‘Rocky’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan

What's up, Rewatchables fans? As you know, we've done live shows in New York, in Philly, in D.C., in Chicago, L.A. many times.
We've never done Boston. I've been saving it for the right moment.

The right moment is here. It's going to be Thursday, March 27th.
It's going to be the House of Blues, which is right by Fenway Park. And it's going to be

the dream team. Me, Chris Ryan, Sean Fantasy, and Ryan Rosillo.
That's right. We're all coming back.
We're not doing the town. We're not touching the town.

That one episode lives on forever on YouTube, Spotify. We're not redoing it, but we'll probably do a Boston movie.
All information will be on the ringer.com/slash events

very soon. Once again, the Rewatchables Live, Boston, Thursday, March 27th, houseofbluesringer.com/slash events.
And we're going to have a couple more things we're doing that weekend, too.

So I'm very excited. We have not come to Boston yet, and we're going to do it right.
Hope to see you there.

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The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We are now available on video on Spotify.
We have a YouTube channel as well that you can find on Ringer Movies. Van Lathan is here.

You can find him on Higher Learning. You can find him on

Midnight Boys. Beep Beep.

Pew pew. Come on.
You know that. He's just fucking with me, man.
He did this the last time, too. It's pew-pew.
Beep, beep. That's right.

What are you up to?

He's like the roadrunner and the coyote now. Yeah.
Yeah, I make the watch. Oh, great.

A lot of good TV though.

There's some great television on. That's great.
Well, I'm Bill, and we're about to do Rocky, one of the most important movies the last 50 years. Let's go.
His name is Sylvester Stallone.

He's the star of a new film called Rocky. He has been described as handsome, tough, talented, sexy, sensitive, dynamic, and brilliant.
He's been compared to Brando, Newman, Pacino, and De Niro.

He's been called a top contender for an Academy Award. Sylvester Stallone in Rocky, rated PG.

All right, let me start here. Rocky is is now a prequel for Rocky III.
Prove me wrong. No, you're right.
That's so funny. Like, our role,

what's coming up in the category, like prequel, I'm like, this movie is a prequel. It is the prequel.
Yeah. And it's one of the most important,

I think, movies of the last 50 years. I'm going to make a case and it's prototype for sports movies.

And yet now, all these years later, I'm like, oh, I like how they're setting this up for the pinball machine in Rocky 3. I was trying to think of an example of what happens in Rocky 1.

And it's basically imagine if Godfather was entirely about Kate and Michael not in New York City.

Kate and Michael just hanging out, going on dates, going to the movies, you know, like reading books to each other, checking out the Sunday Times, going to a skating.

And then at the very end, like Don Corleone dies, you know, and he's like, I have to take over the family. So it's like, it's crazy.

Boxing does not happen until the last 13 minutes of this movie. Shockingly absent from the film, the lore of the Rocky movies,

after you watch all of them and then you come back to this one, what a quaint, emotionally devastating film. Mid-70s

character study.

Character study of a guy that's trying to

take this opportunity for the rest of his life, something that's super duper relatable.

Yeah, it's funny because, and from a rewatchable standpoint, and this movie's in the running for probably most rewatched movies on cable and just diving in halfway through it, but you never watch the first half hour of it when it's just establishing over and over again what a loser he is.

Yeah. Juicy not in the rewatch thing, you'll come in and be like, Oh shit, he's taking the Apollo fight, I'm gonna start watching.

And there's just some gut-wrenching scenes in that first 30 minutes, which is why it ended up winning Best Picture. But is that also why you've been a little bit reticent to do it?

No, on the pod, I just wanted to do Rocky 3 first because I think it's one of the great movies of all time.

Uh, this, when I say it's one of the most influential movies of the past 15 years, the case would be this: um,

created the sports movie prototype, like just period,

um, Created the underdog, the modern version of that underdog.

They, you know, there's millions of movies from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s that did this, but this nailed it to the point that you would just compare. It could be sports, it could be non-sports.

If there was like that kind of Rocky type of character, it'd be like, oh, this is like Rocky.

And then just the beats of like

something leading to the big game, big event, whatever, which I guess you could say Longest Yard started it, but once Rocky did this.

But I was wondering if this is the first time you remember seeing in a movie sports narratives and storylines getting manipulated from behind the scenes in a kind of dark arts way to create a sensation, right?

Because like all the stuff that Apollo and Jurgens are doing where they're like, well, we got to pick this guy because they'll believe in this guy. And this is like how we're going to do this.

And what I'm going to do is knock him out here, you know? And it's like all the stuff that feels like

it's not the

pure athleticism and the triumph of like the little guy over the big guy. It's like actually like there's all this other stuff happening in the grimy CD underbelly.

So like what else was doing that before this? Probably nobody. I can't remember.

I can't couldn't really think of an example of a sports movie that did that where it's like, here's all this gross shit happening underneath.

I'm sure there's like 1930s and 40s boxing movies where like a mafia guy is trying to get a boxer to take a dive or whatever, but Apollo is like manipulating the media in this. Certainly.

It's a movie that at its heart is about

this guy's golden opportunity.

But then it also gets into why that's happening.

Everybody wants to believe somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, someplace right now, that people are having a conversation about you that's going to end in you doing this great, amazing thing.

And then to watch that happen and then watch the guy that it's happening to, knowing that he did absolutely zero to like deserve it, it's all right, turns down the fight when it's offered to him, and right immediately turns it it down.

Like, I don't deserve to be in the ring with that guy. He's that self-aware.
But it's the thing that's going to save his life and propel him.

Like, legitimately, in the last scene of the movie, when Adrian is walking to the ring, like her hat falls off. Like, her hat falls off.
She looks back for the hat. That version of her is gone now.

Yeah. Like, the mousy, like, I don't know that I'm beautiful.
I'm trying to hide from the world version. And then the Rocket 3 version's coming.
Yeah.

She's got to go into a coma first. But Rocket 3, Adrian, looks fantastic.
So it's like the movie just tells this unbelievable story that everybody wishes was their story. Yeah.

Guy, loser, got nothing going, gets his one chance, actually comes through, gets the girl, and then it's ripped off for the next 48, 49 years, which I think is unfairly held against this.

The only other nitpick is just that

there's some slow parts.

I think this is one of the five movies I've seen the most

just because it's been around for so long.

Was this like an early like watching it on cable over and over again, or did you have it on tape?

You didn't see this in the theater, right? Do you order? Oh, I did. I have a whole story.
Okay, cool. I was on Dedham, Massachusetts with my dad in 1976.
It's supposed to be big in Boston.

There were not a lot of non-whites in the theater. I'll just say that.
You guys are, yeah,

get him. Get him.
Get him.

Life are bosses.

It wasn't a diverse crowd in Dedham.

Oh, my God.

But

first of all, it was amazing. Like, I just never had been to a movie like that.

But leaving, my big memory was being confused whether he won the fight or not and asking my dad, like, but what was the scorecard?

But they said eight, seven, Apollo, and then they never said what the rest of the card was. How do they? And I was just so confused.
And then, you know, upon rewatches, you realize what happened.

But see, I was very much more, I think I might have first seen Rocky four in the theater. Yeah.
Went backwards. So Rocky 1 exists in this really weird

prequel world. Yeah, well, it just is like when you watch it when you're younger, you're kind of like,

This sucks, you know, like this guy's a loser. Everything's

does not paint like the most flattering portrait of Philadelphia. Uh,

and you're just kind of like, oh man, this is a real bummer. I much prefer two and three and four.

But then, as you get older, I think you see the artistry of it, and you realize it's part of like the context, it's essentially like Stallone making mean streets.

It, if you first see Rocky 3 3 or 4, like I did as well, it's not even the same species of human that Rocky is. They have discovered the steroids by the time three and four have come along.

They don't even look the same. Rocky one is, those movies are action movies, essentially.

Rocky three. Rocky three.
Those like are big action movies. It's really all about the physicality of the film.
Of course, there's the character stuff in there, too.

Crossed with like a music video where it just moves from big sequence to big sequence. Right.
Like

this one, you got to give yourself some space with it for a long time. I didn't enjoy it at all.

The more I started to actually live life and understand

and got the understanding that life is a lot more like Rocky 1 than it is like Rocky 3, the movie just, it gained

a lot of real estate with me. Well, it also feels very mid-70s as a movie.
This ties into a lot of other great movies. I mean, this is such an unbelievable time for movies that's 74 to 78 stretch.

And just the way they did it, I just think even five years later, the movie is different. Like we're only, they make this in 76.

We're eight years away from Karate Kid, which is the next, the 2.0 version of this movie. And that is a completely different movie in every respect.
This is slow.

It's really trying to build character. It's trying to have these little moments.
It's a love story. It has some characters that are.

It's also like when you talk about Karate Kid and you even talk about movies like, I don't know, the John Hughes movies and even up to Top Gun, it's just a much different portrait of like American life because this is so urban.

And then you see movies sort of start to look towards the suburbs for storytelling because it's a lot safer and cleaner and prettier to do that.

But this is so like, it looks like the depression, you know, like when you're takes you to know a world, which we love on the rewatch. Those movies have a lot of style to them, too.
Yeah.

You know, you got Cruel Summer and all of that stuff.

This film is just devastatingly emotional yeah like you like it really makes you believe how many times did you tear up i tear you know what's funny like i really i cried uh literally cried when rock is yelling at the door and mick is walking away and he's talking about the fact that he's felt abandoned by him yeah i'm right here

what about my fun

and then just the i hate the character i've always hated this character this character is my number one op in film history

poly My number one op in film history. We have a lot of Pauly stuff coming.
Yeah, but like the Pauly stuff, Pauly is just a more desperate version of Rocky because he can't even box. Yeah.

He's Rocky without the boxing. So like he can't, so he has nothing to take him out of his situation other than his proximity to this guy.
And that's pretty desperate.

We have to go backwards to 76 because I just need to, because I'm old enough to remember this. I can't explain what a giant phenomenon this was.

You know, like Jaws in 75, this in 76, Saturday Fever in 77, Star Wars in 77, where these movies would hit, and then there would be like seven, eight different outcomes from the movie hitting.

And in this one, like the music,

people started jogging

like for real. Yeah.
I don't, and maybe they were jogging before this movie, but I never remember seeing anyone jog before

reinvigorated jogging, but you think, you think Rocky started? I feel like people always claim Jim Fix, but I always feel like Rocky, the concept of just people training and being motivated to train.

I remember, I'm not kidding, I was a little kid being in the living room because I was an only child, and I would play the Rocky soundtrack, and I would just be in the main event boxing Apollo and just running around.

Like, you know, you fake plane, you're like hitting yourself and doing, you're listening to the music.

Like this movie was. So you boxed Apollo.
You were a Rocky and Apollo? I was Rocky. Oh, you were Rocky? I was Rocky.
I was like fighting this.

Which one of your friends? Which one of your non-white friends? I was by myself.

But this is what you did.

Paulo, come here. Put your pose over here.

This is what you did, though. You jogged to this movie.
You shadow boxed to it.

And then the other piece of it was just alone

going from, I don't never heard of this person before, to this is, this person's now in my life.

And then think about how he's been in our life.

I mean, this is, I don't know how many re-watchables we've done with him at this point, but I don't know if there's been a bigger rags to Rich's actor story than this.

It's Tarantino crossed with acting almost? Yeah, but I was trying to think of also any the people who have broken big and then stayed big with the story of making the movie mirrors the movie itself.

You know, like his self-belief, his,

I, I believe in like, I'm betting on myself on this one. And if it means I can't even make the movie at all, I'm not going to compromise.

And to actually catapult yourself into this kind of level of fame is astonishing.

Yeah, he had to, first of all, everyone had to deliver to such a ridiculous level. The script is perfect.
Even it's really well written.

And it's hilarious that Slast Alone wrote it because, you know, it's like,

it's really cool reading William Goldman.

Yeah. And he talks a lot about like the locker scene and all the different things you learn about Rocky from just him hitting the locker to open it up.
One of my favorite script.

like just little touches is when they watch the interview on TV

and they're kind of making making fun of him in the interview when he's after he takes the fight. And he's like, Yeah, it doesn't bother me.

And then he walks away and Adrian's kind of watching him leave. He's like, You remember when I said this stuff didn't bother me? It did.
It did.

And then he just walks up and be like, Oh man, this fucking guy, can he buy, bro? Can't he buy a break? You know, he would just buy this guy a break.

Is there a time? This is going to sound really whatever, but is there a time in a movie before this to where the old sports trope

of

watching the guy talk about like Apollo's on TV. Yeah.
And like Apollo's on TV and you're the first time you see like you see you see them talking about it. You see them talking about the fighting.

You're watching them on TV. They do that in sports movies like all the time now.
No, this is completely invented. This is why this is such an influential movie.
We could talk.

About a million different things. And I'll say this.

I think until Rod Tidwell, I think Apollo was the best kind of of side sports movie character ever yeah like if you actually watch all the apollo scenes carefully in this movie he's a amazing character he's like a businessman the way he talks he's charismatic he's doing partly ali but he's also

i don't think ali was like a businessman like this like he's he's a thinker like he's the one who figures out what to do in that fight

and uh And you just get a complete feel for him. You want to spend more time with him.
And I have him in the finals against Rod Tidwell. It's an interesting thing that he is

the character that is in this movie utilizing race and capitalism,

all of that stuff against the everyman. The Italian stallion.
Right. It's almost, it takes that, you know, there's a specific because he knows.
Yeah. He knows what's going to sell.

And it's like, he's got to fight a wet guy. It's a great juxtaposition, too, because the three or four of the main characters of this movie are like almost nonverbal.
They're like barely articulate.

No, but like, no, you're right.

That was like a nice way to put it. Yeah, like, I mean, Adrian, Paulie, and Rocky are kind of like either drunk, shy to the point of petrification, or like brain dead.
Yeah.

And then Adrian's basically Raymond Babbitt for the first 40 minutes of this movie. Yeah, until he pulls the glasses off.
She's like playing with the Cincinnati Reds baseball cards.

He awoken something in her. But then she did.

But so you basically, like, when Apollo is narrating all this stuff of like, I don't want Bob Justice or whoever the fuck he's going to fight, like that's the only thing that kind of keeps this movie going for a while because otherwise it's just people wandering around in the dark, you know, like it's a promoter is great too.

Like

every Jergens moment is great, but there's that scene when they're just beating the shit out of each other in the end and it just cuts to him.

He's just sitting there with like his fucking cigar just like, yeah,

box office. And then even when Apollo is going through and he clearly lost the fight, you could watch the movie 15 times on a row and Apollo lost, right? He definitely lost the first two rounds.
Yeah.

So, I guess 14 might have been a 10-8. And it's like, there's a statement that the movie is making about how cynical Apollo was about picking Rock and how he doesn't train hard enough.

Exactly.

That was one of the big scenes when the meat locker, the meat, whenever that scene, when Duke's watching it, it's like, yo, you can hear them.

This guy means business. And Apollo's like, yeah, yeah, I mean business too.
And he's just like reading the Wall Street Journal.

I love Apollo's so great. But that character, in a way, that's a revolutionary character.
No question. Particularly as a black man right there to be the guy that

he's the one that's talking specifically about America and the American dream and everything that America is. And he's like conducting a little bit of a symphony.
He was like, well, like it's Philly.

They're going to go for this Italian guy, Columbus, the bicentennial. He's orchestrating a story.

Six years after they wouldn't let Ali fight. Yeah.
And this is like clearly like it's an Ali-based character.

And the reason Stallone came up with the idea for the movie is he's watching Webner Ali in 75, which was the real life version of this. Webner ends up suing him.

Underscore settlement. Yeah.
But that's part of the lore of the movie.

Stallone watched that fight. Webner was like this, you know, there's been documentaries and moves about him, but he's banged up face.
He's getting killed by Ali, but last 15 rounds.

Stallone, so inspired, pumps out the movie in three and a half days. Can I ask a question about going back to what you guys were talking about?

Would Goodwill Hunting be in the same mode of a movie where the guys just went, fuck it, we're going to make our own movie and explodes?

Yeah, the only difference, though, is those guys around for a while. But those guys had been in movies.
Adfleck and Damon, like they hadn't had their A-list break, but they had been in stuff.

Like Affleck was in Chasing Amy the year before, and Damon was in a bunch of stuff. I think

he'd gotten the Rainmaker by then. He was in school time.
Yeah, the Rainmaker hits all the time. Stallone was in Paradise Alley.
That was it. And I think also, I mean, I don't remember.

I'd have to go back and look, but like, I don't know that Damon and Affleck

would have said no if they were like, we're going to make this script, but like, these two giant movie stars are going to be, and you guys get paid for the script.

Like, I think they may have been like, hey, we're keeping it moving. And we're, I don't know.
It was like Stallone was basically like, this is either

writing it and starring in it, or it's not getting made. Well, there was a piece that I didn't know about how he sold it to ABC with Henry Winker

because they worked together. And then ABC was basically like, we're changing everything.
Thanks for the script. Here's some money.
And he convinced Winkler to give it back to him.

Well, no, and crucially, it's like Winkler has to go back to ABC, ask for the script back. They're like, no, thanks.
But he's the Fonzie. And he's like, I'm Fonzie.

Like, so if you don't want to fucking happy days, you'll give it back or you sell it back to me at cost. And then it's this two-year dance or one-year dance, however long it was of.

people wanting to buy the script, but put a famous actor or con or whatever.

I got to say, it's an amazing, in the bet on your, if there was a bet on yourself book, Stallone Betting on Himself is a chapter.

yeah i'll take way less money i have to star in it i want to be the writer and star is there a version of stallone's career where he is primarily a writer that he's more of a filmmaker actor if he just

too charismatic but he he has suggested or like when he talks about it like i think that he has suggested that that's like a career he would have happily had you know like that he really wanted to be a filmmaker and he thinks of himself as an artist more than like you know in some ways like rocky is golden handcuff cuffs, right?

He's returned to this franchise over the decades so many times. But Rambo 2, Rambo.

Yeah, but I wonder if he's like, I would have liked to have made more movies that are like on the waterfront or whatever, you know? Well, he definitely,

yeah, he didn't write First Blood.

He, you know, Rocky, the moment this comes out, it's like, all right. Let's make Rocky 2.
Come on, guys. What are we waiting for? And then that comes out.

And then he's trying, he, you know, he's in Nighthawks. He's in Victory.

But then he has that second run with Rocky 3 and First Blood same year. And then that's it.
He has one of the best, probably six-year A-list movie star runs ever.

All seemed inconceivable if you watch Rocky run. He's got to lose weight.
He's got to look more leading man. It was tough to separate Rocky from Stallone.
You know, like he's in Nighthawks.

He grew a beard. Yeah.
And he's like, all right, I'm street cop Stallone. And then he's in victory.
He loses a ton of weight and he's the goalie. And it's like, all right, it's still Rocky.

And it really took him until, I would say, 82, 83 to be Stallone. Yeah.
And obviously, he spends most of his career like in and out of that persona, really, until Copland. Yeah.
Yeah.

We've done another physical transformation there. Yeah.

By the way, we've done, this is our 11th Stallone Rewatchable. So he's moved into the top five.
What all have you guys done? He's tied.

I mean, we've done a bunch of them. I thought you might crash in a Hackman at the last second here.
Well, I'm waiting for the results.

Cruz 15, De Niro Pacino, 13. Denzel and Stallone, 11.
That's our top five.

Awesome top five.

How many more Stallones are still sitting there? Are you scouting? Are you at the Combine looking at Stallone? There's a couple good ones left. Yeah.
We haven't done lockup. We haven't done Daylight.

Lockup. You're a Daylight fan? I like Daylight.
Stallone has to see. We did Cliffhanger, right? We did Cliffhanger.

I was ready to do it again, though. But see, the Stallones, I mean, you.
Rambo 2, we haven't done. So you're never going to do Cobra, right? Bear Doc.
Did Cobra already. Did Cobra? Oh, fuck yeah.

I love Cobra. Have you done Tango and Cash? Yes.
Oh, shit. Well, Tango and Cash is one of my favorite movies.
Well, we can talk about Tango.

Yeah, we'll do it. It's one of my favorite movies.
Let's we'll take a break, come back a little more, and talk about this movie. This episode is brought to you by AT ⁇ T.

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This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Jay Kelly, the new film from Academy Award nominee Noah Bombach, my guy.

George Clooney stars as an actor confronting his past and present on a journey of self-discovery alongside Adam Sandler, my guy, as his devoted manager.

Critics are calling it a declaration of love to the chaotic art of filmmaking with the Wall Street Journal praising it as, quote, a transcendent comedy drama.

Watch Jay Kelly December 5th, only on Netflix. Just quickly on the ultimate sports movie recipe, surprise out of nowhere star,

killer supporting parts. So we mentioned Apollo Creed, but you also have Mickey.
You have Polly, the least likable character, probably of the 1970s, other than maybe Travis Bickle. And then

Adrian.

And then you have Gotzo, the Lone Shark guy. Oh my God.

And you have

Godzo's driver, the funniest character probably of the 1970s. And then you have

Juergens.

And Duke, who's not named in Rocky One and eventually becomes Duke, Bala was like a son to me. Yeah.
I raised him. When he died, a part of me died too.
Duke has

some all-time heaters. Why wasn't Duke?

Duke has some Duke. Duke's the best.

The guy's all wrong for us. Like, Duke, like, Duke has some.

I don't like South Paws.

Duke has some all-time heaters when you just let Duke cook, man. So we got the killer sporting parts.
We got Perfect Underdog Story.

Great music. Great all-time sports movie music.
Multiple chill scenes.

I always call them chill scenes when you're watching the Gonna Fly Now. And he starts racing the boat.
You're like, aha.

And then the great ending. This is the recipe.

This is the recipe that was then copied for 48 years. When you were watching this,

I know you're a kid, so maybe you just assume, but like,

did you watch, were you watching this being like, and of course, like, Rocky's got, gotta win at the end, right? Like, oh, yeah. Sports movie, like, idea of like, this was Bad News Bears, too.

Those are the two movies that year that flipped, oh, you think they're gonna win at the end? Watch this, and then they don't win.

Um,

something else about the movie, it

to me, it establishes the sports movie to where a victory for our main character is

this transformational victory for all of our supporting characters, too. Like, everybody learns a lesson along with Rock.
Like, Pauly got $3,000. Paulie, like, Rock pulls everybody, Mickey,

everyone.

Like, by the time you get to Cinderella Man, you realize that he's not just fighting for him, he's fighting for Jamaica, he's fighting for like everyone kind of gets pulled out of their thing by what this guy does.

Well, some other stuff, other piece of this big picture. The uh, we mentioned the Stallone breakout movie adrian

is not a wet blanket in this movie

but we get to rocky four and it's full bloom like doesn't even go to russia with him i think for the most part really great sports movie girlfriend in this one like just additive supportive

wants him to win a different loves him so much she can't go out there to watch the fight doesn't want to see him get but then can't resist has to come out a different time in the american economy when a woman could make a living working in an exotic fish store in South Philadelphia or in Kensington.

Yeah, never more than one customer in there.

The heart of downtown Adrian, six dollars, and they're just getting fucked over.

Six dollars, yeah. That's okay.
Did those caveat eggs sign up? We're providing a big service to the community. Yeah,

right across the scummy gym in a porn theater. I don't know where everyone is today.

Adrian,

you know, the guy singing Dooop can use the toilet. So, you know, we

play our part.

All white doo-op group. We're going to get to it.
Stallone's Stallone's Bro.

All white doo-wop group. Loved it.

Your Mickey thoughts.

So, you know, having been around the boxing gym a lot, everybody in there is essentially Mickey.

Like, you know, they have their favorites. They, they do the whole,

you're not putting enough into

your boxing career. When I was a kid,

I didn't like Mickey. I thought that Mickey sucked.
As I got older, something changed. I'll tell you what it is.

When you get older, the first thing you lose patience for is people squandering their talent and their ability. That's the first thing that goes.
I didn't know why people used to do that to me.

Like when I was a kid, I used to be like, look how big Van is. And one of my uncles would be like, yeah, he ain't going to do nothing with it.
I'd be like, God damn, I'm eating my cereal.

Like, what the fuck is wrong with you? But, like, now when I look at Mickey and I go, he was so disappointed in Rocky because he saw what Rocky could have been.

And that's why he was treating him like shit. So that's a character that you kind of age with.

Because at first, when I first saw the movie, I was like, oh, I had seen the old one that Rocky loves Mickey so much. I was like, why?

He's kind of an asshole for the first half of the year. Rock's coming into

the gym smoking a lung dart.

Hey, where's my locker?

Dessert ashtray.

mick gives his locker away

to the dipper continuously tells him how shitty he is and then

becomes kind of grifter when the 150 000 deal comes by now that that's

such an important scene it's an incredible scene it also like shows mick in this like incredibly i mean maybe not self-consciously vulnerable way where he's like look at look at the newspaper clipping of me and you're just like oh this is a guy who has newspaper clippings about himself like stuffed into his pockets like he's he's kind of pathetic in the wants it.

Yeah, I got hot, but I ain't got no locker, do I, man? Yeah, tough one. That's exactly like I'm 75 years old, like, it never happened for me.

I just want to be around anyone who still has the chance that it could happen for them.

So, this movie won three Oscars: best picture director in editing, 10 nominations, first sports film ever to win best picture. This was

kind of an amazing Oscars year. Let's talk about it.
It beats all the president's men, network, taxi driver, and bound for glory. Jesus,

John Aviltson wins for best director.

He beats Alan J. F Kula for all the president's men.
Amar Bergman, Sidney Lehmet for Network, and

Seven Beauties.

And then

Stallone loses

to Peter Finch and Network.

De Niro loses as Travis Bickel.

And William Holden Holden. I would make the argument that I think Holden's better in network than Peter Finch, but aside from that, like

that's probably a De Niro year if we're redoing that.

And then Ty Shire not nominated, but we do have Burgess Meredith and Burt Young both nominated, but Jason Robards wins for All the President's Men. All right, you're re-litigating this.

Who wins in 76? So for Best Picture, definitely, I think all the President's men should have won Best Picture. And now you can make the argument that taxi driver cinematically is more importantly

movie history, but I just think all the president's been as a perfect Oscar best picture movie. What do you think? I would go all the president.
Well, Network's really great, though. Yeah,

I would go all the president's men for movie, and I would go Scorsese for best director. But the important part here is it's not Rocky.
It's not Rocky, but I think that speaks to

how unique the movie was. And part of what made people respond to it was they just never seen anything like this.

And it really affected them.

The Oscars fall for phenomena a a lot and if the movie was a phenomenon that you say it was they get swept up in that it's a very related it's like crash yeah um jesus 1.1 million dollar budget made 225 million spawned five sequels and three creed movies so eight sequels overall i wonder how that money got chopped up

1.1 made 225 but it's got to be so much more than 225 when you factor in the sequels and this has to be a multi-billion dollar franchise right

like four

four billion franchise

quantify like the economic impact it had on Philadelphia. Like, you know what I mean?

Like they don't have points on that, but like it's crazy how this is like a, in a lot of ways, a world-changing movie. Yeah, like video games, cartoons, it creates an

American mythology. Like Rocky is not a movie character.
He's like more akin to like, I don't know, Paul Bunyan. You refer to Rocky as like, oh, it's like a Rocky story.

This guy's coming out of nowhere. I mean, it's, we still do it today.
Yeah, you could say Rocky Jaws, Saturday Night Fever, and The Godfathers

just like created this new form of pop culture, at least a piece of it. But the crazy part about it is when you watch it,

you would never think that. Like when you watch the first 45 minutes of Rocky, you're like, wow, I'm watching a really, really sad character set.
Yeah. This is like an indie movie.
Yeah. Yeah.

Roger Ebert, our guy,

four stars last week for Crash.

Four stars this week for Rocky.

A description of it would sound like a cliche from beginning to end, but Rocky isn't about a story. It's about a hero, and it's inhabited with supreme confidence by a star.

His name is Sylvester Stallone.

Just raves and raves and raves. Raj Love Story.

What's the exact perfect age to see this movie? What do you guys think? 13. I had 13.

Do you think you need to be in puberty and care about girls a little bit or care about romantic relationship a little bit?

Because otherwise, you're going to be really bored for the first two thirds of this. I said 13 in 1993, but like now

at this particular time, and I think you'd have to be like 26 or 27. Okay.

But I think that the kids that watch this would watch the movie now, a lot of them, they're not going to stick it out with Rocky through the early part. I know my kids didn't.

My kids wanted to watch Rocky 3 and Rocky 4. Yeah, this was too slow, first 45.
Most re-watchable scene. I got to give, I got to start.
I have a bunch.

I have probably too many, but I love the beginning with the Spider-Rico rico fight pre-credits um the headbutt gets me i like the uh the smoke after the fight when spider rico is just lying in the on the bed you got low-key um

and it goes right into i like when they get paid spider gets 17.20 rocky gets forty dollars and 55 taxes out on these guys yeah

that's going to the government and then he walks out and we go into take it back with our diverse doo-op group yeah and then we're into the opening credits Just to back up a second,

if you don't get the theme song and the title sequence and the fight in the beginning of this movie, I think a lot of people would be like, what the fuck am I watching?

Because it gives you the sense, if you just start with this guy like wandering through the night, Philadelphia, smoky. Yeah.

Like, I think people would be like, yo, I thought this was a sports movie.

But this gives you, hey, just so you know, at some point, then, then,

this guy's coming. Yeah.
And this guy can fight. fight right and so you stand do you think you could take spider rico no um

i don't know i'm pretty good in the ring though a couple rounds uh maybe i'll tell you one thing about that that that scene though that is one of the worst in terms of like

aesthetically boxing movie scenes ever and it's interesting because of the boxing or because of no because it just there's this portrayal of the sport when i say worse i mean the way

i'm boxing unflattering is what i meant to say this portrayal of the sport that these guys are in there just killing themselves for nothing. It's completely dirty.
It's corrupt.

It's just the worst part of it. Fans are awful.
Fans are awful, the whole deal. And the first thing Rocky says is, when can I fight again? Yeah.

Like, there's something that he's putting himself through. And you go, and the first thing you go is, like, why?

And that question is answered at the end of the movie.

The end of the movie, the movie takes the entire movie to answer the question of why would someone put themselves through what Rocky's going through in the first scene is because you might, you could possibly make everyone is chasing that, walking out there at the end.

And so that kind of pays it off. But when you, when I watch that scene, it first is like, it's fucking disgusting and terrible and exploitive in the whole night.

And I was thinking about how they, you know, in Creed, which very closely follows some of the structures of Rocky, like the first fight is in Tijuana and it's like, no, Creed can fucking fight.

Like Creed's knocking this dude out. Like, and it's not like, oh, like, this why is this guy fighting he's taking watches

yeah but remember that in creed he's but he hits the guy who's already knows that it's over yeah

i'm combining three small scenes together because they're all in a row apollo breaking out his bicentennial plan

apollo i like it it's very american no jergens it's very smart uh right into gazzo's driver

Hey, Rock, I heard she's retarded.

Take her to the zoo. I hear retards like the zoo.
I'm starting to say say the R-word.

It's very nice. Yeah.
It's so the driver is like the worst human being probably ever. And every time he pops up, I'm like, the driver's like 175 thing in this movie.

I like when Rock has had enough of it and he just goes after him.

I'm right in.

This guy just hates. Why does he hate Rocky so much? What did Rocky do? Well, Rocky's not a very good collector.
Rocky's letting a lot of guys off. Yeah.
Not breaking enough thumbs.

Well, then we get right from there there back to the office with Apollo going, this is what I'm looking for. The Italian stallion.
He's soothpaw. I like you messing around with softpaws.

I like that whole section.

Jurgen's making Rocky the offer. Great.
Right into the press conference. I fight in clubs.
I'm really a ham and egger. We stopped using the phrase ham and egger.

Him asking the secretary for the business card back so that he can keep it as like a keepsake. Yeah.
Yeah. There's so many good subtle touches like that.

Oh, yeah.

This guy, this guy thinks this is like the only proxy like the closest he's ever going to get to success is being in this office so he wants to keep everything he gets from it he thinks he'd be a sparring partner it's funny this movie is the definition of a rewatchable because we know that we're looking at rocky balboa i know yeah yeah like we like we we he doesn't know that he's rocky balboa but we know second superhero movie yeah like we know that we're looking at rocky balboa so they don't know he's going to end the cold war right there the whole deal he's going to go on to become he's already got like 21 losses but he's going to end up he's going to go on to become one of the greatest heavyweights of all time

the whole not like we know we're looking at him rocky do you believe america is the land of opportunity i said this to cr in 2011 i did i was trying to get him to come to grandland it's like cr

do you believe

um i also love i just want to say hi to my girlfriend yo adrian

And then this is when the, you know, I didn't say that stuff on TV didn't bother me none. It did.

Mickey trying to convince Rocky to hire him, we mentioned. Yeah, of course.
I never had no management. That's such trouble.
And I got all this knowledge. I got it up here.
I want to give it to you.

I want to give you this knowledge. I want to take care of you.
I want to make sure that all this shit that happened to me doesn't happen to you. You know what I mean?

If I said.

Listen to me. I want to be your manager.
You follow that, do you? The monologue.

I love the door opening and closing because he thinks Mickey left, but he didn't. Then he slams the door again.
Then he opens and

he just starts screaming incoherently, which is some of my favorites to loan. Yeah.

You talk about pride. What about my product? What about my product?

And then I like the wordless reconciliation from far away. Just some good filmmaking.
Yeah. Possible Great Shot Gordo.
What'd you have for Great Shot Gordo? Oh, the running up the art museum steps.

Steady Cam.

It's actually Great Shot Garrett because he's the Steady Cam inventor. He's there.
Great Shot Garrett.

Rocky's TV interview in the meat freezer,

which also gets the Big Kahuna Burger Award for best use of food and drink.

You could even argue it might have to replace the Big Kahuna Burger. I'll be honest with you, there's another candidate, though.
What do you got? The turkey.

Oh, that's a great one. Yeah, you're right.
The turkey. Turkey's a tough one.
Because Paula keeps the one gross

touching people with it with the grease.

He's wielding the turkey leg as a scepter as he's thrown her Thanksgiving turkey. I don't know what a bastard.
And it's like the third worst thing he did in the movie.

I like when they're doing the TV interview and they're about to film it and the guy's like, hey, the meat guy is sticking his head in.

Doing that. Duke's watching.
Yeah, I mean, business to you.

He hears the punches, right? Yeah. Because Duke's got his back to the TV and then he's like, turns around slowly.
What's going on here? He hears the punches.

What do you think this would, if they had social media in 1976? How many views is this getting? Him hitting the

Apollo's opponent opponent punching meat in a meat locker. I feel like this is like 10 million.

10 million views, right? I'll tell you what, man. Charlamagne sending that to you.
Yes. Did you see this guy who's fighting?

I don't know, bro. This dude is Apollo ready for this guy, bro.
And the Ariel's like, I heard that wasn't real meat.

All of a sudden, this goes into the Gonna Fly Now training sequence, which I forgot. Like, we're like, oh,

we're doing this.

One-handed push-ups

races the huge boat.

second chance at the stairs, which we set up earlier with that 5 a.m. brutal training session.

Yeah,

I honestly, I think this is one of the best sports movie scenes of all time. Of course it is.

It has to be. If you're just arguing about them, this has to be one of the first ones.
They're great works. Unless you want to go Rocky 2 on me with all the kids.

Seriously, like inside of that building, the Art Museum is some of the greatest works of art in the history of the world. There's like medieval suits of armor.
There's like tombs from Egypt.

There's paintings from Impressionism.

And dressed the kill ladies.

And it's just literally like every day there is a line of cars and vans waiting to take pictures of the Rocky statue there. It is still like this iconic thing.
How important is this movie?

This is going to sound so stupid. The city has so much history.

How important is this movie to the contemporary identity of Philadelphia? I think it was big during my childhood. It was huge during my childhood.
Not so much anymore. It peaked in the 80s.

I don't see a lot of dudes being like, man, Rocky's really means a lot to me. But it's like, you have to remember, like, Iverson's 25 years ago now, so it's like this is a very long time ago.

They got my trunks wrong that scene when he goes into the spectrum.

Doesn't matter, does it? I'm sure you're gonna give us a great show. Then he knows, like, oh god, I'm gonna fucking get smoked, goes back, talks to Adrian.
Nobody's ever gone the distance with Queen.

And if I can go that distance,

you see, and that bell rings, and I'm still standing,

I'm going to know for the first time in my life, see?

I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood. I love all that stuff.
It's like, you got me, Rock. You had me a half hour ago.
I didn't need this speech. You got me.

I'm splitting the fight up into three scenes. The entire fight entrance.

Pauli got three grand. I got the robe.
Shrewd.

The Uncle Sam entrance from Apollo, which is great.

Him talking shit to Sly.

And Sly's like so stupid in the pre-fight, but it's great. Is he talking to me?

Yeah, he's talking to you.

And then the Joe Frazier cameo is amazing. Awesome.

And you hear people chanting like Frazier in the background. Yeah.
Took me a long time. And then I love the nicknames.
The Master Disaster. Is that one of the best nicknames ever? Love it.

King of Sting. Yeah.
All of that stuff. First two rounds of the fight.
The first round knockdown is one of the most exciting sports movie moments ever oh my god i love the bar shot

guys jumping around in the first round as they're like sort of feeling each other out it's never like

those are like he's actually like missing like they're not like that's not dad's stunt work or that no i think they're i think it's just slapping okay

um

breaks his nose duke does though he doesn't know it's a damn show he thinks it's a damn fight yeah And then the end of round two is great. Yeah.
Cause it's like, oh, Rocky's not going away.

Here we go. We do the montage.
14th round

next scene i think this is my most rewatchable this is because of cutney nick no i love the down down stay down and he's just like and adrian comes out and then apollo with the shoulder slumped is my favorite yeah where he's just like man you're fucking kidding me this guy's got up again you like that and then he comes back with a

and this is just all body shots but they repeat the same shot it's two punches that they run twice reminds me of the the fight that was on on last week where

Zane just gets nuked out by body shots. Yeah.
And you, and that's his thing. He's going to go to the ribs just like the slabs of meat.
Yeah, because don't they say Apollo is bleeding internally?

Basically,

yeah. And he just can't handle it.
Mickey calls it. Mickey tells that guy.
It goes to the body like nothing we've ever seen. Cut me Mick is great, too.
And then the ending. Cut me Mick is so gross.

Cut me Mick is disgusting, y'all. I can't see nothing.
Gotta open my eye. Cut me, Mick.
Don't want to do it.

Come here,

try to cut him.

Cut me,

cut me, Mick. I didn't even know that was a thing.
It's so great that they bring the cut guy in at like the eighth inning. She's got, hold on, I got my razor blade here.
Let me, let me get that.

And then the ending. It seems like he's going to get him.
Ain't going to be no rematch. Don't want one.
Where's your hat? still champion apollo um

i don't know best sports movie ending ever it's in the running during the fight especially on repeat viewing i think you can tell that the stadium's empty when they're fighting or very empty they weren't counting on blu-ray in 2025 some of the adr like sound effects stuff could have been better but that bell

everybody rushing in the music shot or everybody rushing in the music him just being like you automatically kind of intuitively know it doesn't matter if he's won or not.

It's because he's stuck through the whole fight. He did win.
Yeah, he earned the champs' respect. It's just like, holy shit, man.
Polly finally does something nice. He lets the rope open for Adrian.

He doesn't get

what he wants, but he leaves the fight with so much more than what he came into the fight

with that. Even looking at him as battered and bruised as he is, you're like, it was worth it.
What's your your most re-watchable scenes here?

Going to fly now? I think I'd probably go with the training. Yeah, the finally getting up the art museum steps to go to fly now.
I love the 14th round.

I think it's the training, but I do want to just give some love to Rocky and Adrian's first date at the

ice skating rink, where

he just demonstrates so many things. Number one, like

the script really is perfect because Rocky's talent is determination.

That's what his talent is. His talent is determination.
And throughout the whole movie, you just see a determined guy. He's going to get her on the ice rink.

He's going to tell her the stupid South Paul story. And you can just see them kind of closing in on each other to the whole time to where, you know, he kind of accosts her in his apartment later on.

She's telling him about fish food. Yeah.
I love the fact that the guy keeps yelling. Eight minutes.
Oh, seven minutes.

But it's like it gives their date urgency. Like if you can't close here,

you know? Hey, this episode of The Rewatchables is presented by State Farm. There's a lot to say when buying a new home or car, but only one thing to say when you need help to protect them.

Like a good neighbor. State Farm is there.
A State Farm agent can help you choose the coverage you need, like a good neighbor. State Farm is there.
What's the most 1976 thing about this movie?

I think White Dooop.

White Dooop.

I get it. Maybe not in 1977.
I mean, did we still have such

voices back then? I don't know. White Dooop.

White Doo Up. Well, Color Me Bad was like really the last moment.
Yeah, but like some of them were black. some of them, I know, but they had a couple white guys there.

Do you remember though?

Have you ever seen a group of men singing in harmony on a street corner in real life? No, yeah, well, that's what I had most 1976 thing:

good-natured winos and doo-hop singers versus just fentanyl addicts, which we would have now. Oh my god, now we would have people with no pants on just wandering on circles.

Just carry a tune, you know. Yeah, if they could just sing a little bit, we could

take it it back.

Where's my foot now?

Phil pulling up with a full coat, being like, let me hear a tune, fellas. All right.
And then throws him a quarter.

It was like Sarah, though.

Drunk street characters were always like these benevolent movie characters. Like he picks up that one guy and brings him in the bar and she's like, let me put you over on the seat.
Right.

Have a drink with Eddie.

Those days are gone. A lot of the stuff that we lionize on this podcast, smoky dive bars, 1970 streets and stuff.
This is the real shit in this movie.

And it kind of makes me second guess whether I would love to be in a smoke-filled bar, the Lucky Seven Tavern, with overhead lighting and three absolutely guys dying of kidney failure.

Right.

And Polly upset that the mirror is broken. Right.

Thanksgiving, Christmas. It's the shittiest lie.

You know how many times in this movie somebody accuses somebody else of stinking this stinks yeah it stinks in here oh yeah he talks about his own apartment my house stinks oh this desperation what's age the best cr mentioned the steady cam

this is the third movie ever they use the steady cam but the most famous one and uh

steady cam i would say is it's not an mvp of the movie but it's it's first aim on darry brown inventor of the steady cam and he basically was like trying to get people interested in the technology and and rocky winds up becoming more or less the guinea pig pig for for the technology that changes cinema apparently the run up the stairs was his idea because to show them how the steady cam worked he did a test run with his wife to show him what it would look show them what it would look like and that led to how they did it um

apparently they offered him either money or points in the movie and he took the money and has some regrets poor god got a bet on yourself it's a tough one that was not a good that's not going to be in the bet on yourself book

what's age the best the music and the soundtrack

it's still going you hear that i mean how many years have they been playing that in sporting events start of every fourth quarter in america it feels like

i have a bunch what do you have anything good the actual turtles yeah still alive as of 2021 which cuff and link yeah last reference i could find of them but still own kept them oh wow yeah it's amazing I'd sing with turtles.

They don't die. If you get a pet turtle, that's not like, ah, 10 years from now.
Turtles do smell it, too. I got to say.
Turtles are an L. Yeah.
You don't like them? No.

I used to like them when I was back in Louisiana. I see turtles everywhere.
Would you have them in the house, though? Probably not. Yeah.
Agnostic on turtles now. No, it's aged the best.

Well, first of all,

I personally think that just overall, the sports movie, obviously, it's aged the best, but I think that this, it's because of Rocky. Yeah.
I think

without the success and the

cultural penetration of this movie, I think the sports movie period is just like much, much different. Like this is a...
Yeah, I wonder if somebody would have figured it out.

They probably would have, but we don't know. Right.
I'm sure they would have, right? It's just such an important piece of our culture. But man, does this movie just completely,

it's like the Marlon Brando of sports movies. It changes the archetype, period.

You know what I was thinking about the other day is how come in sports media, we're pretty obsessed with the great teams, the dynasties, the burgeoning dynasties, the Chiefs, the Pats, the like, we're always talking about the Lakers in the NBA or whatever.

But in movies, we're never interested in the great teams. We're interested in the underdog teams or the underdog player.
Like, nobody wants to watch. True greatness is the interesting.

Yeah, you wouldn't watch Moneyball about Brian Cashman. You know, you'd want to watch Moneyball about a guy trying to put together a team with less money than Brian Cashman.

Like, we don't ever make movies that are about, like, ah, this is the story of the three peep.

I have a thought.

It's probably because when we're watching those dynasties, it's aspirational. And when we're watching the movies, it's inspirational.

We're definitely more Rocky than we are the Yankees. Everybody in this movie feels like they're Rocky.
If you watch this movie and you felt like Apollo Creed, then you own some different shit, right?

So we're Rocky probably. That's why we have sports documentaries.
Yeah. Yeah.

Do you know what I mean, though? It's kind of interesting.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, it's interesting because one of the best sports books ever was The Game by Ken Dryden, which was about like the Montreal Canadians at the tail end of their dynasty trying to hold it together.

It's fascinating. It's basically what the last dance is about too.
It's like,

can we stay together one last time? So we've seen it work in documentaries and books, but I've never seen it in a movie. But to his point though, and I've always wondered this, not only do we

not get into the underdogs in real life, but we hate them.

Like we, if we

are relentlessly critical. Oh, yeah, like when a bad team is a random wildcard baseball team team wins, it's kind of like this is annoying.
Yeah, like we don't win. It negates the regular season.

We kind of don't like them.

You know, a team's bad, it's like, oh, they suck. I hate them.
They're disgusting and all of that. I'm like, you're just not having a good season, you know, so it's just different.
We're hypocrites.

Morrow would say the best. Race and boxing.

I didn't know when this was going to come up.

But you don't need to take this one. It's the same space.
Boxing is legitimately the only place where it's still completely acceptable to be totally tribal. Sure.

I mean, some people would say that there are other places where it happens, but in boxing, you go to a place like

the black guy versus Mexican guy, all the brothers rooting for the black guy, all my Latino brothers and sisters are rooting for the Mexicans. The English guys fighting.

And it's just totally, it's just, it's totally okay.

It's totally okay. Why are you beating down?

I'm not beating down.

No, it's like this is just a weird era for sports movies because it's the 1.0 era, but most of them are like, you know, it's like Hoosiers, it's Rocky.

It's a lot of our white hero trying to beat whoever the black guy was in front of him or the black team. Yeah.
And then it eventually shifts.

But I, you know, I just think that in this case, it's clearly an Ali thing. And it feels like less of a black, white thing.
But after the fact, it feels black, white.

I really think this is an Ali thing. What it says is Stallone is like, What if I fought Ali? And that's the premise of the movie.
Oh, no, Stallone doesn't.

I don't think Stallone, I don't think the movie is conceived from the lens of race almost at all. But I think the perception after the fact was that it was.
This is why it became so popular.

This is why they had to have a sequel so he would win. Well, I think I'm just saying it's right.
There was no way to read it other than that at that time. But then, if you

kind of realize how obsessive Severest Stallone is about boxing, like legitimately, Roy Jones Jr. was supposed to be in Rocky Balboa.
He went out and laid an egg in a ring.

Stallone removed him from the movie and put Antonio Tarbert in the movie. It was really good.
Right. And so, like,

when you, obviously, the movie has racial undertones, overtones, the entire thing. But all of the race in the film comes from the black heavyweight champion.
Yeah.

Like, he is the one, and maybe that's intentionally discussed. It's also explicitly discussed how manipulating people's racial biases will lead to a bigger payday lead to a bigger audience right yeah

let's get this guy because of this city because of this time and like here's the story we're going to tell about him i think this movie is clean on the race front from stallone's hands rocky three becomes a different story it takes

some you know some tough

might not be that clean the movie itself is but but also like even small things like Rocky's locker gets given to dipper dipper dipper younger blocker yo Rock. I dig your locker.

Dig your locker with me on Skid Row. Yeah.
Is that the most boxing gym moment ever? The guy taunting Rock from the ring that he digs his locker just out of nowhere. Yeah.

It's a pretty good one. It is a pretty good one.
Do you ever have moments in the gym where everybody stops training at once because something has happened in the gym? Yeah.

That is like when Mick and Rock are yelling at each other and everybody just stops.

Well, when you're in the gym with that much testosterone, that normally happens because two people have taken something that happened inside of the ring. Yeah.
Like outside of of the ring. Right.

You know what I mean? And so, like, because the boxing gym is a pretty chill place. It's like very chill.
But once again, the tribalism still exists in there.

I have said stuff in the boxing gym that I wouldn't say anywhere else. Like Phil goes, I remember one time, Phil goes while I walk in the gym.
Phil goes, hey, man, got somebody for you to work with.

And I go, I'm not sparring anymore, Mexicans.

I just remember, and I said, and everybody's laughing. I'm like, I'm in here for, you know, fitness.

I'm not trying to fight somebody that's fighting for the honor of their family.

So, you know,

just letting you finish.

Bill's making a playlist of his favorite duo.

I'm talking about this.

Just looking at my outline. Very determined fighters is all I'm saying.

Well, that was like that card we were watching the other day when, who was the guy, Sergio Mora? Yeah. He said, he's from Ghana.
Those guys are warriors.

We were texting about it. He was talking about it, see?

What is boxing so far? Every time he said it, there was just dead silence from his partners. And then he would just double back on it.

This is what I was telling you about, Ghana.

Born with Sage the best.

The 5 a.m., this is the first day I'm going to start my training. And it just being the most miserable thing ever, I think is perfect in this.
It's like, I'm going to start. Here's my alarm.

I'm going to have some eggs, do a little run, maybe run the steps. And it's just like by the end of it, you're holding your side, you're coughing up five cigarettes, and it's just super depressing.

I loved how they did it and then brought it back. I think it's really smart.
Can we talk about Angry Mickey,

who has quotes like, Yeah, I said that before, you dumb dago.

Then he goes, Yeah, I know, woman weakened legs.

He does that. Rock's like, I know woman, weakened legs.
And he goes, goes, well, let her train you.

You're going to eat lightning and you're going to crap thunder. I love his like, just Burgess.
So I knew Burgess Meredith as the penguin in the Batman series because I used to love that series.

Me too. Once upon a time, Van.
See, yeah, you used to be one of the things. I love the Batman series.

And then we're like, the penguin's going to be mixed trainer?

Anyway. Twilight Zone.

Oh, he's the one with the glasses? Yeah. Moore would say it's the best.
The meat freezer is just an amazing. whoever thought of that give them a gold star 1970s philly is fun

yeah i mean you could get into some trouble out there seemed really it's it's it's it's like it's like when philly was really in a lot of like economic despair so yeah well i don't think new york and boston were doing any better

but everywhere yeah i think i think the 70s were rough yeah um so it's mostly kensington kind of like port richmond shot shot there yeah you put my stuff on skid row it's like that little they call when you lose your locker, you go to Skid Row in the box of gym.

I thought that was good.

Bucus,

Stallone's real dog that Stallone sold for $50 because he was so broke when he was writing this movie, he sold in real life, then got it back after he sold the script. That's nice.

And then brings Bucus in there. He gets a lot of breaks here, Stallone, getting his script back, getting his dog back.
Give him Bucus the Brandy Booth Award, best performance by a pet.

Multiple great scenes by Bucus.

What's age of the best? The Rocky Marathons that eventually got on TV once we got to three or four, and they would just run them all in a row.

Although I never understood why they would run all of Rocky 1, start Rocky 2 with the end of Rocky 1 again.

Just

kind of like that. Just

go right into the start of Rocky 2. It's like,

they'll just

put the flow together.

Another what's age the best, any scenario where a boxer, UFC fighter, tennis player, or golfer is an out of nowhere story, and you just think of Rocky immediately. Yeah.
Right.

Especially like with the combat sports, you think of that. Um,

last thing, Talia Shire,

as Adrian, three best picture movies in five years: Godfather One, Godfather Two, and Rocky. Yeah.
Her run. Yeah.
It's like a fucking Scotty Pippen

kind of 90s Bulls run by her. She's great in this.
She's really good in this. Yeah.
I want to like nitpick it, but I can't. I think she's good.
And it's different than Connie Corleone.

I feel like she's a different character, right? Connie probably has, well, I mean,

come on. I kill you.
You kill him like your father. What an intense scene.

I was calling Godfather the other day the amount of times somebody's like, you think I'm going to make my godson of an organization?

And she's just like, I am. And they just kill.
They just a straight lie.

Like a whole family of liars. I like at the end when she's a new godfather one, when she's mad at Michael spitting on him.
Yeah. She's like, I know you did him.

And then Michael's like, I don't know what you're talking about.

Carlos in Vegas.

He didn't call? What's going on? You can ask me about my business this one time. One time.
Did you do it? No. No.
Why? The door closed right on her. Right.

The only other WhatsApp, the best I had, other than Gazo's Driver and the Steady Cam

was.

Gazo's Driver is just a comedic genius.

He's just on the screen, and you're like, oh my God, this guy.

John Avilson, the director, said the original ending, Apollo was carried out by the crowd and so was rocky and he pulled adrian up on the on his shoulders and they had the happiest night of their life and that was gonna be done and they couldn't pull it off so then they did this second ending when he walks down the aisle and sees adrian because he lost and they hold hands and they walk into the back and it didn't work

and they decided to reshoot it with the Bill Connie music and came up with the third version of the ending and Avils says now that that saved the movie. Yeah.

Like the movie, the ending would have sucked. It would have been a downer.
It's so cool that you don't really leave the ring. Like, I don't think we wanted to see like

that. So she's, she legitimately comes into his world.
Yes.

By the way, about her performance, I think she actually grounds the movie with her performance. Yeah, she's good.
I think at the beginning of the movie, she's kind of the only

person.

Because even, I mean, Rock is a dude, but he's very over the top kind of as well. You know, like, but I think like her subtlety and vulnerability kind of thing.

Yeah, she's like, and she's also the person who's just like, look around me. Like, this sucks so much.
I have to make myself small so that this doesn't

kill me. Like, you know, she's just like, I don't want to see it.
I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to talk about it.

One of my hot takes about this movie is: I don't think Polly was a very good brother.

It's one of my takeaways.

I don't know if you guys noticed that.

Some of the stuff he did. When were we going to talk about it?

It's coming.

Great shotgolder award. We said the 5 a.m.
training ending the first time with a wide shot of Philly. Yeah.

Kid Kai Pursued Happiness or Best Needle Drop. Could you change this to Gunnify now?

I was, I had Reflections, which is the one that samples Cool in the Gang, which was later used by Fresh Prince Summer Times. It's just like

I like that too. Yeah.

There's a there's a

there's a record that plays at the end of the movie that was sampled by somebody else in a very popular song that I loved in the 90s. What song? Song's called Victory

by Notorious BIG. Yeah.
Yeah.

At the beginning, somebody raps on the song.

But yeah.

Somebody who might be in a lot of trouble these days.

When I hear the beginning of it, I just think immediately of that record.

And I started doing it almost reflectively. I'm like, yo, the sun don't shine forever, but as long as this.
And then I was like, oh, wow. Whoa.
Yeah. Whoa.
It's tough.

The Chess Rockwell and Brock Landers Award for best character name. Easy.
Rocky and Apollo. It's got to be Apollo Creepy.
Apollo Crazy.

Single best fictional name. It's so good.
It's up there with, it's literally to me up there with Darth Vader. It's also cool because he talks about names throughout the movie.

It's like, oh, no, that's. I got to say, don't sleep on Spider Rico.

I really did enjoy him as well. All right, Van, you're up with the flex category.
Did you have a flex category you picked? Yeah.

The Pauly Award for asshole of the film.

Ghost of Pauly? It goes to Pauly. Dude, does this need to be a new award? This is also the weak link of the movie.
Yeah, the whole nine. Yeah, I had him coming up.

I had him coming up in what stage is the worst.

There are

very few characters that are pure asshole, just all asshole.

And it gets worse because we now know that at the end, after Rocky gets his fucking face beat in for 15 years building a fortune, what is the reason that Rocky loses all of his money?

Rocky 5 never happened. I don't care.
He loses all of his money and has to open up a small Italian restaurant

because Pauli gives power of attorney to some crazy person. And then Rocky gets all of his money taken.
Paulie's terrible. He is.

I thought he had some decent moments in Rocky 4, just not to defend Paulie, but it's just him and Duke in Russia. There's no other training.
You're a robot that was like. No, just there was a couple.

Rocky 4 is probably the best version of Pauli.

Rocky 1 Paulie is one of the worst human beings in a movie. He's a pimp.
He literally pimps his sister out. He says,

I go out and get your meat every morning. You forgot that.
Then even give you my sister too. You're such a loser.
I didn't get married because of you. You can't live by yourself.

I put you two together and you don't forget it. You owe me.
Rocky should have punched this guy to death. Yeah.
Rocky should have at least thrown him out the fucking window, but should have hit him.

And you know what would have happened? Nothing. Not a single person in that neighborhood would have been like, not Paulie.
Yeah.

It would have have just been like it was he had it coming he said you're busted to his sister yeah that's like the worst thing you could possibly say to your sister I mean what Rocky is kind of complicit because Pauli makes her go out with him Paulie comes in he throws he sacrifices Thanksgiving turkey that's an all-time asshole move she goes she goes I mean she goes it's Thanksgiving I can't go on a date because I'm making a turkey and it's like a really normal response it's not like she's like I have social anxiety I can't go on a date she's like I've been making your fucking dinner I've been making a Thanksgiving turkey.

This dude takes the turkey, throws it out of the window, and then eats a piece of it. So he gets some turkey for himself.
And she's got to go out with Rock on Thanksgiving.

She's got to go to the stink house after the ice rink with no Thanksgiving dinner. He's an abomination.

And it really jumps out every time you watch it because in like the 70s and it's like, ah, Polly, that irascible

deep down. It's like there's nothing to like about him.
Living in between Rocky and Polly, while those two assholes are like yelling out the window. Like, oh, Polly, I got your sister.
Yeah.

My sister's a pig. It's just like,

I would just be like, come on, guys. Polly Panino.
Yeah, we need a Polly Panino. Why is this character so awful? Okay,

something like that. What's with you? I had the, for the Butch's girlfriend award for weak link in the film, either Polly or the, just the Rocky Adrian courting scenes are so slow now in 2025.

They're just, yeah. It's 25 minutes of content that now you're probably doing nine.
Yeah. 25 minutes.

I like it. The skating rink.
I know you like the skating rink. At the same time, if there's a transcript of it, it would be the worst transcript of the thing.

The problem with the skating rink is it could have just ended with a kiss at the skating rink, and that would be the end of the first date. And instead, he's like, let's go back to my house.

And I'll show you.

We'll come in. That's the thing.
It's the skating rink. Then he has to convince her to come inside.
Then he has to convince her to stay inside. He's got to do the

t-shirt. Then he's got to do the whole.
It's like, all right, we get, we get it. And then he starts denying his bodily fluids.
That's the tough part, you know? He gets her hooked on it.

And then he's just like, nope.

Because at the end, she becomes like a little mix.

She's ready.

She jumps on it. Well, she's discovered wild parts of herself.

She wants me to rub you down. Yeah.

She's become a sexual human being. Right.

My flex choice. Does Steven Seagal hard to kill a word for did this movie need a better intimacy coordinator?

He kind of mauls her a little bit in the first

kind of. Yeah, I'm just, I'm trying to be kind of rocky.
It's a little bit of a mauler. He also, I mean, she doesn't have a lot of options in that scene.

Like he's kind of like, especially if she has no

traveling.

She's like, can I use the phone? He's like, oh,

it's a little uncomfortable.

Yeah, he subtly asked for consent. It's like, I'm going to kiss you now.
But at that point, she was in a spot. I don't feel like she felt like she could do anything else.

I also just, another one I would add is the Sean Penn Award for Excellence in Smoking. I thought Stallone Smoking was excellent.

But we need to maybe add another cigarette award here, which is the Sylvester Stallone Award for smoking so much in a movie that you quit smoking. In real life?

In real life, he quit after Rocky because he was like, it was too gross. I'd smoked so much on Rocky.
I had to, I had to quit. Oh, interesting.
Didn't know that. That wasn't in my research cigar.

Stallone is for quitters. Yeah.
Wow.

Woodstage the worst. Everything about Paulie.

Chuck Webb nursing. Her body's going to dry up.

What mean thing didn't Paulie say to his sister? No one says, Paul, you piece of shit. Shut up.
Yeah. Right.
Nobody, he, he.

Nobody punches him at a bar or anything. He disses the way she looks.
He disses her age. He disses everything.
I thought about quitting drinking last night watching Paulie ass.

I was like, this is not.

Chuck Webner, that whole story is the worst.

You mentioned the fight crowd scene, CR. This is the biggest

kind of nitpick all these years later where I just wish somebody had done a George Lucas and just paid the 50 grand to CGI some fans all over the place. Somebody for like for the re-release and stuff?

Yeah, just if you're gonna be like, hey, we got Rocky on Blu-ray, just spend the 50K. Maybe James Cameron could stop making avatar movies and instead single-handedly populate the sports.

Like how we want to be the sports movie consultants. Like James Cameron should be like, let me just help out a couple of these classics.
I'll just put some fans in.

Fincher is like moving curtains in Panic Room. Like, we can get Fincher on the crowd here.
You guys want James Cameron to fix Rocky? He invented a submarine that went to the deepest part of the ocean.

Right.

Can't he add some dance? Right. That's what that's what he's doing.

And then Garrett Brown, the steady cam guy, not taking points in the picture as age-worse. What else do you have? Anything?

I think Rocky's advice to that 12-year-old girl, you use bad words and maybe you end up becoming a whore.

Marie, the little whore who hung out at the atomic hokey shot.

It is a leap.

You hang out with those guys, use a couple of bad words. I always want to have a kid to say that.
You just feel like, oh, you used bad words.

Well, and then the weird part about this is another what says the worst is watching that girl in this movie, she then becomes the Rocky Balboa love interest.

Remember?

The girl he starts dating and yeah, that's the girl he starts dating in Rocky Balboa. Are you seeing that? It's the little girl.

That's like how they reconnect. Yeah.

I don't think I've seen Rocky Balboa or I can't remember. Wait, wait, wait.
Rocky Balboa is the one. That's the one that Antonio Tarver.
Antonio Tarver. It's not a very good one.

And Adrian's dead by this point. Adrian's dead.

And he starts hanging out with Rarino Lou from the Atomic Hoagie shop. Yeah.
Yes. Take it back.
Do, do, do, do.

Any other what's Age Worse? Yeah, just Paulie as the brother. You just blew my fucking mind with that.

Oh, white Doo-Op Groups. Yeah.
Yeah, it was a tough one.

Ruffalo Hannah Rubinik Partridge Overacting Award. It's good acting, but it's got a good Adrian freaking out on Polly.

Yeah.

I cook for you. Yeah.
Just like she goes up a level. So that's the thing with her is

she is a fantastic actress, obviously. But when she turns it up to that point, like when she turns it up in the Carlo.

The buffalo.

Oh, she goes see a little whore

in two. Marie the Little Whore at the Atomic Cody Shop.

In two, she's a different character. So like this is like pretty solid the whole way through.
She never has to like turn it up, but when she turns it up, sometimes it gets away from her.

All right. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford.
How does Take Award? Did you have one, CR?

By far, the most interesting non-big three character in this movie, not Rocky, Adrian, or Apollo, is by far Gotzo.

And

I don't know how much of a... whether it makes it a better or worse sports movie, but it's a much more interesting movie if Gotzo tries to like assert his control over Rocky for the first time.

Tries to get him to fix the fight. And I just think Joe Spinell is awesome in this, obviously, also in The Godfather

or Godfather 2. And

it would just be so cool if he was like, everybody's putting money on you going down to third.

He gives him the 500 bucks and you think he won't be able to do it. That's when you think he's starting to maybe try to get in on him a little bit.

And I was like, this would have been so cool if we had two more Gatso scenes and two less Paulie scenes.

Well, what's interesting about this, the great takes here. The original script, which was much darker, it had Rocky throwing the fight.
Yeah.

And Mickey was a racist. Those are the two things.

In this movie, he's just racist against Italians. Right.
Yeah.

Yeah.

He's just a rascal.

Do you have a hottest take fan? I do not. I have one.
Actually,

I mean,

I've already done this hottest take.

I mean, this is the beginning of the greatest love story of our time.

Which was Rocky and Apollo. Oh, yeah, you did that.
Yeah, Rocky goes on to almost caused a riot in Philadelphia.

I have, I'm going old school with a super hot hot take because I feel like we've gotten, we have rational hot takes now. I'm going.

We got away from our principles. Yeah.

If this movie didn't exist, Philadelphia would basically be Delaware with more attitude, a nicer art museum, and a couple pro sports sports centers. That's fucked up, though.

Yeah, first of all, there's a state. Hot take.
Delaware is an entire state. You mean that's fine? They're probably about the same size.
No, that's not true.

But you think that if Rocky didn't exist,

I think Rocky really made Philadelphia. That's my hot take.
What would it mean Boston? I don't know. Wouldn't we fucking knock out the British and created America?

He affected

that ass is King George.

No,

it was an attempt to do how to stake, but it is funny how much this movie means to Philadelphia. Yeah.
That it almost became like another sports station.

Philadelphia has actual real legendary. That's it.
They win the fucking NBA championship. I get it.

I get it in the desert. You had the Flyers titles in the 70s.
I get it. Yeah.
Yeah, but like, Philly is happy. You're just kind of between Washington and New York.

They won't be used to the World Series in the 83. They win

like legitimate boxing legends. Like, no bullshit.
like fucking real. Yes, the biggest box

you're looking at

him from Philly, look at Jem from the fucking town over there.

You'd be Baltimore if it wasn't that. I'm just trying to bring the hottest tape back to where it used to be.

Casting wood-ifs.

United Artists wanted a well-established star.

Redford, who I think gets just mentioned for every movie ever,

Ryan O'Neill and Burt Reynolds actually make sense, and James Conn makes sense. And like, if I'm thinking about Hollywood back then, Ryan O'Neill is way too good looking.
Too wastey.

Yeah, like I'm just saying

I'm not saying make sense in the movie. I'm saying makes sense.

I could see the studios being like, here's the list of actors we want in this Rocky movie. So I was going to save this for recasting couch.
You could even call this a lukewarm take.

What is this movie if it's James Conn is Rocky and Harvey Keitel is Paulie? Oh.

Or a John Cazal is Paulie. Like if you have...
I think James Conn has too much baggage at this point to be Rocky.

What do you mean? Because we know him from Godfather and a bunch of big movies.

I think Rocky being an unknown really helps.

I think I think it worked out great. Like Burt Reynolds, same thing.
He depended on too many things. Yeah, those guys are just too movie star-ish.
Yeah.

I needed somebody that you're almost rooting for him in real life, too, as is in the movie. This was interesting.
Ken Norton was targeted for Apollo Creed.

pulled out and they gave it to Carl Weathers. Stallone wanted Harvey Keitel Pauly.

Probably a better movie. Carrie Snodgrass, I don't even know who that is, was chosen to play Adrian and they had a money dispute.

And they auditioned a bunch of people, including Susan Sarandon and Cher.

And Sarandon, they really liked, but they thought she was just too pretty to be Adrian. Oh, Carrie Snodgrass was in Pill Ryder, I remember.

This is my favorite, though. They wanted Lee Strassberg for Mickey, and he wanted too much money.
Is this before, too? Godfather 2? Right after. Oh, so yeah, because he didn't even want to.

He wasn't even trying to act in movies, right? Yeah. No one knows who gave the order, but I heard it.
I wasn't angry. Wasn't it angry?

I said, this is the business. We chose it.
There's not even a statue of the man.

Who was street named after him? The Rosalo Brothers.

And then,

yeah, that's it for Kaswinos. He's in the room.
No, I have a partner. I know I have a partner.

I think I know the answer to this, but we're going to to do the category anyway just because fans here, the Van Lanthan word for did this movie need more black people? Zero. Okay.

Wow. Best that guy's coming up.
I think we have to take one more break. This episode is brought to you by Coca-Cola.

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Refresh your holidays. Best that guy award.
Joe Spinel is, I think he's not eligible. Oh, for real? Yeah, he's Joe Spinel.
I think it's Thayer David.

He's a graduated that guy. I think it's Thayer David.
Thayer David is Juergens, the manager.

He's in a bunch of cool stuff, right? I didn't know what his name was. As soon as I saw Joe Spinel, I was like, he's clearly the one, but I guess, okay.

No, he's Joe Spinel. Stan Shaw was another one, but I think he's Stan Shaw, who played Dipper.

And then Frank Stallone is Frank Stallone. Yeah, the doo-op guy.
Now, do you think Frank was like,

me and my boys have a doo-op group, and we'd love to get just 10 sex. I think Slide's like, can we get Frank in the movie? Yeah.
And we can get him like 25 seconds.

Yeah.

Deion Waiters is a hopping category. We got Marie the Teenage Delinquent.
Tony Burton is dude.

Joe Spinel is Gazzo.

Stu Nahan and Bill Baldwin. But my pick is Buddy the driver.
You think Burgess is in too much of it? Yeah, he's in too much.

He's like the number three star in the movie. I think it's Gazzo's driver.
Yeah,

he. Hey, Rock, did you get the number of the license plate that hit your face? He's the definition of the award.
That's right. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. By the way, we...

Me and my dad used the license plate joke over and over again. Like that was like, that's 20, 20 years.
Got out of that one. Recasting couch.
I'm not touching it. You want to touch it?

No, I was just saying, like, I think that there is a different version of Paulie that's like a little bit more likable, palatable. Yeah.

And that, that, John Gazelle may feel like he's played the failed brother a few too many times. Yeah.
But he's got a shit ton of charisma.

Yeah, he would have definitely been like a more likable version. Yeah, like what if he was like a skinny kind of like nobody ever paid attention to him?

Not like a raging alcoholic who tried to put logos on the back of people's robes. smart.
Half-asser research, we did some of these already. I like that Duke didn't have a name in the movie.

They didn't name him until Rocket 2. The first two Steadicam films were Bound for Glory and Marathon, Man, so it was all around the same time.

They shot the ice skating date that way because they couldn't afford extras.

Burgess.

Had a fake cauliflower and a tube stuck up his nostril to make his nose look fucked up.

And then Burt Young did some weird stuff to get in a character. Like he covered himself with vermouth on his neck.
He wore too many clothes, so he was hot.

He wanted to be like uncomfortable and angry during that time. Yeah, he takes a slight

of whatever he's drinking in the meat locker once and like his lower lip is all wet. Yeah.
And they're just like, ah, this is like a

disgusting roast beef character. Yeah.

When they did the climactic fight, they didn't. choreograph it and then realized they had to and had to basically stop and go back.
Oh, so they just went in there all vibes.

Yeah, they were like, oh, you do this and I'll do this. And then they're like, it kind of casts weathers off of like a sparring session anyway.
So I think they were probably like, we can just fight.

Something else, you like Stalone actually cares a lot about boxing. And obviously, everyone knows that.

But as the movies get on, you can see that he gets, he becomes like a much more athletic, much better boxer. Yeah, I think that there's

you could make the argument that one of the things that's aged the worst is like they leave this conception of Rocky in this movie. And then he gets, I think,

even more he gets smarter and more physically talented as he gets older which he's already probably is not the case for the boxers yeah

this was a really good one

the poster when he goes in he sees the posters like those aren't my trunks that was an actual mistake they made and they felt like they had to address it so they added that scene so that they would be covered for people be like wow it's just another really good touch script it's just like him being in the spectrum before the fight is one of my favorite little moments of the movie where he's just like shit this is is too big for me.

Well, and then the spectrum doesn't become the spectrum for most of the fight because

there was some sort of union issue in Philly.

There was a you think you're better than me union moment, and they had to film a lot of it in L.A.

It doesn't look like the spectrum because you feel it in Rocky 2. You're like, oh, this is the spectrum.
Now, Spectrum is a cool place. Is it because of

that because of the Rocky movies that I have such a seven, not 70s, I wasn't around, but an 80s and early life connection to the spectrum when I didn't care about Philly Springs

and Dr. J and it was Barkley yeah and they were Julia Serving yeah it had a great spectrum was cool yeah

I also like with the spectrum and I don't know because it was a hockey basketball arena

back into Philly's favorite listen I'm loyal to the hottest take we're supposed to throw hot takes around

there was something about the spectrum the layout of it where the fans seemed a little closer yeah the layout was good and the fan it just felt like you were very on top of it.

They were the first, I felt like 70s arena to move people closer.

Because if you look at some of the stuff, like I noticed this when we were doing the Celtic stock, some of the, even the early 70s, the courtside seats, they're like 30 feet off the court. Yeah.

And then the spectrum was like, let's put everybody closer. Kentucky Duke highlights from the Leitner shot game.
Like people are like so close. Like so up on the game.
Yeah, it's cool.

Last thing, Gonna Fly Now. How high do you think it got on the Billboard Hot 100 list? I'm gonna go top 10.
Yeah, seven. How about one? Yeah.
Oh, wow. I was gonna say number one.

I don't know if you were doing my flex category, but it was gonna be. Yours is coming.
Okay. Isn't it coming? I think I deleted it.
Damn.

No, do it now. Okay.
My okay, motherfucker moment when the movie.

Wait, let me redo that. My okay, motherfucker

moment when the movie jumps up a notch is when Gonna Fly Now drops like 90 minutes in. Because you're really like, all right, man, this is kind of a sleepy boxing movie, man.
What are we gonna do?

And then it's like

you just, it really gets the adrenaline going. He's racing the boat, and Sierra's like, you know, who they're looking at? They're looking at us, LAPD.

Ha ha!

Apex Mountain, Stallone. I think we've litigated this 10 other times.
I think his Apex Mountain was that Rocky III Rambo. Yeah.

82. Yes.
Yeah. Is this Apex Mountain mountain for a woman taking her glasses off and getting that much hotter? Oh, man.
Wow.

Van's going through all his porn searches now. Oh, no, it's easy.
I can go one time, Lisa, anyway.

But, wow, is it?

It would have to be. I've tried to think of like, it's a big step up.
Other I think it's a little bit more. I mean, also, the glasses are really.
I mean, there's like, oh, she's all that.

But this one would have to be bigger than those. But there's another one.
The varsity. I don't actually

take her her glasses off. I'm not like, whoa, Adrian's hot.
But I'm just, it is a classic kind of like

she takes them off and it's like now all of a sudden.

What a good question. I'm trying to think.

There's one that I'm missing, and people are going to, there's one I'm missing where the guy takes it off, and then this woman screams, but I can't remember that.

This is probably the most famous, though. Probably starts the whole deal.
Well, so the glasses are so ugly. Right.

They're like out of like 1925 for pharmacy glasses or whatever. Talia Shire,

I'm going to say yes for her. Yes, I have yes for her for sure.
Yeah. And she got a couple projects out of this, but none of them made it.
Interesting career. Yeah.

Like all big doesn't have much of a presence other than, but like every single movie she's in is like

kind of like a hitter. I want to take care of you now, Michael.
Yeah. Jason Schwartzmann tells this really funny story about like for most of the beginning of his life, people calling his mom Adrian.

And

I forgot that's his mom. Yeah.
And like, he's just like, why are they calling you Adrian? And she would just be like, yeah,

they're confused. They don't understand.
And then like he starts to realize like 100 people can't be wrong when they're like, hey, Adrian, yo,

yo, Adrian.

Apex Mountain for shy girlfriends, CR?

It might be. Yeah, I think.
It might be. I was also going to ask, is this Apex Mountain for withholding sex while training and or competing in sports? Is it this or Bull Durham?

Bull Durham.

Because I think he's still having sex. Yeah.
Because you know what? Wait, you think Rock is still having sex? I think he woke up a beast with Adrian.

I think there was a lot of time for thinking in the fish store. Yeah, fan knows.

I'm being for real. Like, look, I think there was a lot of time.

There's a before. She climbed on him one time and she's doing a little,

she's pecking at him. He can't do it.
Yeah, because he's like, I, you know, I'm trying to save all my juices. Yeah.
Yeah. Women weaken.
Women weaken the legs, though, is a classic, classic line. Yeah.

Yeah. Classic line.
Well, what's the phenomenon behind that? Because you, you have more testosterone if you haven't shot a a load in a while.

Is that what we're supposed to think sports science was really as did they ever cover this with John Brankus? Dog, I swear. HBO boxes.
Did they try this with Embiid?

Just like you just know not November, see if your knee swelling goes down. HBO boxes.

Who is now out for the season, by the way? Fuck off. No.

Breaking news on a Friday. I'm sorry, Joanne.
I was just kidding. Wow.
Oh, God. I was going to say maybe they try that with Anthony Edwards.

Zion.

John Aviltson, even though he won the Oscar for this,

could make a case. It's karate kid.
Karate Kid, yeah. Because then he's got Rocky and Karate Kid.
Karate Kid definitely made more.

Avilton, you think.

Did Aviltson fall out with Stallone? How come he couldn't, they wouldn't? I don't think he was a giant boxing fan. Well, Stallone wanted to direct the second one himself.

He wanted to do the written and directed by a Sylvester Stallone move.

Philadelphia Apex Mountain CR? I'll let you decide.

You know, I think the founding of our nation, probably 1776, is a pretty big one.

Or solid for some.

And then

the 83 Sixers title. Being the Pats and 18s.

This is up there, though.

Ending the Mahomes dynasty. Yeah, I think that this, if you were carving a Mount Rushmore of Philadelphia, they'd put Rocky with his hands in the air on it.

One of the most notable images of Philadelphia.

Burt Young.

Yeah.

Did Burt Young ever? It's probably Rocky III when this character becomes more tolerable, at least somewhat. Best Burt Young, though, is back to school with Rodney Dangerfield.

Oh, yeah, where he plays the driver slash motion. Amazing, amazing performance family.
We haven't done back to school, right? No, it's on the list. Spider Rico, definitely.
Ice skating dates.

Was there a better ice skating date? There is an ice skating skating date in Happy Gilmore. That's amazing.
Oh, that's a good one. You're right.

Cutting Edge, is that the figure skating date? Topic?

Yeah.

Rocky movies, no.

Boxing movies? Boxing movies was the last one I had.

So give me, how are you defining this? Because a couple of years later, Raging Bull comes out.

Like, you know, I think.

Maybe it's re-watchable boxing movies. Fine.
I think

aesthetically,

I think Raging Bull is a better film. Raging Bull is better than this movie, but this movie is much more, I think, culturally significant than Raging Bull.

If you're going to Desert Island, do you take Raging Bull or Rocky? You take Raging Bull. Honestly, I would take Raging Bull.
Really? Yes. Interesting.
Yeah.

Raging Bull is a lot more interesting to watch than Rocky is. Wow.

Raging Bull is so funny to me, man. It's just, it's a hilarious movie.

It's like, it's just,

why'd you fuck him?

Why'd you do? She just said she didn't do it. Why are you asking her why? She just says she didn't do it.
And a lot of the ways Raging Bull follows a little bit of rocking.

I mean you have Pesci kind of playing the Burton Young. Moriarty's the Adrian, you know?

Cruise or Hanks? Cruise. I went with Cruz.
I think it's Cruz. I guess it's Cruise.
Yeah. I can't buy Hanks as a heavyweight boxing challenger.
You can buy Tom Cruise as a heavyweight boxing challenge.

It's just because I think he would do like six months of prep for it.

He would gain all the weight and then would lose the weight during the five weeks of filming. I am going to say Hanks, but you guys obviously win this democracy.
Cruz? I go with Cruz. Okay.

Scorsese or Spielberg. Is this the perfect movie if they co-direct it?

The inspirational side of Spielberg, the gritty side of Scorsese? Yeah.

Like Scorsese handles

all the rocky, Paulie type of, but then the bigger step back. Can you imagine if Spielberg got his hands on like the last fight and like I think I think it's Corsazi

I mean it's the kind of movie I would score director situation

directs raging bull a few years later I mean the the opera entrance into the ring is

this is becoming one of my favorite categories what role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played Pauly Pauly I got Pauly or Gatso's driver how about Jurgens

Juergens maybe yeah yeah gotso's driver

hey rock hey rock take her to the zoo

Picking nits.

So Rocky just waltzes into the spectrum one day before the fight to look around.

Let him in. Yeah.
He's on a fight. He's on a fight card.

Hey, I'm Rocky Balboa. I'm fighting here.
He goes all the way down to the spectrum

just to go look at the things hanging down. It's a little weird.
No, it's not weird at all.

You could go in there and fuck around with the ring to make sure that the ring is. Nobody's in there.
Nobody's setting up anything. It's just completely empty.

It's like, yeah.

This is my biggest one. Five weeks, plenty of time to prepare to fight the heavyweight champion of the world.
I don't feel like 40 guys are turning that fight down.

They make it seem like, oh, not enough time. Nobody's going to take it.
It's like, oh, I got the feeling. So many people are taking it.

But Apollo picks Rocky for the specific story, right? But he does that only because

everybody keeps turning the fight down. Oh, okay.

I was like, oh, he's in England. It's like he can get back from England.
We just watched Macaulay take a fight in 10 hours. And they actually say that in the movie they go

this guy that goes oh he moved to california he gained 50 pounds so what bring him on and make the fight i actually got the feeling that no one actually wanted to fight creed possibly that but but five weeks is more than enough for 150 grand in 1976 andrew ruiz jr took the fight on basically that much

in real boxing people take it yeah The string trick of putting string around your ankles, keep your balance, that seems like. Also, is that Mick's primary contribution aside from the cut man,

like what is it? What else does Mick teach him?

This is something that I thought he gives him a string around his feet. I'm willing to have the combo.
Apollo is a much better trainer than Mickey is. Yeah, Apollo is way better.

Apollo actually transforms Rocky. He changes Rocky.

Apollo is a much better trainer than Mickey. Counter

woman weakened legs. We learned that.
Go to the body.

You need need better balance. That's three things.
Stop smoking. Yeah.
Okay.

Rock's in a much better spot five weeks later. Yeah, you got a guy who's going to open up your eyeball in the first place.
Yeah, you got a great

guy with a razor blade.

Any other nitpicks for you guys?

There's that scene where Van talked about being quite moved by Rocky, you know, doing the Where Were You 10 years ago scene with Mick.

And the blocking of that scene is kind of weird, but it's like, you know, the doors are closing and opening and Mick's all the way down the hallway and then almost outside and he still is hearing this speech that Rocky's giving for the most part at like regular speaking voice.

Yeah. I can't hear my wife in the other room if her water is on.
So there's no fucking way that Mick can hear this monologue halfway down. 76 year old Mick.
Yeah.

He's been punched in the head 7,000 times in his life. Yeah.
There's no way. I'm like, what?

My nit to pick is somebody would have gotten to Adrian before this. There's just no way.
Oh. In the neighborhood, someone would have gotten to her before this.
Fish store customer?

Fish store customer.

Coming in and buy some piranha? Somebody coming in and buy the dog or something like that. Somebody would have gotten to her before.
There's a question.

So Rocky and Paul are best friends, and Rocky's like 29, 30. 30, yeah.

The first time it occurred to him to make a run at the fish store girl?

Well, I think in the movie, it seems like he's been going in a lot and making his like, I make a joke in the morning and a joke in the afternoon, right?

And unfortunately, she can't communicate until until she takes a shot. She's like,

she's just like,

let's smash.

I mean,

she gets it. She really enjoyed it.
She changes. She starts dressing different.
She does. The dick starts making her dress different.

Like,

she starts. I'm telling you, she totally changes her.
Spending money that he hasn't made yet.

She's like, I got a red coat. You better get in that ring.

That would have been a better hot estate for me. Here's my virginity is overrated.

Whoa.

Sequel, prequel, press the HTV, all blackcaster, untouchable. They've done

pretty much all of those universities.

They haven't done a TV adaptation of this universe yet, right? Oh, you know what? They were going to, right?

Wasn't there?

Honestly, I feel like we're good.

We're coming with the Creed in the Creed universe. No, am I making this up? No, I mean, I think because this is a good thing.
We're done with Rocky. Let's stop.

Amazon and the MGM purchase.

And I think that they were going to do like the usual make it a universe kind of thing.

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Treo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Barney Cousins, Tony Romo, Harling Mays, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, Wilfred Brimley, and the firm?

And I want to kind of add Gatso's driver to this going forward.

Take her to the zoo. This movie is better with Gatso's driver.
I was going to say,

oh, Mike, you see, you don't just have to take Adrienne to the zoo. She likes the ice cream too.

I miss Collinsworth. Yeah.
It's been like two months for him.

Tony Romo. I just got a hop in her step, Jim.

She loves having sex, Jim. Different lady.
She's talking now. This is a lady who loves exotic fish and sex with Rocky Babo, Jim.
It's a sexual awakening, Jim.

It's making her feel things she's never felt before, Jim.

Just want to ask her. Who gets it? I got stallone for screenplay.

Okay.

I think that's fair. And this year, you know? Yeah.

Probably unanswerable questions. Do women weaken legs van? Did we get a decision? I was about to say, HBO did a whole thing.
It was called Sex in the Sweet Science. Yeah.

Where they did like a HBO boxing did it back in the day. It might have been Showtime Boxing.
Was this like set in Vegas and the Bunny Ranch or whatever that show was?

That's where they merged the two shows. Right now.

was the it was called cat house um but they they they they talked about it and they got science guys together and there's no scientific proof to it women do not in fact weaken legs what were the odds on fan duel heading into this fight

no man you guys don't think it would go higher than minus 2000 but I think Creed is minus 2,000.

So what were the Tyson Buster Douglas odds? Is this like 40?

Yeah, that was like 30 to 1. That was the last time they were that high.
It's maybe 30 to 1 here. The over-under for rounds, I think, is 2.5.
Two and a half, yeah. Yeah, for sure.

And people are banging the under. Now, what happens? This is where Gatso gets involved.
Yeah. This is where it got.

You go out there, you can acquit yourself decently. You give the last two rounds, and then you got to go down.
Yeah. What happens to the live odds once Apollo goes down in the first round?

I think after the second round, it's just hard. It's like Apollo is now like minus 400.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's like a lot of Rocky money.

what piece of memorability would you want or not want from this movie? I got to tell you, not a lot.

There's not a lot of showering going on in this movie, so I don't really know what I would walk away with. I guess the gloves would be cool from the fight,

yeah, or Rocky's gloves, his little

training gloves, the one where he's fucking bleeding all over them from punching the knee.

I really like the Italian stallion gray sweatshirt he wears for three months straight, but I can't imagine it smells awesome. You can fucking fumigate it.

Yeah, um, I was looking at some of the Mickey, like the training camp, like pullovers they have and stuff like that.

But I think some of the posters outside of the gym would be cool.

Yeah, there's a poster in Juergens's office that I really like. Maybe the photo of Mickey when he was a younger fighter that's all messed up.
That's pretty cool.

It would be cool if you started having like every day, me and Sean, and Mal and Van had to put our shit in lockers, and then every once in a while we'd come in inside

our shit on Skid Row.

Like last week's podcast,

Adrian's Joy of Sex Book.

Maybe that could be it. Adrian's Kama Sutra.
She's like, chapter five.

Adrian's like, how about somebody? Hey, Rock.

Adrian, weaken the legs. Rock, lie this way.
Yeah.

Yeah.

The coach fits that award for best life lesson. Don't let anyone tell you you're a bum.
Be a tinker, not a stinker. Oh.

Mine was, you'd be happier if you were just dumber.

Rock is a dumb, happy character. Have you given up calling Ryan?

Yeah, we're doing 0 for 5. It's like, it's just, he doesn't answer.

He's a, lets it ring and then calls back 10 minutes later, guy. It's fucking

a full-time screener, even with people he knows. Unbelievable.
Yeah. Like,

you call Rosillo and he's a game. We could give him a heads up.
We could just call him

about an hour. That wasn't the idea.
And he'll, it's always like, he's always. I would like to know what he thinks of this, though.
Yeah.

Best double feature choice. Would you go Rocky 2 or something else? I'd go Raging Bull.

Oh.

I went Saturday Night Fever.

Oh, I like it.

This movie made me want to watch Saturday and Night Fever for some reason.

So

what's yours? Rocky 2. Okay.
I think you have to go right from here into the second one. And then just make sure you skip over about 40 minutes when Adrian goes in a coma.
And so does the audience.

When we do rocket 2 rewatchables it's gonna be about 50 minutes it's my least favorite one but the last 25 minutes are great yeah when do you stop counting rocky movies

four

yeah well you know what i like

van likes five okay rocky five is the one with tommy morrison tommy morrison i like rocky five i

like five and then balboa five

i despise five but i will admit that the last like 30 minutes i thought i would see rocky balboa to see if marie's in this thing

that's the whole it's a a huge

I've seen the movie before. I must have, I don't think that I connected that this was, that was the character from the first movie.
So, who won the movie? Obviously, Size Stallone.

Here's my question: Have we ever had somebody win a movie harder than this? I feel like this might be the number one who won the movie ever.

That's we would have said Tarantino, but I, but Stallone, like as a writer and a star, and then

a 50. It has to be Stallone, right?

In fact, I can't, I would say only we could rename it the Stallone Who Won the Movie Award, but like no one's ever really done this.

We've only seen, at least since I started following movies, which is right around when this movie came out, there's only been a couple of rags to riches stories like this.

There's also not that even many times where like people have successfully like,

I mean, like Starsborn, like where people are like, I'm directing this shit or I'm writing it and I'm starring in it and like I'm going to learn to do something like successful. That's the problem.

They're not going to let you do this very often. You're going to have to have such a serendipitous set of circumstances for them to let you write it, star in it when you're not bankable at all.

Tarantino is one, but he had true romance before, so he at least had a foot in the door. Chas Palmeteri kind of thing.
Tarantino was one. Chas Palmeteri's dog.
You're talking about for Pope?

Yeah, for Pope. Oh, I mean, he had Reservoir Dogs, too.
That's what I mean. Oh, yeah, yeah.
And he had Lawrence with him and all that. He had a foot in the door.

Julia Roberts is another one, but she had steel magnolias and she was a pizza pizza.

She was around and I knew who it was. This was just for somebody to come out of nowhere and immediately become an A-plus list star.
I'm really rocking.

I'm trying to think.

I'd legit.

Pacino and the Godfather, maybe, but he'd even done Panic and Needle Park. He was already in Panic and Needle Park and stuff.
Like he was a big deal. Yeah, I can't.
Certainly not in the last one.

It's nowhere near the accomplishment.

And even he, I was going to say, Orson Welles doing like Citizen King, but he's, he was already considered a boy genius, like coming out of like radio plays and like his theater company.

Like, he had already done War of the Worlds on the radio.

Did you say Charles Holmes on Midnight Boys? Pee-Peep. That's a big one.
Hey, man, respect.

Respect the pew pew.

We're going to start fucking over your shit. Watch.
Yeah.

We start fucking over your shit. That's when you're going to take it seriously.
Where did the pew-pew come from?

Laser guns. I was like, yeah, we're the middle, because we're the midnight boys.
We're like gunslingers. We're instant reaction.
So we just shoot from the hip. Pew pew.

Maybe we'll do beep peep for us, CR. Okay.
For the rewatchables? Beep beep. Watchables.

CR, beep, beep.

All right, that's it. So now we've done three Rockies.
Yeah. The only one, and we've done Creed.

So we've actually, I guess, done four Rockies. Creed, three, four, and one.
Because people always asked why we didn't do Rocky yet, even though we'd done three and four.

I actually think that we handled it perfectly.

Three, four, one is the prequel, and kind of end with two, which is the least least re-watchable of the four. Did you see Creed 3?

I did. Thoughts?

I thought Majors was really good. He's really good in everything.
He's really good.

And I think I liked it more than I like Creed 2. I can't even remember Creed 2.
Creed 2 was with the Russian. Yeah, I don't even remember.
I don't linger too much, Creed, right? Yeah.

You know, I think it's time for the franchise now that we're at 50 years.

It's people that do outlive CR.

because you're not 50. Nope.

So this franchise is older than you are. Two years before I was born.

Or they shot it two years before I was born. I was going to say that what they need to do is get back to what makes this story so meaningful is that it's a guy out of nowhere.

And you can't do that if it's like it's a Paul Creed son. Yeah.
I mean, there is a move left that the Shields movie, which I really liked. But there's a female Rocky angle that they could do.

They wanted to flip it.

Basically do all the same stuff and have it be and have Polly be the sister.

But nobody wants that. Like just come up with your own.

We're probably too cynical for Rocky now. We've seen, we, we want,

to me,

like looking at it like this, you're just going to ask so many questions. Like, why didn't he fight amateurs? Like, what, blah, blah, blah.
Like a guy with 21 losses becoming like, it's just.

Could you do a Rocky that was basically UFC? I guess that's Warrior. Yeah.
I mean, but even with Chris. I mean, you could.
UFC is sitting there. It's weird.

There just hasn't been enough UFC movie content at a high level. Warrior is by far the best one.

But yeah, I guess you could do Rocky UFC.

But

I mean, yeah, I guess you could. Like, I don't know if the UFC or you make this more of an erotic thriller with Adrian's.
It's filtered on Adrian's Awakening. That's the movie.
That's it.

Is that what you would call it? Adrian's Awakening. Adrian's Awakening.
And actually, a new way to look at the Rocky series. I got it.
A different movie where, what's the mafia guy named Gatso? Yeah.

Where he actually hires Adrian to weaken Rocky. Rocky's legs.
Oh, so that it...

So some like they're trying to have, or maybe not him, maybe Apollo hires Adrian. Her awakening is because Rocky needs his legs weakened in the movie.
That's the second one.

There's a brief twinkle in her eye when Clubber Lang is calling her out in Rocky 3. Oh, she liked it.
You could see for one second, she's like, oh. She's like, maybe I'm a dark shark.
Clubber.

she likes

that. I thought the only white guy is saying, Do what?

She's been waiting for Clubber to look my way. Yeah, she liked it.
Rocky, so your rankings are still three, four, one, two

or three, one, four, two.

Three, one, four, two for you. Three, one,

four, two. What do you have, Van?

I go three,

four,

one,

five, two.

Five over two.

I don't like two. I don't like two.

Two is my least watched Rocky movie.

But it's a really fun coming 30.

We got to rush in and do this. Like, we got to make it.
This movie starts the second the first one ends. To me, it's the least

original of the Rocky movies. I said that five is original because Rocky has now fallen off of his perch.
Yeah. Four is original Cold War stuff.
Three is the Rocky, the leap of the Rocky franchise.

Two is like a continuation of one, and one is just superior. I saw Rocket 2 in the theater with my best friend.
Crowd standing. Not

fight scene. Of course.
Like, that's the only time I've ever seen the movie. The whites.
People going fucking crazy.

Like, it was like they were at a fucking Patriots game. It was nuts.
In Boston, they probably run out and harassed some KB. They're like, come on.

They probably run out. Hey, Salty, motherfucker.

We saw you moving on.

New, I shouldn't have brought up that story. Well, we won't invite you in the Rocky Tupac.
Shout out to Dedham. But when we do Adrian's Awakening, you're there.
I'm there, of course. All right.

Of course. Fancier.
Great, Steve. Thanks to Jack Sanders as well.

Shout out to Craig Horabach, who wasn't there this time around for us, but we got the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. So you can check us out there.
See you next week.