Playboy Interview: Sylvester Stallone

In 1976, Sylvester Stallone burst upon the American movie scene like a Roman candle. In "Rocky," his Cinderella saga about a club fighter who valiantly goes the distance with the champ, Stallone himself became a Hollywood heavy-weight to be reckoned with. His portrayal of boxer Rocky Balboa was an energized blend of brute force and injured innocence that drew raves from reviewers--and unabashed admiration from millions of moviegoers. (Incidentally, before the movie opened, Arthur Knight in our "Sex Stars of 1976" forecast Stallone's success.) "Rocky" became the sleeper hit of the decade, and although Stallone was denied Oscars for his screenplay and acting, "Rocky" went on to win three Academy Awards, including one for Best Movie of 1976.

If there was an overriding reason for the film's phenomenal success, it probably could be traced to its hero's--and author's--traditional values. Stallone deftly turned boxing's seamy side into a morality play about striving, honor and old-fashioned romance. As such, it was a message the nation hadn't heard from its moviemakers for some time. To many, "Rocky" was a welcome throwback to American movies of 30 years ago, when endings were always upbeat and the good guys seemed destined to live happily ever after. The film even had practical lessons to teach: Athletes and executives alike began extolling "Rocky" as a prime motivational tool. Stallone had obviously touched on yearnings deeply embedded in the American consciousness.

In doing so, he became an instant celebrity; but there was soon trouble in paradise. Sly, as he's known to associates, was said to have developed a terminal case of Hollywood ego. Last winter, the press somewhat gleefully reported that his marriage had fallen apart. In the spring, his performance in "F.I.S.T." was scorned by most critics, while Stallone himself was reported to be at odds with both "F.I.S.T.'s" director and its original author. No one in Hollywood doubted that Stallone had achieved superstardom; the question was, could he keep it? For an actor who'd spent many years waiting in the wings for his career to take off, matters were clearly getting out of hand.

Born in the Hell's Kitchen section of New York City on July 6, 1946, Sylvester Stallone was the son of a Sicilian immigrant. Frank and Jacqueline Stallone worked hard to get away from Hell's Kitchen, and when Sylvester was five, the Stallones moved to Montgomery Hills, Maryland, where his parents opened a beauty shop. Their marriage broke up when Sly was 11 and from then on, he and his younger brother, Frank, Jr., lived a year at a time with each parent. After his mother remarried, he went to live with her in Philadelphia. When he was 16--and had been tossed out of three schools for fighting and vandalism--Stallone was sent to the Devereux-Manor Hall High School, an institution for boys with learning and behavior problems. In 1969, after attending two colleges, he went to New York, determined to be an actor. For the next five years, Stallone did more starving than acting and supported himself with a variety of menial jobs.

In 1973, he, his wife, Sasha, and the couple's bull mastiff, Butkus, piled into a ten-year-old Oldsmobile they had bought for $40 and headed for the West Coast. Says Stallone, "As soon as I arrived, I went Hollywood: I bought a 32-cent pair of sunglasses. For me, the difference between New York and Hollywood was that I was still unemployed, but now I had a tan." Stallone was down to his last four dollars when he landed a small role in "Capone." Several other bit parts followed, but his career went absolutely nowhere--until, in 1975, he sat down and wrote "Rocky."

To interview the mercurial actor, Playboy sent free-lancer Lawrence Linderman to meet with Stallone in Hollywood. Linderman reports:

"Until we actually completed it, I was beginning to think of the Stallone interview as more of a career than a Playboy assignment. I first met Stallone in August 1977 on the set of 'F.I.S.T.'; our last meeting took place after that movie had been released and Stallone was doing postproduction work on his next movie, 'Paradise Alley.' In between, I watched him act in both films and got to know him well enough to realize at least this much: Sylvester Stallone comes at you with his dukes up. His success has been a very bittersweet experience; although it's given him money and a great sense of personal vindication, it's also made him a target for colleagues and media folk who've publicly doubted everything from his brains to his talent to his morals.

"In any event, he was deeply suspicious about doing this interview and almost canceled it several times. Further complications arose when one of his managers wanted Stallone's photo on the cover and then wanted cover approval, and then wanted cover and copy approval. Those are good things to want if you're the manager of a star; if you're a Playboy editor, those are unthinkable conditions to grant, and my editor didn't grant them.

"Six months after we first shook hands, Stallone and I finally sat down to begin more than ten hours of taped conversations. Stallone dropped his guard almost as soon as we started talking and he revealed himself to be an open, quick-witted and thoroughly engaging guy. 'F.I.S.T.' was still very much on his mind and it provided the opening subject of our interview."

[Q] Playboy: After praising your portrayal of Rocky, a number of film critics suggested that the movie may have been your million-to-one shot--and that, following it, you'd soon slip back into acting obscurity. That idea gained currency last spring, when most reviewers berated your performance in F.I.S.T. Could the critics be right?

[A] Stallone: No, but I think they'd like to be. I know I have at least 10 to 15 decent acting roles--different characterizations--in me. After those, I'll become a hack and begin to parody myself by falling back on tricks that have worked for me in the past. But critics don't know that. They don't know how schizoid I can become and how I change at times. I've always been kind of like a chameleon, and critics can't know that, because they haven't lived with me for 32 years; I have. I'm aware, though, that after Rocky, a lot of people were skeptical and deep down in their hearts wanted me to fail, for whatever reasons.

[Q] Playboy: Did that make you a little more careful about choosing your next film?

[A] Stallone: Very much so. I wanted a truly demanding role so diametrically opposed to Rocky that it would be shocking. I wanted to play a leader of men, instead of a man who is led, and not many scripts like that are around. I'd written a couple for myself, but then F.I.S.T. came along and there was a chance to work on a big-budget film with a big-name director and a big cast, so I took it just to get it out of my system. Incidentally, F.I.S.T. got very good reviews in the West; the East Coast critics were down on it, and I think it's because there's a different breed of men back there. They have a basic antagonism to anything that comes out of the West Coast and, on top of that, I think they look at me as a defector. I represent something that is very frightening to them: a guy who's made it by being a raging optimist--and most of those people, as the word critic implies, are pessimists.

[Q] Playboy: Nevertheless, F.I.S.T. disappointed more than just critics--or did you think it was an unqualified success?

[A] Stallone: Of course it wasn't. As a matter of fact, I was very apprehensive about the movie, because I didn't have any creative input after we finished filming it. That's like giving the blueprints of a house to a construction team and not going back until it's built--and then you wind up saying, "My God, they've put the kitchen in the bedroom and the bedroom in the basement, and everything's wrong." I was a victim of naïveté in the sense that I didn't know what to expect. But then again, I didn't have the same entree to the editing room on F.I.S.T. that I had with Rocky. If I'd had a voice in the editing process, I would've changed a lot of things in F.I.S.T.

[Q] Playboy: Such as?

[A] Stallone: Well, I don't know why, but Norman Jewison, the director, never used my most fiery takes, so I came off lukewarm throughout the movie. I do three different types of takes for every scene in a film. I do the first one lukewarm, the second one medium and the third very hot, so that the editor has a choice. For instance, if the movie is dragging in spots and the editor needs a little extra energy, he's got it. But, for some reason, only the lukewarm takes were used.

Another thing that bothered me involved a transition that I did with my voice. I started off in F.I.S.T. talking the way I'm talking now, and then my voice got lower and kind of gravelly, and I finally ended up talking in a hoarse whisper. But the transition wasn't used, so you wonder where Johnny Kovak's voice came from. It was completely screwed up: One day I'm a medium-voiced guy and the next day I'm hoarse. That really burned me up, because it looked like I didn't do my homework--and I did.

But the biggest blow to me concerned a line that was cut from the Senate-hearing scene. I'd never worked so hard getting ready for a scene in my life. I had heart palpitations, blurred vision--I actually thought I was gonna go into a nervous breakdown. Anyway, at the end of my confrontation with Rod Steiger, I get up and say, "I hold you in contempt, I hold Milano in contempt, I hold this hearing in contempt and, most of all, I hold myself in contempt!"

I then walk to the hearing-room door and just as I'm about to open it, I turn around and shout, "You may bring me down, but you're not gonna bring this union down--or we're gonna shut this country down!" And then I walk outside and into a crowd of truck drivers, and you know that I may have been discredited, but if I want to, I can shut the country down. That was a very important line to lose. Norman Jewison said, "It makes Johnny Kovak too threatening." Well, he is threatening, and when he stands raging at the hearing-room door and making his final threat, it's like the last bellowing of a dying bull.

In the meantime, I'd paced my performance for that moment, which is why I didn't go all the way when confronting Steiger. I wanted to save that last little bit extra for that line--which would've put a different edge on the scene and on the picture.

[Q] Playboy: Is your dissatisfaction with F.I.S.T. the reason you didn't lift a finger to promote it?

[A] Stallone: No, it's because I felt that Norman Jewison was the star of F.I.S.T. It's his movie. The scenes were cut like a Jewison movie, my performance was cut like a Jewison movie and I therefore felt that Norman should promote it. I'm not trying to be critical of him, I'm just saying that F.I.S.T. was his and that I didn't feel very involved in it. I did what I had to do and turned in my performance, but there was a distance between us. Nobody ever asked me what I thought. I felt as if I were a journeyman, an employee, all the way down the line.

[Q] Playboy: That contradicts what we've read. For example, Joe Eszterhas, who wrote the original screenplay of F.I.S.T., claimed that you successfully insinuated your way into getting credit as co-author of the film.

[A] Stallone: Well, I read Joe's comments about that, and that was a classic case of a failure to communicate because of the go-between--who was Jewison. I think if Norman had actually tried to promote a thing between Joe and me, it would've worked. I got offended because Joe wouldn't listen to me and he got offended because he wasn't invited to the set and he made some threats. We finally talked to each other and got it straight. I happen to like the guy, but I'll never do any kind of collaboration again unless I meet the man first.

[Q] Playboy: What did you contribute to F.I.S.T.'s screenplay?

[A] Stallone: A lot. I'd been offered hundreds of scripts after Rocky and I turned everything down until I read Joe's, which was massive--250 or 300 pages, I think. Norman Jewison sent it to me and after reading it, I told him I'd do F.I.S.T. with one stipulation: No disrespect to the writer, but since I'm a writer and I wanted to play the role, I wanted to tailor it to myself. The first half of the original script was the building up of a nobody, a loading-dock worker who helps organize a union and then becomes head of it. The second half produces a change: He goes to Washington, D.C., and it's his downfall. He becomes corrupt and a viper among vipers. He eventually gets so insufferable that the Mafia finally does him in, because, after having his own best friend set up, he wants to kill a Senator. I told Norman that after the first hour of the movie, we'd lose our audience: No one wants someone they've seen grow as a hero go down. I told him, "This guy has to keep growing. The movie starts when he's 22, and he's got to grow until he's 50, and we've got to end on a peak." He agreed, and so then I sat down and worked.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think, in retrospect, that it was a mistake for you to have been in F.I.S.T.?

[A] Stallone: I have mixed emotions about it. I think I wasn't true to my nature and that I should have done something more along the lines of a blue-collar guy who stays blue collar. I'm sorry I didn't do something, say, along the lines of a Rocky Balboa or an ex-con who's trying to make it back into society, or a fire fighter. Instead, I did something to prove that I could pull it off. And I put my fate in someone else's hands--and most of my efforts were butchered. I'm not very happy about the film. It served its purpose, I think, because people will now say, "Yeah, all right, he's not a boxer, he can act a little, he can yell a lot and maybe even write, too." But F.I.S.T. wasn't worth the seven months I spent making it.

[Q] Playboy: By the time it was released, you'd managed to acquire a reputation for having the most oversized ego in Hollywood. Do you think that's a bum rap?

[A] Stallone: I just think I've become brusque with people. I've become hard. Right now, I'm a very cynical person, but I believe it's only a stage I'm going through and that I'll lose it soon. The cynicism is because people are coming at me now, sometimes in the press, with undue malevolence. They come after me saying that I'm swell-headed, and there are all these stories about me, like how I won't work with any actors who are taller than me, and that's not true. In my next film, Paradise Alley, there're at least nine actors who are not only bigger than me, they're half the size of the island of Rhodes. This kind of stuff turned me against the press for a while, but I guess it's a case of what goes up must come down--and there are a lot of people out there who like to read unhappy news. That's what sells. They don't want to read that I'm happy and riding around in a Rolls-Royce and that I use lilac shaving cream and how I never get a pimple. They'd rather read that I'm miserable and that all my teeth are falling out. But I'll lose this cynicism, this hardness.

[Q] Playboy: So you haven't enjoyed your fame?

[A] Stallone: No, I do get kicks out of it. I walk into a restaurant and I get good service where normally it would take hours. But I really don't walk around thinking, I am a star. To me, a star is only a ball of gas, and I've always loathed using that word to describe actors. That's like saying, "I am so celestial. I am not of this earth, for I am a star. I twinkle in the cosmos while all of you grovel in the valleys."

[Q] Playboy: Nevertheless, by Hollywood's standards, you are a star. Has it been rough going handling your new-found status?

[A] Stallone: No; success is really very easy to deal with. All I do is sit back and gaze into a mirror and say, "All right, Sly. Eighteen months ago, you were a total nonentity, a goofball. Today, people put you under a microscope and analyze every move you make. But you're the same guy you were then. The only difference is that you got your break, and you don't have to be supersensitive about it."

The one thing I have to accept, I guess, is that I'm no longer one of the boys. When people know who you are, what happens is that everything becomes diffused. It's as if I'm now looking at life through leaded glass, and it's definitely not rose-colored, either. It's thick and kind of out of focus, but that's the only way I can maintain an even keel right now. I suppose the only performer who really has all this stuff down, who truly understands glamor and fantasy, is Liberace. He can sit there and flaunt his diamonds and his minks and his Rolls-Royces and you like him, because he does it honestly. He's sharing all that with you. He's not saying, "Look what I've got and you don't." He's saying, "Look what you bought me." He's just extraordinary.

[Q] Playboy: What are you saying--that you want to emulate Liberace?

[A] Stallone: Hey, that isn't me. I think I have two choices: to either become a recluse like Elvis Presley--which can be very dangerous--or to be an extrovert. I think the name of the game is show business, so I show myself. I think that as long as I mingle with crowds, well, I may lose that elusive mysterious quality, but what I gain is a definite rapport with reality. When I go into a crowd, I'm not tongue-tied and I'm not worried I'm gonna fall down a flight of stairs, or that I'll scuff my shoes getting out of a limousine or chip my teeth on a curb. What I've said before holds: I'm trying to travel through life without being permanently mangled by success. I really think it's just a matter of allotting time, of discipline, of getting up at a certain hour and following the same routine. You can't waver. I wavered for five months and suffered terribly, and I'm not talking about my work.

[Q] Playboy: Are you referring to the break-up of your marriage?

[A] Stallone: Yes, I am. After Rocky, I went through a period of too much too soon, and the pressures got to me. I was extremely foolish in that I directed my frustrations at the people I love the most, simply because they were the most vulnerable to attack. I left my family, thinking that if I left, my problems would go away. All I was doing was playing hooky from reality.

[Q] Playboy: How long did it take you to realize that?

[A] Stallone: I knew it within two or three weeks, but there was a problem: I wanted to reinstate myself with my wife, Sasha, without coming off as a total buffoon. I walked around thinking, How do I pick up the pieces and still maintain any type of esteem with Sasha? I wanted to go home badly, because I love her, so, in a sense, I waited and waited for the proper opportunity--until I realized there is no such thing. You just have to strip yourself down to the bare wires and do it. So that's what I did. I went home one day and told Sasha, "You're looking at a full-grown fool. I'm extremely regretful and sorry, and I don't blame you if you never talk to me again. You have every reason in the world to despise me."

She took me back without condition, which shows, I think, that our marriage was right in the first place. That it had tremendous foundations.

[Q] Playboy: If all that is true, why did you tell Los Angeles magazine that success had nothing to do with your marital breakup?

[A] Stallone: That was a lie. I was lying mostly to myself. Sometimes one does lie to one's self to alleviate pressure. A lie can be handled in a few short words, but the truth sometimes takes hours of deliberation before it shows itself. In any case, when the press would come up to me and ask, "What's the story with your marriage?" I thought, Why expose myself to a mere stranger? So I'd just handle it with a stock answer. I'd give them stock answer number 72 and get ready with stock answer number 73 for the next question. It wasn't an easy period, because I thought I was on top of the whole thing, but I became moody, avaricious and all-consuming. To paraphrase the Eagles, I wanted to live life in the fast lane.

[Q] Playboy: Has your life slowed down since then?

[A] Stallone: No, but I think I'm living it more in perspective and analyzing it more. I'm not taking it like, well, after I finish editing Paradise Alley, I'm gonna make Rocky II and then I'll edit that and go on to the next film. I have to look at what will suffer because of all that work. Is my home life going to suffer? If so, then I'll allot more time to my home life and I'll try to be as concerned and responsible a husband and father as I can be. Sometimes it's hard to be aware of that, because you'll want to go for the glory, for the movie, for the money, and you won't think about the repercussions. You won't realize that work is gonna take 99 percent of your time--and that to make up for it, the one percent when you're at home has to be incredibly blissful, tranquil and sincere. That's just not easy to do, especially for me, because I take home the characters I play.

[Q] Playboy: In what way?

[A] Stallone: All kinds of ways, starting with what I eat. For Rocky, I purposely altered my diet so that it would severely change my intelligence level, which it did. I went on a strict shrimp-and-shellfish diet, with no carbohydrates whatsoever, and eventually, my intelligence level dropped to the point where I'd want to listen to country-and-western music, which is really bizarre for me. Your brain can't function without carbohydrates, and if I'd kept it up much longer, I probably would've wound up in a hospital. Plus, of course, I was walking like Rocky and sniffing and shadow-boxing and talking like Rocky. I became Rocky.

Now, maybe this dietary stuff works and maybe it doesn't, but it helps me get into a character, so, in a sense, it does work. For F.I.S.T., I gained 35 pounds eating bananas and water, which wasn't a laugh riot, by any means. In fact, it left me bordering on lunacy, but bananas contain potassium, which stimulates the nerve synapses, those little tissues that transmit the brain's electrical impulses up and down the spine. As Johnny Kovac became older and more physically ponderous, I wanted him to look suspicious and to be ready with a wisecrack for everything. I also took to shuffling around at home like an old man, talking in a low, no-nonsense staccato voice and boring everyone stiff. My wife hated it, the house-keeper hated it, my kid hated it--even our dog hated it.

[Q] Playboy: Do you get the message that maybe you should leave your work on the set?

[A] Stallone: That's easier said than done. Thank God that in my next movie, Paradise Alley, I play a character I was able to jump in and out of at will, a guy very closely aligned to my normal state. For that role, I got into energy foods--nuts, fruits, juices and things that go through your system very easily, like pulverized chicken. I ate like that because I wanted to devote all my energy to directing, writing and acting.

[Q] Playboy: Have F.I.S.T.'s mixed notices caused you any added worries about Paradise Alley?

[A] Stallone: No, just the opposite: I wanted to throw Paradise Alley into release right after F.I.S.T. came out, but the distribution arrangements had already been made. I think it's going to be a terrific film, very much like some of those great Bowery Boys and Frank Capra movies of the late Thirties and early Forties. It's about three brothers who are losers living in Hell's Kitchen in New York. They all want to be big fish in a big pond, and the movie is about their scheming and comic attempts to get out of Hell's Kitchen, to get away from the neighborhood wise guys and dime-a-dance girls.

My character finds a way for them to do it: He gets his iceman brother, Victor, to start wrestling for money. The wrestling in the film goes back to the origins of professional wrestling just before Gorgeous George; it's underground wrestling. Wrestling's been maligned by a lot of people, but it's fascinating to see men of immense size--anywhere from 250 to 400 pounds--moving around like cats, like acrobats. And the wrestling in Paradise Alley is real, which is why I think the movie may be more visually interesting than Rocky.

I've been told, of course, that a movie about wrestling has never made any money. But I was told the same thing before Rocky was made: "Do you realize, Sylvester, that only one fight film ever made any money, and then only pennies?" I said, "Yeah, but it wasn't my boxing movie."

[Q] Playboy: When Rocky was released, there was a great outpouring of publicity to the effect that your life paralleled Rocky Balboa's--that you were down and out before suddenly catching a big break. How much of that was pure flackery?

[A] Stallone: None of it. At that point in my life, I was on the rocks and drying up like a beached whale. I'd been through something more traumatic than straight failure: a small taste of success and then failure again. I'd been in The Lords of Flatbush, Capone, Bananas, Death Race 2000, Prisoner of Second Avenue and Farewell, My Lovely, and I started to think I was going somewhere. And then the phone didn't ring for nine months. That's a long time to be out of work.

I was just about broke and things were looking very, very bad, so one night, to cheer myself up, I took the last of my entertainment money and went to see the Muhammad Ali--Chuck Wepner fight. They were showing it closed circuit at the Wiltern Theater, on the corner of Western and Wilshire in Los Angeles. And I'll be damned, I'm sitting there, looking around at the audience, and a drama is unfolding. Wepner is a trial horse who's supposed to last maybe three rounds, so Ali can go to the showers early, but he's hanging in there. And then, all of a sudden, Ali falls down--he tripped--but now the place is going crazy! Guys' eyes are turning up white; I mean, the crowd is going nuts. And here comes the last round, and Wepner finally loses on a TKO. I said to myself, "That's drama. Now the only thing I've got to do is get a character to that point and I've got my story."

[Q] Playboy: Just like that?

[A] Stallone: Just like that. I then went home and wrote the most vile, putrid, festering little street drama you've ever seen. I had Rocky Balboa as a good guy surrounded by rotten people. His manager, Mickey, for instance, was a racist maniac. The champ was older, maybe 37, and during their fight, Rocky catches him good, breaks his ribs and starts beating the guy to a pulp. And every time Rocky goes back to his corner, Mickey is yelling, "Kill him! I want you to kill him! Beat him to death!" Rocky starts thinking, My God, what have I got myself into? I was broke before this, but at least I was content. So he goes out, and even though the champion's on his last legs, Rocky lets himself get hit with a punch and then purposely falls flat on his face and loses the fight on a TKO. Mickey is screaming at him, everyone is screaming at him, but Rocky doesn't care. He takes his loser's share of the money and buys a pet shop for himself and Adrian.

[Q] Playboy: That does seem a little farfetched.

[A] Stallone: I didn't like it either, but it's part of the metamorphosis of a script, or did you think they just come out ready to be filmed? Ali fought Wepner in March 1975. I finished my first draft that June and showed it to my agent at the time, Herb Nanas, who is now my manager. The dialog was crude and contained tremendous obscenities, but Herb said, "This is really very good." I said thanks, went home, let it cool for a week and then saw all the mistakes in it. But the spine was there and I finished a second draft in July.

[Q] Playboy: How long did it take before you got an offer for it?

[A] Stallone: I got my first real bite by August first. United Artists wanted to pay me $75,000, which is a good price for a first script. I was broke by then--I mean, I didn't even have $100 to my name--but something in the back of my mind told me I could play that role. So when Herb brought me the good news about the $75,000, I turned to him and said, "Don't sell it." And, oh, were they shocked back at UA! Their next offer was $100,000 and a guarantee that they'd get a celebrity to play Rocky. They said it would make an excellent film and that I could come by and visit the set.

[Q] Playboy: Who did United Artists have in mind for the part?

[A] Stallone: They mentioned Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Jimmy Caan, Ryan O'Neal--they mentioned just about everyone except a great bit actor named Arthur Hunnicutt. I remember the day I learned about all the actors they were considering. I was in Herb's office, and after he told me their names, I said, "Hey, this is not going to work." Herb said, "What's not going to work, Sly? They're up to $150,000, which is more money than you and I have ever seen." I told him, "Look, my friend, they can go to $500,000, they can go to $1,000,000 or $2,000,000, or $5,000,000 or $10,000,000, take your choice. Under the threat of death, I'm telling you not to sell the script unless I play Rocky."

So Herb went back to UA with that. They came back with an offer of $175,000, and then $210,000, and then $250,000, and a final offer of $315,000. I kept saying no until they gave in and said, "Oh, Jesus, let's forget all this and let him have a shot at it."

[Q] Playboy: How much did you finally get for the screenplay?

[A] Stallone: The price came down to $20,000--and I got that much only because a Writer's Guild rule says that any film budgeted at $1,000,000 or more must pay a minimum of $20,000 for the script. As an actor, I worked for scale. Maybe it was a stroke of fate, but I also got a percentage of the picture--ten percent of the net. I didn't see a dime of it until last September, when I was almost done with F.I.S.T. That's when I got my first payment.

[Q] Playboy: We understand that first check was for around $1,000,000. How did it feel to become a wealthy man overnight?

[A] Stallone: Terrifically comforting. I threw away my burlap security blanket and replaced it with one made out of cashmere. I also discovered that the Government was my buddy and that my buddy wanted income tax from me. Which was kind of novel, because I'd only earned about $1400 the year before I made Rocky. United Artists probably went into shock over the amount of money they made, because while we were shooting Rocky, word leaked out that UA would be happy if the film broke even: They liked the script, but they weren't thrilled with me. Neither were some of the directors they tried to get before John Avildsen agreed to do it. At least five directors turned them down. Some liked the script, some didn't--and many of them felt I was wrong for the part.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Stallone: They said I didn't have the stature of a heavyweight. I'll tell you what I told them: I'm bigger than Rocky Marciano was in his prime. I'm five feet ten and three quarters tall and Marciano was five ten and a half. I have a 73-inch reach and he had a 68-inch reach. His biceps were 14 inches and mine are almost 17 inches. I hate to tell you what I thought they might want to measure next. Anyway, I said that if Marciano could become undefeated heavyweight champion of the world with his physique, I could certainly play a fighter in a fictitious film with mine.

[Q] Playboy: Rocky Balboa was your first lead role in a movie. When the cameras started rolling, were you at all worried that perhaps you were in over your head?

[A] Stallone: For one fleeting moment, yeah. When we started shooting, we were on Broad Street in Philadelphia at 4:30 in the morning and it was 19 degrees outside. I got dressed in a trailer and as I was about to walk out, I looked at myself in a mirror that was hanging next to the door. And I thought, Oh, God, this is it. Sylvester, you've bluffed your way, you've bullied your way, you've badgered your way and you've begged your way into this position. If you don't pull it off, your name is gonna be synonymous with failure. Pretty soon, people aren't going to say, "Hey, you made a bomb." They'll be saying, "Hey, you made a Stallone." It's all up to you. Can you do it?

I just stared and stared at myself in the mirror, in make-up, and the make-up seemed to blend perfectly into my face. And then an assistant director stopped by and yelled, "Come on, Sylvester. It's time." I turned from the mirror and said, "Hey, you got the wrong guy. Rocky. Call me Rocky." And I knew from that instant on that I was going to do it.

[Q] Playboy: The heavyweight champion in Rocky, Apollo Creed, was an obvious take-off on Muhammad Ali. Did you get any flak about that?

[A] Stallone: Yeah, mostly from United Artists. Their hierarchy was a little worried about it, and before they'd accept the script, they asked me to rewrite the Creed part. I went home and did it overnight, and the next day, Apollo Creed came back as a Jamaican. As soon as they said, "OK, it's a go," I put the Jamaican back on the plane and brought back my real Apollo Creed.

I think the character was a form of flattery to Ali, but a couple of black guys told me, "You're running our man down. We're personal friends of Ali's, and this is a racist script." I said, "What sense of racism is there? This movie's about a white underdog. I'm being more racist toward myself than anybody else, because I lose the fight, so what are you talking about?"

[Q] Playboy: We've heard that you're a domineering and difficult actor to work with and that you supposedly proved it while making Rocky. Have we heard wrong?

[A] Stallone: I think so. Look, I'm a born critic--of myself and other things--and I'm extremely opinionated. I must be, because I think anybody who doesn't have an opinion should go to Tibet and start chanting with a Lhasa Apso on his lap. As an actor, I think I'm all right, but I've never functioned 100 percent as an actor. You see, I think the day of the single-talented performer is drawing to an end. Today, actors have to be involved in the politics of film making and in producing, writing, directing--something besides just acting.

But the actual pure certified artisan in an actor doesn't want to do that, doesn't even want to know who's in a movie with him. All he wants to know is the start date and if the script is ready. Fine, but out of ten movies this artist may have done, how many are good--two or three? The rest fall by the wayside. Why? Because in the editing room, the logic and meaning of an entire script can be changed, the story line altered--and the actor's dream reversed. The actor may turn in a fine performance, but six months later, what he sees onscreen will be a wretched misinterpretation of what he intended. He's completely at the mercy of the director, editor or producer, or all three at once.

Well, during Rocky, I kept a third eye out. I lived in that editing room. I was there. I wasn't popular, but I provided them with a presence they wouldn't fool around with. They wouldn't just say, "Hey, let's cut out this close-up of Sly"--not when I'm sitting two feet away. By being there, I got them to respect my screenplay and my performance.

[Q] Playboy: Then you were muscling them, weren't you?

[A] Stallone: An important actor has the power to muscle, because producers need that actor for advertising purposes. Who is more valuable in terms of promoting a picture? The press isn't going to want to talk to a producer or a grip or a gaffer. They're going to want to talk to the guy whose face is up there.

[Q] Playboy: Did you get violent in the editing room? There's an absolutely unconfirmed rumor around that you beat up Avildsen when he cut out a scene you liked. Any truth to it?

[A] Stallone: I've heard that, too, and no, no, no, it never happened. What did happen was really kind of funny. John and I had been discussing the scene where Rocky is out walking with Adrian and invites her to come into his apartment. Now, John is an amiable guy, but as I drove to the studio one morning, I started thinking, What if John says he wants to lose the scene and then turns around and raises his voice and pushes me? I'm gonna grab him, and then he's gonna yell for the cops. And then I'm gonna pick up a barstool before the cops get there and-- And by the time I got to work, I was a raving lunatic. I walked in and I shouted, "John, don't make that cut!!" And John said, "Good morning, Sylvester." I had to pause right there. I finally mumbled, "Oh, um, excuse me. How are you, John? Did you sleep OK?" That was it. No fights.

[Q] Playboy: You mentioned that United Artists was merely hoping that the film would break even. What did you expect it to do?

[A] Stallone: The first time I saw all the daily rushes on it, I bet the producers that Rocky would gross at least $20,000,000, and then, when I saw it cut together for the first time, I said the movie would make $100,000,000. The producers said, "Well, if it makes that kind of money, we'll buy you any car in the world that you want." I got my car: a Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL.

Don't take this as an egomaniacal statement, but I knew it would happen. I'd never seen a film like it. I sat through Rocky at least 40 times, and every time I saw it, I got emotional. And I knew that was unusual, because, like most actors, I usually can't stand to watch my work on a film more than 10 or 15 times. You want to know how sure I was the film was going to take off? When Sasha and I went looking for a house, the real-estate agent pointed one out to us alongside the curb in a nice neighborhood and I said, "No, that won't do. When this movie breaks, I have to be hidden away." And that was six months before Rocky came out.

[Q] Playboy: When it did, you quickly replaced Farrah Fawcett-Majors on the covers of America's fan magazines and supermarket tabloids. How did you initially react to all that publicity?

[A] Stallone: I became very, very self-conscious. I started thinking about a public image and I began changing the way I dress. I started wearing suits and carrying myself in a more upright position and worrying about my personal appearance--was my hair right, were my teeth polished? So that was my first reaction: I was tampering with a winning combination, which you're not supposed to do. You'll be pleased to know, as I sit here in a tank top and jeans, that I've since reverted back to my natural instincts.

My second reaction was to begin wondering if I could duplicate Rocky's success. I came to the conclusion that I never will duplicate it. I doubt that I'll ever make another film that has such popularity and box-office numbers. I'll just make smaller winners, because I really don't think I'll ever make a bomb. As long as I can remain in some sort of creative control of my films, that will never happen.

[Q] Playboy: Why not? Do you think you're infallible?

[A] Stallone: No, but I have a certain philosophy about film making that I think will eventually be seen as a revival of good, old-fashioned American movies. I think there's a definite formula in reaching audiences: Provide them with heroes and heroines who have to pull themselves up from the depths of despair. And as they struggle and claw and finally attain their goal, the audience says, "My God, that's the kind of person I want to be." Or, "That's the kind of person I'd like my son or daughter to marry." Give the audience positive symbols, because if you don't, if people go out of a theater less than when they went in, they were taken. And I think that's been happening: There's been a flood of films in the last few years that run down everything. They deal in subjects like politics, psychology and male-female relationships, and I'd say that out of the last 50 films made in America, 35 of them have been in this category.

[Q] Playboy: Can you give us some examples of the kind of films you're talking about?

[A] Stallone: I'm talking about very sophisticated films that are taken on a highly esoteric level, and the critics love them. But I don't think we need movies to be negative, because all we have to do is watch the news on television and we've got all the negative forces we can handle. And that's one reason why people are staying away from movie theaters in droves; who the hell wants to go to a movie and come out feeling worse than when you went in? True story: After seeing Marathon Man, a guy got mugged in a movie theater's parking lot. As this man got beaten almost to death, another guy who was coming out of the theater watched it happen and didn't help. When the police asked him why he didn't intervene, the man said, "I don't know. I just felt like it didn't matter." Now, where is that at? If you don't think violence in movies and on television isn't beginning to numb the nerve endings of this country, you're mistaken.

There're a lot of movies that give off bad vibes. I watched Little Big Man on television not long ago and my reaction to it was, Why did they make this? If you want to make a movie about Indian massacres, make it. But get somebody like Buffy St. Marie, who knows what she's talking about, to write it. Don't sit there and take a fictitious story about a guy who is 130 years old and make it into a slanderous account of the men who died at Little Bighorn, because that wasn't a joke. I don't get off on jokes like that, especially when they cost $10,000,000 to make. If a movie like Little Big Man bombs, the shock wave of failure will spread out and eventually affect 50 to 100 film makers. All of a sudden, they'll be hearing, "Oh, no, you can't do a film that deals with the U. S. Cavalry. Remember Little Big Man? It lost a fortune."

But to use an old agent term, the bottom line on this whole thing is that I may be very full of crap, because I am unproven. I've made one film and it turned out real well. My next films may be atrocities, in which case this whole interview will have been a waste of time, but that's what makes the world go round.

[Q] Playboy: Now that you've told us what you detest, what types of films do you enjoy?

[A] Stallone: Films that touch me emotionally. I like George Lucas' work. Lucas has an eye for what the public wants, and right now, the public wants escapism and Lucas provides it. Except for his first movie, THX 1138, every film he's done has been a vehicle to get into people, to make them laugh, to provide them with two hours of uninterrupted fantasy and entertainment.

Lucas, I think, hit on something in Star Wars that hadn't been hit on for a long time: He knows that all of us are children. Our hair may turn gray, we may get thicker around the waist and we may all have to wear glasses someday, but inside, we still don't want to grow up. I really tried to do the same thing with Rocky but on a cruder level, because Rocky's life was crude.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that's what accounted for the picture's success?

[A] Stallone: For a good part of it, sure, although Rocky was rooted more in the real world than Star Wars, which took place in a fantasy land. Rocky wasn't a total fantasy, though, because guys like Wepner and Evangelista and many others have gotten a shot at the champ, so it's actually happened. I think the humor in Rocky also helped. What I write can be called dramedy--half drama, half comedy--because I think there's great humor in tragedy. I don't mean to sound callous, so let me explain that. As someone said, to those who think, life is a comedy; and to those who feel, life is a tragedy. Since audiences are thinking and feeling at the same time, why not give them both? If you just have heavy, heavy drama, it becomes a wearing, tearing experience for an audience. It's like watching a Eugene O'Neill play; as soon as you leave, the first thing to do is hail a cab and go to Bellevue to dry out. I mean, it's a brutal experience to pay seven dollars to discover you hate yourself, your mother and everyone else.

[Q] Playboy: You're right, you are opinionated. Incidentally, was Rocky your first screenplay?

[A] Stallone: Oh, no, I started writing scripts right after I saw Easy Rider. I bought two books, one on screenwriting--something like Writing for Fun and Profit--and the other, the screenplay of Easy Rider. I read it and thought, I can't believe it! The dialog is so realistic and men are getting paid to write like this, and this is a big hit. And I thought I could do as well.

So I sat down and wrote my first screenplay. I called it Cry Full and Whisper Empty in the Same Breath. You want to talk about the height of pomposity? That was me. I must've been into a little too much Dylan at the time. Naturally, no one would even look at a script with that title, which was just as well, because it was really awful. I let a total drunk read it and even he said it was lousy.

So I wrote another one called Sad Blues. It was a horrible thing about a rock singer who suffers from a heart condition that can only be cured by a substance found in bananas. Right, I have a thing for bananas. Anyway, the rock singer falls in love with a girl, but she eventually leaves him. The singer gets so upset that he goes on stage without eating his daily quota of bananas--and in the middle of a song, he keels over onto his organ. The girl comes rushing in with a bunch of bananas, but she's too late: He's dead. Ta-daaa!

[Q] Playboy: Can we assume that made you two for two in the failure department?

[A] Stallone: I was about to go three for three: My next one was called Till Young Men Exit, a nifty title, but the script stunk. It was about a group of unemployed actors who kidnap a producer like David Merrick and all his employees; they replace the producer and his people with actors who are their doubles, and in this way, they take over the theatrical business. Oh, it was very bad. They tie Merrick up in a chair and they feed him Fizzies and Kool-Aid--I didn't like the character, so I put him on a bad diet. Just as they're ready to ransom him back, the guy suddenly drops dead and the actors all realize, "Well, we got our man running things and no one's on to us." So they put the producer in a blender or something to get rid of him, and that was the end of that. Really bad! I wrote that while I was an usher. As a matter of fact, I wrote that entire script standing up.

[Q] Playboy: Is that what you wanted to be at that point--a screenwriter?

[A] Stallone: No, I was going to be an actor, but I figured that if I kept writing, eventually someone would buy a script. I didn't know if it would be a schlocky film company or not, but someone would buy one of my scripts and give me the acting break I needed. Writing was the key; if I kept on writing, nothing could stop me. And I didn't think I was going against the odds. I felt like I was the house and that the law of averages was on my side. I mean, if you write 400 scripts, the law of averages says you've almost got to sell one. Now, I hadn't done 400 scripts, but before Rocky came along, I probably had written ten or so.

[Q] Playboy: Had you always wanted to be an actor?

[A] Stallone: No, as a kid, I wanted to be a shepherd in Australia, and if I thought there was an opening for a viking, I would've taken it. I wanted to do something adventurous and odd, which, come to think of it, is a very good description of my childhood. By the time I got to high school, I must've broken about 14 bones in my body doing things that were kind of adventurous and very, very odd.

[Q] Playboy: Like what?

[A] Stallone: Well, when I was about 11, I broke my collarbone jumping off the roof of our three-story home in Monkey Hollow, Maryland. To give you an idea of where my head was, I jumped with an umbrella, thinking that I might go up! I didn't. I fell straight down into a cement trough that was half filled with water--my father was building a barbecue pit at the time. When I landed in it, my father came out and saw me lying in slimy gray water with the umbrella wrapped around my neck. He said to my mother, "This boy will never become President. You've given birth to an idiot." I looked up and told him, "They said the same thing about Thomas Edison, Dad."

Actually, I wasn't such a happy kid. I was very self-conscious, because I had a terrible slur: An accident at birth had completely immobilized all the motor nerves on the left side of my face. That's why my mouth tilts down to the right, and sometimes my nose and eyes also lean to the right, and there's nothing I can do about it. I spent many, many hours fighting about that as a kid. Kids like to taunt and ridicule, and they were always calling me Slantmouth. Or they'd pull down the corners of their mouths and ask me if I ever used mine for an umbrella rack. I really was a very bad person to grow up with. In fact, I was a nightmare.

[Q] Playboy: Did you get into trouble with police?

[A] Stallone: From about the time I was 13, yes. Part of it was due to having an over-active imagination. One night, for example, I saw a car parked beneath a streetlight. The way the shadows fell on it made the car look somewhat like a tank and I began to envision being attacked by Rommel's tank corps. So I began throwing bricks at it, and by the time I was ready to stop, the car looked like a dented can. I stopped before I really intended to, because the guy who owned it came running over and nearly beat me to death. From that point on, Maryland's Juvenile Department considered me someone to keep under surveillance.

[Q] Playboy: What did your mother think of all this?

[A] Stallone: Mom thought I was mischievous. At the time, my mother owned a gym called Barbella's and she could bench-press 170 pounds. Whenever she thought I got too mischievous, she would tie my body into a square knot--she knew all kinds of wrestling holds--lay me across her lap and spank me with a brush. I wasn't left with just a red spot on my butt; she was very powerful, so when she hit me with a brush, it was like a mild concussion. I almost needed surgery to remove the brush.

It was right about then that I got interested in body building--through a movie. I remember seeing things like On the Waterfront, and I'd always end up in a deep snore. But one day I saw Steve Reeves in Hercules Unchained and I thought, Hey, it's one thing for Brando to stand up to the union, but this weird guy with the beard and big calves can pull down a temple all by himself. He's able to take on the entire Roman army using only the jawbone of an idiot, and I'd like to do that, too. I began thinking about what I wanted to look like physically, in terms of the proportions I wanted to develop. You didn't want to go too big, because then you'd no longer look terrestrial. You'd look like Hercules, which isn't bad, but that can get kind of tough if you want to play an accountant or something.

[Q] Playboy: If you were worried about playing accountants, were you already involved in acting?

[A] Stallone: No, that didn't happen until we moved to Philadelphia and I enrolled at Lincoln High School. I wouldn't say that I had my throat torn up by the acting bug, but for some reason, I went out for the school play. Auditions were held in front of the drama class and the class would vote on who got the parts. The play was Mr. Todd Goes West, one of the greats. I tried out for the part of Mr. Todd and I had to read in a British accent: "Oy om your brouther. Don't you rehudnize me?" A bad, bad showing. I lost the election by a landslide.

[Q] Playboy: Did that temporarily halt your acting career?

[A] Stallone: It buried it. I was very resentful, because I would've looked better in tights than the other guy. His legs were much thinner than mine--and mine looked like a couple of threads hanging from my waist. So I put my acting career in dry dock and went on to more rewarding extracurricular activities, such as hanging out at the bowling alley, fighting and trying to open my classmates' lockers. I was soon put into a private school for bright kids who couldn't get along in the public system. But I still didn't know I possessed a brain.

[Q] Playboy: Any particular reason you felt like that?

[A] Stallone: When I was 16, my mother--who always thought I had some talent--took me to the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia for tests to see what I was cut out to do in life. At the end of three days of extensive testing, my mother was told, "Your son is suited to run a sorting machine or to be an assistant electrician, primarily in the area of elevator operations." In other words, I'd be the guy who crawls through the trap door of an elevator to tighten the cables. My mother was disappointed, but then, as parents always do, she reverted to her original beliefs about me.

Meanwhile, I found it a little shocking, because I thought I'd done great. Really, when I was told to put the square blocks into the square holes, I did it very well. And then it comes out I'm one step above being an idiot. I'd always been very verbal and I wasn't shy with girls, and I thought these things indicated I had something on the ball. But according to Drexel, I belonged in an elevator shaft. I wound up feeling like an imbecile, a complete moron.

[Q] Playboy: You couldn't have been that bad if you went to college. But why the American College of Switzerland?

[A] Stallone: It was either that or a place like the College of the Ozarks. I think my mother had read that American College was looking for students because the school needed money. Being a straight-D student, I figured that if they took me, they'd have taken a cretin. I guess my mother vicariously wanted to go to Switzerland, and that being the case, she packed my bags, tearfully drove me to the airport and put me on an plane to Geneva.

[Q] Playboy: Did that seem rather drastic to you?

[A] Stallone: It was very drastic. The school was in the village of Leysin, about a two-hour drive from Geneva and at an elevation of about 4500 feet. The lack of oxygen kept me dizzy at first, everybody was wearing berets and goatees and talking French, and I didn't know what to do. So right away, I decided not to go European but to see if I could get the Europeans to go American. I gave it about a week. I refused to eat the food, go skiing or learn the language. My big problem was that I didn't have any spending money. My room and board were paid for and the plan was for me to find some kind of part-time job.

[Q] Playboy: Did you?

[A] Stallone: Well, the first thing I tried was panhandling in English, but that didn't work. And then I made an important friend. Prince Paul of Ethiopia--Haile Selassie's grandson or nephew, I never was sure which--was a student there, and some of the boys trapped him in an elevator shaft one day. I helped get him out of a sticky situation, and for that, he bought me a Volkswagen. But I didn't feel like going anywhere, so I sold the car, took the money and started my own version of McDonald's. There were no hamburgers in that town, so I invented a thing called a vacheburger, which was part lamb, part beef and part sawdust. I set up a little oven in the garage of an abandoned chalet and went into business without a license, so I had to keep it quiet. I got a couple of aluminum suitcases made up to keep the hamburgers warm, and then I got friendly with a Swiss mountain climber named Keith. His job was to strap the suitcases on his back, throw his grappling hook over the side of the girls' dorm, climb up--and take orders. I made enough money to support myself without any problems.

[Q] Playboy: How did you do scholastically?

[A] Stallone: The first time our class averages were posted, I remember there were 97 freshmen and I was 97th. I had a grade point average of .02. But I made a comeback before the end of the year. When finals came around, Keith and I got into the dean's office and photographed our tests.

The following year, to get out of a creative-writing class, I auditioned for the school production of Death of a Salesman. I'd never acted before, and when it was my turn to read, the drama teacher told me to give a poetic speech. I got up there and said, "I tell you, darling, I can't offer you anything but a handful of stars and a slice of immortality." I couldn't believe garbage like that was coming out of my mouth, but the drama teacher liked it. "Not bad for a guy who looks like a Neanderthal," he said. "Why don't you play Biff?"

I thought that was terrific, and we gave two performances in front of audiences that didn't understand English. I got a very big laugh when I said, "Why don't you give Dad some Swiss cheese?" Actually, the second time we performed it, the audience gave us a standing ovation, and right then and there, I knew what I was going to do with my life: I was going to be an actor. At the end of my second year, I came back to the U. S. and I spent the next couple of years as a drama major at the University of Miami. And then I got on a plane for New York City. I was going to be an actor, period. No bones about it. I felt I was a natural ham and at the very worst, I could play heavies because of my size. I took a room in a Manhattan flea trap and to get by, I worked nights as an usher at the Baronet Theater on 59th Street. That left me free to haunt the city during the day, looking for acting work.

[Q] Playboy: Were there jobs available?

[A] Stallone: Sure there were, but I didn't get any. My first audition was for Sal Mineo, who was directing Fortune and Men's Eyes. I went to an open call and I stood outside in sweltering heat for three hours, waiting to read for the part of a character named Rocky. When I finally got into the theater, there was Sal Mineo, wearing a straw hat and an earring. As I walked up to the stage, he told me, "Try to be intimidating." I was very intimidating. I pushed the stage manager out of the way, I threw chairs around the stage--I really overdid it. All Mineo said was, "Well, I don't find that so intimidating." So I jumped off the stage and put my finger under his nose and told him, "Now say it. I'm not in front of the footlights now. Tell me I'm not intimidating you." Mineo said, "OK, you're intimidating me--but I don't think you're right for the part." And I left. For a year or so, I really perfected the art of being rejected.

[Q] Playboy: Is that how long it took you to land an acting job--a year?

[A] Stallone: You got it. My first part was in the only play ever written by Picasso. It was called Desire Caught by the Tail and it was done very far off-Broadway--on Pelham Parkway in the Bronx. I played a Minotaur. Wonderful part: I wore a tail, a fright wig that was supposed to be pubic hair and a huge phallic symbol that hung down to my knees.

We did the play for three weeks in front of audiences that averaged about seven people a night. At that point, the director decided that maybe we needed a little something extra at the end, when this girl who played the Angel of Death kills the Minotaur. The director gave her a fire extinguisher and the first time we did it that way, she came out dancing in sequins, chiffon and a lot of aluminum foil--and she let me have it with the CO2 right in the face. Instant frostbite! My lips were frozen shut, my eyes were frozen shut--and I'm going crazy because I want to kill the director! I was rushed to a hospital and after they thawed my face out with a heat lamp, I turned a splotchy brown from the neck up and stayed that way for about four months.

[Q] Playboy: Did you begin thinking you might have chosen the wrong career?

[A] Stallone: Oh, I reconsidered becoming a shepherd, but I was committed. The show closed after my accident and by then, I couldn't get my usher's job back, so I got a job cleaning the lions' cage at the Central Park Zoo. Not too many people ever have the thrill of seeing lions taking giant leaks. Let me tell you, they're accurate up to 15 feet, and after a month of getting whizzed on, I quit. I couldn't put up with it anymore. Lion urine is intensely odorous, and I became the only man in New York who invariably wound up in his own private subway car. I told myself, "This is marvelous, Sylvester. You've gotten to the point in your life where you're now making $1.12 an hour to get pissed on by a lion."

I'd had it with part-time jobs. My acting career had pretty much fallen apart and I resolved to write every day. I took a cheap apartment over an abandoned delicatessen on 56th and Lexington and painted the windows black, because I didn't want to know if it was night or day. I cut off the telephone, cut off the electricity, and I wrote by candlelight. Except for a crate that served as my desk, I had absolutely no furniture. I didn't even have a bed; I slept on top of an old coat. It was the most pathetic, thread-bare joint you could hope to see. The rent was $71.84 a month and I spent most of that year--1972--getting by on $30 a week unemployment.

But I got into writing on a very intense level, and if it's possible to do such a thing, I increased my intelligence that year. I'd never read books in college, but I began going to the library every day, reading the American classics and, in the process, becoming somewhat of an authority on Edgar Allan Poe. By then, I'd written a script about my school days in Switzerland, and one day I got a call that Otto Preminger wanted to talk to me about it. My big break!

[Q] Playboy: Is that what it turned out to be?

[A] Stallone: Not exactly. I met Mr. Preminger at a fancy French restaurant, and I'd never been in a French restaurant in my life. I was very worried about meeting him, because I couldn't afford to have my clothes cleaned, and to tell you the truth, they smelled. It was a very depressing situation: After we sat down, he starts talking about the script, and I'm thinking about the holes in my shoes.

But Preminger really was interested in the script and asked how much I'd want per week to do a rewrite. I looked at him very meekly, crossed my fingers and said, "Would you consider $70 too heavy a sum?" Preminger looked at me with such disdain, as if to say, "You're not a writer. No writer in the world would sell out for only $70." He dropped the script into his chocolate mousse and said, "I don't think we have anything further to talk about." A laugh-a-minute guy, Otto Preminger.

A year later, I made my first sale. I got $2500 for a half-hour script for the Touch of Evil television series. Now I'm on my way, I thought. I wrote five other scripts for Touch of Evil--and none of them sold.

[Q] Playboy: Was that the low point of your years in New York?

[A] Stallone: No, because things were looking up, in a strange way. Sasha and I were together by then, and after she left her job as an usherette--we'd met at the Baronet--she got a job at a restaurant and I began eating again. Actors need to get film of themselves, and for that reason, a friend and I somehow put together $1500 and made a short called Horses. It was about a cowboy and an Indian who come back to life in 1973 and find everything so weird that they go back into their graves. The film was so bad that when I showed it to my parents, they actually walked out of the room--and they'll normally sit through two hours of flower slides. I decided to give up on acting forever.

[Q] Playboy: What got you back into it?

[A] Stallone: A stroke of luck. The friend I made Horses with had to do a scene for his acting class and asked me to be in it with him. The scene was from Death of a Salesman, which I had down pat, so we did it. He was studying at the Herbert Berghof School, and after our scene, Berghof came up to me and offered me a scholarship. Which I turned down: I was through with acting. But Stephen Verona was sitting in the audience that night and six months later, when he got ready to direct. The Lords of Flatbush, he remembered me and sent me a telegram to come down and audition for him. And that's how I got into my first real film.

[Q] Playboy: What about that porn film you were supposed to have acted in?

[A] Stallone: It was a sexploitation movie called Party at Kitty and Studs. I played Studs, who posts a sign on a bulletin board inviting people to come to a party. About ten people show up and they do a lot of kissing and necking, and that's about it. By today's standards, the movie would almost qualify for a PG rating. It was much, much tamer than The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea or Don't Look Now.

[Q] Playboy: Weren't you nude in that film?

[A] Stallone: Yes, I was. I was also starving when I did it. I'd been bounced out of my apartment and had spent four nights in a row at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, trying to avoid the cops, trying to get some sleep and keeping my pens and books in a 25-cent locker. I mean, I was desperate. That's why I thought it was extraordinary when I read in one of the trade papers that I could make $100 a day. And the fact that I had to take off my clothes to do it was no big deal. There wasn't any hard-core stuff in the movie, so what did I care?

The people behind it were a group of wealthy lawyers, very, very solid, and I auditioned for them in a high-rise office building. But they came up with a turkey. Party at Kitty and Studs was a horrendous film and was never released.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't they try to semiblackmail you into buying the film after Rocky came out?

[A] Stallone: I think they asked for $100,000, but I wouldn't buy it for two bucks, and my lawyer told them to hit the pike. You know, when you're hungry, you do a lot of things you wouldn't ordinarily do, and it's funny how you can readjust your morality for the sake of self-preservation. What's really ridiculous is to get in front of a camera in that situation and delude yourself into thinking you're doing something artistic. I thought, Well, maybe this will be an art film. Brilliant. In a way, though, it was either do that movie or rob someone, because I was at the end--the very end--of my rope. Instead of doing something desperate, I worked two days for $200 and got myself out of the bus station.

[Q] Playboy: You've come a long way since then. Rocky may well go down as a movie classic, but aren't you pushing your luck by doing a sequel--Rocky II?

[A] Stallone: If you have a character that's well liked and if you can use the character in a successful film that has a message applicable to today, why desert him? I've never understood that, which is why I don't like any of my characters to die. Killing them off is just too Hemingwayesque for me. I don't need to have my matador on the end of a bull's horn and being paraded through the streets of Pamplona. I'd much rather have him jump on the bull's back and ride into the sunset, and maybe we'll see where he goes in the future.

I like Rocky. To me, he's a 20th Century gladiator in a pair of sneakers and a hat, and he's out of sync with the times. When I first thought about doing Rocky II, I wanted to have him fight in the Colosseum in Rome. I was thinking about giving him more glamor, but that also meant giving up the neighborhood, the street corner, the guys back in Philadelphia. If he were to become Continental and big-time, I think I'd lose the essence of Rocky. Rather than make it big, his world should remain within a three-block radius in Philadelphia. I'd forgotten for a moment that Philadelphia parallels Rocky Balboa: It's never taken seriously. It is the underdog of America's big cities.

But Rocky will change and grow. There's always the death of one facet and the birth of another in people's lives. He'll see how quickly success is forgotten. He didn't win the championship. He gave a good showing of himself; fine. He's hot for two weeks, and then he's not, and he's back to being a pug. Well, he wants to regain the status and esteem he briefly enjoyed. But he knows he's 32 and that time is running out on him in his profession--and that's where rocky II will start from.

[Q] Playboy: That sounds as if it could be your own motivation for making the film. Is it?

[A] Stallone: The age part certainly is, because I always feel I'm being chased by Father Time. I think that if I slow down, the omnipotent clock is going to catch me and just cut me to pieces with its second hand. I feel I have a certain number of hours and minutes to spend on the earth, and I want to accomplish as much as I can before the final gong sounds.

Right now, my age is an asset, but it will soon be going against me. Most of the films I've devised are youth-oriented. The characters themselves are in their late 20s and early 30s, so I don't have that much time left to play them before I'll have to hire younger actors to be in my movies.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that will take the edge off your desire to make movies?

[A] Stallone: No, because the work itself is pure fun for me. Movies are my reality. When I step outside the studio, I step into an alien world, a world I'm not too comfortable in. When I was a kid in Montgomery Hills Junior High, the teachers voted me the student most likely to end up in the electric chair--and without acting and writing, I just might have lived down to their expectations. Quite honestly, I function so poorly in society that when I wasn't working on a film, I was averaging a fistfight every two to three weeks, and I'm talking about a major brawl.

[Q] Playboy: When was your last fight?

[A] Stallone: About ten months ago. But that was because someone had the audacity to run into the back of my car. I got out and said, "Don't you think you should apologize?" And he said, "Go to hell." I'd just dropped my son off and I told the guy I could've had my kid in the car--and he again told me to go to hell. Well, I felt obligated, morally and every other way, to stretch him. And he was stretched. In true Rocky fashion, I hit him with a wide, arcing left. It cost me $15,000 to throw that punch.

Anyway, to get back to what we were discussing, acting nourishes only the egocentric side of me. I like to see myself up on the screen. Sometimes that's not true because of certain acting choices I've made, but it's not to the point where I'm going to run to a psychiatrist. Directing is like an all-encompassing thing, sort of like being the coach of a team. Writing, though, is almost pure eroticism for me. When I can produce a well-turned phrase or what I think is a perfect scene, I'll jump up from my desk and do a cart wheel and almost slam my head through a window out of sheer ecstasy. One writer creates work for 300 people and entertainment for 3,000,000 people, so who's the most important person on a film?

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that Stallone the writer is absolutely vital to the career of Stallone the actor?

[A] Stallone: Sure, because other actors have to wait for the kind of scripts they're looking for, but I can write my own. If I feel it's time for me to be in an action film, I'll write an action film. If I feel I need to do a love story, I'll write one. Short of brain damage or Providence deciding to turn its love light off me, I really don't think I'll ever get stale as a screenwriter.

[Q] Playboy: Do you foresee the possibility of one day doing something other than act in motion pictures?

[A] Stallone: That day will never come. I see myself making a vast variety of films that will eventually cover just about every facet of my fantasy life. And when that's done, I'll begin to shrink in the business and I'll probably have to put myself into someone else's hands--I'll have to direct or act in films written by other people. One way to avoid that may be to do biographies. For instance, if I were to do a film of George Washington's life, I'd begin to vicariously experience life through his eyes and I could direct it and act in it, too. Anyway, at the end of it all, I'd just like to be beneath a quilt in a nice, warm bed with all the best moments of my films spliced onto a giant loop that keeps playing over and over and over. And then I figure I'll just slip away into a warm, peaceful Valiumlike demise. Goodbye, world.

[Q] Playboy: Any idea of what the world's response to that is likely to be?

[A] Stallone: People who knew me will say, "Well, Sylvester was quirky--but he had his moments."

"I'm aware that after 'Rocky,' a lot of people were skeptical and deep down in their hearts wanted me to fail."

"I really don't walk around thinking, I am a star. I've always loathed using that word. That's like saying, 'I am so celestial. I am not of this earth.' "

"I think the day of the single-talented performer is drawing to an end. Today, actors have to be involved in the politics of film making and in producing, writing and directing."

"If you just have heavy, heavy drama, it becomes wearing. . . . It's a brutal experience to pay seven dollars to discover you hate yourself, your mother and everyone else."

"As a kid, I wanted to be a shepherd in Australia, and if I thought there was an opening for a viking, I would've taken it."

"In my first part, I wore a tail, a fright wig that was supposed to be public hair and a huge phallic symbol that hung to my knees."

"I function so poorly in society that when I wasn't working on a film, I was averaging a fistfight every two to three weeks."