Sylvester Stallone did not dress it up. Asked whether a broke, slurred, unknown writer-actor could still fight his way to the top of Hollywood fifty years after Rocky, the man who wrote the picture and refused to sell it without starring in it gave the only honest answer left.
“No. It’s a whole different mindset. The actors look different, they act different. The subject matter, I couldn’t relate to,” he told Tracy Smith at 92NY on Monday. Then the shorter version. “No, I would be in trouble.”
That is not an old man waving a cane at the kids. That is the guy who built the last American underdog myth looking at the town that used to make those myths and admitting the shop is closed.
Try Casting The Godfather Now
Stallone did not stop at his own career. He put the whole factory on the table.
If you were going to make The Godfather today… try casting it.
He called it impossible. He also called the current ideology a different animal and said action itself now feels “kind of anachronistic.” Read that again. The man who gave you Rocky Balboa and John Rambo is telling you the industry no longer knows what to do with a story about a man who takes a beating and gets back up.