Rocky
Rocky (1976) may not be the best sports film ever made, but for many it is the best loved. As much love story as boxing movie, thisfeel-good box-office smash launched Sylvester Stallone's career into the stratosphere, inspired countless imitations (some of which were the Rocky sequels), and provided America with a simple blue-collar hero at a time when nonheroes and antiheroes—in movies like One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and Dog Day Afternoon —predominated on American movie screens. As Stallone told the New York Times at the time the film came out, "I've really had it with anti-this and anti-that. Where are all the heroes? I want to be remembered as a man of raging optimism, who believes in the American dream."
Much of the film's enjoyment stems from the fact that Rocky Balboa's succeeding-against-all-odds story is neatly paralleled by the succeeding-against-all-odds story of Stallone himself. The actor had been living in a seedy Hollywood apartment with his wife, his savings having dwindled to $106, when he wrote his script about the Italian Stallion. Producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff showed the script to United Artists, and the studio was sufficiently impressed to offer Stallone $75,000 for the script—then $125,000, then $350,000—so they could make the film starring Ryan O'Neal, Robert Redford, James Caan, or one of the other superstars of the day.
This page contains 201 words.
Rocky article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 1,679 words
(approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Rocky Article
