Sylvester (‘Sly’) Stallone wrote this memoir to be released somewhere around his 80th birthday, and although he often struggles with clichés and overdone sentimentality, it’s worth reading anyway due to the extraordinary story behind Rocky on the occasion of the film’s 50th anniversary.
Arriving in grimy and freezing New York in 1969, aspiring actor Sly worked for years in dead-end jobs while living in a sleazy hotel and trying desperately to make it as an actor, despite much bad luck and many assumptions that he was some kind of fool. Step One finds him mostly alone, getting into scrapes, going for bit parts in a variety of productions with occasional success (like playing one of a pair of thugs who menace Woody Allen in Bananas), and studying hard to understand how scripts are structured.
Step 2 picks up with him starting to get proper roles (like The Lords Of Flatbush, with Henry Winkler and Richard Gere, until he was fired) and perhaps unwisely relocating to Los Angeles with his wife Sasha. He depicts himself here as more reflective and determined, and he finally and frantically pens the script that eventually became the first Rocky in 1976.
And Step 3 details how he stubbornly refused to sell it unless he played ‘Rock’, even though he was offered hundreds of thousands of dollars so that Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, or many others could portray the character. It’s a story you’ve probably heard before, but a surely post-therapy Sly relates the tale with such starkness that you can feel his fear.
A shame that Rocky’s endless sequels spoiled the original, but that’s Hollywood.
Sylvester Stallone (Hachette Australia: Seven Dials), 293pp
RRP $34.99 (paperback); $69.99 (hardback); $16.99 (e-Book); $57.99 (audiobook)
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