The #1 Sylvester Stallone Fan Site in the World!
Today’s piece is Jon Riggle’s take on Sly as Freddy from “Cop Land”. Jon is an illustrator and photographer. He also created the Sci-Fi comic strip Sonic Jack and is available for commissions. You can see more of Jon’s art here and here.
Thanks to Jon for the bang-up job and John Beatty for the gift.
Chris Moreno worked up this very nice color take on Sly from “Cop Land” for me at a convention last year. My buddy picked it up when I had to leave the show early and I didn’t end up getting it in my possession until just recently. Man, I really like Chris’ art and my piece is an excellent example of “why.” He’s a talented artist with a huge sense of humor. What a great combination! You can check out more of Chris’ art here.
Francesco Francavilla is an extremely talented artist. His art blog is a regular stop on my internet travels. I love Francesco’s moody black and white work and was excited to get a copy of his Chiaroscuro sketchbook. I was even more excited to learn that Francesco draws a free “quick sketch” in every copy ordered through his site. As you can see from the scan above, he decided to give me his take on Freddy from “Cop Land.”
Chiaroscuro is 70 pages full of Francesco’s black and white work. It features everything from quick sketches to more detailed work of characters like Hellboy, Batman, Kong, Marv, and so many others. It arrives securely packaged [which is a major plus knowing my mail carrier] and the last page contains the quick sketch. Francesco has another sketchbook available. Schermoscuro is a classic horror movie guide in artbook form. Francesco is offering the same deal on it and I plan to take him up on it soon.
Gawker.com has an article about actors who have gained weight for roles. Included in the list are: Matt Damon, Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Jared Leto, George Clooney, Robert DeNiro, Vincent D’Onofrio and of course Sly. Here’s what they had to say about Sly:
Sylvester Stallone in Copland
Rocky Balboa gained about 40lbs to play a sad-sack New Jersey policeman in this quiet thriller that was meant to revive his acting career. While Stallone and the movie were both quite good, they went mostly unnoticed and disappeared into film history. Stallone since bulked back up and recently played a 60-year-old John Rambo.
Kevin Williamson of the Ottowa Sun, in the April 6, 2008 edition picks his Top Ten Cop Movies. As you can imagine, it’s a great list since there have been a ton of great cop flicks. Williamson’s list includes: 1] Heat 2] LA Confidential 3] The French Connection 4] Serpico 5] Narc 6] Se7en 7] Bullet 8] Cop Land 9] The Untouchables 10] Dirty Harry and Lethal Weapon. Here’s what he had to say about Cop Land: 8. COPLAND (1997)
You can read the full article here. – Craig
In the first, Sly defends the level of violence in “Rambo” saying, “As horrific and bloody as you think the film is, I don’t, because that’s what war is.” He goes on to add, “Gratuitous violence is a guy dressed up in a fright wig with a meat cleaver chasing ten teenagers around the woods for ten hours. That’s gratuitous, this [
Rambo] is war. And civil war is by far the most vicious of all wars.” Click HERE to read the full post.In the second Sly discusses the film that bothered him the most: “I think the biggest mistake I ever made was with the sloppy handling of
Judge Dredd. I thought that could have been a fantastic, nihilistic, interesting vision of the future – judge, jury and executioner. That [film] really bothered me a great deal.” Sly goes on to talk about characters that he’d like to re-visit: “I think Cobra could have been kind of interesting on a certain level only because I always saw him as Bruce Springsteen with a badge! That character would’ve been nice to go back to.” Sly also “added that he wouldn’t mind going to see if Sheriff Freddy Heflin, the character he played in James Mangold’s Cop Land, ‘lived happily ever after’.” For the full piece click HERE.Sly opens the door for some very interesting possibilities. Especially if Mangold joined him. – Craig
Sly Stallone as Freddy Hefflin from “Cop Land.” The pic comes from my collection.
best,
– Craig
Sylvester Stallone Guest Stars on AMC’s ‘Sunday Morning ShootOut’ on December 7 at 11 AM
for Sun. (Dec. 7) –(BUSINESS WIRE)–
AMC‘s weekly half-hour series, “Sunday Morning ShootOut,” hosted by Peter Guber and Peter Bart, brings the smarts and spin of Sunday morning political shows to the world of entertainment.
THIS WEEK’S GUEST: Actor, writer and director Sylvester Stallone. Since achieving worldwide fame with Rocky, which won an Oscar for Best Picture in 1976, Stallone has acted and co-written such successful films as First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Rambo III. His acting credits include Get Carter, Driven, Demolition Man and Copland, which garnered him international critical and audience acclaim. Most recently, Stallone has completed filming Avenging Angelo, co-starring Madeline Stowe.
DISCUSSION TOPICS: 1) The producers of Rocky offered you $150,000 to cast Ryan O’Neal in the title role. What made you turn it down? 2) Why did you agree to take a major pay cut for the film Copland? 3) Lost
Souls Seeking Redemption, Rocky VI — is this a parallel to your own life and life experiences? 4) Your upcoming Rampart Scandal delves into the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. What made you choose this piece and how did it come about?
WHEN: The episode will air on Sunday, December 7 at 11 am ET/PT on the AMC cable network. The episode can also be viewed at http://movies.yahoo.com, beginning at 12 Noon (PT).
BACKGROUND: “Sunday Morning ShootOut” is a new, half-hour weekly series on AMC hosted by entertainment industry veterans, Peter Guber and Peter Bart. Guber is the chairman of Mandalay Pictures, former CEO of Sony Pictures, the producer of dozens of Hollywood‘s most successful movies including Midnight Express, Batman, Rainman, Basic Instinct. Bart is editor-in-chief of Variety, and former Hollywood reporter for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. In his career as an executive at Paramount Pictures and as president of Lorimar, Bart played a major role creating classics like The Godfather, Rosemary’s Baby and The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Like other Sunday morning debate shows, the sparks fly here as prominent producers, directors, writers and stars join the hosts to debate all sides of the week’s biggest stories in the world of movies and entertainment. The experts provide informed and spirited perspectives on the winners and losers at the box-office, the rising and falling fortunes of the stars and studios themselves and the emerging trends that are forever reshaping the business of entertainment.
The pic above comes from an ad in Entertainment Weekly and the text from Business Wire. – Craig Zablo
Thanks to Ernest “Jazzman” Resendes for the item above from the November / December 2003
[Issue #22] of IFC/RANT. It’s for a series airing on the Independent Film Channel – Craig Zablo
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