Movies - TV
Sylvester Stallone Wrote A 90-Page First Draft Of Rocky In Just Three Short Days
By BEN F. SILVERIO
Before Sylvester Stallone wrote the Academy Award-winning sports drama “Rocky,” he was just as much of a Hollywood underdog as his titular character was in boxing. Luckily, inspiration for “Rocky” struck after Stallone watched the championship boxing match between Chuck Wepner and Muhammad Ali in 1975, and he completed the first draft in an amazing amount of time.
In an interview with Michael Watson to celebrate the 25th anniversary of “Rocky,” Stallone revealed that he completed a 90-page script in only three days, and then began shopping the movie in Hollywood. Only about one-third of that original script was used in “Rocky,” but Stallone accomplished one of the hardest parts of the creative process: getting started.
Stallone still had to deal with resistance from Hollywood studios about casting a no-name as the star of “Rocky,” but he said, “'I've just got to do it. I may be totally wrong, and I'm going to take a lot of people down with me, but I just believe in it.'” With five “Rocky” sequels and several spinoffs later, Stallone was clearly onto something all those years ago.