One of the reasons that the 1976 film Rocky remains so iconic is that the star and the creator of the film, Sylvester Stallone, are so clearly connected. Famously, this story of a resilient boxer who knows defeat is in his future was written by Stallone, making much of the film his creative vision. As sports movies go, Rocky is unrivaled, but it’s also a great film that showcases Stallone’s specific belief in how certain kinds of male protagonists are crafted. Speaking to Men’s Journal about his hit series Tulsa King, Stallone laid out his insistence that great fictional men need to have doubt, weakness, and worry; otherwise the audience simply won’t buy it. “If you’re going to make a character empathetic, that character has to be able to be bruised and beat up and knocked down and actually question his logic,” he says.
And, in the same interview, Stallone also revealed that one scene in the 1976 Rocky, in which Rocky Balboa can’t sleep and confesses to Adrian (Talia Shire) that he “can’t do it,” was almost cut from the film, and that he fought to make sure it stayed in.
“He’s thinking: Am I doing the right thing? When Rocky lies in bed, he’s thinking: I can’t win. I’m going to get murdered. And that was the scene they wanted to cut out of the movie,” Stallone says, indicating the studio or certain producers wanted the scene out.
“And I said: ‘That’s the whole scene. When a man can finally say: I’m going to face the bully after school, and he’s going to break every bone in my face, but I’m going to go there. I’m going to still do it because if I’m just alive and standing up, good enough.’ For me, that’s a major victory.”
In the film, right before the actual final act, when the big fight happens, Rocky says this to Adrian: “It really don’t matter if I lose this fight. It really don’t matter if this guy opens my head either. Cause all I wanna do is go the distance.”
That is the spirit of Rocky, and it is hard to imagine the film without this quiet scene. And thanks to Stallone’s singular vision, the scene exists in the final film. In a way, it’s like Rocky’s Garden of Gethsemane moment: He’s unsure if he can go through with the task at hand, but decides it’s worth it anyway. It’s classic stuff and continues to inspire men and others 50 years later. And when you watch Rocky, or Stallone’s more recent projects, it’s a reminder that a part of all of his characters is genuinely a part of him. In other words, Stallone is the real deal, and the existence of this Rocky scene is just more proof.
Rocky and Tulsa King stream on Paramount+. Read the longer interview with Sylvester Stallone below.
