I don't like sweet drinks, so I'd put vermouth on my neck, so I'd feel disgusted.' Put turpentine on my hands so that they'd be tight to remind me I was arthritic. However, he wasn't nearly as large as Paulie - in his DVD commentary, he says he put on layers and layers of clothes. In a 1986 People magazine profile of Young, Jack Kelley wrote, 'Young attacks the heavy bag in his upstairs gym, displaying a sledgehammer power that suggests Stallone wouldn't last a round with him.' Before becoming an actor, at 29, he was a boxer and carpet layer. In Real Life: In some ways, Young was the easiest actor to cast in the movie. In Reel Life: Rocky's friend, Paulie (played by Burt Young) is an angry loser, an overweight, balding, disheveled drunk who despises his fate - working in a meat locker.Īdrian stuck with Rocky despite the repugnent smell of his apartment. The brick wall was placed outside the window to obscure a palm tree. Shire says that there really were bugs on the floor. Stallone says that it really smelled terrible (which inspired his ad-libbed 'It stinks in here' when he yells at Mickey later in the film). In Real Life: The apartment was a 'real' flophouse in Los Angeles, and on their DVD commentaries both Talia Shire and Stallone comment on the setting. In Reel Life: Rocky's apartment looks awful - it's dark and small and grungy, and the only view is of a brick wall. Mark Kram, who previewed the fight for SI, characterized the 6-foot-5, 220-pound Wepner as 'a wide, long slab of heart and dreams who is one of the last club fighters, the kind who gives you what he has, who turns a ring into a red-wine sea and keeps coming on for more.' Wepner was a heavy underdog, and his fight with Ali in Cleveland was considered such a mismatch that Wepner appeared on a Sports Illustrated cover with the headline 'Boxing's Strange Encounter.' Stallone had watched on closed-circuit as Wepner, nicknamed the 'Bayonne Bleeder,' went 15 rounds in a title bout against Muhammad Ali on March 24, 1975, in Cleveland. In Real Life: Sylvester Stallone was inspired by Chuck Wepner, a 35-year-old club fighter who also happened to be the No. In Reel Life: Rocky Balboa is a 30-year-old club fighter. ( Note: ESPN Classic will be showing 'Rocky' at 8 p.m. Which parts were real and which weren't? Read on. The character of 'Rocky Balboa' was partially inspired by former heavyweight Chuck Wepner.īut still, most of 'Rocky' was pure invention. It also displayed an ambitious fighter's harsh training and, from up close, the brutality of the sport. The movie showed Philadelphia at the depth of bleak decrepitude during the 1970s. 'Rocky,' which won an Oscar for Best Picture in 1976, has often been lauded for its gritty realism, both in and out of the ring.

Southpaw by Frank King