Rocky III (1982)
Plans for a third entry in the Rocky series were underway as they were working on post-production for Rocky II. Stallone felt it would end the trilogy and wanted to begin filming within 18 months, feeling was becoming too old to pull off another boxing film. Bill Conti began composing pieces that could be used for the third entry scoring Rocky II.
Stallone envisioned the final bout set in the Roman Coliseum against a Russian opponent, a goliath, on the blood-soaked soil where Christians fell to lions, with Rocky and company flown into the ring by helicopter and the fight broadcast worldwide by satellite. There would be some fun fish-out-of-water moments when Rocky tries to adapt to being in Europe as he trained. Rocky visits the small villages in Italy where his father grew up before coming to America. Apollo would take over for a wheelchair-bound Mickey as his trainer. After the climax, the epilogue finds Rocky using his prize money to retire to the old country.
Stallone worked on the first pass while promoting Rocky II, but personal issues caused delays. Stallone suffered an ulcer from intense pressure to make Rocky II successful. He also returned to his philandering ways, moving in with model/actress Susan Anton, prompting his wife Sasha to file for a divorce, for which Sasha was set to receive $5 million and custody of their two sons.
After several months, Anton left Stallone to begin working again and began seeing Dudley Moore. Stallone reconciled with Sasha, flying her into Budapest where he was filming Victory. He told her they were spiritually linked and acknowledged that success brought constant forbidden fruit. Wishing he could indulge, the last place wanted to be was stuck at home with his wife and two kids. He decided he needed to indulge, leaving no temptation to the imagination in feeding his ego.
However, losing his family made him lose his self-esteem. The silver lining to indulging to his whims was learning that the true meaning of love is dependability and loyalty. She was the only woman who loved him as a lewd, crude nobody. Everything else fades but that. He began to see his own face everywhere, which he enjoyed at first, until his image got distorted in a way he began to believe himself, and he began to change into a kind of person he didn’t want to be. He began succombing to petty games and jealousy and he began to lose again, and feared he would go back to being an out-of-work actor again. Stallone says that fame feels like being locked in a room full of mirrors. You see so many different reflections of yourself, you can forget which one is the real you. He began to believe all of the things he was reading about himself, and it filled him with a sense of being unbeatable and unstoppable, surrounded by opulence but losing sight of who he was.
Stallone was tired of the public associating him with Rocky. Two presidents and Ted Kennedy called him Rocky instead of by his real name. He felt that the only way to finally be free of the sterotype was to see him go for good. He wanted to end Rocky’s story with him still on top, having achieved everything he wanted in life. He contemplated ending the trilogy with Rocky’s death on the cab ride home after his Coliseum bout having endured the fight of his life. He says he’s tired, rests his head on Adrian’s shoulders, then dies, with the crowd chants of “Rocky!” still in his ears.
He had also contemplated killing off Adrian in Rocky II but changed his mind because he rationalized that the audience wouldn’t enjoy it and wouldn’t see the film more than once. He wasn’t sure if this was the ending he would go with, but wanted to shoot it. He did waffle on whether he should let someone else direct due to the exhaustion of preparing for the fight scenes, both physically and with camera placements.
Rocky had typecast him into roles that emphasized his physicality only and nothing about his intellect. The overwhelming feeling that it would all end tomorrow made him choose another track. Apollo in the film represents the voice in his head to get out of his head and back into the game, to reclaim the “eye of the tiger”, the hunger he once had to succeed. He had to go back to basics, but also adapt.
Upon completing the draft, Stallone signed a contract for $2.5 million and 15% of the gross for writing, directing, and starring in the third entry. Stallone’s next slated movie as an actor was a cop thriller titled ATAK (later, “Hawks”, then finally Nighthawks) followed by a soccer-based drama, Escape to Victory (released as Victory). After which, Stallone felt Rocky III was ready to go whenever all of the principal players were available. However, producer Irwin Winkler pumped the brakes, saying that the script needed much more work to get it within a reasonable budget at a financially struggling MGM/UA. The Roman Coliseum title fight idea and the location shooting in and around Rome carried a huge price tag. Although his Rocky films were successful, Stallone’s non-Rocky films fell far short of those at the box office, so it was still a huge risk.
The budgetary considerations once again forced Stallone to scale back. Gone were the Russian opponent and the Roman Coliseum because the latter involved too much politics in Italy to secure. He began incorporating his own life experiences dealing with fame after the success of the Rocky films. Stallone’s manager would die in 1976, and in that loss, he felt he lost his way. He realized that his manager had been shielding him from the bad stuff and angry people, carrying and pampering him. He resented this at the time, but when she died, they all got to him. Stallone became bitter and angry because he thought that wealth and success were the answer to all of his problems, but they only added to them. People didn’t see him for who he was, they saw him as Rocky, and he felt it was an unfair image to live up to.
Stallone visited Caesar’s Palace as a potential place to shoot one of the bouts and to gain new script ideas meeting up with 38-year-old Muhammad Ali just before his attempted comeback bout to fight the undefeated champion, Larry Holmes on October 2, hoping to gain the title for the fourth time. Ali had trimmed down 35 lbs. for the fight to increase his agility and to dance around. They also recorded the crowd footage and the noise of the crowd to use for the film. This inspired a story angle of Rocky wanting one more chance to fight. He wanted the fighter’s due; he might lose, but at least he knew he lost on his own terms in his own time.
Ali ended up losing to Holmes. Stallone, who was friends with Holmes, a regular at Stallone’s private gym in the back lot at Culver City studios, and asked appear to be his trainer. Stallone also later asked Ali if he wanted to take over the Apollo Creed role to spark more interest in the film. Stallone began sparring and dancing around the ring and ended up winded, so maybe Ali could teach him how to dance around like Sugar Ray Leonard. Stallone felt that to survive, you have to adapt, so Rocky learns how to be a boxer and not just a slugger. You become obsolete when you can no longer change. Rocky can’t win with his usual style of power vs. power, so to win, he has to be more agile than his opponent. He also has to regain his self-worth to develop a new skill set he didn’t think he was capable of. Finesse, speed, and endurance can carry the day. Stallone says that his intent was to learn to fight like a black man, specifically Sugar Ray Leonard, rather than the ham-and-egg style Rocky used to have and can’t match up to against Clubber Lang.
Stallone came up with a smaller-scale idea: success puts Rocky on a pedestal but his past catches up with him, and people beging trying to knock Rocky down. Rocky, eyeing retirement and becoming involved in neighborhood politics, finds his plans derailed when a street-tough challenges him to a fight, refusing to take no for an answer. After Mickey suffers a stroke, Apollo becomes Rocky’s trainer and also his manager. Apollo teaches Rocky to fight in his agile style, and how to invest his money to enjoy his retirement.
Despiter scaling back the budget, Stallone tried renogotiating his salary to $10 million, settling for $7 million. Talia Shire wasn’t sure if Rocky III was getting made, as for many months she’d not been asked to return. Burt Young, who didn’t want to even return for Rocky II but was offered more money than he could refuse to do so (a six-figure fee plus a profit percentage). He said he would return if they killed his character off in Rocky II but they promised him the same deal if he would return for Rocky III, so he accepted Pauly living.
Stallone wanted a tight 90-minute pace with more action and less dialogue – no fat, like Rocky’s body – leaner, quicker, and with more punch. He wanted to show he’d become a boxer rather than just slugger. Stallone had dropped 50 lbs. to play his character in Victory. Stallone was 210 lbs. while making Rocky II and had gotten down to 162 for Rocky III. His biceps are still 16 inches but his waist went down to 29 inches from 34. Stallone worked with a nutritionist to lose 35 lbs. and get his body fat down to 4.5%. To train for Rocky III, Stallone laid off the weights to build his upper body in favor of developing his lower body with lots of running and jumping for dexterity and speed. It took 10 months for Stallone to be satisfied he had the physique he wanted.
In January, 1981, the search for a Black actor to play Rocky’s nemesis, Clubber Lang, began. Stallone thought it would be easier to teach a boxer how to act than an actor how to box. They first tried Earnie Shavers, but he was too aggressive with Stallone in the ring. Auditioning was ex-NFL great Jim Brown, plus Joe Frazier, and WBC light heavyweight champion Matthew Saad Muhammad. Frazier was ultimately chosen and acted in one scene, but was subsequentlly dropped because he had trouble remembering his lines, and was, like Shavers, too rough with Stallone in the ring, though Frazier said it was due to a salary dispute when they tried to cut his salary to $50,000 after initially offering him $150,000.
In February, 1981, Talia Shire signed to return for a million dollars, as did Carl Weathers (Stallone says his attempt to get Ali as creed was a momentary brainstorm that he realized wouldn’t work), with filming set to begin on March 30, beginning with fight scenes shot in the LA Sports Arena. Weathers claimed to be relieved he didn’t have to perform another boxing bout as the manager. He still worked out every day to stay in shape.
The role eventually landed on Lawrence Tero, who went by the name Mr. T, a former bodyguard for famous boxers like Leon Spinks and Muhammad Ali, as well as celebrities like Diana Ross, LeVar Burton, and Michael Jackson. Mr. T happened to have experience as a boxer and wrestler. He’d recently won a “Bouncer of the Year” award for his work at a Chicago nightclub called Dingbat’s Disco. A casting director named Rhonda Young, who was looking for a fresh face to spark a fresher Rocky, asked him to audition after seeing him on TV show called “Games People Play” in a segment where he won a contest to find America’s toughest bouncer by breaking a door down and throwing a dwarf like a human javelin seventeen feet. The problem was that Tero was broke and needed to borrow the money to fly out for the audition. Stallone liked his convincing street attitude and felt he had a raw acting talent. After negotiating with Chartoff and Winkler for a few weeks, Mr. T was brought over to begin three months of physical training and work with a nutritionist. He received $2,500 a week – he earned $32,000 altogether. Stallone changed the persona and dialogue of Clubber to match Mr. T and allowed him to rewrite his dialogue to better fit the street rhythm of the way he naturally talks. He found Mr. T to be a force of nature you just turn loose and don’t do anything to tamper with his intensity.
Hulk Hogan was cast when Stallone woke up one night, put on cable TV and saw this huge wrestler taking on four other men at Madison Square Garden. He thought it would be interesting to have a scene where Rocky faces a wrestler in a charity mixed match. He plays a champion wrestler named Thunderlips.
Scenes in the movie were shot in Ali’s heavily guarded mansion. Stallone was interested in doing location shooting in New Zealand and buying land there.
One source of major publicity was the creation of a 12-foot-high half-ton bronze statue of Rocky with his arms raised in a victory posed. The statue was sculpted by Denver-born artist A. Thomas Schomberg. The statue was to be used for two scenes standing atop the Art Museum steps for the film, after which he offered, as a tax write-off, to donate it to the museum directly to keep there where so many fans run up the steps re-enacting the famous scene in the original Rocky. He felt the statue was a good way to reach common people who might be drawn to check out more art inside the museum.
Controversy ensued when the museum commission felt the statue was too garish and declined to keep it. They would allow it only for the two weeks needed for the film and then have it removed. Stallone was incensed, feeling he was making a generous offer. There were negotiations to put it in the tourist center in JFK Plaza or the Spectrum. Rather than let the museum keep it he had it shipped back to his home in California where he tied it to a tree in his backyard, with birds pooping on it, until he decided hat to do with it.
Things took a turn when an unemployed truck driver named Arthur Gorman and a nine-year-old girl named Nikol Bird began asking Philadelphians to sign a petition to being the statue back. Nikol and her 7-year-old sister Helen got 2,000 signatures. Gorman, who was too borke to pay his bill, did introduce the “Rocky Bill”, and it passed. He was set to appear on the TV show, “That’s Incredible”. City Councilman James Tayoun said that either the Art Museum should take it or the city would propose an ordinance to accept it. Stallone said he would return the statue free of charge, including the freight, if the commission reversed their decision.
The commission decided they would keep the statue in front of the museum from May to mid-July of 1982 while the film was being promoted, then get put into its permanent home at the Spectrum.
Most of the film would be shot in LA locations rather than Philadelphia, except for a three-day location shoot that included the Art Museum steps and the Rocky statue. A small snag hit the second day of shooting, as they had to clear the arena, including its 4500 extra, due to a bomb threat. The Screen Actors Guild didn’t have enough extras available so they filled up the rest with residents of senior centers and children from Boys and Girls Clubs, paid for with food and door prizes to keep them from leaving.
Stallone’s personality was reported to cause friction, becoming testy when dealing with the producers, Chartoff and Winkler. Stallone was insecure because his success wasn’t able to bear fruit outside of the Rocky series. Stallone felt the pressure was much larger for ther third entry because he had to continuously try to avoid repetition while giving the fans what they hoped to see. Stallone claims that the failures of Nighthawks and Victory destroyed his confidence and that if he failed with Rocky III he might leave the business.
As a director, Stallone wanted a different feel to the prior films. While Stallone felt obligated to continue the style of Avildsen for Rocky II because it ws set directly following Rocky, three years have passed for the events of Rocky III. Due to the immense weatlh and fame, Rocky is changed. Stallone, in meeting many real-life champsionship boxers, notes that many become civilized and sophisticated once they achieve massive success. He cares about how he dresses and how he speaks, and has worked on it. This Rocky wouldn’t say, “Yo!” He wouldn’t want to look like a fat slob. He trimmed down, hired a hair stylist, and had facial plastic surgery. He’d was a modern man, not someone who held on to times when he had no money and seemingly no future. This would also carry over to their spouses, as Stallone observed the fashionable turns for Vicky LaMotta and Veronica Ali. In some ways, it also make Rocky soft, who cares much more about his image and having a good deal to lose.
As for Rocky seeming smarter, more stylish, and classier, Stallone says that he himself had changed his image after finding success over the least three years, so why wouldn’t Rocky have taken better care of himself physically and intellectually after being the heavyweight champion of the world? He’s become a media darling, and carries an air of winner about him – a man of excitement with beaming self-esteem instead of a down-on-his-luck loser carrying the weight of failure around with him. Rocky’s problems used to be his own; now they are front page news and his embarrassment is the talk of millions around the world. Stallone wanted the movie to also carry the pace, energy, and momentum of Rocky in its editing.
Stallone wanted the sophistication of the characters to also carry over to the camera work. These were not people always in the public eye, so he wanted more news footage, and more Steadicam work to give a more documentary feel, with more glare and light reflected in the lens. It should look like a persistent invasion of privacy to Rocky, who is always living in the fishbowl.
The Barclay Hotel in Los Angeles, where Stallone films part of Paradise Alley, was chosen for the place where Rocky trains with Apollo because Stallone liked its run-down quality. Stallone liked the idea of Rocky having to go all the way to the bottom if he wanted to climb back to the top again. Stallone called it a story of adaptation and education for Rocky. Rocky lets glory go to his head and has to go back to his roots to get his groove back.
LeRoy Neiman, who’d done a portrait of Muhammad Ali, was commissioned to do a painting for the film, which became the last shot of the movie showing Rocky and Apollo boxing.
In later interviews, Stallone softened on the possibility of continuing Rocky’s story in something not called Rocky IV, returning to an older idea of Rocky outside of the boxing arena. At 35, Stallone’s punching was slower compared to when he made Rocky, He’d be even older if attempting another in three years. Perhaps Rocky could get into social service, or into politics, or might center on the further friendship between Rocky and Apollo Creed a “Butch & Sundance”-type adventure that feels footloose and fancy free. But he doubted he would, saying he loved the character too much to see him bled dry. He’s not a Frank Capra character that can go on forever.
Reportedly, the shoot was only 37 days and came in $1.6 million under budget. They saved time and money rehearsing boxing scenes for weeks before filming. The big bout took 5 days to film for Rocky and 9 days for Rocky II, but only took seven hours for Rocky III because they’d rehearsed all of the moves with nine separate camera placements.
For the music, pop/rock group Survivor’s Jim Peterek and Frank Sullivan wrote a song for the film, initially called “Eye of the Eagle”, but changed to “Eye of the Tiger”.’ Two versions were to appear on the soundtrack.
The release date was moved up two weeks to May 28 instead of June 11. MGM/UA was in need of an immediate influx in cash and Rocky III was the only sure thing they had on the horizon. Plus, they didn’t want it to compete with E.T. Stallone wanted to travel with Sasha on a 30-city tour to promote Rocky III to get in touch with the fans.
Thinking it was the last Rocky film, Stallone broke down in tears when production wrapped. He no longer would have the Rocky series to fall back on and had to go it alone for the rest of his career – a career that hadn’t panned out as well in non-Rocky films because his fans either resented them or, at best, tolerated them. He had no control over how they perceived him in those films, which meant that, beyond Rocky, he had no control over how his career would fare. Rocky, to him, was a character he created – his child. But, in life, the child gave birth to the man that Stallone became after bringing him to life. Rocky taught Stallone valuable life lessons, especially by setting standards and values that he himself was failing to live up to. The fans also had those expectations. When Stallone would appear in public smoking a cigarette, kids would shout because Rocky doesn’t smoke.
Stallone observed that he possessed traits that Rocky didn’t that was causing his unhappy. His arrogance was the primary reason his life was falling apart, both professionally and domestically. Returning to write the next chapter in the Rocky saga reminded him of where he was failing, as he was forced to shut out all of the noise to concentrate on writing, directing, acting, and training with discipline, with Rocky becoming Stallone’s conjoined twin. Stallone and Sasha moved to a new home in Pacific Palisades, California for a clean break and new start.
Stallone felt that Rocky III should be as lean and agile as his body. He felt that the personal drama that got people to like Rocky was already well established in the first two films, so he didn’t need to do more. He could get right into the action, and the drama would naturally unfold in between. Despite getting in the ring for three bouts, Stallone calls Rocky III a psychodrama more than a fight film. He pulled in viewer interest by making audiences want to see Rocky punch his opponents in the face for them.
As with Rocky II, Stallone wanted some real impact punching resulting in real blood on their faces. Paramedics were on standby with oxygen, smelling salts, and potassium IV units. Stallone says everything you see from the middle of the final round to the end is them actually hitting each other.
Stallone says “balboa’ was a guide for a group of Spanish explorers just meant to clear out brush but went into the history books as the first to discover the Pacific Ocean, the ultimate underdog story – he got to the top of the hill first.
Stallone says he wept for the first time since childhood after wrappig Rocky III, feeling like he was losing his best friend, his therapist, his sounding board, his Aladdin’s lamp.
Sasha served as the behind-the-scenes photographer again. She makes an appearance in the movie as a groupie who kisses Rocky and makes Adrian jealous.
Stallone takes the film series into a new direction, although the underdog formula still stays intact. Stallone realizes that it’s hard to be the underdog when you’re the champion, so to knock Rocky down a few notches, he creates the most terrifying challenger he never faced, the bruising #1 contender, Clubber Lang. Lang has been stalking the ready-to-retire Balboa, showing up at every match and public appearance, egging the champ on to stop dodging him and fight him in the ring. Rocky is ready to take him up on the challenge, but his manager Mickey (Meredith) reveals that he has been protecting him since he’s gotten the title belt, only challenging chumps Rocky could easily beat. Undeterred, Rocky still goes ahead with the match, losing the title and his manager in the process. Can Rocky face retiring as a loser, or will he rise to the most difficult challenge he’s faced yet with a rematch?
While certainly entertaining, Rocky III can be seen as the film in the series that finally lost the heart, soul, and focus of the first entry, the Best Picture Oscar-winner, Rocky. In their place is a mostly commercial vehicle using the same characters, given a simplistic revenge plot that is rare to find outside of a pro wrestling arena. Fittingly, future WWF champion Hulk Hogan is a harbinger for the series, as the series takes a professional wrestling vibe henceforth. Hogan exits the film, but the bombastic spirit remains, as Mr. T and Balboa face off in two boxing spectacles.
Stallone going lean and clean as a philosophy to his movie. Rocky III is twenty minutes shorter than its predecessors, but beefed up with action and confrontations. Character progression proceeds simply: Adrian shows additional spunk, Rocky displays fear, and Apollo reveals having a champion’s character and intelligence. The rest is all machismo and braggadocio, as Clubber Lang has, literally, no past or character development other than his insatiable need to prove to the world he can’t be beat. It’s the first time that a true villain has been introduced into the series, possessing no redeeming features whatsoever.
Although simple and predictable, Rocky III is still delivers excitement. It’s slick, polished, and easy to watch and be engaged by, such that some viewers that wanted more boxing action and less sappy romance will probably consider it the most entertaining entry in the series. Just as Rocky has to squeeze out all of the elements that make him too soft to face pure evil like Lang, nearly all traces of gentleness and humanity are excised from the Rocky saga in favor of proving who is the biggest and baddest hombre in the world. Whereas Rocky‘s pugilists were defined by the size of the hearts that beat within each fighter’s chest, Rocky III is measured by how hard the fighters externally beat their own chests with their fists.
Qwipster’s rating: B+
MPAA Rated: PG for some language
Running Time: 99 min.
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Carl Weathers, Mr. T, Talia Shire, Burgess Meredith, Burt Young, Hulk Hogan
Director: Sylvester Stallone
Screenplay: Sylvester Stallone