u/Flabba_Spray5066

Underrated moment in Rocky. Rocky is pleasantly surprised when the guys outside the gym tell him Mickey's been looking for him.

This is another hint and how much Rocky has always craved -- but not received-- Mickey's attention.

Go back to the Dipper scene. Right before Mickey calls Rocky a tomato, Rocky is genuinely hoping (but should have known better) that Mick thinks something positive of him.

"Know what you are?"

"What?" (Said in genuinely curious tone of voice before the inevitable putdown)

"A tomato!"

"Tomato..." (Dismayed)

"That’s right. Let's face it. I run a business here, not a goddamn soup kitchen."

Note: In an older version of the script, Mickey already knew Rocky fought and won the previous night. He also knows Rocky's updated win-loss record. Rocky is surprised and delighted, especially when Mick says, "I know all my boys fights."

Even in the older scripts, Mickey is way down on Rocky and thinks he's wasted his talent. Why he would still care about Rocky's updated record isn't clear. Mick has written him off as a waste of life (in every script version) but it's still an interesting hint that Mick still cares deep inside. Just didn't fit the scene as it was filmed in the final version.

But as for Rocky, he still cares what Mick thinks. It helps set up the roller coaster of emotions in the apartment scene a little later.

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Don't even really need a pic for everyone to know what I am talking about: the moment in Round 14 when Apollo realizes he won't be able to knock out Rocky after landing his A+ knockout uppercut and Rocky gets up.

Elation (and no small amount of relief) has turned into athletic despair. Apollo is mentally defeated at this point, and Rocky dominates the rest of the fight.

It's one of the greatest bits of physical acting -- wordless, yet it says everything-- I have ever seen. Carl Weathers never got enough credit for his acting ability.

Yes, he was legitimately a great athlete. But the way he took Apollo and added so much to every aspect of the character made every scene he did -- from Rocky straight through Rocky 4 -- worth watching. Of all the memorable Apollo moments, this one in Round 14 of the first fight was the greatest (all without uttering a word; and Apollo was rarely speechless!)

Frank Stallone Sr., oddly enough, was the only person the writer interviewed apart from Talia.

Apollo's matronly secretary in Rocky was played by the late Shirley O'Hara. Decades before Rocky, she was a notable actress and sex symbol from the "Golden Age of Hollywood".

I was only six years old when Rocky came out, and her role in the film was a very small part. It wasn't until just a few years ago that I found out that why she's listed in the beginning credits when Rocky is walking home after the Spider Rocky fight.

Her only lines of note are "More coffee, Mr. Creed?" and "Mr. Rocky Balboa to see you, sir" (to Jergens).

Never understood why she's not just a name in the running credits. Well, the reason why was that she was a notable name from old-school Hollywood.

Sly and Carl Weathers had a real life relationship not all that different from their on-screen one.

They would get very competitive with each other and sometimes couldn't stand one another. But underlying it was a lot of hard-earned respect. They had their ups and downs as far as friendship -- they were too much alike in some ways -- but in time inevitably came back to a good place.

This is a cool photo from a Rocky 2 outtake. It started out heated but they ended laughing. ​​

In the original Rocky script, Adrian goes to the animal shelter and gives Rocky a scruffy mutt called Toots.

However, a trained movie dog was out of the budget. So Sly's own dog, Butkus, became part of the movie.

Sly, wife Sasha, and Butkus took a three-day training ride from LA to Philadelphia for the shoot. In the Offical Rocky Scrapbook (1977) Sly tells a funny story about the three days of hell that followed.

One of the funniest exchanges in Rocky.

Paulie: "How's the robe?"

Rocky: "It’s a little baggy."

Paulie: "Look at my date! Cost me $200."

Date (Kathleen Parker): "$250!"

(Unintentional flash forward to Rocky Balboa: If you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth.")

In the final theatrical cut of Rocky 2, Rocky is told he's needed immediately across the street at the pet shop because Adrian took sick. Mickey has just stopped yelling at Rocky for training like a bum, and the scene cuts to the hospital.

Originally, there was a scene at the pet shop where Adrian is unconscious and a frantic Rocky confronts Paulie for causing her collapse. Then the next scene would be at the hospital.

According to Sly in The Official Rocky Scrapbook, his father Frank Stallone Sr. (who played the time keeper in the red jacket) kept missing his cues to ring the bell. Sly started to yell at his father and embarrassed him. It became an argument between the two.

It turns out 8 mm footage exists of Frank Sr. getting agitated. He waves his hand in disgust.

https://www.scribd.com/document/906605324/Official-Rocky-Scrapbook-Sylvester-Stallone-1977

Sasha Stallone took this photo of Sly during the three days he handwrote the first draft of what became Rocky. As always, Butkus is right nearby.

Does the beige bathrobe look familiar? He later put Italian Stallion on the back and wore it for the post Spider Rico fight scene.

Rare frames from the original Rocky ending.

Originally, both Apollo and Rocky are carried off by fans. There weren't enough extras for that. So it became only Apollo is carried off. Rocky leaves alone, ignored, until he sees Adrian waiting for him.

Rocky stops and scoops up a discarded Bicentennial flag. He walks off together with Adrian as "Rocky's Reward" plays.

Lots of stuff at the airport commemorating the 50th anniversary of Rocky if you have some time before/between flights. ​

Deleted from Rocky 2: After Rocky and Adrian learn they are expecting a baby, they go shopping for the crib that's later briefly seen before Rocky's run.

A question: It's well known that the deleted scenes from Rocky no longer exist (except in still frames from contact sheets). United Artists told Sly the cut scene masters were destroyed in a fire and none of the test audience copy prints were preserved. So the stills are all that is left.

OK, but what about Rocky 2? Rocky 3? There are know deleted scenes from both, and Sly was also the director by now. Do these still exist?

In the Rocky script's early drafts, the street corner singers Rocky passes by on his way home from the Spider fight are more significant characters than in the final film.

In the final film, he greets them, swigs from their bottle of cheap booze. He says "You guys are gettin' better every year", then jogs home down the block.

In the early scripts, they had names -- Dino, Tony, Bobby and Phil -- and had a plot purpose.

Apart from their practiced harmonies, yhey are unreliable "friends" that Rocky hangs out with; negative people in his life.

They're bums from the neighborhood. They just hang out, getting high/drunk. Their lives are going nowhere.

Later, Dino drunkenly mocks and torments Adrian. Rocky defends her... nearly belts Dino... but lets it slide. However, that's the end of Rocky hanging around with them.

There are other similar neighborhood acquaintances of Rocky's pre-Adrian -- A local prostitute, bar flies, etc -- but they are just in one scene and unnamed. The street corner singers are in several. Distancing himself from those types shows Rocky's personal journey of becoming something more than just another bum from the neighborhood.

Most of the stuff taken out or changed from the early scripts was for the better. I do think, however, that it might have been interesting if Dino, Tony, Bobby and Phil had stayed in the script on a larger level.

(Rocky (to Frank Stallone): It's the bum from the dark... get a job ya bum!)

Total Rocky had a really good article about the rubber ball that Rocky totes around, bouncing from the second scene of first film through his final scene of Creed 2.

It's worth the read.

https://totalrocky.com/articles/rocky-balboa-black-ball/

The rubber ball brings Rocky a full circle: we first meet him in 1975 bouncing the ball coming home from the Spider Rico fight. We last see him in 2018 starting to bond with his grandson by giving him the ball.

The coffee stained notebook contained Sylvester Stallone's hand-written first draft of Rocky, written over three days in the spring of 1975. His then-wife Sasha typed it up.

It's an expanded version of a short story he wrote about an unrepentant loan shark collector and his timid pet shop girl girlfriend. Instead of being an ex boxer, Rocky is still a small-time club fighter who gets a fluke shot at the heavyweight title.

Sasha's first impression of the script: Rocky was too unlikeable and dark of a character. The more familiar Rocky characteristics would emerge over multiple rewrites of 90 percent of the first draft.

However, even before Sly wrote one word of the story, he did a painting on canvas of an embattled boxer in a dark cityscape. The painting was called "Finding Rocky".

As with the original Rocky, Sly's then-wife Sasha was on the set as the production's still photographer, generating many really good (and now rarely seen) images. This one was used by United Artists in a push to have Rocky 2 duplicate the feat of another Best Picture nomination.

Unlike the original, which won Best Picture against some incredibly tough competition, Rocky II never made it to being a Best Picture finalist.

Even so, it's another fine film and a very worthy sequel to the original. ​

It's no coincidence that first line of dialog Rocky ever speaks to Adrian is, "How ya feelin' this morning, huh? Fulla life?"

Rocky doesn't mean it, course, in any sort of a mocking way. He's just trying unsuccessfully to make conversation before telling his rehearsed turtle food joke.

But it is very important line. We find out right away that Adrian is anything but full of life.

She's too shy to even look at Rocky let alone reply with more than one word answers barely above a whisper.

We later find out why she's so beaten down by life; so timid and emotionally abused. But in that first moment, all we see a dowdy looking woman who seems every bit the spinster even in her late 20s. No hint of personality, flat affect .

It's every bit as much Adrian's starting place as Rocky's decrepit apartment, turtles and goldfish for company and his sad, deep sigh in the mirror show the state of his life one scene earlier.