Has there ever been an entertainer more linked with his screen characters than Sylvester Stallone? Sly himself admits when he’s in Philadelphia he’s referred to simply as Rocky. And perhaps most impressive is that Stallone fused reality with fiction to create a miraculous comeback that only seems to happen in the realm of movies – resurrecting Rocky Balboa thirty years after our first introduction to him, followed by a return of John Rambo twenty years after last seen on film. Maybe the greatest underdog story of our time isn’t Rocky, but Rocky’s own creator.
He was raised in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, adopting the tough guy persona with a heart that would bring him to cinematic greatness down the road. In the 1970s he was a bit actor, credited in Woody Allen’s comic classic “Bananas” as “Subway Thug #1.” Roger Corman utilized him a couple times, as Machine Gun Joe Viterbo in “Death Race 2000,” and in a supporting role in “Capone.” Frustrated and feeling the pressure of an unrealized career, Sly was inspired by a Muhammad Ali-Chuck Wepner fight in Cleveland and quickly wrote “Rocky.” Demanding he take on the role himself, the gamble paid off – the film won the Best Picture Oscar for 1976 and established Sly, at the age of 30, as the rising star of the 70s. A new “Rocky” would return every three years over the next decade, and meanwhile Stallone tried his hands at various projects – even directing the “Saturday Night Fever” sequel “Staying Alive” in 1983.
By the 1980s. Stallone rivaled Governor Schwarzenegger as the biggest American action star of the decade. Between the proverbial “Rambo” and “Rocky” movies, there’s “Cobra,” “Over the Top,” and “Lock Up.” A marriage to Brigitte Nielsen proved short-lived and by 1990, with “Rocky V” the bottom of the barrel and the attempts at comedies like “Oscar” and “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot” failures, once again Sly was looking for a hit. The action movies of the mid-decade were panned critically, and critics and audiences alike overlooked his fine performance in “Cop Land.” He couldn’t get a break, and with “Get Carter” and “Driven” in the early 2000s generating nothing, Stallone’s next films were direct-to-DVD fares.
Approaching sixty, television kept him busy with “The Contender,” and in 2005, the tide finally turned. Incredibly, MGM greenlit Stallone to write, direct, and star in the final Rocky saga, “Rocky Balboa.” The film, a surprise hit both commercially and critically, guaranteed Stallone’s next outing, “John Rambo.” This return to his iconic characters as aging men has earned Sly new respect, and now looks to write and direct more personal pictures in the twilight of his career. He has embodied what his great characters have stood for in the face of criticism and hostility. This underdog, then, truly knows how to stay alive.
Badass Bracket – Rambo
In 2007, we created a Badass Bracket for 32 of the most badass characters from the movies and TV that we could think of. It was pretty hard narrowing it down to that number, but we picked Rambo for obvious reasons. He’s one of the iconic badasses in movie history. Rambo won several key battles before running into Bruce Lee.
Sylvester Stallone, “First Blood”
Behold, the mother of all Soldiers Who Never Stopped Fighting The War. If John Rambo, a Special Forces vet in the Vietnam War, wasn’t already having difficulty adjusting to civilian life, he sure as hell was when small-town sheriffs with Texas-sized egos went after him. He let the sheriff and his minions off easy, merely wounding them (it’s not Rambo’s fault that one bonehead fell out of the helicopter). When he goes back to Vietnam to look for POWs, however, barely a soul lives to tell the tale, with no less than 59 confirmed kills. As for his trip to Afghanistan in 1988, well, let’s just say that they’re still cleaning up the wreckage.Definitive badass moment: When he rigs the trap in the woods that plunges a pair of arrow-tipped stakes into the legs of one of his pursuers.
Classic badass line: “I could have killed ’em all, I could kill you. In town you’re the law, out here it’s me. Don’t push it. Don’t push it or I’ll give you a war you won’t believe. Let it go. Let it go.”
Seed: #3
Occupation: Ex-Special Forces
Strengths: Extremely resourceful, could turn a piece of bark into a deadly weapon
Weaknesses: Mental instability could be used as a weapon against him
Bracket History: Defeated #6 Rooster Cogburn in round 3, 77%-23% / Defeated #14 Tommy DeVito in round 2, 75%-25%
Sly on the Screen
He’s Stud in his 1970 screen debut, “The Party at Kitty and Stud’s,” a subway thug in “Bananas,” and Stanley Rosiello in “The Lord’s of Flatbush.” After “Rocky,” he’s the Teamsters leader in “F.I.S.T.” and the star in his first directed film, “Paradise Alley.” He played a New York detective opposite Billy Dee Williams in “Nighthawks” and a member of the soccer squad competing against Nazis in “Victory.” In between the various “Rambo” and “Rocky” movies of the 80s, there’s “Rhinestone,” “Cobra,” “Over the Top” and “Lock Up.” He’s Kurt Russell’s partner in “Tango & Cash,” Snaps Provolone in “Oscar” and Gabe Walker in “Cliffhanger,” which he also co-wrote. “Demolition Man,” “The Specialist,” “Judge Dredd,” “Assassins,” and “Daylight” followed. Sly worked alongside Rober De Niro, Harvey Keitel and Ray Liotta in “Cop Land,” voiced Weaver in “Antz” and is the evil Toymaker in “Spy Kids 3-D.” More recently, Sly reprised his most famous roles in “Rocky Balboa” and “Rambo,” and appears in the action star-packed “Expendables” franchise.
Interviews
NY Times Interview
Stallone is 80 here and he just released his new memoir, and this interview is quite revealing. He’s brutally honest about his struggles and regrets.
Sly Says
On rejection:
“I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.”
On seizing the day:
“Once is a man’s life, for one mortal moment, he must make a grab for immorality; if not, he has not lived.”
On filming the end of “Rocky Balboa”:
“It was very heavy for me. It was like saying goodbye to Sylvester Stallone.”