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[shutter clicks]
[cheering]
[orchestral music]
- [Sylvester] It was early in the morning
on the streets of Philadelphia.
It was freezing cold.
And I just started to feel something welling inside.
And they go, "Sly, are you ready?"
I go, "I'm not.
"But Rocky is."
[inspirational orchestral music]
I was a complete unknown, even unknown to myself.
And I had this idea.
A lot of people were feeling kind of the way I was,
going nowhere fast.
And I didn't know whether I had it or not.
So I wrote this story about an underdog,
a person who wasn't very appreciated,
and I was given a break by United Artist
and now, you had to put up or shut up,
so I couldn't believe my good fortune
and every day we'd go to the studio
and work on the script a littlebit.
Of course, I had a bit of an odd personality I guess.
Maybe I was born to play this part, I don't know,
but it just seemed to fit into all the things
that I sort of believed in.
Anyway, we started working on
experimental ideas about boxing.
There had been many boxing filmslike,
maybe over 300 made in Hollywood
and they weren't very successfulso
I couldn't believe my good luck here
when they're doing a boxing film about this character.
But the point is, it wasn't a boxing film.
It was a story about obsolescence,
about not getting an opportunityin life,
and more importantly, eventually, a serious love story.
And he happens to be a boxer.
So the relationship comes a little bit later on
but it's the key to the whole movie.
John Avildsen in the background.
He always took these, he's driving me crazy
with these eight millimeter films
but here we are, so I'm glad he did it.
But at the time I thought, what a waste of film.
Now, Mike Westmore, who was a great, great, great
makeup artist, part of the Westmore family,
he started doing all of the experiments.
Here again, I'm just overdoing everything.
Makeup tests.
And it was great, but I ended up with barely any eyebrows
left the rest of my life, so there is that.
At one time I actually wanted Rocky to look
very, very punchy and I thought,
why don't you glue my nose to the side of my face?
So they got this kind of colostomy bad glue
and it was so bad, it looked like a cartoon,
like I had run into a wall like Gumby.
So anyway as you can see, Itook things to kind of extremes.
I mean, it looks like a lost clam.
We got lucky with Burgess Meredith
who was a world class actor with 50 years experience
and he took it very serious.
He was fantastic and developed his character
that was based on a real character
and he had all the mannerisms.
'Cause I did real good last night,
and you should've seen me.
- Big deal.
- You should've seen me, too.
- Hey, kid.
You ever think about retiring?
- No.
- You think about it.
- [Sylvester] My friend Stan Shaw in the back.
Great guy.
[dramatic music]
I didn't know anything.
You know, I talked a good game like, yeah, I'm a good boxer.
I didn't know how to box anything, except maybe oranges.
But I was willing to try.
The character was not supposed to be a gifted fighter.
He was gifted in other ways.
He just could take anincredible amount of punishment,
and he was fighting for an ideal.
He had no allusions that he was a winner,
he just wanted an opportunity.
Then we came across this amazing guy, Carl Weathers,
the greatest film boxer of all time.
This man could move.
Well, he was a world class athlete and a great actor,
but God, could he move.
This is us really beginning to figure it out.
There was a situation happening.
They had hired a choreographer
and the choreographer was used to doing old-fashioned films
like you hit me, I hit you, you hit me, I hit you.
And that's what was normally done in a closeup of two guys
just sort of, as we say, shoe-shining.
One-two, one-two, one-two, one-two.
And I thought you know, let's try to do something different.
Oh, look who just popped up.
My brother.
He was a great singer, is a great singer,
and I thought well,since I can't affordanyone else,
I'll use him.
♪ I said I been told by
♪ Do do do do
♪ Some people and they all
Now here's him in the ring,
really showing his love and appreciation for the job.
Appreciate it, like start tackling me, knocking me down.
Of course I'm trying to make him feel good here
by getting a concussion.
Back to Carl, he's improving a great deal.
And I said to the stunt coordinator,
I said, "Why doesn't Carl come out
"and hit me like four jabs on the right?
He goes, "That isn't the way it is."
I said, "Well how about three jabs on the right?"
He goes, "No, just follow my thing."
I said, "Well, I wanna see something different."
He goes, "Okay.
"I quit."
So he left, and I was stuck,
and Irwin looked at me like hey, who are you to...
Well this is the guy actually right before he left.
His name was I think Stackler or something like that.
Nice guy, but he had his
old-fashioned way of doing something,
and I wanted it to look as close to real as possible,
and usually boxing films,
the actors really were not in any kind of great shape
and they didn't work any kind of choreography,
it was sort of done on the fly.
You hit me, I hit you,
and no one was ever in really excellent shape
so we started writing it up.
The director said hey, why don't you write it out?
And I thought okay, you mean like a dance?
Absolutely like a dance.
Then we hired Jimmy Nickerson
and he got in some semi-pros here
who blocked out the actual real boxing
and I would study it and go hmm,
that's believable, that's believable.
And then I started to borrow things
from the world's greatest fights
and condense them into moments in our film.
So everything you've ever seen in Rocky
has actually happened before.
In the back there's famous Gene LeBell,
world famous stuntman and Judo champion.
This is all practice footage,
and he's working on Jimmy Nickerson
who insists on him actually hitting him a lot,
which I don't know what was going through Jimmy's head.
He actually did get knocked out.
There's Gene LeBell practicing.
He's overacting as his [laughs]
as a referee.
I never saw a referee get into a full squat,
but why not?
This is footage that was never seen in the movie.
It was supposed to be in the movie.
Rocky is watching Apollo knock all these people out.
Mickey is going, "You don't have a chance," basically.
This is a real fighter named Sonny Shields,
father of the world class fighter named Randy Shields.
He thought Carl was just an actor,
I said he's a powerful man, and he blasted him,
and eventually knocked him down again, for real.
We never used this footage, which is unfortunate.
It was a work in progress.
So in between setups, I would constantly be re-writing
and re-writing [laughs]
and trying to make this thing work
for the budget that we had, which was nothing.
And our locations were pretty,
you know, pretty sparse.
But you know, I think that worked out for the best.
I hadn't figured out Rocky's color combination,
so this is just us practicing basically choreography
and makeup tests.
And you can see like the ropes hanging on the ground.
This was again, just for us,
too much smoke or too much makeup,
we were trying to figure out.
Like this.
Hey, anybody want a hamburger?
How you doin'?
Like, little bit of overacting
putting the cart in front of the horse here.
I think Carl again, this was mostly a makeup test.
This place was freezing by the way,
it was in the dead of winter, so.
It was not conducive to moving around a lot.
But again, we did what we could
because we were borrowing the Olympic Auditorium.
And we're seeing how close we could get with the punches.
Those are actual eight ounce gloves
that are not doctored up,
and when you get hit with them, it's...
My eye is closed, your depth perception
is way off.
So this is what these rehearsals helped with,
figuring out what works and what doesn't work.
Oh there's my father.
We're sitting around before the film
kind of figuring out thelogistics with the set designer
and it was great to be part of all of this.
I didn't know what I was doing, but it sounded good
and it looked good.
And we were pretty passionate about it.
But really there's something good
about not knowing everything,
you're just throwing yourself headlong into it.
Made my father the bell ringer, that was interesting.
He'd always ring the bell about 20 seconds late
and I would take a beating.
And I kept going, is this kind of Freudian by any chance?
That's me wearing my incredibly expensive York shirt.
Kind of hung up on the tank tops at the time,
I don't know why.
Storyboards are something I'd never seen before.
It was very interesting.
It was laid out what we were supposed to do.
This whole kind of ritual of twomen
getting ready to face one another,
Rocky being incredibly inferior
and Carl, or Apollo Creed, just taking it as another day
in the life of a champion, no big deal.
But all these maneuvers here like the Vick's
and the greasing up, this is pretty much
what we were taught by authentictrainers.
Rocky knows he's basically going to get slaughtered
so he's just praying he doesn't get hurt too much.
And Carl, this is the first time we actually see him
get serious in the film as Apollo Creed.
You won't believe this camera.
This is so gigantic.
Everything we had was, I don't know,
just scraping things together.
This gigantic camera, that we had to lash to the car.
They don't even exist anymore.
This fella here, his name was Jimmy Gambina,
he was also a trainer, his father's a trainer,
and I thought I'd put him in a movie
'cause he was really some kind of character.
And it worked out.
- Don't you think you oughta take a rest?
- No, my back is hurt.
- Your back?
- My back is hurt.
You deaf?
- No, I'm short.
- [Sylvester] As I was getting prepared again,
me being very mature between takes,
this is how I prepare for a movie,
by chasing Adrian with a meat cleaver.
You think it's a little odd perhaps.
We tried to keep it loose.
It was a lot of fun in a way, and I tend to
not want to walk around all moody, and I just try to
keep it relaxed 'cause if you'rerelaxed,
the rest of the crew is relaxed.
And then you turn it on when youhave to,
so you can see me with Joe Spinell who played Mr. Gazzo
and John Avildsen, makeup man Mike Westmore,
and we're just having a good time.
That hat was a real bone of contention.
Nobody wanted me to wear the hat.
They wanted me to just be, you know, bareheaded.
I go, [groans]
So there was a store there and I bought the hat,
there's the director's children,
bought that hat for like $3
and I wanna wear the hat.
And the producer goes, "You can't wear this hat."
and I go, "Why?"
He says, "Because,
"Gene Hackman wore it in French Connection."
I says, "So, that's the end of hats?
"So, hats are banned?"
I said, "It kind of tops off the character."
And I just went ahead and used the hat.
I'd never seen a hat like it,
it was like this cheap, felt, cardboard hat,
but it just worked perfectly,
and I think made a great impression on the character.
I think it just set the whole thing like a suit of armor.
It was a costume that he was sort of hiding behind.
And then when you see him put on the glasses
like they should realize, he's not this real tough specimen,
he's kind of nerdy in a way.
Oh yeah, this is us in between takes, just hanging out.
This is a scene that was amazing.
I wrote it for 300 extras.
And Adrian was supposed to be taken out on the ice
by this incredible ice skater and he's showing off
and I'm sort of humiliated
and then I get into sort of a beef with the fella.
I show up on the set, they said,
"Well, we've had to cut the extras back a little bit."
I go, "To what?"
He goes, "To none."
You're kidding me!
How about a heads up?
So I went back and I started re-writing immediately
and, well, the proof is in the pudding.
It became just the two of us on the ice
and since I can't ice skate, Rocky runs alongside of her.
That's George Memmoli who was a great character,
actor and a friend,
and it turned out to be a thousand times better
if there had been a big, big crowd here.
So, again, taking the negative and making it a positive.
Got very lucky on that day.
But that scene sort of set the tone for Rocky's first date.
He wasn't used to you know, being very... [laughs]
Well we'll just say sophisticated,
but I think that was part of his charm was his honesty.
No it's okay, it's okay.
Hey listen, are you closed to the general public,
or are you just closed toeverybody, you know what I mean?
You can see here, we really struggling.
She was not exactly you know, Ice Capades either.
We're just struggling out there which I thought
kind of reflected on who they were, too.
It's like, neither one of them is very graceful in life.
But together, they're a perfect fit, they really really are.
I almost broke my neck on this about 10 times.
This turned out to be very, verygood.
You can see where John's rehearsals
were absolutely duplicated in reality,
so it was a perfect thing.
I tell you, things get pretty rough in the rink.
Again, this is the makeup with Mike Westmore
and we'd be running lines here.
So we've hit the ground running.
I like to learn a lot of dialogue
a long time before the production
so you can let it go and ad lib
and then come back to the script.
And Burgess, who's a classicallytrained actor and I wasn't,
was totally on board with that.
And he was just fantastic.
He's really a consummate performer.
I didn't realize it at the time
'cause I had never worked with anyone that good,
but now, as I reflect on it, one of the greatest.
This was an actual apartment, believe it or not,
and I thought we should add some things that are a bit odd,
like a mattress stuck to the wall full of bayonets.
Don't explain it, just, that's the way he lives.
And a bowl full of turtles and so on.
[inspirational music]
We couldn't afford a hose to wet down the street,
so we'd do it by buckets.
Rocky solidifies his relationship with Mickey
after a tempestuous brawl a few moments earlier
where he just unloaded on Mickey about being ignored.
But that's what made the character,
he's just always forgiving.
This is my friend Gene Kirkwood,he was very, very important
in having the film actually made.
And Burt Young, who was fantastic.
We start in Philadelphia and we end up here, this is L.A.,
running along the side of the meat packing place.
I don't know exactly why I wrote in a slider house,
but it was just an idea.
Like boxers are considered meat,you know,
we don't think of them as you know,
regular human beings, but they are.
They have a lot of heart and soul,
they're not just flesh to be hitupon.
And so that was somewhat a symbolic move,
a little heavy-handed but I think it worked.
And here we are outside.
Yeah, with my dog Butkus which was actually my dog
and I thought Rocky and the dog looked very much alike,
so I wanted him in the movie.
And I thought it again added a little bit of character
to who Rocky was, and it was a gift from Adrian.
This is a scene that was made up on the spot.
What's that, Butkus, huh?
Whose truck is this?
Come on.
I was supposed to just be in there.
I thought, you know, it'd be great if he just shows up
and there's Burt saying, "Hey, hope you don't mind,
"I called your television network,
"and I'm basically here to embarrass you."
And of course, Rocky takes it instride
and goes along with it 'cause he's that kind of a guy.
This place was so magical.
I mean just these streets,
I go back there every now and then.
It's amazing.
They're so small, so narrow, so claustrophobic,
the terrain is just so graphically interesting.
Yo.
- Yo.
- Yo, you look great.
And then, right here, this is where she just exploded.
I mean, she became Cinderella.
This is what he saw.
When he's here to pesh up, everyone else saw this homely,
very, very shy woman.
He saw really a beautiful person, inside and out.
And she really sold it in that moment.
This is the game changer.
This man's name is Garrett Brown, he's an inventor,
he lives in Philadelphia and just out of luck,
he goes, "I got this camera called the Steadicam."
I go, "Excuse me?" It kinda looks like a vacuum cleaner.
But no, this thing was amazing.
You could run as fast as you could, be on a bouncy truck,
yet the picture is incredibly level.
And here we are in this very, very inexpensive film
using a revolutionary camera, which really,
basically revolutionized the business
and is used probably on every movie there is
around the world.
Extraordinary.
Oh yeah, fight night.
Carl, we had this idea of him being Uncle Sam.
I thought, we're gonna push the envelope here.
This probably was so much out of our budget
we could barely afford it.
The robe they made for me
was for a guy who was six foot five
but again, we work it into the movie.
"Don't you think this robe is kind of baggy?"
"Eh it looks great, don't worry about it."
We don't have many extras,
so the camera angles are very, very important
to be shooting up
and these little lights which you see in the background
which add depth of field, these Christmas lights,
they're very effective.
And out here, we're starting out working on the choreography
that eventually will be almost punch for punch
exactly what happens in the final product.
So it's interesting to see how, bam bam.
[cheers]
It worked!
I mean, it was shocking.
I enjoy seeing this here.
Of course, you never know when you get out there.
It could be the biggest waste oftime
and you go oh, it looks really phony,
but we're able to take it from the gym
where you didn't know, I mean,
you have to understand, we didn't know what we were doing.
No one ever rehearsed for months and months and months
and months and months.
And boxing films weren't very, very popular,
so I thought, are we just really wasting our time?
Or is this actually going to translate into something?
So every day you go in there, [grumbles]
I hope this is just not gonna be an embarrassment.
From that little gym, it worked in the big picture.
Punch for punch.
And we were able to do this time and time and time again,
which is why I always advocate for a long, long,
long rehearsal for boxing films.
And most people don't do it.
It's well worth the effort.
[dramatic music]
- [Announcer] He can't even get his gloves up
to protect himself.
- [Sylvester] Here's Carl just laying it on me.
Oh!
Beautiful.
His timing is amazing, it reallyis.
The canvas was interesting.
We designed these stars which was reminiscent
of Apollo Creed's trunks.
[inspirational orchestral music]
The acting started six months earlier in the gym,
and you're just hoping it works there.
We've been building up to this, right here.
This is the harder part.
How do you keep the audience engaged with the drama
that these men are going through,
and the trauma what they're going through.
[calm music]
This I believe is after the show.
We're all pretty much wrapped up
and having a little bit of barbecue
with John and his children.
In my Howdy Doody shirt.
This is uh, I guess, yeah,
it has to be probably while we're editing
because my hair is longer in this part.
This is great.
We tried to keep this as free tothe core,
this kind of family group.
Bill Conti, who I cannot express
how important he was to this movie.
His music just took it to another level.
Yeah, classical music in an un-classical film.
Very interesting dynamic.
They wanted to put in rock music at one time
and was talking about even Jimi Hendrix
and bringing in Bill, he figured it all out.
There's John's children [laughs]
Hey Rufus.
I believe we opened up in maybe two theaters
and this is the place where I was an usher
several years earlier.
Two doors away at the Baronette,
and I would also work over there at Cinema 2.
And now I'm back with a film.
That was my beloved manager JaneOliver.
She was great.
And then John with his son.
And the irony of being in this movie theater
where I used to go back and forth with my brother
there all the time
and he was singing on the corner and I'm carrying tickets
and now I'm in the theater, I'm on the marquis.
How did this happen?
It's amazing.
And this was in also on the West Coast, in Westwood.
In one year, my life exploded for the better.
So I tell people, you never know.
You just never, never know if you're gonna hit the lottery.
You just gotta keep buying tickets,
you gotta keep going for it.
Yeah, I used to cut my own hair, I know, I know.
Don't comment on it.
I was too cheap to hire a barber at the time.
I didn't know any better.
Here on the lobby just greeting customers.
I felt like hey, thank you for showing up.
I didn't know how long it was going to last,
I didn't know it was going to be successful.
You're a very lucky person when you can find out
the best friend you ever had is some character
that just popped out of your mind,
someone who was always there when things got rough
and never quit on you.
That's what I look at Rocky as, my best friend.
[applause]
- And the winner is, Rocky, [cheering]
Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff
- To all the Rockys in the world, I love you.
[applause]
[inspirational orchestral music]
[dramatic orchestral music]