Stallone takes a swing at sly ‘Spy Kids’ role
July 25, 2003 from the Chicago Sun-Times [suntimes.com]
BY ANGELA DAWSON
As Rocky, Sylvester Stallone was king of the boxing ring. In real life, the veteran actor can lay claim to a crown on the tennis court.
“I beat Pete Sampras at something on the tennis court,” he boasts while promoting his newest movie, “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over.”
Of course, the “something” was a contest in which the Italian Stallion challenged the King of Swing to see who could throw a medicine ball the farthest. And the 57-year-old Hollywood heavyweight triumphed over the 31-year-old tennis champion using equal parts brain and brawn.
“He said he could beat me anytime on the tennis court in anything,” Stallone says of his pal Sampras. “So I brought a medicine ball instead of a tennis racquet.”
Standing behind the baseline on one side of the court, the object of the match was to throw the 16-pound training ball as far as possible backward over the head and across the net.
Stallone‘s ball went the distance.
“I got about six feet past the net and he got it about four feet past the net,” recalls Stallone, smiling. “Considering I am the world’s worst athlete and he is the best, I took that as being a great thing. I could be his father. And I (said), ‘Very good, Pete. That’s the equivalent of me being beaten by an 85-year-old guy.'”
Stallone, looking muscular and fit with just a hint of gray in his dark hair, chuckles over his technical knockout.
The unusual challenge–and victory–kind of sums up this legendary actor. He is shrewd, smart and should never be counted out. Even when he’s playing just for fun.
Though his long career has had its ups and downs, he always rebounds and usually ends up on top. When his action-hero days seemed to be waning, he moved on to comedy. When the comedy routine got dull, he returned to action roles.
Now, he’s embarking on a whole new genre, playing a multiple-personality villain in the third and likely the final installment of the successful “Spy Kids” family adventure franchise.
“I thought that (writer-director) Robert Rodriguez had actually called the wrong number,” Stallone recalls about being asked to play The Toymaker in the fantasy 3-D adventure. “I thought: Wrong guy. Maybe he wants Michael Keaton.”
But after checking with his daughters, Sophia, 6, and Sistine, 5–both “Spy Kids” fanatics–he knew he couldn’t say no. “I’ve got parental respect” now, he says. “I had to do it, otherwise I would have been disowned.”
Rodriguez–a maverick director who is practically a one-man band in lensing, scoring, editing as well as conceiving and directing his innovative movies–says he thought of Stallone for the role of the evil inventor of an enticing but ultimately dangerous video game that sucks players in and brainwashes them.
“I met Sly five years ago at a film festival and he had me laughing the whole time,” recalls the Austin, Texas-based filmmaker. “I was always a fan of his but I didn’t know how genuinely funny he was. I thought, How come his comedies weren’t that good? But he didn’t make those. He was always funny in his ‘Rocky’ movies. He knows how to write for himself. Now that I knew what his sense of humor was like, I wanted to work with him not in an action movie but in a comedy. So five years later, I called him knowing he has little girls who have probably seen the ‘Spy Kids’ movies. I told him I had this character–which is actually five characters–and something your kids can watch … and he said, ‘I’m there.’ “
Making “Spy Kids” was a challenge for the seasoned actor. Set in the fantasy world within a video game, the backdrops were largely added later by computer. Stallone shot most of his scenes against what is known as a “green screen” and had to rely on what Rodriguez told him about what was going on around him during his sequences.
“Green screen is like being held face down in a bowl of guacamole,” relates Stallone, who shot for three weeks on a green soundstage. “It’s all-encompassing.”
Returning for “Spy Kids 3-D” are Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara, who play sibling secret agents Carmen and Juni Cortez. Also returning are Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Ricardo Montalban, Holland Taylor and Mike Judge. This chapter in the family-oriented fantasy includes some big-name cameos as well.
As a writer-director himself, Stallone says he understands Rodriguez‘s passion for his work. Indeed, Stallone is about to step behind the camera for the first time in nearly two decades to helm a drama (which he also wrote) based on the L.A.P.D. police scandal and the murders of rap artists Tupac Shakur and Biggie “Notorious B.I.G.” Smalls. It’s tentatively titled “Thugz Lives.”
Stallone concedes that he’s encountered some resistance from the hip-hop community but is looking forward to telling the story based on the facts, without drawing his own conclusions. He is in the process of casting the film, which will include music from the slain artists as well as contemporary hip-hop.
“The Biggie and Tupac situation is very much like the JFK conspiracy to the black community,” he says. “Yet there’s never been an arrest. It makes you scratch your head and go, hmm.”
Stallone is looking forward to directing again, he says, because he likes being in charge. He wrote and starred in the Oscar-winning “Rocky.” He was an actor-writer-director on “Rocky II” and “Paradise Alley.”As an actor and co-writer, Stallone filmed “F.I.S.T.,” “First Blood” and “Rambo: First Blood Part II.”
But with three recent films in which he served only as an actor–2001’s “Driven,” 2002’s “Avenging Angelo”and the as-yet-unreleased “Shade”–the native New Yorker wants to get back in the driver’s seat.
“A lot of times, the best-laid plans go awry,” he shrugs of his recent box-office disappointments. “That’s what happens and that’s why I wanted to get back to directing again. You can be the architect of your own fate.”
– Craig Zablo