Rocky
A first (341/365)
Vivi and I saw Rocky (1976) for the first time this past Friday evening and were impressed by it. We got hooked early and couldn’t stop, even though we were exhausted from the week.
Have you watched the movie before? I asked.
No, you?
No. I mean, I know the basics, but no.
Yeah, same.
It turns out we were completely unaware of most of the plot:
Who was Rocky in the first place
How did he get selected to fight Apollo
Who was Adrian and how did they meet
Who won the final fight
Why does Rocky inspire us?
To say that Rocky has a fandom would be a gross understatement.
People from Philly, the US, and many other countries feel connected to the characters and the movie. I walk by the now called Rocky steps—the Philadelphia Art Museum staircase—twice a month and there’s ALWAYS people taking pictures with both Rocky statues in the vicinity (one on top of the stairs, the other to the side of them).
Why? Why is there a race in honor of a guy who doesn’t even exist, in words of Bill Burr?
Maybe because we see ourselves in him. We dream of being chosen, of going from being a nobody, to being able to survive fifteen rounds with the world champion.
Vivi and I were especially intrigued by Sylvester Stallone.
His weird charisma, facial paralysis, and word choice—a guy who talks like a child, in words of Stallone—makes Rocky a lovable character, especially when you know that Stallone wrote the script in three days after watching a championship match.
We thought that Rocky’s love for animals, his high spirit (Leg’s ain’t workin’, nothing’s workin’, but they go, “Go on, fight the champ.” Yeah, I’ll fight him), his awkward confidence with Adrian, and many of his lines, like the improvised and now famous It stinks! This whole place stinks, make him very relatable.
In one of my favorite scenes of the movie, Rocky stares at a picture of himself when he was eight years old. He sighs, watches himself in the mirror, then back to the picture, then back to the mirror. You can feel he’s questioning his life choices up to this point, something we’ve all done multiple times.
We wondered how much of the character was a persona and how much was just Stallone being himself. He comes across as transparent and believable, and we could now understand why so many people felt inspired with him.
Maybe it is because we like to try hard, just like him.
Here’s Stallone again:
Rocky‘s about a guy who’s just trying to get something out of life.
And like the rest of us, he struggles with money, his body, and his relationships.
When Mick, the owner of the gym where Rocky trained, comes to help him prepare for the fight, Rocky says no. He’s still mad because earlier in the film Mick kicked him out of the gym while saying:
You got heart, but you fight like a goddamn ape. Nothin’ special about you.
Rocky waits for Mick to leave. Then he starts a heartfelt monologue in a voice that gets louder and louder. By the end he is screaming and punching the door.
After he finishes saying his piece, he goes after Mick and accepts his offer.
The next morning, we watched Rocky II (1978) and half of Rocky III (1982) with Eva. Throughout the movies there are many emotional sequences: the trainings, the runs, the fights, the moments with Adrian.
As I watched all of this I asked myself a deeper question though:
What do we mean when we say that Rocky inspire us? Does that mean that he inspires us to change the way we live, or is it just a short-term boost of motivation to do something?
I’ll try to answer this question in a future post.
#day341