It is clear that Sly drove it to the extreme. He's in his 70s. Yeah.
I mean, should he still be alive? No, no, no. It's not uncommon to get injured, but I thought it was too much.
After an acid attack, he got up. After getting shot, he got up. After his own mother tried to kill him, he got up.
It ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. But there's one thing he couldn't get up from.
Get on the ground! Reports are coming in, that the body was found three days after death. It's hard.
My mother would say, "The only reason you're here is because the hanger didn't work. " She said, "You know, if there was really something wrong with your brain, I would've definitely opened up the window and put you on the windowsill and let you freeze. " You know you're young, you're kind of naive and foolish and go, maybe everyone's mother is like this.
I never really hung out with other people, so I didn't know what a happy home was. When he was just 11-years-old, Sylvester ran away to Philadelphia, chasing a mother who had left him behind. The courts brought him back to his abusive father, but by then, the damage was done.
Sylvester became a loose cannon. A boy seeking chaos, drawn to the pain that felt familiar. Acting became his lifeline in a world that was determined to crush him.
What I wanted to do was just find something that would make me heroic. I was so caught up in unreality, non-reality, fiction. I would spend untold hours in theaters, and I don't care what it was, I just sit there and watch this thing five, six times.
That's the life I wanted to lead. That's the ideals grandeur. That's hard work and triumphs over evil.
Always had hero worship. You know, I wish I could be the guy who saved the bus full of children. That's who I want to be.
I want to be the guy who saves people. Sylvester left home the first chance he got, but with nowhere to go and barely a dime to his name, he found himself wandering the dangerous streets of New York, scraping by however he could. My life was definitely on the wane.
I literally had nothing. So I lived in bus stations, I slept in alcoves. I had a coat, and the coat was my house.
Every day was a robbery, physical attacking, cars coming over curbs, people throwing acid on you. I was emotionally, spiritually, physically bankrupt. But no matter what, he clung to the idea that one day he would make it.
He knew he had what it took to become an action hero on the big screen, but the rest of the world wasn't so sure. I would go to agencies. I'd go to every one of these places.
I'd like to be a client. "We're not accepting anything. " I'd push the picture in and they'd push it out.
I tried out and they say, no, you slur, your eyes droop. You're this, you're that. Agents auditioning, agents would go, "Do you have a speech impediment?
" I said, "I guess I do. I do. " I was born in a charity ward in New York.
She just was afraid to have a kid, even though she was nine months pregnant. Kept riding around on the bus and she got into the labor. Somebody smart enough to get her off the bus.
They carry her into a charity ward. And that's where I was brought into the world via this accident, which kind of paralyzed all the nerves in the side of my mouth. So I was born with this snarl.
So that's why my mouth and my voice is deeper and it slurs, and there's nothing I can do about it. They said, "Well, it's just not gonna work. Maybe you'll be an extra.
" So I started to buy into that and go. 'Cause every time I was cast, it was always for a thug. Watch it will ya.
Sorry man. I didn't see ya. They wouldn't give him leads, or he'd be doing stage work or he'd be the prop man.
But they never gave him respect. I said, "This is no good. I don't wanna act anymore.
" Maybe what I can do is write all my frustrations and make screenplays. Sylvester had no intention of being at the end of the credits. He was the determined to be the hero and prove everyone wrong.
Isolating himself from the world, he poured everything into writing, crafting script after script in relentless pursuit of his big break. When he finally scraped together enough cash, he didn't hesitate. He packed up all he owned and set his sights on California.
I made 1300 bucks just enough to get a $40-car and drive 11 days to Hollywood. My car breaks down on Hollywood and Vine. Just boom, stops, like it was prophetic.
The only one I knew in LA was Henry Winkler, who is now a big star as the Fonz. And the first phone call I made was to Henry. I said, I will be right there.
I went and got him and this mountain of a dog. All of his clothes in the car somehow sitting on suitcases. He obviously couldn't take me to his house, had a dog, a wife.
He just pointed me in the direction of this motel, and I headed up there for like three nights. And then I found some dump way in the valley, one street away from Balboa Boulevard. With money running out and time ticking, Sylvester knew this was it.
He had to write something extraordinary, something that could change his life or he'd lose everything he had. And so I had $106, the rent was 300, I had a pregnant wife. Matter of fact, I had to come out and tried to sell my dog, because it was either do that or he’s just not gonna be well fed around the house.
You might say I had quite a bit of fuel to sit down and write the script. I wrote the script for about three and a half days, only because I could hear the wolf. I could hear it a little.
Sylvester, took all the struggles and heartbreaking and pain from his whole life and poured them onto the page, turning his reality into a story that was impossible to ignore. The more I thought about this kind of street-like character, that just is totally misrepresented by the way he looks physically. Just the way he walks down the street was enough to say people, oh dismiss him.
He just kind of looks like a bully, he looks like a dark kind of character. And I thought, you know, that's an interesting character because they're always unrealized. And then after that it took maybe 25 rewrites.
You have to keep going. When you first went along with your script, I mean, they liked the script, but they were so desperate not to have you, that they kept offering you increasingly large sums of money to go away. First it was a 25 grand and a hundred thousand dollars.
I never heard of a hundred thousand because I had like $106 in the bank. And like I said, I had to sell my dog and things were not looking very, very good. My $40-car had just blown up.
So I was taking the bus to work. And but still, it didn't matter. I wanted to stick with it.
Then it went up to 150,000, 175,000. It went up to 250,000. Now my head was starting to spin.
And it went up to 330,000. Did people say to you, "Listen, Sylvester, you'll get your chance to act. Sell the movie, make some money.
" Including my agents. They said, "Are you crazy? " This is ridiculous money.
$360,000 by standards back then. No. I said, look guys, I really mastered the method of living on nothing, of eating basically cobwebs.
And it's okay. I know in the back of my mind if I sell this script and it does very, very well, I'm gonna jump off a building if I'm not in it. There's no doubt about it, I'm gonna leap in front of a train.
I'm gonna be very, very upset. So this is one of those things where you just roll the dice and flyby the proverbial seat of your pants say, all right I gotta try it. I gotta just do it.
I may be totally wrong and I'm gonna be taking a lot of people down with me, but I just believe in it. How did you sell yourself to them? Usually it's the old syndrome of knocking on the windows, pestering them, pressing my face in the door, honking their horn in the driveway.
In other words, making a real pain in the neck out of myself. And slowly they began to see, well, perhaps he's got something. And they put a lot of clauses in the contract.
Like if I fell in love with my leading man or if I curse a nun or if I don't brush my teeth or whatever, I could be removed from the script after production, after five to 10 days. But all that aside, I really think that they they just wanted to get rid of me. They said, let's put 'em in a movie that'll get rid of me for two months.
But the gamble paid off in a way no one could have predicted. When Sylvester's movie hit the theaters, it wasn't just a box office hit, it was a cultural phenomenon. People were lining up down the street to watch it.
They couldn't get enough of Rocky. And seemingly overnight, Sylvester went from a struggling actor on the streets to one of the biggest movie stars in the world. There's something irresistible about Sylvester Stallone.
From underdog to champion, and have earned Stallone both worldwide fame and a personal fortune. Stallone knows he got where he is because he knows what it is to make a hit. There's Rocky stuff all over.
You amazed by that? Totally amazed by it. Having lived the, I guess the poor boy syndrome for so long.
All now the gates, the fantasy were open in. You are okay with being a Rocky? Totally.
Are you kidding? I mean, I wish I was Rocky. Sylvester wrestled with the truth that he could never fully live up to the larger-than-life character he had created.
When everyone looked at him, they saw Rocky, but he felt far from heroic. And now what should have been the greatest night of his life, he was distracted by a familiar absence. And the winner is, Rocky.
Sylvester Stallone, I'd like to thank you for sharing your dream of Rocky with us and for giving a performance that has enriched all our lives. When people go, "Ah, you must loved the Oscars. " I go.
. . I invited my mother, and she goes, "You want me to go with you?
" I'm up for an Oscar. Yes, I mean, I was a bum a year ago. She goes "All right, but you have to invite Vivian.
" I go, "Who's Vivian? " "She's my hairdresser. " I don't have a seat for your hairdresser.
It's you and me front row at the Oscars. "If you don't invite Vivian, I'm not coming. " Well she didn't go.
So you just went alone? Mhmm. Was there ever one time that they ever acknowledged how proud they were of you?
No. Not once? You mean, them?
Yeah. No. Jacqueline Stallone is an experience.
She looks and acts like Sylvester's sister, not his mother. She says she's been a showgirl and astrologer and a beauty contest winner. I understand you're having fun right now, just traveling around, being Sylvester's, not just being Sylvester Stallone's mother because you were Sylvester Stallone's mother before Sylvester hit this.
Yeah, I remind him that often. If it wasn't for me there would be no Sylvester Stallone. That's right.
If I decide I didn't wanna be a mother, Sylvester Stallone would just be a. . .
What would he be? Nothing. For Stallone, the rejection cut deeper than any critic's words.
He'd spent his whole life trying to prove he was more than the boy she had rejected. But even at the height of his success, it still wasn't enough. That's when he knew he wanted something different for his own children.
He worked tirelessly to build a legacy they could be proud of, that could live on forever. The line in the movie that, you know, I'm so, so glad he is born because now I can live through your eyes. It's like that I think is what fathers look to their children for.
You know, It's an extension of, it's a slice of immortality. As long as he's alive, your memory will always be alive. That you did something right.
I mean, you hope for that. But in his relentless drive to create that legacy, Stallone became obsessed with pushing himself to the limit. He felt more at home, blurring the lines between reality and fiction, throwing himself into life-threatening stunts and spending months apart from his kids, convinced that sacrifice and pain were the only paths to the future he envisioned for his family.
He pushed forward. There's something kind of romantic about doing your own stunts. There's something very unromantic about after doing your own stunts.
Dolph Lundgren you told him to hit you and you ended up in the hospital for nine days. I know I was in trouble when I showed up and nuns met you. That's not a good sign.
It was an accident. I had seen the Haggler Hearns fight- Good jabs and a right hand- and I went, well, you know what? I gotta forget what we've been practicing now Dolph.
I want you to get up there and just try to clock me, knock me out. Just go for it. He comes out there and I'm like, 5'10, he's like 6'12.
Okay he's beyond height. And he was also a world champion kickboxer. So he knows to fight and he's warm in the chest.
And after that night, I started feeling palpitations and I said, "Oh my God. " And I went to the hospital. It was an upper cut, cut the ribs, which hit the heart against the rib cage.
And it's a thing called a pericardial sac. They said, you usually get this in head on collisions. I said, "Well close.
" It's not uncommon for an action hero to get injured on a set, but I think it is clear that Sly drove it to the extreme. I thought it was too much. Bronchitis and thrush and fractured neck.
It was just on and on and on and on. You know, he's been working nights. He hasn't slept at all.
And now he is gotta work all night again. He's gotta just get home and be operated on right away. It was hard on them because I was so stressed and beat up.
Sly tries to mask the pain, pretend like it didn't happen. It's very scary for our family, every time Sly has to go through surgery, 'cause you never know. I mean, no one knows.
Sylvester Stallone hours before an earth-shattering loss. Smiley movie star at Comic-Con Thursday with Arnold Schwartzenegger to promote their new movie, "The Expendables Two. " Keep it going as long as we can and bring back some true bad asses and- Jovial mood, a far cry from the tragedies Stallone will face the next day.
The body of Sage Stallone was discovered, unresponsive in the residence. 36-year-old Sage Stallone was found in Sage's Los Angeles home. His body may have been in the house for days before it was found.
His death coming as a shock to everyone, including his famous dad. After his son's funeral, Sylvester struggled to pick up the pieces of a life that suddenly felt unrecognizable. Sage's death hit him harder than any role he'd ever played because this time there was no script to follow.
There was no way to rewrite the ending. Loss and grief, which is the hardest thing in the world to live with girls, I swear to you. Yeah.
Oh s***. It's hard. As long as he's alive, your memory will always be alive.
You did something right. Anyway. I don't know why all of a sudden get dramatic like that.
You know, some s*** just comes up. Grief never goes away. It sort of rises into the clouds, you might say.
It sort of seems as though it's diminishing and it does, until something brings it back and there and is the cycle. Life is addition up until age 40 and after that is subtraction. Your children are moving out, your friends are moving on.
Some die, job is gone. Gone. It's loss.
Family, that's real. That lives and breathes and dies and bleeds. Just a few months later, while Sylvester was still struggling to cope with the loss of his son, life hit him again.
His daughter needed a life-saving surgery. And suddenly he was faced with the terrifying thought that he could lose another child. Jesus Christ it was horrible and she was so brave.
I mean, we're falling apart, and she put it on the brave face. And I know she's scared to death. I don't think I ever told you this, but I remember the day I found out that I had to have surgery.
Mom broke down, you broke down, and everyone around me lost it. That was the moment I realized that sometimes the strongest people in your life aren't always as strong as you think. When you had your first operation within two months, it was such a nightmare.
And the nurse is taking you. She goes, "Okay, kiss your baby goodbye. " I went, "Stop.
Can you rephrase that? " This can't be happening. There's always that regret.
I could have learned so much more if I hadn't been so self-absorbed and dealing with other people. I'm there making a stupid movie instead of making their life. And you go, was it really worth it?
Searching for a sign, Sylvester brought his family back to Philadelphia. The place where it all began. It was here all those years ago that he had followed his mother in search of belonging and where the vision of Rocky had first come to life.
Little did he know, as they retraced those familiar streets, his daughters were about to surprise him in a way he never expected. I'm gonna tell you guys something. So right here, probably the most important thing I ever wrote was in Rocky Balboa.
Where you used to fit right here, I'd hold you up to say to your mother, "This kid's gonna be the best kid in the world. " And I wrote this because it's something I always wanted to say to my children. This is the one line we remembered out of all the things is that line.
Yeah. We know that speech by heart. The world aint all sunshine and rainbows.
It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are. . .
It'll beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit.
It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. You made my life girls.
No, you made ours. They made me happy. They made me very sad.
They bring me emotion. I had to almost lose it to respect it. Things as they say, happen when you least expect it.
Nobody knows what life is gonna bring. And then 35 years later, you look at your beautiful family and you realize you're the luckiest son of a b**** in the world. Looking at his children, Sylvester knew that all the painful sacrifices he'd made over the years had finally paid off.
And that his legacy had grown into something so much bigger, reaching far beyond his family. Rocky is part of Americana now. I was obsessed with Rocky.
I kept picturing me falling down and getting up. I wanted to feel something besides defeat. I wanted to just go to distance.
That changed my life. He is strong and he is a fighter and he believes in protecting and defending and kicking ass. But he's also tender and he's gentle and he's humble and he's accountable.
This is a beautiful character. And Stallone, thank you for creating Rocky Balboa. Don't you find it fascinating that one movie caused such an iconic move that every single day on those steps, they run to the top and immediately their arms are thrown in the air?
I thought, where can I exemplify a transitional moment where a man fails and then he succeeds? And I feel that way today. I've had my time and I'm incredibly grateful for it.
Now it's your time. It ain't about how hard you get hit! It's about how hard you can get hit!
And keep moving forward! How much you can take! And keep moving forward!
That's how winning is done! It's your time to look out there, see your vision, go after your dream and don't be deterred.
