Rocky

Related Topics:
Rocky_Series :: Rocky :: Rocky_Mountain :: Rocky_IV :: Rocky_Horror_Picture_Show,_The :: Rocky_and_Bullwinkle :: Rockyford :: Rocky_Horror_Show,_The :: Rocky_River :: Rocky_Face

Rocky (1976) is a motion picture written by and starring Sylvester Stallone as underdog boxer, Rocky Balboa. It tells the rags-to-riches American Dream story of "Rocky Balboa", a slightly dull-witted but good-hearted "collection agent" for a loan shark in Philadelphia with a penchant for boxing who gets a shot at the world heavyweight title. It was written by Stallone and directed by John G. Avildsen. The fighting scene in the movie was inspired by a real-life fight between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner.

Plot

Rocky Balboa is a dead-end, "bottom of the barrel" guy from Philadelphia who is going nowhere in life. He works days as an enforcer for a loan shark and as a boxer at night. With the nation's bicentennial coming up, and scheduled contender Mac Lee Green injured, the undefeated heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) searches for a new opponent for the match on the nation's birthday. With all the deserving competitors unavailable for one reason or another, Creed comes up with the perfect bout: he will fight the local underdog "Italian Stallion" Rocky, and by doing so give him a chance at the world title.

Creed sees the whole thing as a big joke, a spectacle, rather than a fight. And at first, his attitude seems justified. In the time leading up to the fight, Rocky trains with crusty, 1920s-era bantamweight fighter Mickey Goldmill, played by Burgess Meredith, but Rocky initially shows little in the way of either ability or true desire.

However, soon Rocky falls in love with his best friend's sister, Adrian (Talia Shire), and a newfound focus and determination is sparked within him. After rededicating himself to intense training, Rocky is truly ready to take his million-to-one shot at the title.

Nonetheless, the night before the match, Rocky admits to Adrian that he knows he cannot actually win. But the important thing is that he is going to prove that he can make it through all 15 rounds of the bout, and not be knocked out. Rocky explains:

"(I)t really don't matter if I lose this fight. It really don't matter if this guy opens my head either, 'cause all I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody's ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I'm still standin', I'm gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood." ^* In the first round, at the Philadelphia Spectrum, Creed treats the match as a joke, until Rocky catches him with a left hook that throws Creed on his back and knocks him down. In his entire professional boxing career, no one had ever knocked Creed down let alone in the first minute. From that point on, Creed takes the match seriously, and the fighters beat each other bloody. Neither man will back down, even when Rocky's eyes have swelled shut, he manages to break Creed's ribs going into the 15th round. Creed hits as hard as he can, knocking Rocky down more than once, but Rocky refuses to stay down and ultimately does fight Creed for all fifteen rounds. As the fight ends, Creed, disbelieving but respectful of what Rocky has done, embraces Rocky and says to him in exhaustion, "Ain't gonna be no rematch." Rocky, having accomplished his mission, answers back, "Don't want one."

At the conclusion of the fight, Rocky has proved himself to all those who had doubted him before, including both his trainer, Mickey, and himself. True to his word about what his goal for the fight was, he shows no concern whatsoever over the judges' forthcoming decision. As reporters try to interview Rocky, he seeks only to find and embrace Adrian. Adrian finally fights her way through the crowd and into the ring and, as Creed is being announced the winner by split decision, Rocky takes her in his arms and the two celebrate their love for one another — Rocky having demonstrated that one man can stand in the face of overwhelming odds, and in so doing, having shown himself to be a true champion.

Cameo appearances

Given the inevitable comparison between the outspoken Apollo Creed and the real-life outspoken Muhammad Ali, one interesting detail is the cameo appearance of Joe Frazier, a former world heavyweight champion who fought Ali three times, as himself. Frazier accuses Creed of "dodging him" prior to the start of the match with Rocky. Stallone invited all boxing heavyweight champions to participate in the cameo, with Joe Frazier being the only one who accepted the invitation. In that year's Academy Awards, Ali had a little comic scene of confronting Stallone onstage which ended amiably to make it clear that he was not offended by the film.

Other characters included Burt Young as Rocky's brother-in-law, Paulie, and Thayer David as the fight's promoter and ringside announcer. Los Angeles television sportscaster Stu Nahan played himself. Lloyd Kaufman, founder of the longest running independent film company Troma, makes an appearance as a drunk.

Trivia

Rocky won the 1976 Academy Award for Best Picture and earned Stallone a nomination for Best Actor. John G. Avildsen also won the award for Best Director, and Richard Halsey and Scott Conrad won the Academy Award for Film Editing. Not until Crash 29 years later would a Best Picture recipient receive only two other awards.

Conrad's film editing award was most likely earned by the fact that the final fight scene was fought in reverse order, with the actors starting out in heavy make-up, which eventually wore off as the scenes were shot. ^*

The American Film Institute placed Rocky at number 78 of its "100 Greatest Movies of All Time" list, and #4 at AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers.

In 2006, Sylvester Stallone's original screenplay for Rocky was selected by the Writers Guild of America as the 78th best screenplay of all time.

The success of Rocky spawned five sequels, though none were as critically acclaimed as the original ("Rocky III" was more successful in terms of real, uninflated dollars, but only just). Production of a sixth installment in the series, to be titled Rocky Balboa, and again starring and directed by Stallone, was announced by MGM/Sony in October 2005 and is expected to be released on December 22, 2006.^*

The film was made on an extremely low budget of $1.1 million, and was shot in only 28 days.

The famous dramatic ending of Rocky was not the original ending. The ending went through a few changes and finally Stallone wrote and kept the final piece that concludes Rocky.

One legacy of the original movie is the theme music that was composed by Bill Conti, which was used as the theme for Citytv Toronto newscast CityPulse throughout the 1980s (along with cues from "Rocky II"), and is often played at sporting events. Canadian jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson put "Gonna Fly Now" on the pop charts with an instrumental disco rendition from his 1977 album, Conquistador. The original version of "Gonna Fly Now" (or "Gonna Fly" as it is called in the film's end credits), which underscores the training montage in the film, made it to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977.

Another legacy of the Rocky movies is a statue of Stallone, as Rocky Balboa, that long stood in front of Wachovia Spectrum (formerly known as the Philadelphia Spectrum), the arena where the first Balboa-Creed fight took place in the original movie. This statue was briefly moved to the top of the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the 1990s before being moved back to the Spectrum. The statue has recently been in storage and is currently on its way back to the Art Museum area.

At the Art Museum, tourists and residents alike still make the run up the museum's front steps, the Rocky Steps, mimicking the famous scene where Rocky sprints up the steps at the end of his training run. A set of footprints on a metal plate are embedded in the concrete at the spot where Rocky stood. Several TV shows have paid homage to the "Rocky Run", an example being "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”.

Garrett Brown's Steadicam, a camera attached to a weighted system of pulleys so that it would not shake while its operator ran, was used for the first time in this movie, during Rocky's training run up the flights of stairs.

The first Rocky video game was released by Coleco for Colecovision in the early 1980's. ^* Another was released in 1987 for the Sega Master System. More recently, a Rocky video game was released in 2002 for the Nintendo Gamecube, Sony Playstation 2, and Microsoft Xbox, and a sequel released in 2004 for the Sony Playstation 2 and Microsoft Xbox.

Comedic actor Kevin James, who is a big fan of the Rocky films, has spoofed many scenes in his sitcom "The King of Queens." In episode #24 of season 1, Doug loses his temper with Arthur and begins a screaming rampage as Arthur is leaving his house. This was taken directly from the original Rocky movie where Rocky is screaming at Mick as Mick is leaving Rocky's apartment. The scene is referenced further as Doug chases down Arthur and makes peace with him.

That above-referenced scene actually was not supposed to have any dialogue after Meredith left the house. But Stallone improvised on-the-fly with the screaming which made for a more effective scene.

Tony Burton (Apollo's trainer) is the only minor character to appear in all six Rocky films.

In Steven J. Schneider's 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die it says the film is "unfairly dismissed as schmaltz," while Rolling Stone's Peter Travers called it "corny as hell."

U.S. box office gross

Rocky: US$117.3 million
Rocky II: US$85 million
Rocky III: US$120.2 million
Rocky IV: US$125.4 million
Rocky V: US$40 million

These figures reflect only movie theater ticket sales in the United States. The most profitable of the films by far was the original Rocky, which had a production budget of only US$1.1 million.

External links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Rocky

Plot

Cameo appearances

Trivia

U.S. box office gross

External links