YouSaid · the spoken record

Sylvester Stallone

lines on the record: 29
first: 2022-04-14
most recent: 2022-04-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“They do all the time, all the time. And usually with an arm wrestler, I go, oh, having done a film about it, you don't know who's the killer in the room. Some fellow will come with you with pipe stem arms and he's a savant in arm wrestling, so you never know.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there's tons of regrets. There's always regrets. And it's frustrating because obviously you can't do anything about it. But there's certain roles you turn down. The politics weren't right. And we get perhaps not being as adamant about surrounding yourself with like-minded people. And because you're dealing with very, very fragile egos and everyone is usually running on a lot of fear. That's the fuel. And you've got to like really trust your own instincts because other people are looking out for their part of it. The director is looking out for his image. The writer's guarding the words. The actors looking, hey, do I have more lines than that guy next to me? Everyone has a different motive for what they do.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was most proud of Rocky Balboa, the sixth one, because that was done with such skepticism and I was at my career low because it's all peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys in any career, any sport, anything. And I was in some serious valley of the unknown. And I came up with this idea at 59, 60 years old to play Rocky as a boxer and this and that. And they said, this is absurd.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If they're hyphenates, if they're going to go in just solely as, oh, I am an actress, rough, rough. The day of the 30-year career, I think long gone, I've been really fortunate and something happened that I think is amazing, which I'm very proud of. I'm the only person that's ever had a number one film with six different decades, which is remarkable.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This one is being written by Taylor Sheridan and of course Terry Terrence Winter. And I am kind of like the hired actor. I'm the hired gun. But you do put your input. You try to, as you say, it's a lot easier to remember your own dialogue than someone else's. So you try to construct the sentence so it's easier to recall.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't think it's going to ever have the golden era that it's had by far because The audience. The demographic is different. They're now watching films on an iPhone. So it's not as though the theater has become this habitual shrine to come in attractions. And streaming, this is where, actually, I'm going to do one very, very soon called the Tulsa King or the King of Tulsa. And it just allows you to breathe the character, to breathe out, to take 10 weeks, which is beautiful. You have maybe 95 minutes, 110 minutes. And it's all a crapshoot. In other words, with films, you have a James Bond film, $300 million. You have one opening weekend.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would pretty much say that, yeah. I think if you could do a couple of indies to learn your chops of sorts. But the day of the kind of entrepreneurial... Grabbing life by the seat of the pants, going with your gut instinct is over. For example, when rocky would never be made today, this never would have happened. It's over. Majority, the godfather wouldn't be made today.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. My point. Just haggard, gone, dead at 39. Writing is rough. And I have tremendous, it's almost like being a composer. Every word, as you know, is a note. It's not just typing. Anyone can type. Anyone can talk until a recorder, but they actually get the fluidity and the essence of dialogue. It's beautiful, but it's hard.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Directing is fantastic, but you lose your life. It's seven days a week. You wake up in the middle of the night, Jotty notes. Writing is a complete horror. Complete horror. Have you ever seen a truly well, I mean, fresh-faced writer?”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh boy, you really. There is a possibility. I've written half a screenplay because this is a story where obviously his days in the ring are long gone, where he now tries to save his neighborhood, or he thinks he can, because that area right now in Philadelphia is just literally fentanyl. It's terrible. And he involves himself and he realized you can't save the neighborhood. You're rocking his simple mind. So you start to get He starts to focus on a couple of these characters and it becomes like the new Adrian, but with all the 2020 problems of today. And then there's a fellow that comes in from Mexico and the Iraqi takes him in under. Horrible existence until it becomes tolerable.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was, then again, it's that fourth crossroad. Okay, do I listen to them or how do you feel? Do you feel still competitive? Is there a, as Rocky would say, stuff in the basement? And I go, yeah, but I just have to do it age-appropriate. That's when I came up with expendables. Where you can't do it alone, but I'll take together, I'll take a group of actors that are not doing so well. and you put it all together. And I got the idea when I took my wife to a rock and roll revival where you have like 20 groups and each one was worse than the next, but... Together, it was an interesting ticket. Like, oh, look at this. And I thought, why don't I do the same? I take all these guys who perhaps on their own were struggling, including myself, put them together. And that, like, I want to see how this turns out. This is kind of interesting.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. It's just something. It's like the call of the wild. I just get up there and I go, I can do this. See, there's a difference between stunts and when you hook yourself up to, for example, you're jumping from train to train to train and this and that. That's just a certain kind of act of doing those sorts of James Bondi and his stunts. Then there's a kind that you become very, very physical and you engage with other people and you do it yourself. Completely no doubles. That's going to lead to a lot of injuries. And so I chose more of the... Confrontational kind of stunts, jumping off a waterfall, fire stunts. I mean, of course, I would have some very good doubles like at the time like Mark Dalessandro and Diamond's Farmsworth. But the majority of them, you do them yourself. And they come with a lot of injuries.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“David, the hard part is the choreography. It's trial and error because it's one thing they just film a regular fight. But to create dramatic beats and looks and whatever, it takes Hours, months of trial and error. So it ends up being written down like notes left, right, switch moved the head faint. I thought If I don't do this myself, it's never going to be done right.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not even a fight unless it's in a ring. See, first of all, Rambo is a killer for real. He's almost a psychopath when that switch flips. Rocky is a good guy. You know, he has mercy. The other one has no mercy.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, Rambo was a novel by David Morell. And I was the 11th choice. Everyone, it was like, I don't know who was next after me because they had gone through everyone and passed, pass, pass, pass, including three different directors. So this had become sort of a pariah of sorts. The first time you go in there, Rambo was in the original screen, but it was horrible. He was a psychopath. He killed children. He killed fishermen, this and that. So I said, if I'm going to get involved with this, I see the character going on beyond this. And he said, what do you want to do? I said, I want to rewrite the screenplay. And I want him to go right to the edge of finance, right to the point where he's being pushed, but he pulls back because similar to James Dean in East of Eden, he wanted to be accepted back into the family of man.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't know a percentage. There was some, I think, a little devious behind the scenes machinations there where when you're naive, you're going to get burnt. So I have no ownership in that.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not at all. Because actually, every film back then was kind of a statement film. I mean, all the president's men network and going and bound for glory. And then there's Rocky, which is, no statement really is just about a man wanting to have a little bit of respect and love.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Give me a job. Everyone, all the back slappers were there. And yeah, it was mystifying. And also, it emboldened me in a negative way too. Because I said, I told you, you know, say that kind of thing. C. And I think I swung that pendulum way too far to be obnoxious.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They did. They did. They had all kinds of morality clauses. Basically, if you spit on the ground, we can replace you. And the first thing we did was me shaking down the fella along the docks. You know, come on, give me your coat, give me your coat, your loan shark money. You know, if you want to dance, you got to pay the band kind of a thing. And something happened. They saw, wow, this actually might work.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Edgar Allan Poe, and that's when the light went off. I went, Poe, talk about a misunderstood artist way ahead of his time, the literary Van Gogh. And that's what triggered, that's what changed everything.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what happened is I said, My God, I'm not going to make it. Now I'm starting to get like around 26. So I got a job as an usher. And people said, why? Well, it's $39 a week. Who could turn that down? But more importantly, I could watch films all day long. And I started to dissect them at night. It had a little one-room thing in Sutton East, a little kind of a transient hotel. And I would take a little inexpensive tape recorder, record the soundtrack. and the dialogue and go home and try to replace the dialogue. No, it was like a game. And after a while, I started picking up a little tempo and a little rhythm. And the first five screenplays were pretty horrendous. It's like what I did last summer type screenplays until finally I came to the New York Library and I went down in the basement and they showed me parchments, writings of Emerson, Dickinson.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I cleaned lions' cages, I cut fish heads, I was really good with sturgeon in the delivery of a night watchman in this building. I just did a multitude of things. Delivery boy, you name it. But primarily I did those things. And this is after four years of college that I took these jobs. So I would have my days free so I could, quote, make the rounds.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's the line in Rocky because you weren't born much of a braid, so you better start using your body. They didn't put much faith in that particular occupational choice. So I just said, look, guys, it's one of those things where they said, well, have something to fall back on. I go, what? Literally what? I'm not good at anything other than daydreaming and imagining. I'm not pragmatic at all. I'm totally abstract. And they took me to, I don't know if I've ever told anyone this. At 16 after being expelled from 11 schools, at 16, they took me to the Drexel Institute of Technology. And they ran a battery of test. And in conclusion, and I still have it, they said, Sylvester seems to be deficient in this and deficient in that. We recommend him.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I was completely manufactured. I wasn't a physical specimen at all. I just had an epiphany when I went to see Steve Reeves and Hercules in Hercules Unchained. My head exploded. I finally found that's the role model.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my father was kind of a real tough guy, but he focused on hair, the stones and the family were very into cosmetology. And my mother was two. And then she was the first one to open up a woman's gym in New York called, I mean, Washington called Barbella's, which I thought great name for daughter, Barbella.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know. I know. They actually thought, oh, they found some fella who actually was a pug at one time. And that was actually probably to this day, a lot of people think that a little short on the gray matter and I'm more of a rocky-esque character reality.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, there's a big misconception about that. Everyone thinks it's, oh, I was watching Chuck Webner fight Mohammed Ali, knocked him down. That was the fabricated type story. Rocky Marciano, who is basically my size, had a computer fight when Muhammad Ali, when he was suspended in 1970. And the light bulb went off. I said, this is kind of interesting. And then again, no one in Hollywood knew who Rocky Marciano was. So in 1975, the truck Whitmirth, there was more contemporary, so I used that as a reference of the, I guess, the Bayonne Bleeder or the neighborhood loser going the distance with the champion.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very hard because, and I understand it, I was basically a classical nobody at that time there were a few men in Hollywood that actually considered themselves rather machismo and they could have filled the role in a sense. But I just knew this was the crossroad moment and if I didn't hang on, if I didn't go all in and the film was a success, I would have never forgiven myself for the rest of my life.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that was a stunning revelation because, you know, when you start out, my intentions were to do like a little footage of what I did last summer kind of film. I never thought I would ever get to this magnitude. So yeah.”
2022-04-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Sylvester Stallone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source