Sylvester Stallone Once Shared Why He Was Offended by Talks That ‘Rocky II’ Saved His Career
Sylvester Stallone’s career took off after writing and starring in the first Rocky. The actor was in the process of carving out a nice career for himself after the Oscar-winning drama. But despite his growing film resume, many considered Rocky II his comeback film. It wasn’t an attitude that Stallone appreciated.
Sylvester Stallone didn’t think his career needed saving with ‘Rocky II’
Stallone once owed a lot of his success to the Rocky franchise. Both the movie’s titular character, and the actor himself, became household names after it first hit theaters. But ironically, Stallone felt that Rocky’s momentum made it easier to fail in the eyes of critics. He felt the film might’ve set expectations way too high for his career. Stallone believed that other films he’d done were measured with the same metrics used for Rocky.
“What it was…after Rocky was such an enormous success, anything was gonna be an anticlimax. I made FIST, which people think was a flop. It made $28 million. I made Paradise Alley. Not as much, but it’s into profit,” Stallone once told Roger Ebert.
Stallone believed the media played a part in manipulating expectations in an attempt to sabotage the actor’s winning streak.
“You know what I think happened? After Rocky, I was almost set up in the eyes of the media to make a flop. The last two years have been pretty tough, public image wise. I said some things that did not exactly endear me. My ego got blown out of proportion,” Stallone said.
This all led to others labeling Rocky II as the film to salvage Stallone’s career. But this was something the actor took offense to.
“They all ask me, Will Rocky II save your career? Is this my comeback, they wanna know? Will it pull my career out of the toilet? I didn’t think I was doin’ so bad. I’ve never made a film that lost money. If Rocky II was a comeback, I coulda made it a lot more commercial, Like, Rocky coulda been an astronaut,” he quipped.
Sylvester Stallone admitted he became ‘insufferable’ after doing ‘Rocky’
Stallone confided that all the success and fame he achieved with Rocky had a negative impact on him. His ego grew to the point where he became insufferable.
“I abused power badly,” Stallone once said according to BBC.
He also added how ashamed he was with the way he carried himself in public at the height of his Rocky stardom.
“I read some of the interviews I gave now and wish I could go back and punch myself in the face,” he said.
The turning point came with the feature Paradise Alley. It was Stallone’s directorial debut that he both wrote and starred in, focusing on the world of professional wrestling. The movie didn’t fair very well financially or critically, which was a wake-up call for Stallone at the time. He attended a first-day showing of the movie, and saw only two people in the audience.
“And one of them was asleep,” Stallone remembered.
But Stallone felt the film’s performance was largely due to forces beyond his control.
“I’ll never forgive myself for the way I allowed myself to be manipulated during the editing of that film,” he said. “There were a lot of scenes in there to give atmosphere and character, and they wanted them out just to speed things along. They removed 40 scenes, altogether. I put 10 of them back in for the version shown on TV. For example, the whole sequence of the soldier without legs, sitting on a bar eating peanuts.”
Sylvester Stallone took a pounding from Carl Weathers in ‘Rocky II’
Stallone was willing to put his body on the line for the sake of Rocky II. The movie famously had him going up against Carl Weathers’ Apollo Creed in a rematch. Although it was a scripted bout, Stallone shared that a lot of the injuries he sustained were real.
“Just what I said. I’m real messed up inside. When we were filming Rocky II, I took a terrible beating. I let Carl Weathers really pound me. It was the most gruelling thing I’ve ever been through. Broken bones, the works. The fight’s four times as long and has eight times as many punches as the first one. A lot of those shots aren’t faked. It’s as hard to learn not to hit somehow as to hit them, Right now my health is pretty bad,” he said.
But Stallone asserted that he planned to take that kind of physical abuse in his Rocky movies for authenticity.
“Because I have to. I can’t make the movie without a fight. The fight has to look right or the movie doesn’t end right,” he said.
