I'm probably the only person in the entire world, other than the author himself, to have actually read every single page of Sylvester Stallone's first and last novel, Paradise Alley. (Or the only person to even know that he wrote a novel. Or care.)
Yes, I said 'author' and 'Sylvester Stallone' in the same sentence. And I meant it, too.
How do I know that he wrote the book, and not some ghostwriter?
Because there's a line in Rocky V where Paulie, Adrian's brother, sick of her stubbornness, tells offs his sister by saying: " You live in this fairy tale world, where the air don't move! You're like a season that don't change."
Rocky V came out in 1990; Paradise Alley came out in 1978. (Paradise Alley was a script Stallone wrote before Rocky, actually, which he then turned into a book and a movie after Rocky's success.) I read the novel and noticed the line 'you're like a season that don't change' because I remembered that line from the final Rocky flick; it was a line I'd always liked. Had a touch of poetry to it. Then I read the book, and noticed it again; Stallone stole his own line from his own book to use in the Rocky V screenplay twelve years later.
(Scott, you may ask, why the hell do you know this stuff? To which I can only answer: Well, I notice things like that, because, um, those are the kinds of things I notice.)
I read it when I was working at the downtown library in St.Catharines back in high school. (Tori, if you're reading this, that copy is probably still lurking somewhere in the shelves.) It was a hardcover, with a photo on the back of Stallone sitting in front of a dressing-room mirror, hands clasped over his face. I even remember the dedication, to his first wife: To Sasha, who takes away the rain.
(I told you I remember and notice strange stuff.)
I was interested in writing. Always had been. Tried to read everything out there that seemed interesting. I was getting more and more interested in movies, too, and I had always loved the Rocky movies as a kid, and when I was fourteen, fifteen, I watched them again and again and again. (I was racing cross-country then, and I used to watch the training montages to pump me up the night before a race.)
I realized that the first Rocky, especially, had a pretty damn good script. And Stallone had wrote it, and had been nominated for an Academy Award for it. And he wrote all the Rocky movies, and he directed II through IV, and he wrote and directed Paradise Alley, and he wrote and directed the Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive, too.
In the early nineties, when I was in high school, Stallone was making junk like Stop!Or My Mom Will Shoot and Cliffhanger and Demolition Man. (Actually, I have a soft spot for Cliffhanger because it was the first 'R' rated movie I saw in the theater as a legitimate 'adult'. Saw it three times in the theatre, actually, because it was very cinematic and kind of cool, truth be told, which freaked out my Canadian Literature and Drama teacher Mr.Dimartle. "You saw Cliffhanger three times? In the theatre?" I don't think he'd seen any movie in the theatre since probably Bonnie and Clyde. Let alone three times. Let alone the fact that it was a Stallone movie. But he's a good guy, so I forgive him his trespasses, as he forgives mine.)
Stallone's cinematic legacy was that of a pumped-up, monosyallabic, pretty-damn-bad actor.
Which he was.
But...
He'd wrote Rocky, see. And Rocky II. Good scripts. Human scripts. And he was a good actor in those, too. A real and honest one. And I was interested in writing. And if the image of a writer was a nerdy guy in a room smoking cigarettes, well, Stallone didn't fit the image.
It taught me a good lesson, is what I'm saying. To look beyond the surface of things. To delve deep into a person. To not rely on stereotypes. To not take things at face value. To not necessarily believe what the media and everyone else around you is saying. To look past exteriors. All the stuff we're supposed to learn in kindergarten but never really do.
I was thrilled to see Copland back in '97, the last good movie Stallone made, perhaps the last good movie he'll ever make. The director, James Mangold, knew he could act, knew he could get a good performance out of Stallone in a movie that included such heavyweights as Robert
DeNiro (the best American film actor ever), Ray Liotta and Harvey Keitel. There's not much Stallone can do well, as an actor, but what he does do well, he does very well -- two or three things only, mostly facial expressions, vocal expressions, that accenuate his droopy eyes and give him a tender, sympathic look. But Mangold knew what to look for and ask for, and he exploited Stallone's strengths to good effect.
Ah, the strange obessions I have...
Most of you don't care, nor should you. We all have our own quirks. We all have these eccentric cultural, societal likes and dislikes we don't talk about with people. This is one of mine: defending Sylvester Stallone to the world. Why? Because it's a strange and goofy thing to do. Because I'm a contrarian by nature and choice. Because when you're a teenager you still don't know how the world works, and you rely on what you're told, and I was learning that most people thought Stallone was a loser while I was learning that he wrote scripts and novels and offered something others neglected, and ignored. It was my own secret and my own theory, and it's important to remember who we used to be and what we used to love.
I always try to look for the full story of someone, and Stallone had a hell of a story -- kicked out of multiple schools, a struggling actor, writer, Academy Award nominee, biggest movie star in the world, now a somewhat sad, fading has-been. In the first Rocky, everyone's watching Apollo Creed on the TV, and the bartender says a disparaging remark, to which Stallone says: "This guy went out and took his best shot and became champion of the world. What kind of a shot did you ever take?" And some director was once accused of only having one or two good ideas, to which he responded: "Yeah, but most people don't have any good ideas, so one or two ain't bad, really." That's my take on Stallone: he latched onto a hell of a concept, and he rode it, and he took a shot. Almost everything else he made is garbage, true, but he took a shot. (Although I could defend his comedy Oscar, if you want me to, because it's actually not that bad. But you probably don't want me to, do you...)
I still maintain that Rocky is a great movie with a great script. (We have to stay true to our adolescent selves, after all.) I've realized that Stallone, as a director, evolved into the Michael Bay of the mid-eighties (which is a good thing or bad thing, depending on how you look at it); that Rocky IV is better than you think if you accept it as it is, which is a comic-book style allegory of Cold War tensions, not the gritty realism of the first film in the series; that First Blood is a tight, taught thriller; that most of his work his complete garbage; and that he really, really shouldn't have sung the title song to his directorial debut Paradise Alley. (Yes, Stallone himself sang the title song. Honest to god.)
We have to stay true to our adolescent selves. We have to remember what we used to love, and why. We have to defend the people and times that nudged us forward.
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