Stallone Fest 09
Dec/090
I have no idea why, but I have been obsessed with Sylvester Stallone for the past month or so. I have been watching all of his movies and reading a lot about the guy lately. In fact, I think he might be my new hero. I love the fact that he WROTE most of the Rocky movies, Cobra, Over the Top, Cliffhanger and other movies. I love the fact that there is a movie coming out called The Expendables that in 1987 would have been the highest grossing movie of all time. He’s just a cool guy and the more I learn about him, the more I like him.
For instance, he thought the movie First Blood was so bad he tried to buy back the movie from the studio so that he could destroy the print. Do you have any idea how expensive that would have been? He ended up going into the edit bay and helping to re-cut the movie into the classic is today. That’s just insane to me. Anyways, here’s what I’ve watched of his lately.
- First Blood
- Rocky
- Rocky II
- Rocky III
- Rocky IV (at least four times)
- Rocky Balboa
- Cobra
- Tango & Cash
- Cop Land (really great movie)
Netflix has Cliffhanger and something called Eye See You that I have never heard of available online that I’ll be watching soon and I also have the new Rambo movie on the way. Basically, I’m obsessed.
Which is awesome because being obsessed with stuff leads you to things you never would have found otherwise. Around the time that Rocky Balboa was released he did a 20 part Q&A with Ain’t It Cool News answering fans questions. (Ain’t It Cool is horribly organized so the best way to read these is to scroll to the bottom of this page for 1-16 and then just google “aint it cool round 17″ (then 18, 19, 20) stupid, I know.) I’ve found out a lot of interesting things like near death experience, what Brigitte Neilson was like in bed, how he feels about Sico the robot in Rocky IV, he has an Edgar Allen Poe script and perhaps most interestingly that he wrote Rocky in just 3 days (and then did a ton of rewrites). I LOVED this. This is how I’ve always felt it should be done, but every screenplay book I’ve ever read (about 20) says not to do it this way and that good screenplays can take “months, years”. It’s cool to know that one of my favorite movies of all time had it’s first draft written in three days and that combined with my new love of goals and the constant motivation that is the Rocky soundtracks, I am pretty motivated to take steps and do this thing.
Now, if I could just get three days off and some speed.
(I would prefer not to say how many times I have listened to that song in the past two days. It’s in double digits.)
