quentin Tarantino and had heard rumors about this World War II epic. I would be insane not to work with such a brilliant filmmaker. I was hoping to work with Quentin in his new Grindhouse film, but unfortunately Rocky and Rambo duties prevented that from happening,” Stallone said.
Speaking to Maclean’s, Stallone went into a little more detail about his reasoning for rejecting Stallone’s Death Proof. But it also turned out that Death Proof wasn’t the only Tarantino project that he turned down.
“The De Niro part in Jackie Brown. And Grindhouse, the part Kurt Russell did—I said, ‘There’s no way. I have two daughters, and this fellow, his hobby is putting teenagers in his car and smashing them into a wall. That’s not going to work,'” Stallone said.
Quentin Tarantino called out Sylvester Stallone for making ‘Rambo’
Although a fan of Stallone’s, Tarantino hasn’t always enjoyed the decisions The Expendables star has made in films. Tarantino was a fan of the novel Stallone’s Rambo: First Blood is based on. Stallone’s adaptation of the feature is fairly faithful, but he deviated from the novel by keeping John Rambo alive. It was a decision that Tarantino didn’t agree with.
“Quentin Tarantino said, ‘You’re a coward, you should have killed him!’ I said, ‘Quentin, you’re a lunatic. I want to do some sequels, brother,’” Stallone said.
By not killing off Rambo, Stallone made a franchise out of the character. But the series seems to have reached a conclusion so far with Stallone’s 2019 feature Rambo: Last Blood.
