On October 23, the United States will see the release of Sylvester Stallone’s autobiography, The Steps. While presenting it, the actor and director spoke with a New York Times journalist about a painful and regrettable episode tied to the filming of Rocky and to his stormy relationship with his father, whom Sly had invited for a cameo hoping that he, a man who had always opposed his son’s profession, would finally be proud of him—unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and filming the climactic boxing match proved to be a colossal ordeal.
Stallone had asked his father, Frank, to play the tiny role of the timekeeper, essentially the ring-side official in charge of timing the takes and the pauses, and the man accepted. “I thought,” Sylvester recalled, “I want you to love me at least for a little while. Look at what I’ve done! Share this with me. I know you’ve spent your life thinking I was a fool, but look where we are now!”
When on set the director John G. Avildsen yelled “Action!”, everything went awry, because Stallone’s father did not time the pace as his son kept landing punches on his opponent, and the result was that Carl Weathers, who played Apollo Creed, began asking, “What’s going on?” Obviously,” – Sylvester Stallone said – “a fight broke out that quickly turned furious. A terrible Italian melodrama. And yet for a moment I thought: Jesus, he’ll be proud of me!”
In the interview, Stallone explained that his father was a very cold man with whom it was extremely difficult to interact, and that the parent-child relationship was strained until the two reconciled before Frank’s death in 2011:
With him, it worked like this: violent outbursts of anger followed by total silence. If, while we talked, I told him, “I disagree,” he would start twisting the fork and grind his teeth, and at that moment you knew what to expect, and indeed you’d get a slap. He had big hands. I learned to dodge his blows. In the book I didn’t talk much about him, because I didn’t want readers to pity me, but he was crazy.
We know that Rocky was the film that rapidly transformed Sylvester Stallone into a star. At the time, the actor was 30 years old and he was nominated for the Oscar both as leading actor and for the screenplay. He didn’t win, but the film earned three golden statues: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing. Yet Frank Stallone did not alter his attitude. A barber born in Puglia who soon separated from his alcoholic wife, he raised Sly and his brother Frank on his own. At 15, Stallone moved to live with his mother in Philadelphia, finished high school and enrolled in college, but then returned to New York where he lived in poverty, often sleeping at the bus station and taking a variety of jobs before debuting before the camera in the 1970 soft porn Porno Proibito. The harsh Frank never supported him.
Returning to Rocky, as we know, it is the subject of Peter Farrelly’s film Rocky Sono Io, which will hit Italian theaters on December 31 and to which Sylvester has given his full endorsement. Starring is Anthony Ippolito, whom we gladly see again in the film’s trailer.
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