Cinema 1544: The As-Official-As-It-Gets Site

For this week’s film, I put two and two together – one being that we have some newcomers around who are super young and so haven’t seen all the greats, and the other being that the original 1976 Rocky was leaving Netflix in a few days – and decided to show the John G. Avildsen Oscar-winning Stallone writer/star vehicle.

Now, before I allow myself to get too far, let me admit that even I, the old-timer here, hadn’t seen Rocky until, I dunno, five years ago or so.  Sure, I’d seen Rocky II, Rocky III, and especially the anti-communist agitprop Rocky IV a bunch of times during my childhood, but the original somehow never came up.  As I matured, I came quickly to believe that the sequels were…pretty much garbage, and I only assumed that the original was as well.  Obviously I would later come to learn that it had “somehow” won Best Picture.  I was unmoved.  But eventually I broke down and watched it, and folks, I was shocked.  It was not the film I expected.  Argue for it being somewhat facile all you want, it was not the film I thought I was sitting down to watch.  So what, exactly, was it?

Rocky Balboa has a double life.  Maybe it’s not a great life, but there are two aspects to it.  One is that he’s a low-level street enforcer for a loan shark, you know, shaking down the deadbeat clients, breaking thumbs…well, maybe not so much the breaking thumbs part.  Rocky is the low-level street enforcer with a heart of gold!  His boss is mad at him about it, but not too mad.  But Rocky’s other life is that he’s an amateur boxer.  He fights in basement rings in front of crowds of dozens of betting customers, and, well, it’s probably coming to be the end of the road for him.

The reason we know that Rocky Balboa – to be clear, a fictional character and an admitted admirer of, but no relation to, the real-life boxing great Rocky Marciano – is on his last legs is that Mick, the trainer at his sparring gym, has cleared out his longtime locker and given it over to a younger, more promising boxer.  Rocky is clearly being pushed out of the nest – is he gonna fly now?  (Sorry!  Sorry!  Don’t hit! Owie!)

But I guess it’s fair to say that Rocky has a third side to his life – he also aggressively loves to hit on the granny-glasses homely Adrian, a supremely socially awkward employee at the local pet store.  He’s already got two turtles that he doesn’t really know what to do with and his nights are taken up with desperately trying to come up with new jokes about his turtle food that he can tell to Adrian in the morning on his way to his other lives.  The whole hitting-on-the-awkward-ugly-girl thing is going way worse than you could ever expect, so at this point he’s probably on the outs with at least two thirds of his lives.

Rocky’s last good hope is his buddy Paulie, who works down at the meat packing plant.  Rocky and Paulie have a kind of you-scratch-my-back relationship.  Paulie, tired of the honest but joint-freezing work in the perpetually-refrigerated environment of the packing plant wants Rocky to open some doors into the business of breaking thumbs, and Rocky wants…well…he wants Paulie’s sister, Adrian.  Did I mention he was her brother?  No, of course I didn’t, I was waiting for the reveal.  They live together.  No other apparent family.  Philly is rough, man.

Anyhow, despite his sister’s obvious reluctance to go out with Rocky (or, to be fair, anybody), Paulie executes a devious plan.  The plan is this: 1) Invite Rocky over for Thanksgiving dinner without telling Adrian; 2) When Rocky shows up to her surprise, blow up over nothing and throw the turkey straight from the oven out the window; 3) Abuse Adrian into going out to eat with Rocky instead.  It barely works, but work it does, and Rocky manages to also spend the then-princely sum of $10 to bribe the Zamboni man at the local (and closed) skating rink to give him ten minutes of all-skate on the ice with his vaguely unenthused date.

Not to belabor any point, Rocky and Adrian eventually get together, and we hope that 2023 will forgive 1976 for a somewhat kissual-assaulty scene.  She doesn’t want it, she doesn’t want it, she doesn’t want it, she’s pushing him off, well…maybe she wants it a little…aaaaaaaand cut!  Rocky never actually does give Paulie the reciprocal backscratch, and Paulie gets kind of resentful over this, eventually saying some very mean things to his own sister even, although everything gets smoothed over in the end after Rocky gives Paulie a once-in-a-lifetime advertising opportunity.  How in the hell can he do that?!?

Well, it goes something like this: World Heavyweight Champion Apollo Creed has booked a “bicentennial” prize title fight to occur in Philadelphia on January 1st, 1976.  I guess he just couldn’t wait until July 4th, but we’ll let that go.  But right around Thanksgiving time (Remember Thanksgiving?  This is a movie about Thanksgiving…) Creed’s opponent suffers a broken hand and has to drop out of the fight.  Despite his promoter’s best efforts, it is simply impossible to book another top fighter to take the injured boxer’s place on the title card – anybody who isn’t already committed to another fight in that timeframe isn’t going to be able to get into shape for such a match in the short period between Turkey Day and Early Bicentennial.  Creed, is, however nothing if not a consummate business man and image influencer.  Cancelling the fight is unthinkable.  He suggests instead that they draft some poor local schmuck to take a fall on the premise of giving the little man a chance at glory on the anniversary of the American Revolution – sure, it sounds kinda hokey here but in the movie Creed actually sells it.  And after going through a local promoter’s catalog of fighters Creed focuses in on one man – the boxer who goes by the nickname “The Italian Stallion”: Rocky Balboa.  His thinking is along the lines of “an Italian discovered the New World…” ah, you fill in the rest.  It works.

Naturally, when Rocky – the completely unknown boxer – gets a call from Creed’s office regarding the already-well-publicized fight on January 1st, he assumes he’s being asked to be a prep sparring partner.  When to his astonishment he learns that he’s being asked to actually fight Creed, he initially (and rightfully) balks.  But he does change his mind, despite the fact that he very well already knows the score.  And the score is Apollo Creed 1,  Rocky Balboa 0.  He begins to train for the fight, and after a bit of a false start with Mick (you remember Mick, the trainer who put himself on the outs with Rocky Balboa before Rocky Balboa magically got a shot at a title fight?) he even has a trainer.  Some of Rocky’s training methods are unconventional.  For instance, beating up on non-liverwurst things hanging in the local meat packing plant.  Well, at least it makes for a great local interest story for the 7 o’clock news.

Training happens.  Epic soundtracks manifest through montages.  But then things get really, really good.  The night before the fight, Rocky admits to Adrian that he has no chance of winning.  Never did.  But he’s been going through all of this for one reason – to prove to himself, and to the world, that he could do it.  As of yet, nobody has ever gone a full 15 rounds with Apollo Creed, and Rocky tells Adrian that his goal is simply to exit the ring on his feet, he can ask no more.  Twenty minutes before the end of the movie, we’ve changed expectations from a championship belt to mere persistence.  What movie does that?

Creed, as we’ve noted, is a shrewd businessman and naturally has got this fight practically choreographed.  The only problem is, Rocky has apparently not gotten the message that he’s not actually allowed to win.  So instead of what Creed assumes is going to be an easy TKO in the third, the fight drags on with both fighters taking heavy punishment.

Rocky, who has taken pride throughout the movie of never having had his nose broken…gets his nose broken.  Along with most of the rest of his face.  Creed suffers some broken ribs.  And as Rocky somehow remains standing after the bell ending the 15th round sounds, he famously screams out for Adrian and she runs to his bloodied side in his triumph…as all the while in the background and audio-leveled far, far below the hugfest between Rocky and his girl the ringmaster calls out the results of the split decision…the third judge finds in favor of Apollo Creed.  Roll Credits.  The End.

Rocky is so far, far better a movie than anybody really gives it credit for today.  I know that’s hard to say, given that, you know, it WON BEST PICTURE AND EVERYTHING, but the relatively insipid sequels have really acted to diminish its standing as one of the great sports movies of all time.  The final 20 minutes of Rocky are simply amazing, but the kicker on top of all of it is that Rocky lost.  And the movie tries really, really hard to simultaneously let you know that Rocky has lost, and to completely obscure the result of the fight in Rocky’s celebration of going 15 rounds against Creed.  In the end, Rocky doesn’t care whether he won or lost, so why should we?  Show me a movie that has had the cojones to do this.  There’s really only one.  And it’s not the movie you think you’re watching when you go into it.  It’s not the movie you thought you were going to get, but it is the movie you didn’t know you needed.  So thank the movie.  It deserves it.