Peter Farrelly wanted Sylvester Stallone’s blessing before making I Play Rocky — and the director said the actor’s approval mattered more to him than how audiences ultimately received the film.
“Obviously, this doesn’t happen without Sylvester Stallone, and I don’t care what happens with this movie, who likes it. If the world loved it, but if Sylvester did,” Farrelly said during a Q&A following the L.A. premiere of Amazon MGM Studios’ I Play Rocky Oct. 24, at the TCL Chinese Theatre as part of AFI Fest.
The film stars Anthony Ippolito as a young Stallone and tells the story of the actor’s determination to write and star in Rocky, the 1976 boxing drama that became a cultural phenomenon and earned Stallone Oscar nominations for both acting and screenwriting.
Farrelly explained that he and screenwriter Peter Gamble first sent Stallone the script before meeting with him to discuss the project.
“I met with him and I said, ‘I won’t do it unless you want us to.’ He said, ‘Do it,’” Farrelly recalled.
The filmmakers also discussed whether Stallone should be involved as a producer. Farrelly advised against it, believing that the actor’s association with the project could lead audiences to question whether he had influenced the story.
“Personally, I think it’ll hurt you because you come across so well here, and if at the end we see ‘Produced by you,’ people are going to go, ‘Ah, that’s why he shaped it.’ And he agreed with me. I said, ‘I think you should separate from it,’” Farrelly said.
About a week later, Stallone gave an interview in which he was asked about the film.
“He goes, ‘I know nothing about it,’ and all of a sudden the internet went crazy,” Farrelly said.
The director called Stallone to ask what he was doing, only for the actor to remind him of their agreement.
“He goes, ‘You told me to separate,’” Farrelly recalled with a laugh.
The Saturday-night screening was followed by a Q&A featuring Farrelly, Gamble, Ippolito and cast members AnnaSophia Robb, Stephan James, Kiki Seto, P.J. Byrne, Matt Dillon, Jay Duplass and Tracy Letts.
For Gamble, uncovering lesser-known details of Stallone’s early life proved essential to writing the screenplay. One discovery involved Stallone’s former college roommate, who described the aspiring actor living in a cramped space beneath a staircase.
“One day, I went down this one rabbit hole with his former roommate in college, talking about him living in a closet under the stairs, like Harry Potter. And all he had was room for this bed and recording poetry to work on his lisp. And I was like, you can’t make that up,” Gamble said.
Dillon, who plays Stallone’s father, Frank Stallone Sr., recalled the impact Rocky had on him as a child, long before he was cast in a film about its creation.
“I remember seeing my mother’s black-and-white TV in the kitchen. I remember seeing this guy hitting the meat with a hand, and I was like, ‘What is this? Who is this?’ This feeling of authenticity of it,” Dillon said, referring to the iconic training sequence.
Ippolito, meanwhile, spoke about the opportunity to talk with Stallone before filming began. By the time the two connected, Ippolito had already spent roughly a year and a half researching the role and was about a month away from production.
“It was very built up at that point. And I was just so grateful that he was willing to take the time and share some of this stuff because it’s such a pivotal period of time in his life, and he was down and out and very isolated, and it’s a vulnerable thing,” Ippolito said.
He said Stallone’s ability to persevere through that difficult chapter was what resonated most with him.
“Seeing what he was able to persevere through and his endurance is something that really stuck out to me and prevailed. Just seeing that shows you can do a lot more than you think sometimes,” Ippolito said.
Farrelly also pointed to Rocky’s influence on other filmmakers, citing the story of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who faced resistance when they wanted to star in Good Will Hunting, the screenplay they wrote together.
“Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, when they wrote Good Will Hunting, they got the same thing. And they had a mantra. They were saying, ‘Rocky, Rocky.’ Seriously, they talk about it. They really held out and if they hadn’t held out, they wouldn’t have had the careers they had,” Farrelly said.
