Category: Celebs

Hey, Those Guys Look Like Rocky!

Craig / / 2003, Celebs, Cop Land, D-Tox, Family, Unmade Films

Hey, Those Guys Look Like Rocky
In Spy Kids, Sylvester Stallone plays an unconventional four-part role to appease his inner child
By RICHARD CORLISST

uesday, Jul. 22, 2003 [From the Time OnLine edition]

He is the Toymaker, the brainy bad guy bent on ruling the cyberworld. He holds conferences with three advisers — a steely general, a bald scientist and a blissed-out hippie — all played by the one actor. Sylvester Stallone is simply the guest villain of Robert Rodriguez’s 3-D video game, but when the veteran star is onscreen, this Spy Kids plays like Sly Kids.”

Actors who partake in films like this or in animated films, like I did in Antz, often say, ‘I did it for my children,'” notes Stallone, who’s 57 but looks a fit and muscular 15 years younger. “Nah. You mean you did it for your inner child. Here I get to scream and act like a total fool and get paid for it. In a part like this, you really have to let loose and not worry that you hear the ‘acting police’ sirens looming in the background.”

Stallone had mentioned to Rodriguez that he had no movies in which he appears to show his older daughters, Sophia Rose, 6, and Sistine Rose, 5. As the director recalls, “I told him he’d get to be a hissable but redeemable bad guy and to play opposite one of the greatest actors: himself. We sent the kids an early videotape so they could see how cool their dad is.”

Or some might say “was,” for Stallone is at least a decade past his uber-hunk prime. Of his star vehicles after 1994, the top U.S. grosser (a modest $45 million) was the arty Cop Land. His last action film, D-Tox, hardly played in theaters at all.

As for Rocky and Rambo: those franchises are sooo last century. Stallone knows he’s lucky to have played two iconic heroes, but he calls it “the esoteric kiss of death, because you’re never going to be taken seriously. It’s like if John Wayne wanted to dance The Nutcracker. People would say, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t care how good you look in a tutu or how you are en pointe, I’m not buying it.'”

At 57, any man hears the whispers of career mortality. “You almost feel obligated to get depressed,” he says. “What nags at you is becoming warehoused — having your soul and your ambition put in cold storage.” Your ego too: it’s tough to fade gracefully to character-actor status after 25 years of stardom.

So he’ll be starring in and directing Rampart Scandal, about alleged cop corruption in the Tupac Shakur murder case. He’s also defying age and logic by planning a Rocky VI.

Clearly, the pug boxer is never far from Stallone. His home is festooned with Rocky arcana, including paintings by the actor. There’s also a photo, taken the day Baghdad fell, of a young Iraqi hoisting a U.S. flag with Rocky emblazoned on it. The image pleases and tickles the star: “You know the movie wasn’t playing in Iraq. Why would someone smuggle into the country a character that represents the American Dream? Did he have it under his bed thinking, I can’t wait to be liberated! It’s the first thing I’m pulling out!?”

In Hollywood, Stallone the star may be history. But in the rest of the world, he still helps make it.

— Reported by Desa Philadelphia/Los Angeles

From the Jul. 28, 2003 issue of TIME magazine  – Craig Zablo

Rocky’s Sixth Round

Craig / / 2003, Celebs, Family, Jennifer Flavin-Stallone, Rocky, Spy Kids 3D, Unmade Films

“Rocky’s Sixth Round”
by Liz Smith for New York Newsday.com
July 28, 2003′

What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It’s for the superfluous we sweat,” said Roman playwright Seneca.

SYLVESTER STALLONE, sitting in dark pants and a gray polo shirt in the lobby lounge of the Four Seasons hotel, looks as if he never breaks a sweat. But judging from his beautifully tanned biceps and deltoids and his flat abs – I’m sure he does. He still works out and takes care of himself. I have known this guy since he hit the heights with “Rocky,” his creation, his inspiration, his super-hit. Stallone looks better today at 57 than he did back in the beginning of what many thought was just an impossible dream.

Sly is in town promoting his role as a villain in “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over.” I asked how much of a villain? He laughed, “I’m the one you want to live next door. I’m the kind who keeps learning his lesson, like Wile E. Coyote. I’m an evil genius who creates a kind of cyberspace game that steals the minds of children. We’re like we’re in a computer game. And the kids are just great; real pros! I loved working with them.”

I ASKED my longtime friend Sly to talk a bit about what it’s like to have created the iconic “Rocky,” and how he has adjusted to the ups and downs of fame. He said, “Well, I have a great family life, a wonderful wife [Jennifer Flavin] who gets smarter every day, and my three daughters, 2, 5 and 6. You know, the Quran says a man with three little girls goes directly to heaven when he dies, as he will already have endured in life enough worry and paranoia. But it has dawned on me that your life works from your roots. My family has saved my sanity.

“It took me a while to realize that ‘Rocky’ wasn’t just a performance. It had great meaning; the character became indelible. I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I did once rebel against the ‘Rocky’ idea. Now I know it’s normal to want to run the full spectrum, the rainbow of all your colors. ‘Rocky’ is a philosophy, so let’s make the sixth one, which I’ve already written. ‘Rocky’ still needs to be in the game, like my hero, George Foreman, who went from real-life ‘villain’ to fabled hero in only 50 years or so. He’ll be in the next ‘Rocky’ movie!

“I call this script ‘Puncher’s Chance,’ because it’s what every fighter has. A fighter may lose his abilities, but even old fighters retain their punch. It’s the last thing they lose. And if they use it right, they can get lucky. Foreman, you know, is going to fight again professionally. And look at a great athlete like Lance Armstrong. These guys just keep moving forward.”

MEANWHILE, Stallone is moving forward with another story he wrote, “Thug’z Life,” about the real-life deaths of rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., and the corruption in the L.A. Police Department. Sly will direct, produce and appear as Det. Russell Poole, who believed there was something rotten going on and was removed from the force as a result. “We are just waiting for the Errors & Omissions insurance; it’s a normal thing, to keep us from being sued,” Sly said. “I think this can be a great film. It will offer a conspiracy theory, present the evidence and let the audience draw its own conclusions.”

“YOU KNOW, sometimes, I think there’s not a lot I can do in this industry,” Sly continued. “I have begun fantasizing about getting into the anti-aging game with nutritionals. I have been talking to experts, and I’d like to do something like what Paul Newman did with his food line. A situation where you can do something useful for society and give something back. So I have been examining that.

“Stallone is a forceful guy, who also has high hopes that, eventually, he will make his movie on the life of Edgar Allan Poe. It is written, it is ready, and Sly continues to seek the actor to play it and the financing to make it. “It will win an Oscar for somebody!” he says with certainty.

At the end of our talk, I asked Sly how his controversial mom, Jackie, is doing? He smiled. “Everybody wants to keep on keeping on, to be famous, to do their thing. She does hers!” Well, she did one thing very well; she produced the phenomenon that is Sylvester Stallone. Sly knows the reality and says “Youth must be served … but the rest of us go on as well. We have our choices, our ambitions, and we have that last important thing – the ‘Puncher’s Chance!'”

Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

– Craig Zablo

Stallone takes a swing at sly ‘Spy Kids’ role

Craig / / 2003, Celebs, Spy Kids 3D

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

Will there be another “Rocky”?

Craig / / 2003, Celebs, Rocky VI, Shade, Spy Kids 3D

In the July 20, 2003 Who’s News section of USA Weekend the following appeared:

Q: Is Sylvester Stallone really working on another “Rocky” movie? Angel Moll, Bellingham, Mass.

Yes. Stallone, 57, now is writing a script that will have sensitive boxer Rocky Balboa jumping into the ring for a sixth time [it’s been a while; “Rocky V” came out in 1990]. Meanwhile, Stallone can be seen as the villain in “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over” next weekend. The role of the baddie is a switch for the actor, one that’ll no doubt tickle his three daughters with third wife Jennifer Flavin [Sophia, 6, Sistine, 5, and Scarlet, 1]. The Los Angeles-based star, who has two older children from his first marriage, also is waiting to see whether “Shade,” an independent con-man caper he filmed with Melanie Griffith will be released.

– Craig Zablo