youtube
The movie “I Play Rocky" charts the long and obstacle-hurtling path that Sylvester Stallone took to getting the movie “Rocky” to the big screen. Directed by Peter Farrelly, the movie structures its making-of-“Rocky” narrative in the same triumphant underdog way that the director of “Rocky” structured the original.
This sequence takes place during the shooting of a dramatic sequence in “Rocky.” Anthony Ippolito portrays Sylvester Stallone as he is playing Rocky. And Robert Morgan portrays Burgess Meredith as he is playing Mickey, a trainer, former boxer and the owner of the gym Rocky frequents. In the sequence, after Rocky has been picked to face the heavyweight champion of the world, Apollo Creed, for a chance at the title, Mickey offers to be Rocky’s manager. But Rocky sends him away because he believes Mickey never cared about his potential during the many years he’d been training there.
But in the scene as originally written, Rocky immediately chases after Mickey, without a sense of what might have motivated him to do so. During the shoot, the director of “Rocky,” John G. Avildsen (played by Jay Duplass), feels that the scene is not making sense because he doesn’t understand why Rocky would go after Mickey when Mickey has been critical of Rocky’s talent until now. He challenges Stallone to devise a way to make the sequence come together emotionally.
Stallone takes a break and has a conversation with his wife, Sasha (AnnaSophia Robb). She pushes him to think about why he
|
