When it comes to who should play Sylvester Stallone in a biopic, a certain two-time Oscar winner need not apply.
That’s according to Stallone himself, who held court at Brooklyn’s historic Kings Theatre on a rainy Thursday night for a 50th anniversary screening of his 1976 Best Picture-winning boxing classic, Rocky. The action movie icon received a hero’s welcome by an audience filled with Italian Stallion fans — including a few cosplayers — and was joined onstage by Oscar-winning composer Bill Conti, who conducted the film’s beloved score live in the room.
But before the screening, Stallone also welcomed Peter Farrelly and Anthony Ippolito, the director and star, respectively of the Oscar-contending new movie, I Play Rocky, which dramatizes the wild backstory behind the franchise-launching film. It was the first time that Stallone and Ippolito had met in person and Gold Derby captured their handshake for posterity.
Speaking with moderator Gayle King, Stallone made it clear that he approved of the younger actor’s portrayal of his younger self. “He really had to work hard,” the original Rocky remarked. “He had to build his body up, and his voice up. There’s a certain form of relaxation with the way I speak and he got all that. But that takes months and months of grinding — you’re constantly on point. He put in the time and it’s very, very obvious. It’s not easy to do.”
Stallone then revealed the identity of the actor he definitely didn’t want playing him. “I was afraid of who you were going to cast,” he admitted to Farrelly. “I thought, ‘If he puts in Adrien Brody, I’m gonna kill him. I’m going to murder him, that’s it!’
“I’m kidding,” Stallone quickly added about Brody, a double Best Actor winner for The Pianist and The Brutalist. But then he impishly improvised a postscript suggesting that his Brody aversion might not be an act: “I kid… not really.”
For his part, Ippolito revealed that he didn’t wait for anyone’s permission to pursue the opportunity of playing Stallone. “No one asked me to audition for this thing,” the Long Island-born actor said. “I read an article that Peter Farrelly was making this film about the great Sylvester Stallone, and I just knew there was something special there. I really wanted to be a part of it, so unsolicited I just started sending them audition tapes.”
Farrelly picked up the narrative from there. “The tape came to me, and [casting director] Rick Montgomery said, ‘I think we got the guy,'” recalled the director of the Best Picture-winning Green Book. “I said, ‘What are you talking about? We haven’t even started casting.’ He said, ‘Some kid from Long Island sent me a tape.’ He sent me the tape, I looked at it and I said, ‘That’s the guy.’
“People said, ‘Why would you take a chance on a relative unknown?'” Farrelly added. “I was like, ‘It wasn’t a chance. It was one-hundred percent fair. He was perfect.'”
Stallone praised Ippolito by emphasizing the monumental task confronting the younger actor, whose most notable roles prior to I Play Rocky were supporting parts in the Netflix film Purple Hearts and the Paramount+ series The Offer. “I realized what he had to accomplish,” the Rocky writer-director-star said, almost certainly aware that he was providing a boost to Ippolito’s Best Actor campaign.
“This is not easy, because they’re duplicating reality and making their own reality,” Stallone continued. “I had to stay away from the whole thing, and I think that also gave it their originality. Imagine if I’m constantly asserting myself and that’s not their vision?”
“To be clear, the very the first thing I said was, ‘I’m not doing it unless Sylvester Stallone gives us the OK.'” Farrelly added, indicating that Stallone was always part of the project’s creative DNA.
“What you said was ‘Rocky‘s a really good movie, but the story of making Rocky is even more interesting, because it’s real and relatable,'” Stallone agreed. “He saw that — no one else saw that. 49 years later, he had the foresight to go, ‘That’s a really interesting, relatable story.'”
Farrelly revealed that Ippolito did have to go to bodybuilding boot camp in order to get into fighting shape. “He was scrawny,” the director remembered, adding that Ippolito spent a year packing on 45 pounds of muscle to convincingly play Stallone and, of course, Rocky. “You know how Rocky does those one-handed pushups? In the beginning, Anthony couldn’t do three-handed pushups!”
That admission allowed Stallone and Ippolito to bond over the soreness that accompanies Balboa’s intense training montages. “It takes a toll on the shoulders,” Ippolito admitted, prompting Stallone to concur, “That’s not easy. It really hurts — I don’t recommend it.”
Asked to pick their favorite scene from the 1976 Rocky, Farrelly and Stallone both agreed that it’s the moment where Burgess Meredith’s aging trainer Mickey comes to Balboa’s apartment and practically begs to be his manager ahead of the Apollo Creed bout. But Rocky isn’t feeling particularly charitable, throwing Mickey’s years of neglect right back in his face in an angry monologue that was improvised on set — a bit of backstory that’s brought to memorable life in I Play Rocky.
“It wasn’t my favorite scene until I read I Play Rocky,” Farrelly observed. “Knowing the backstory, which you learn when you watch I Play Rocky, it’s much more important. That’s not a scene that people normally quote, but that’s my favorite scene in the movie.”
“Mine too,” Stallone agreed. “When I did it, I made a mistake — I didn’t flesh it out enough. When I saw Burgess playing it… I started thinking back on my life and all the frustrations. That was purely on the spot where you finally give that cry of desperation.”
Ippolito, meanwhile, picked Rocky’s first morning run through the Philadelphia streets — the one that happens before the famous “Gonna Fly Now” montage. “Because I’m up here with the great Bill Conti, I have to say that one of my favorite scenes is when Philadelphia morning comes in during that run and he has that first go up the art museum steps,” the actor said. “There’s something so beautiful and fragile about that moment.”
Speaking of “Gonna Fly Now,” Conti shared the origin story of the track that’s since powered a thousand workouts — including, no doubt, the ones that Ippolito did to get into Stallone shape. “At the end of that montage, Rocky is jumping up and down and it looks like he’s gonna fly,” the composer said, recalling how Rocky director John G. Alvidsen asked the film’s lyricists to write a few lines to accompany Conti’s soaring music.
“Meanwhile, I was writing these 30-second music bursts, and by the end of that montage, I was struggling to stay alive musically like Rocky is struggling to stay alive going up those stairs.” Conti added. “And so we ended up with that song.”
The world, meanwhile, ended up with an underdog sports movie that still packs a punch after 50 years.
