By Neil Davey
Some 30 years since the first (Oscar-winning) Rocky, and 17 years since the (seriously awful) Rocky V, Sylvester Stallone has brought the "Italian Stallion" back for a final time in the just-about-as-good-as-we-could-have-hoped Rocky Balboa. Stallone is justifiably proud of this closing chapter, as Screenjabber found out when we caught up with the writer, director and star. However, the fact that he’s sitting here today to discuss it never seemed likely. It's a cinematic freak of nature,' he admits with the famous crooked smile. 'The fact that it's even happened is crazy — but it goes to show that sometimes crazy ideas are worth following.
Rocky Balboa is a return to the basics for the character, replacing the fads and flashiness of most of the sequels with the grit and humanity of the first film. Does Stallone regret any of the sequels? "Some of them, yeah, I do," he admits with admirable honesty. "They were a bit too focused on the fight, a little too manipulative. They still had emotional content but it wasn't like the first one where 90 per cent of the movie was non-action."It's a similar proportion here, with the climactic fight playing second fiddle to the human interest: Rocky's relationships with his son (Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia); his best friend Paulie (Burt Young); and, following the death of Adrian, a new woman in his life, Marie (the excellent Geraldine Hughes). The similarities also extended to the making of the film, particularly the struggle — the seven-year struggle — for funding. Last time, it took someone at the studio to take a risk on what was a relatively cheap project. This time, as Stallone explains, "nobody takes a risk" these days. "The irony is it was tougher coming back to it, even though I was known this time. The character was considered passé, I was considered passé. That's the reality. People who really green-light films today are the marketing department. Can they sell the film? Can they sell a 59-year-old has-been boxer?!" he laughs. "But eventually everyone feels like they're a has-been when they're not, and that's the point of the story, that we still have this thing burning inside: nurture it and it can revitalise us.
"It was an accident that got it made. The studio head was replaced, and the new studio head happened to walk into this small Mexican restaurant at 15 minutes to midnight, one New Year's Eve where I was feeling sorry for myself. He goes, 'Hello Sylvester, what's up?' I say, 'Well I wrote this thing on Rocky Balboa' and he said 'can I see it?' I was like, 'am I hallucinating?!' 'He takes it home, his wife reads it, she cries and the movie's green-lit. So don't ever underestimate women in boxing...' On the subject of women, Stallone was also keen to get behind the camera to show his three young daughters that their dad has a career. 'They thought I played golf for a living. Badly. For real! They had to fill in a form and under what does your father do they put 'golfer'; 'does things in the yard...'" They finally got a chance to see what their dad does during filming.
In order to make the fight scenes as realistic as possible, Stallone didn’t use a fight choreographer and filmed much of the “live” footage during a real championship fight. ‘I thought I’d like to shoot a real fight and use their rules, where the cameras are placed: there’s a certain way HBO shoot fights.‘So I found a mega fight — Bernard Hopkins, a middle weight title fight — in the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas with 12,000 people. So I asked to use that crowd. The audience didn’t know that,’ he chuckles, ‘they’re here to see Bernard Hopkins, and here comes Rocky Balboa 17 years late! They’re like “Excuse me? check please…!” "Their fight went on and afterwards we asked the audience if they wanted to stick around for a Rocky fight and thousands of them did. We also used their weigh-in, we used their press conference… Everything in the film is real. The only thing fake in it is me. It was a buzz. These are not paid extras so they yell things at you, sometimes they’re not flattering, sometimes they are flattering. It was scary. I was three quarters of the way to the ring and there was no [chants of ] “Rocky”. Then finally, 15ft from the ring, they started going “hey Rocky!”, “it’s Rocky!” and I thought “Thank God!” I thought I was going to be humiliated. It’s tough enough doing this, and this was the first scene. Then I thought what’s going to happen when I take my robe off? ‘Let me put it this way.’ Stallone leads forward and intones into the microphone. ‘Fear was the main course that night.’ Though he readily admits that he hates to be away from his family, Sylvester never had any doubts that he wanted to direct this closing chapter. I was in a restaurant about two weeks before the filming and John Avildsen [the director of the original Rocky] walks in and says “Let me direct it.” I said “John, no. If it doesn’t work, I want to be responsible. If you direct it and it doesn’t work, I will kill you…”’ It was a major investment for Stallone, with the mental pressures of the writing and directing combined with the gruelling physical demands of the role and, particularly, the training. Sylvester cheerfully accepts he isn't as young as he was. 'I'm not a spring chicken — everything you touch breaks apart,' he says, discussing the brutal training regime. 'It was rough. I wanted to try and emphasise that what you see in the movie is what I did for real: less bodybuilding, more pounding. That kind of training develops a more ponderous, thick body, more beast of burden than slick animal. I broke two toes, a metatarsal, but it paid off in the end.’ He laughs. 'And then someone asked: 'did you CGI your body...?!'"