Sylvester Stallone turned down hundreds of thousands for the Rocky script rather than surrender the lead, a hard bet that built an American legend.
Long before the Oscars and the franchises, Stallone was a broke New York actor sleeping on pizza boxes and cleaning lion cages at the Central Park Zoo. In a CBS News interview with correspondent Tracy Smith, he walked back through the years that produced “Rocky,” his forthcoming memoir “The Steps,” and a career built on refusing to quit.
Born in Hell’s Kitchen roughly 80 years ago, Stallone described a childhood with little warmth. His parents sent him to a boarding house while he was still very young. Affection was scarce.
“No. I don’t think they knew how. There was zero touching,” he told Smith. Asked about hugs, he answered, “Oh, no, no, no.”
He almost didn’t blame them. “I was very rambunctious.”
The lean years in 1970s New York were brutal. Stallone said he used pizza boxes for a mattress. “I did, yeah. It was very comfortable,” he recalled.
The zoo job left its mark. “That’s a rough one, because I felt so bad for these magnificent animals,” he said, “and then I felt bad because I smelled like them, you know, going home.”
In about three and a half days, finishing in March 1975, he wrote the “Rocky” script. He still had almost nothing. He sold his dog, Butkus, because he could not afford to feed him. “It’s the only thing I could sell. It was like, that was it.”
Producers wanted the screenplay. The bidding climbed as high as $360,000, on the condition that someone else play Rocky. Stallone said no.
“I said, pass. I can’t do it. I’ve literally crawled through every gutter in New York. I’ve slept in every alleyway. I have paid my dues, and I know this is it. I will never have this opportunity again. I don’t know if you believe in destiny, but I think in some cases, it happens.”
He bought Butkus back and put the dog in the movie. “Rocky” became a cultural phenomenon, won three Oscars including best picture, and earned Stallone an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.
Stallone frames the breakthrough in plain spiritual terms. Near the end of writing, he said he pushed through despair.
“I said, ‘Is this Your plan to, like, torture me? To this-and-that to test me? All right, I’ve come this far, I refuse to break.’ And I went back in and I finished the last few pages of ‘Rocky.’ I really felt as though something guided my hand, because I’ve never been able to do it since. So, that’s why I have to give credence to some sort of divine guidance.”
That same stubbornness later pulled him out of a dry stretch. In the 1990s he spent about six years he called artistically dead. “When you artistically die and nobody wants you, where do you go? You’re just like the 10th wheel going to parties, but you’re not relevant. You’re not missed.”
How did he come back? “The pen!” He wrote the sixth Rocky script and directed “Rocky Balboa” in 2006.
The result is rare staying power. Stallone has starred in at least one No. 1 box-office film in each of the past six decades, a mark CBS noted that only Harrison Ford can also claim among actors.
Smith met him at Carbone Restaurant in New York, where Stallone is treated like family. He is still clear-eyed about the city that forged him.
“It isn’t as though I have a love affair with New York. New York to me was a battlefield, and it still is, you know what I mean? It’s beautiful, the shops and the culture, but I walk these streets, I would look at the cracks, I could see the filth and whatever. And so, I always approached it as this, I kind of like descend into a h***, you know? Like, are you going to be able to elevate yourself from this to some penthouse someday?”
Then the punch line he has earned: “Look at me now!”
He has been married to Jennifer Flavin for close to 30 years. They have three daughters, including Scarlett Stallone, who sometimes shares the screen with him on “Tulsa King.” Of Flavin he said, “What have I learned from her? That I’ll never be as good as her. She’s just magnificent, has kept me alive.”
His memoir, “The Steps,” is due Sept. 29 from William Morrow. A film about the making of his breakthrough, “I Play Rocky,” opens in theaters Nov. 19. The fourth season of “Tulsa King” was set to arrive the month after the interview on Paramount+.
Stallone’s answer for why he kept going is simple process-of-elimination grit: “Because I consider there’s a process of elimination. Eventually they’re going to open the door.”
Hollywood still sells shortcuts and excuses. Stallone’s story is the older American one, pay the dues, keep the pen moving, and do not sell the part that is yours.
