It’s a familiar story often told in profiles of Sylvester Stallone. So incredible that an entire movie is coming out about this one pivotal slice of time in the subject’s life (I Play Rocky). Still, it is so fantastical and revealing about ambition, belief, tenacity, stubbornness, and gamble that it bears repeating again.
It’s 1975 and 29-year-old aspiring actor/writer Sylvester Stallone has hit bottom. After years of struggling and rejection—with only a handful of bit and supporting parts in low-budget movies to put on his resume—he’s come to a point in his life where maybe it’s time to move onto another career path.
Yet, he’d written this script about a struggling boxer who gets a freak chance at the big time that has piqued some interest. It’s called Rocky and some Hollywood big shots think it might be a great vehicle for, say, Burt Reynolds, Ryan O’Neal, James Caan or Nick Nolte.
No, Stallone said. He would play the underdog title character. It was his story.
Incredulous, the offer for the script—with no acting job for its writer—rose to $75,000 (or $450,000 in today’s money). At the time, Stallone and his pregnant wife Sasha had $80 in their bank account. Even his agent told him to take the money and write another script to star in.
No, Stallone said. He would play “Rocky”—or no one would.
At a final meeting, the last offer from the producers and studio for the script and the script alone, was $360,000—or $2.25 million today. Stomach twisting, Stallone stood up. “I have to play Rocky.” And walked out of the room.
Well, most people know what happened next after Rocky came out in 1976. And at the next year’s Academy Award ceremony, it won Best Picture—beating out Taxi Driver, Network and All the President’s Men. And the career of one of the industry’s biggest and longest lasting movie stars was launched.
That combination of belief and balls—and his life up to that point—forms the crux of Stallone’s book The Steps: A Memoir (304 pp., $32.50. William Morrow). It’s title inspired by the concrete steps leading to the entrance of the Philadelphia Art Museum, which Rocky memorably races up to Bill Conti’s inspiring score and John Avildsen’s direction.
As the book opens, Sylvester Stallone grew up poor in a cold water flat in Hell’s Kitchen— when the name meant a dangerous New York neighborhood and not a cooking competition show.
His very birth was difficult, so a doctor used forceps to bring him out, crushing some nerves in the process and leaving his face partially paralyzed and with a drooping mouth and vocal slur he carries to this day. His violent, bitter, and volatile parents were not much interested in parenting, and sent him to live three years of his childhood in a boardinghouse across town. They reappear in Stallone’s life throughout the book, though never warmly or with good intentions.
Arriving in New York 1969 with $80 in his pocket and nowhere to live, Stallone harbored vague dreams of being an actor. Many shitty jobs and bad auditions followed, until he landed a gig as a theater usher. There, he’d watch films repeatedly (including M*A*S*H a reported 75 times), record the dialogue, then go home and hand write the script out to study what made movies work.
Some of the book’s most vivid writing concerns Stallone’s descriptions of dead-end auditions and of the squalor he lived in at various dump rooms and homes. Like waking up mornings to find a dozen dead roaches floating in his toilet. Or sleeping on the bed he made of scores of flattened pizza boxes. He would even shower in full clothes so as to wash both his body and his garments at the same time and save money.
After several years of grinding and getting nowhere, Stallone, Sasha, and their bullmastiff dog Butkus head out for new possibilities to California in a junk car (that Stallone’s father nevertheless charges him $40 for because nothing is free). Misadventures follow, including a complete engine breakdown. After which they are saved by a family of Mexicans who spoke little English but knew auto maintenance.
They make it to California, and struggle more. And in a feverish three-day, non-stop session, Stallone pounds out a first draft of an entirely new script. About this down and out boxer.
In the latter part of the book, there are amusing anecdotes about casting the rest of the Rocky actors with Talia Shire, Burgess Meredith, Carl Weathers, and Burt Young. And self-effacing tales of Stallone—who had never set foot in a boxing ring—trying to add muscle and train to convincingly play a fighter.
More creative conflicts follow on what was supposed to be a B-picture, made on a budget of $900,000, with only 28 days to film. But also creativity. Those scenes of Rocky running on the streets of Philadelphia and through the Italian market? Avildsen couldn’t afford actual permits, so it was filmed quickly and illegally. The cheers and jeers of people are real. One guy even throws an orange at Stallone. He deftly catches it without missing a step.
Make no mistake, The Steps is not the birth-to-80-years old comprehensive biography or autobiography of Sylvester Stallone. That has yet to be written. But in chronicling a gritty tale of belief and survival in which man and character almost become one, Stallone writes here with a clarity, depth, and sincerity that may come as a surprise to those who only know the caricature of the man or his onscreen roles. And Rocky Balboa becomes a strong metaphor for perseverance and grit in anybody’s life.
