He coulda been a contender

Noel Vera

I was never a big fan of the "Rocky" movies. Built on the dreams of actor-writer
Sylvester Stallone, wearing its big heart unabashedly on its sleeve, the first
"Rocky" charmed audiences with the image of this big, gentle, slow-witted
bruiser with the courtly manners and modest outlook in life who--as the
boxing-movie cliché goes--"getsa shot adda tiddle." Stallone captured the way
ordinary folk talked and acted in Philadelphia, and he had in particular a feel
for how big palookas think--how they're constantly aware that the world looks at
them as freakish and grotesque and not a little stupid, how Rocky basically
doesn't mind, so long as he has this small space for himself--an apartment, a
turtle, not much else. Stallone's able to convince us that this might actually
be a reasonable way of living after all, no small achievement.

Then it turns into a huge fairy-tale, and suddenly we're in rah-rah mode: Rocky
pummels a beef carcass (must be how Philly cheesesteaks got so tender), runs up
the Art Museum's stairs, does a little victory jig to the tune of Bill Conti's
"Gonna Fly Now" number (with tremulous violin strings suggesting the thrill of
the moment), and we believe this nobody can beat the heavyweight champion of the
world. To be fair, Stallone didn't pluck the idea for his screenplay out of thin
air; he'd been inspired by the career of Chuck Wepner, a relative unknown who in
1975 had been given a chance to fight Muhammad Ali for the title. Wepner
surprised everyone by lasting far longer than the expected three or four rounds,
even knocking Ali down on the ninth (the only fighter to have knocked Ali down
while he was the heavyweight champion); he lost to Ali on the fifteenth by a
TKO. You can see the basis for the story here, though Stallone couldn't resist
polishing and even whitewashing the facts a little--Wepner had been a longtime
professional and had fought noted boxers such as George Foreman and Sonny Liston
before being given his title shot, and he was no innocent (in 1986 he was
arrested for cocaine possession).

The second half is what most people remember, but it's the first half--that
street world of pale, pasty faces wrapped tight against the Philly chill--that I
liked best. If the basic rule of creative writing classes is to "write what you
know," Stallone wrote about what he knew, and clearly loved; you could almost
imagine him walking the neighborhoods, scribbling down funny lines from his
friends and acquaintances for his hoped-for movie.

Then came the sequels and frankly I lost interest; they were set up as underdog
fights against increasingly unbelievable comic-book villains (in "Rocky IV" the
hero faced the Soviet Union itself, incarnated (petrified?) in the granite form
of Dolph Lundgren), but the hero had long since lost his underdog status. If I
followed the series at all, it was for the way the stories paralleled Stallone's
own life, from relative unknown to Oscar nominee to celebrity fathead, jerk, and
moviemaking joke in just a few years (his two Oscar nominations have since been
buried under the far larger pile of Razzie nominations--twenty-nine in all,
winning an impressive ten). Doesn't take a genius to realize that Rocky was a
stand-in for Stallone, and that the boxer's rise and fall in fortune was
Stallone's way of working out his own rise and fall in status, only on his own
terms, terms that existed solely in Stallone's head--everyone else has since
grown tired of said terms, of the movies, of Stallone himself.

Cut to sixteen years after "Rocky V"--more or less agreed upon by people as
being the worst in the series--and five years since Stallone had been given a
lead role (his last was "Driven" (2001), a car-racing picture that made back
only half of what it had cost). When news leaked out of a sixth "Rocky,"
reactions were more raised eyebrows and age jokes ("Who's he gonna
fight--Wilford Brimley?") than any kind of serious expectations.

But things are different now; Stallone is no longer the celebrity he once was
(if he's still a jerk or fathead, I wouldn't know--even tabloids don't bother
covering him anymore), and in this latest installment he's finally found a
suitably realistic foe--his own decaying body. Suddenly Stallone's slow delivery
and weary, wary eyes have acquired a gravitas he lacked when young; he's gone
back to his roots, in a way he failed to do in "Rocky V"--rediscovered the way
Philly folk talk and walk, rediscovered the thought processes of someone aware
of being seen as freakish, grotesque, not a little stupid. It's the spell of the
first film's first half evoked all over again, with the added pathos of
nostalgia, of obsolescence--this Rocky is a dinner-party bore, reduced to
repeating tedious boxing stories to a table of respectful listeners, helplessly
aware that his son is slipping away from him, unable to resist taking his first
date in years (Marie, played by Geraldine Hughes) to the same places he took his
dead wife.

There's pathos and there's pathos, and then there's pathos. For the most part,
I'm an emotional diabetic--syrupy bathos has an emetic effect on me. But beyond
a certain point sentiment stops being cloying and starts being entertaining
again--it's the sheer shamelessness that's the source of fascination. Will
Stallone have Rocky caring for yet another pet turtle (the same one for all I
know--turtles have a long lifespan)? Sure. Will he show yet another shot of
Rocky visiting his wife's grave? Of course. Will he earn yet another "shot at
the title?" Whaddaya think dis is--neorealism?

It's when the movie goes for that last cliché, complete with yet another
training montage and set of beef ribs to be pummeled (More tenderized
cheesesteaks! More cheesy music!) that it once again loses me. Stallone has the
common touch; he knows--or knew, once upon a time--how to win over ordinary
folk, how to move them, leave them cheering instead of jeering, and against all
odds, he's recovered enough of that skill to make this movie, this "last shot at
the title." One wishes that along with that touch he'd developed enough of an
artistic sensibility that he'd for once want to crack open his hero's psyche,
take a look at what it means to be a champ who has lived past his sell-by date,
in a section of the city that's been largely passed by; one wishes, in effect,
that he'd picked this fairy tale apart, made new magic out of an aging carcass
(instead of pummeling it anew), shown Rocky dealing (or failing to deal) with
his wayward offspring instead of trying to beat sense into yet another black
punk who don't know any better (Antonio Tarver, who onscreen seems to experience
far more complex emotions than his underwritten role requires).

No such luck. And now the modest success of this latest sequel has apparently
encouraged Stallone: there's news of a "John Rambo"--the umpteenth installment
of Stallone's fascistic fantasy figure from the Vietnam War--coming in 2008. Yet
another shot at the title, or his foot? Another comeback, or comeuppance? Stay
tuned, if you happen to still be interested.

(First appeared in Businessworld 3/30/07)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)