Sylvester Stallone has become a household name in Hollywood today but creating a whole legacy demanded sheer hard work and continuous struggle. He absolutely went through the same along the way before he created franchises. Struggling to make ends meet during his time as a struggling actor, his dedication eventually led him to his breakthrough.
Like every person, he too got a golden opportunity in 1976 with his role as boxer Rocky Balboa that kickstarted his famous Rocky series. Until 1982, he was a prominent actor but his Rocky films were the only ones racking profits which then brought him to his next franchise, Rambo. The same year, he released the first installment of the popular series, First Blood, but to everyone’s surprise, he was not happy with it at first as he claimed the producers had other plans before they approached him.
Sylvester Stallone Was Not The First Lead Choice in Rambo: First Blood
When Sylvester Stallone led First Blood released in 1982, it was met with mixed reviews but the box-office numbers were amazing which ended up grossing $156 million.
However, he felt humiliated as he claimed that the film producers approached many stars before they eventually ended up signing him for the movie. For the unversed, Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood, and Paul Newman were among the few top actors considered for the lead role.
“I think they were going to lab animals before they got to me,” he said. “They went through every actor in the system and they eventually said, ‘Ok … De Niro … Nick Nolte, Zippy the monkey, let’s go to Sly.’”
He even had quite less hope for the first installment in the Rambo series as he even believed it would be a “career killer” for him. As to what exactly made his opinion this negative, it was none other than the film’s creative direction that he disliked.
Sylvester Stallone Hated First Blood’s Dialogues
Despite the film being a crucial project in the 77-year-old actor’s life, he was unable to watch it as he shared,
“This film, when we did it, it was so bad—at least I thought, and even my manager—we both went out, I think we both retched together in the alley.”
What made his film unbearable to watch initially was its running time which he claimed was originally “three hours long.”
However, the cherry on the top thing that absolutely detested him was the dialogues that were insignificant in that project.
“I stayed an hour and a half in the woods chasing guys. And plus, I was pontificating throughout the thing. For example, I shoot an owl, and then the owl drops, I go, ‘Take that, you mouse-munching mother [pauses].’ I said, ‘I can’t say this.’ And then there’d be lines like—the cop pulls me over and he goes, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ I go, ‘Did you ever see Easy Rider? Yeah? Well, I’m Easy Walker.”
Eventually, he took things into his own hands and made major creative changes like removing the entire dialogue segment and chopping off the running time. This is how the final product was eventually created and has now become an influential film in the action genre.
Source: The Howard Stern Show
