Before Rocky made Sylvester Stallone a star, it nearly broke him. Director Peter Farrelly, whose I Play Rocky opens in select theaters Friday, Nov. 6, from Amazon MGM Studios, said the real story behind the 1976 classic was far rougher than the legend most fans know.
"I thought I knew the story," Farrelly said in a press roundtable that included Cup of Soul. "When I got that script, I was like, yeah, I know, he sold his dog. ... But I didn't know anything."
'He broke both hands'
Once United Artists finally agreed to let Stallone play the lead in the screenplay he wrote, Farrelly said, the pressure started immediately. If Stallone fell one day behind, he could be replaced.
"Day one, he ran 20 miles and blew his leg," Farrelly said. "Every running scene in the movie is day one." A few days later, he said, Stallone was punching sides of beef that were "frozen solid. He broke both hands. And he was in the hospital four times."
What stayed with Farrelly most was the money Stallone turned down to keep the role. He pointed to the $350,000 offered for the script without Stallone attached, which he put at about $2.2 million in today's dollars. "He never sold his soul," Farrelly said. "He had the character to say no."
Farrelly also noted that Stallone didn't fit Hollywood's idea of a leading man in the 1970s, when the stars were "pretty boys" such as Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford and Ryan O'Neal. Stallone, he said, was born with half his face paralyzed and had a lisp.
Anthony Ippolito plays the young Stallone in I Play Rocky, with Matt Dillon, AnnaSophia Robb, P.J. Byrne, Toby Kebbell, Tracy Letts, Jay Duplass and Stephan James. Amazon MGM says the film expands to theaters nationwide later in November.
Watch the full conversation and read more in our Peter Farrelly interview, and see why the film is campaigning as a comedy in our Golden Globes report.
