On October 15, 2012, Complex Pop Culture posted an interview with Ted Kotcheff, director of First Blood. Here’s a tidbit:
- We shot the suicide ending, and then Sylvester came up to me and said, “God, what we’ve done to this character, he jumps off cliffs, he’s chased by dogs, he’s shot and he has to sew up his own arm. After all of that, we’re gonna kill him?” One thing about Sly, he always had a popular sense of what audiences wanted to see. I said, “We’ve always conceived of it this way.” He says, “Do you want to come back here three months from now when the distributor asks for a happy ending?” I said no. [Laughs.]
– Craig