Puoh Share See's List: ROCKY 1976

• 
  November 1, 1976

  'ROCKY'

  'Rocky Isn't Based on Me,' Says Stallone, 'But We Both Went the Distance'

  A year ago, Sylvester Stallone had $106 in the bank. His wife was pregnant, his bull mastiff was starving and he couldn't pay the rent on his seedy Hollywood apartment. What to do? 

   
• Well, one answer was that Stallone, a sometime actor-turned-screenwriter, could sit down and in 3 1/2 days write a screenplay with a meaty starring role in it for himself, persuade someone to film it, and wind up a millionaire. Improbable? Pessimists might say so, and advise Stallone to try something more sure, like the Irish Sweepstakes. Impossible? Well, no, because you see, there's this new movie, called ''Rocky.''
• ''Rocky,'' Rocky Balboa, a

  tender-hearted, down-and-out Philadelphia club fighter known as ''The Italian Stallion,'' who almost becomes heavyweight champion of the world. And the words Stallone is mouthing on screen are the words he wrote in 3 1/2 days and sold to producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff on the condition that he would play ''Rocky,'' and not Burt Reynolds, or James Caan, or Ryan O'Neal, who were being mentioned for the part.
• film was shot in 28 days (''The gestation time for a water bug,'' Stallone says wryly), on a shoestring $1 million budget, and now, with critics split down the middle with some raving and other deploring, and United Artists predicting ''Rocky'' will gross more than $40 million, Stallone is finally smiling. You see, he has 10 percent of ''Rocky.''

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