Sly

Year 16, Day 173 - 6/21/24 - Movie #4,761

BEFORE: It's here, it's finally here, my annual Documentary Chain!  It's really because of the Doc Block that I first realized that I could make it through an entire year without breaking the chain, which is weird because for years I thought that I would NOT be able to complete the chain unbroken in any given year BECAUSE OF documentaries, and I didn't want to give them up.  But it turned out I had things backwards, and docs are what made it possible - I watched a bunch of docs about rock music in 2018, starting with the touring years of the Beatles and going through just about every group under the sun and ending with Rush's last tour - and they ALL connected, mostly because every rock doc used footage of the Beatles or The Stones or Hendrix.  All it required me to do was a little more research, and the docs would no longer be the thing that was holding me back.  Sigourney Weaver was my entry point into that first Beatles doc, and Paul Rudd narrated that Rush documentary, so I had my exit point back to fiction films.  That was the secret sauce, planning the correct entry and the exit.   

So for this year I had 35 or 36 docs arranged in a perfect circle, so really, I could enter at any point I wanted, go in either direction, and try to land something very American on July 4.  This worked for me two years ago, I had a similar circle and I landed "WBCN and the American Revolution" on July 4 - OK, so it's just a movie about a Boston radio station, but damn, the title had "American Revolution" in it, so it felt right.  Well, I'm doing that again, I found my entry point into the circle, and it turned out to be the star of my Father's Day film - I just had to add 3 more films with that actor, and things lined up perfectly (?) again.  The Doc Bloc has swelled up to 40 films now, because I added a few more recent ones, but it's still a circle, there's footage in "Sly" of a certain actor who will also appear in Documentary #40.  But ending with that particular doc gives me a fair number of exit points, like I think I want it to be that SAME actor, but we'll see.

Robert De Niro carries over from "The Last Tycoon" and he was in two movies with Stallone, "Cop Land" and "Grudge Match", so I'd put the probability of there being archive footage of him here in this doc as very high.  I'd say about 100%.

THE PLOT: The nearly fifty year prolific career of Sylvester Stallone, who has entertained millions, is seen in retrospective in an intimate look at the actor, writer, director-producer, paralleling with his inspirational life story. 

AFTER: Sure, let's start with one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, why not?  Also, they showed this doc at the theater, in that Tuesday night film appreciation class that I sometimes manage.  So that's what put it on my radar, back in November, and sure enough, there was a way to work it in, because most docs use SO much archive footage - naturally, it's easier to just license footage than to set up cameras and interview more people.  Also, what better way to illustrate the points being made about Stallone's career than to have clips from all the "Rocky" movies, and the "Rambo" movies, even the stinkers like "Oscar" and "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot".  Well, they say you learn more from your mistakes, right?  So where's the footage from "Rhinestone"?  

I wish I could say that Stallone has valuable insights about life, loss and filmmaking.  Well, maybe you'll find some insight in one or two of those arenas.  Of course he talks about what his life was like before "Rocky", where he and John Herzfeld went around NYC sneaking into movie theaters, supposedly they never paid, which is a weird thing to admit.  Stallone could probably buy his own movie theater now, so, umm, why not pay back those theaters for all those movie tickets you didn't buy back in the early 1970's?  But this was all valuable research for "Rocky", which took Stallone from being an extra in films like "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" or a subway mugger in Woody Allen's film "Bananas" to becoming the breakout box office star of 1976.  

"Rocky" won Best Picture of 1976, and the Best Director award for John Avildsen, but at some point Stallone and Avildsen had a falling out so starting with "Rocky II" Stallone directed most of the films in that franchise, and later one of the "Rambo" films and the first "Expendables" movie, too.  Well, you can't argue with success, and if you can turn one movie into a six-movie franchise, well, then that's what you do.  (Huh, Avildsen came back for "Rocky V", I hadn't realized...)

Stallone claims that the "Rocky" and "Rambo" characters are polar opposites - but, are they?  Most fans of action movies might not even realize there's any difference at all, they just want to see a good fight, whether that's in a boxing ring or on the battlefield.  Look, I'll admit it, I've never seen any of the "Rambo" movies, it's one of the few franchises that I've managed to avoid all these years.  Maybe someday I'll have to finally cross them off my list, but it's never a top priority with me - look, I've been busy, ok?  They'll always be there, even if I watch them last out of everything.  "Rambo", "Saw", "Transformers", "The Fast and the Furious", those to me just really feel like I'd be scraping the bottom of the barrel, I'd get no joy from them, I'd just be watching them to say I watched them, and it would feel kind of unfair to the other movies that I do want to watch.

We also see Stallone go back to his old neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan and talk with some of the locals who now live on his old block.  And I'm sure they vetted those New Yorkers first, because they're not phased AT ALL to be talking to Sylvester Stallone.  Sure, celebrities, they're just like us, they go back to visit their old terrible apartments every 40 years and they just strike up conversations with people on the street.  There's also WAY too much footage of the movers packing up Stallone's memorabilia and statues of him as he prepares to move from his Los Angeles home to a new one in - Florida?  Well, he's old enough for that, sure. But why Florida?  And do we need to see EVERY SINGLE item getting wrapped up?  He's got empty nest syndrome, as his daughters are all grown up and have their own reality TV show now, so he's not retiring, he's just moving so he can start a new chapter somewhere else. 

I suppose it's also great that he and Schwarzenegger are friends now, after co-starring in the "Expendables" movies, and they can laugh about the friendly competition they had during the 1980's and 1990's.  Who had bigger muscles?  Who fired bigger guns, held in one hand?  Who was winning at the box office?  Yes, movie stars, they're petty just like us.  Also, since we're still under a week away from Father's Day, we learn about Frank Stallone Sr. and what an S.O.B. he was, he even wrote a boxing movie after "Rocky" came out that was just like "Rocky" only the name of the main character was "Sonny".  Well, like son, like father, because Sly admits to going to see all those movies for free and then just transcribing all the dialogue and changing a few words to make his own screenplays.  Umm, does he realize that's not "writing", that's just "copying"?  You know what, you tell him. 

When their parents split up, Frank Jr. lived with their mother in one state, and Sylvester lived with their father in another, and Frank Sr. had some scam going where he bought up bad horses and trained them for polo, even if they were blind or feeble he ground every last bit of energy out of them.  Sly might have become a champion polo player if his father hadn't insisted on knocking him off of horses and killing all his love for the sport.  Jeez, sounds like a prince of a guy - but you know, we all reach a point in our lives where we reject the things our parents like and we strike off on our own, it could be a sport or a profession or a religion, but when you're 18 or 20 you just want to leave home and find your own thing, it's perfectly natural.  

For Stallone that was acting, and after those small roles in "The Lords of Flatbush" and "Death Race 2000" and even a porn film called "The Party at Kitty and Stud's" (it's true, look it up...) that road of rejecting polo and everything his father stood for led Stallone to Los Angeles where he crashed at Henry Winkler's place and got his "Rocky" screenplay made into a movie, so yeah, that kind of made everything work out for Stallone.  Sure, there were bumps in the road, and some movie missteps but he learned a lot along the way, and it's really about the people you meet and punch along the way, isn't it?   

Things all kind of came full circle when he transitioned into the "aging trainer" role in the "Creed" movies, playing essentially a version of Burgess Meredith's role from the original, but none of that is mentioned here.  This is really a doc for fans of "Rocky" and "Rambo" or maybe both.  For me, well, I guess one out of two ain't bad. 

Also starring Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "Barbie"), Arnold Schwarzenegger (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), Quentin Tarantino (last seen in "Destiny Turns on the Radio"), Frank Stallone (last seen in "Hudson Hawk"), Talia Shire (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Henry Winkler (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), John Herzfeld, Wesley Morris, Jennifer Flavin,

with archive footage of Muhammad Ali (last seen in "Balls of Fury"), Terry Crews (ditto), Woody Allen (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), James Cagney (ditto), Steve Austin, Marlon Brando (also last seen in "Barbie"), Sandra Bullock (last seen in "Bullet Train"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More"), David Caruso (last seen in "Proof of Life"), Richard Crenna (last seen in "Made in Paris"), Brian Dennehy (last seen in "The Seagull"), Estelle Getty (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Teri Hatcher (last seen in "2 Days in the Valley"), Hulk Hogan (last seen in "Air"), Anthony Hopkins (last seen in "Man Up"), Perry King (last seen in "Switch"), Jack Lemmon (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Dinah Shore (ditto), Jet Li (last seen in "Mulan" (2020)), Dolph Lundgren (last seen in "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom"), Ed McMahon (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Burgess Meredith (last seen in "Mr. Warmth - the Don Rickles Project"), Peter O'Toole (last seen in "Spielberg"), Al Pacino (last seen in "Jack and JIll"), Chazz Palminteri (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"), Roger Rees (last seen in "Happy Tears"), Steve Reeves, Peter Riegert (last seen in "A Shock to the System"), Mickey Rourke (last seen in "Domino"), Sage Stallone, Jason Statham (last seen in "Cellular"), Sharon Stone (last seen in "All I Wish"), Mr. T (last seen in "Beauty"), Milo Ventimiglia (last seen in "Tell"), John Wayne (last seen in "Belfast"), Carl Weathers (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Bruce Willis (last seen in "Precious Cargo"), Burt Young (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time") and the voices of Norman Jewison, Joe Eszterhas. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 things learned from watching Steve Reeves as Hercules