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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 movie was inspired by a real-life fight between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner, as well as having parallels to Ali's two fights with George Chuvalo. He is named after Rocky Marciano.
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. In the time leading up to the fight, Rocky trains with crusty, 1920s-era bantamweight fighter Mickey Goldmill, played by Burgess Meredith. At the same time, he falls in love with his best friend's sister, Adrian (Talia Shire). After intense training and with a newfound focus and determination, Rocky takes his thousand-to-one shot at the title. The night before the match, Rocky admits to Adrian he knows he can't win but he's going to go the distance (i.e., make it through all 15 rounds of the bout). 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." [1]
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 nearly knocks him unconscious. 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 and Creed's ribs have been broken. Creed hits as hard as he can, but Rocky refuses to stay down and fights Creed for all fifteen rounds, only to lose on a split decision.
Though Creed is declared the winner, Rocky's accomplishment garners him fame worldwide. He has proved himself to all those who had doubted him before, including his trainer Mickey, and his feat demonstrates that one man can stand in the face of overwhelming odds.
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. Apollo accuses Frazier of "dodging him" prior to the start of the match with Rocky. 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 best friend Paulie and Thayer David as the fight's promoter and ringside announcer. Los Angeles television sportscaster Stu Nahan played himself. Founder of the longest running independent film company Troma, Lloyd Kaufman 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.
The success of Rocky spawned four sequels, though none was as critically successful as the original. 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.[2]
The film was made on an extremely low budget of $1.1 million, and was shot in only 28 days. The American Film Institute placed Rocky at number 78 of its "100 Greatest Movies of All Time" list.
One legacy of the original movie is the theme music that was composed by Bill Conti and is often played at sporting events. Canadian jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson put "Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky)" on the pop charts with an instrumental disco rendition from his 1977 album, Conquistador.
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.
Another legacy of the Rocky movies is a statue of Stallone as Rocky Balboa that stands 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.
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 ever Rocky video game was released by Coleco for Colecovision in the early 1980's. [3] 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, Microsoft X-Box, and Personal computer, and a sequel released in 2004 for the Sony Playstation and Microsoft X-Box.
Comedic actor Kevin James, who is a big fan of the Rocky films, has spoofed many scenes from Rocky 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.
U.S. box office gross
These figures only reflect movie theater ticket sales in the United States. The most profitable of the films by far was the original Rocky, which only spent a production budget of US$1.1 million.
External links
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