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“We love you, Rocky!” shouted a host of enamored fans pressing in for autographs and photos from actor Sylvester Stallone as he made his way into the Arlington Theater Tuesday night.
Stallone was presented with the Montecito Award as part of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and spoke to a packed house at the theater, charming the audience with a host of stories from his four decades in Hollywood.
Stallone reflected on the Rocky story, and said that he feels most people in the world feel like underdogs at some point, unsure of their full potential.
“Just when we think we have it together, something happens. It’s called life,” he said.
That journey began for Stallone in New York, where he described his birth occurring shortly after his mother got off of a crosstown bus, walking through Hell’s Kitchen to the nearest hospital.
The doctor delivering Stallone used forceps incorrectly, which severed a nerve in the left side of Stallone’s face, leaving him to speak distinctly for the rest of his life.
Stallone poked fun at that distinction, laughing at a clip of himself playing Rocky, delivering an outburst of almost unintelligible dialogue in a burst of passion.
“I need subtitles for myself,” he joked. “I don’t even understand what I’m saying.”
The audience was charmed by Stallone’s humbleness and humor, and cheered him on as clips from Rocky IV played, where Stallone could be seen sending Dolph Lundgren’s character –”The Russian” – to a knock-out.
Stallone’s own life took on its own Rocky undertones as the young man struggled through homelessness on the streets of New York, sleeping outside the Port Authority Bus Station under a coat.
“You call it a coat, I call it a house,” said the actor, sitting in a perfectly pressed suit as he recalled his early days of lean living.
Still, “there’s something to be said for struggle,” he said.
Indeed, Stallone wrote the Rocky story and refused to sell it to Hollywood producers unless they cast him in the lead role.
He wrote the script in three days, and after a fatefully failed audition, complete with the director looking at his watch as the actor gave his monologue, Stallone had one last thing to offer.
“I happen to write a bit,” the young actor blurted out, and the director responded that Stallone could bring his work by.
“All you need is a little crack in the door,” Stallone told the audience. “That was the birth of Rocky.”
Clips from Stallone’s many movies were played, including Victory, F.I.S.T, Rhinestone, Rambo, Cliffhanger and the Expendables, among others.
Stallone said that many actors were considered for the Rambo role — Nick Nolte and Robert Redford among them — but all turned it down.
“I was the 11th choice,” he joked.
In the book, Rambo descends into ruin after returning from war, but Stallone fought for a different ending, in which the character returns to the country he loves for redemption.
“It was at a time when we were losing 20,000 a month to suicide from Vietnam,” he said, adding that he wanted to portray another option in the movies.
Stallone also talked about the Cliffhanger movie’s stunt scenes, which remain in the Guinness Book of World Records as the costliest ever aerial stunts performed.
He recalled filming the film’s famous scene while suspended on a cable 4,000 feet above the ground for the breathless audience.
Most recently, Stallone acted alongside co-star Michael B. Jordan in Creed, a role for which Stallone nabbed an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.
Stallone recalled being approached by the film’s director, Ryan Coogler, then a 27-year-old USC film school grad.
Coogler went on to direct the critically acclaimed Fruitvale Station and then Creed, which netted Stallone a Golden Globe and went on to earn more than $100 million at the box office.
The risk of bringing Rocky back to a new audience paid off.
“Embrace the fear and go for it,” he told the audience.
— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at lcooper@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
