Weekend Snapshots

Obviously I had an insane solitary photo shoot in my apartment this weekend and had so much fun that I think I need to do more. I have more hats and props and ridiculousness. It was so fun. But that was just an hour out of my life.

Other things accomplished:

— Took a run in the freezing dawn on Saturday

— Took a run in the freezing dawn on Sunday

The city at dawn – gleaming across the Hudson – with the sun rising behind the buildings … It uplifts me so much. Takes my breath away.

— I also watched Rocky 4 times. And I watched Rocky II twice.

— I never said I wasn’t an obsessive. I’m like RTG. Obsession blooms – and I then get into the mode of treating it like a JOB.

— To some degree, I’ve taken the Rocky movies for granted. Especially that first one. How amazing it was to watch it again. I was amazed all over again by the first scene – the boxing scene – and the darkness of that room, the darkness and grittiness of the filming – it’s the opposite of slick. You can’t tell who is the star. It’s violent, and it looks real. So anyway – I haven’t seen them in years – or many of them, anyway, so now that rocky Balboa has catapulted Rocky back into the forefront … I’m on my way. Into my obsession.

— I watched Rocky once all the way through (it’s been years. But some of those scenes are so familiar it’s like an old comfy well-known and well-loved sweater. When Paulie gets out the baseball bat. The drinking of the eggs. Adrian’s little outfits, and her watch pinned to her sweater. The detail! The contrast between Apollo’s nice slick house and Rocky’s poverty-struck cold-water flat. Stallone’s body. I mean, come on, let us be honest. He’s not too bulky – the way he got later – he looks appropriate for the level that Rocky is at. The body is yummy. Oh – and Burgess Meredith’s face and wonderfully campy performance. “YOU’RE GONNA CRRRRRAP THUNDER!” Stop screaming, Mickey. The shot of Adrian through the bird cage when Rocky is trying to make her laugh. The way Rocky picks up the turtles when he wants to show them to Adrian in his apartment. I remember that moment so so clearly … his arms are so big, and he just seems so … impressive (not to mention sexy) – but the way he picks up the turtles – there’s this delicacy and caution there – fascinatingly incongrous. Anyway. I had a BLAST sinking into this movie again.)

— Then I watched all the special features.

— Then I watched the whole movie again with the commentary track on.

— Then I spent a glorious amount of time cherry-picking scenes I wanted to see again and again and again. Moments. Flashes of a look across Stallone’s face. Tiny moments. The reality of the behavior. How real the fight looks. And it’s all choreographed. Incredible. (Choreographed by Stallone, of course). Amazing. But the whole movie has that feel of reality. Things seem to be really happening as opposed to being staged … or planned out. The movie is a little bit messy. In a good way. Like life is sometimes messy. Like the first kiss. It’s … Who can describe the SYMPHONY of experience that is a first kiss? Watch her. Watch her side of things. Then watch his side. He will not let her get away because he knows she wants it. But he can’t move too quickly or too insistently because it will freak her out. Stallone, in the current-day interview in the special features, says, “You know, I watch that scene today and I disappear in that scene. And she is off the charts.” He’s right. Stallone is necessary for the scene to work – but it’s really all about Adrian’s eyes, looking up at him as he keeps coming at her … She is phenomenal. She has no lines except, “I don’t belong here.” “I don’t feel comfortable”, etc. But she doesn’t need lines. So I watched that scene many times – focusing on her, then focusing on him … I watched the training montage a couple of times – just to revel how perfect it is that the music kicks in there … it’s so BIG, so unexpected – because there’s been almost no soundtrack up to that point.

— Anyway, I STUDIED Rocky. Scene by scene.

— Then I watched Rocky II – which is surprisingly effective, even though it has a thankless job of coming after that first one. But Stallone! My GOD, he’s just so good as this character!

— In the interview with Stallone he said a great great thing. (And this was before Rocky Balboa – this was from 2001) – he said, “I will never … ever … have a voice like that again.” (Meaning: not the actual physical voice … but the expression of life that is Rocky. Perfect fit of actor and character.) He said (and this was the comment I really loved): “You know, if I say stuff, people don’t believe me. But if I make Rocky say that stuff – I’ll be believed. He’s the best voice I’ve ever had.”

More to come.

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38 Responses to Weekend Snapshots

  1. Emily says:

    I remember some interview ages ago where they were asking the “South Park” dudes what their top five favorite movies were, and Matt Stone listed his as follows:

    1. Rocky I
    2. Rocky II
    3. Rocky III
    4. Rocky IV
    5. Rocky V

    That always cracked me up.

  2. Ceci says:

    //More to come.//

    YES, please!! I am traveling back in time with your posts on Rocky, and I am enjoying this ride enormously. It’s been ages since I saw any of the “Rockys” and now it seems like I am visiting an old friend…

  3. mejack says:

    Nothing beats the turtles named Cuff and Link.

  4. DAW says:

    I saw the last 2/3 of Rocky III the other night. I hadn’t seen a Rocky movie for years and my memory of Adrian had been polluted to some degree by Bill Simmons; I saw her first worried looks and thought she was going to be a rally killer.

    But I think Bill has done her an injustice. She is critical to that film. Only Adrian could sort Rocky out because only she could cut to the heart of what he is. As soon as she finished speaking it was clear that we would soon be hearing THAT MUSIC again.

    I look forward to reading your take.

    I was a bit lucky that night; seeing a Rocky movie again makes reading your Rocky reviews more enjoyable, and when the movie ended I noticed that one of my favorite films was starting on TCM. In the spirit of this website, I will only identify it this way: “You are defeated but you have no shame. You are stubborn but you have no pride. You endure but you have no courage!”

  5. red says:

    Emily – ha!!! I hadn’t heard that.

    The fact that they put Rocky V on there shows the depths of their love for the series. Even die-hard fans had a hard time with that one. you know, i didn’t totally mind it, though – However, I’m really psyched he did one more. Rocky Balboa was the perfect way to go out.

  6. red says:

    mejack – I love Cuff and Link.

    Him saying, “Hey Cuff, hey Link … you wanna see your friend Moby Dick?”

  7. Dan says:

    OK, you win – I just added Rocky to my Netflix queue.

  8. red says:

    DAW –

    Surprise, surprise, Bill Simmons has done an injustice to a female character. Ha!

    I love Bill Simmons but he is WAY off when it comes to female characters in movies (in general). I find his attitude misogynistic, more often than not. He’s all about “the rally”. Well, Rocky ain’t all about “the rally”. Without Adrian, he wouldn’t even be there. He needs that woman – to be behind him, to be on his side – and she has her own journey – she’s not just an extension of Rocky. She is her own person, Bill – she is separate from Rocky- with worries about him going blind, about losing him, about him losing himself … She has her OWN crap to go thru. Just like Rocky.

    Criticisms like Simmons’ piss me off. He seems to resent the female presence in movies – unless she’s wearing lingerie and presents no obstacle to “the rally”.

    Like I said, I love Simmons – and I love his sports columns and pop culture stuff, but I don’t like a lot of his attitudes towards women.

    Now – back to Rocky – my video store doesn’t have Rocky III! I’m bummed … I want to see them all in order … so I might just be forced to skip to Rocky IV – and then loop back.

    I love Rocky III and IV, both.

  9. Cullen says:

    I remember reading the Mad Magazine send up of Rocky III before actually seeing the movie. It’s always interesting bringing together those puffy characterizations with the actual film.

    They had a panel where Rocky is running on the beach and Adrian says, “I didn’t know there was a slow motion sequence in the movie.” And Apollo creed says, “There isn’t. Rocky’s running at full speed.”

    What’s really funny is that parody helped my young mind understand the movie that much better. Hooray for Mad.

    So, I guess what I’m saying is, you’ve gotta track down III.

  10. Lisa says:

    III is the best.

    “My prediction? PAIN.” Bwahahahaha. I loved Clubber Lang.

  11. DAW says:

    He really delivers that line beautifully. I laughed out loud.

  12. red says:

    Dan – hahahaha “okay, you win” – It’s like I’ve been beating you down!!

  13. red says:

    Cullen – yeah, I know – I LOVED III when it came out – it’s been years since I’ve seen it.

  14. DAW says:

    Sheila,
    I enjoy reading Simmons a great deal but I often disagree with him. In this case, I didn’t remember Rocky III very well. You yourself have pointed out that many movies use the “rally killer” wife plot device — of course you didn’t use that terminology, but you describe the phenomenon very well in your essay on the wife in “Field of Dreams”. Based on Simmons’s antipathy toward Adrian, I wondered if perhaps the Rocky movies had developed Adrian’s character in this direction — “hey Rocky, we’re married and have a child, we have lots of money, you don’t have to fight anymore.”

    No way. She’s way better than that. She gets it, just like Ray Kinsella’s wife gets it. I’m glad she turned out that way, because it made the movie a heck of a lot more inspiring.

  15. red says:

    Oh and another scene from Rocky that I loved – and had forgotten how much I loved it – is when Burgess Meredith comes to Rocky’s apartment to offer up his services as a trainer. And Rocky is cold to him – “I needed your help 10 years ago … where were you then?” Eventually Rocky goes into the bathroom and shuts the door – and Meredith, defeated, leaves.

    Rocky comes out – and member how he just starts yelling? And going on and on and on?

    It’s sooooo good – and apparently all of that was improvised. “You don’t ever come to my house! What – you don’t like my house? You’re right – it STINKS – it STINKS …” but it goes on forever …

    Apparently in the final script the scene ended with Rocky going into the bathroom and Meredith leaving … and then the next shot was Rocky running after Meredith outside, to stop him, and say to him, “Okay – you can be my trainer …” But there was no segue – there was no indication of HOW Rocky changed his mind. So Avildsen the director said, “Why don’t you come out of the bathroom and just start talking to yourself? See what happens?”

    And THAT is what Stallone came up with – that whole monologue.

    It’s SO damn good. It’s like he’s acting and script-writing at the same moment. So hard to do.

  16. red says:

    DAW-

    Yes – but my complaint, though, is that so often the rally-killing wife is a cliche, a stereotype of women – used as a shorthand. It’s LAZY.

    I never feel that with Adrian. Her concerns and her hesitations comes out of her CHARACTER – not out of Stallone’s inability to imagine how a wife would act.

    Huge difference. They make sense – it’s part of who she is.

    And from the opposite side: Rocky needs to be the man, the provider – but he has that great line to her in Rocky II: “I never asked you to stop being a woman. Please … please … don’t ask me to stop being a man.”

    But again, my point here is: Adrian’s fears about boxing are WELL set up from their first date, when she says, “I don’t understand why anyone would want to be a fighter.”

    That is not Stallone being lazy with his female character. That is him being SPECIFIC with his female character.

  17. red says:

    Sorry – a bit more:

    In the same way that Annie Kinsella in Field of Dreams doesn’t immediately say to her husband: “OHMYGOD you heard a voice? Good for you! DO WHATEVER THE VOICE SAYS.” She is not an extension of him. She is her own person. She takes a joking attitude, she takes her husband seriously, but not TOO seriously … and then when shit starts hitting the fan – she says to him, “You need to come home … we’re going to lose the farm.”

    She’s not an idiot.

    It’s a PARTNERSHIP. It’s hard to have TWO dreamers in a relationship … the thing I love about Field of Dreams – and about Rocky for that matter – is the fact that: when you marry someone, you marry their dream.

    But again: that doesn’t mean there won’t be bumps along the road.

    I’m an actor and a writer. Anyone who marries me has to marry that lifestyle. They need to believe in me. It won’t be easy – but you can’t marry me without marrying my dream.

    Adrian marries Rocky’s dream. And yet – it’s her job – as a person who cares about him – to give a shit about the fact that he might go blind. if she didn’t give a shit about that – then she wouldn’t be an interseting character.

    I think Simmons just thinks that women get in the way in movies like this, and I resent him for that attitude.

  18. red says:

    I mean, I’ll get over it. I don’t lie awake at nights gnashing my teeth over Simmons’ attitude towards women. ha

  19. Lisa says:

    I lie awake gnashing my teeth over his attitude towards college basketball, and the fact that I couldn’t even get through half his book (I’ve never read a book written SO SPECIFICALLY for a certain segment of the population, yet marketed so generally. Bah, ESPN.), but hey. That’s just me.

  20. red says:

    Well, as a member of that population he meant that book for – I read it in, uhm, 2 days??

    Seriously, though, I don’t care about his attitude towards women. He’s very often wrong, and that is my only consolation. haha

  21. red says:

    Oh! And here’s another funny thing I learned from the special features.

    Carl Weathers came in for his audition. First of all, when they asked him if he had any boxing experience, he said, “Yes, I used to box in Canada.” Complete lie – but somehow Weathers knew they wouldn’t check it. Like – what, there’s an active boxing circuit in Canada? Weathers just wanted the part.

    So he comes in for the audition – and of course Stallone was pretty much unknown at this time – and the two of them read together one of the scenes (even though they didn’t have any scenes together in the movie – at least not real dialogue scenes). Stallone was in the room and read with Weathers for his audition.

    Weathers could feel that his first reading hadn’t gone well – he was kind of stiff, felt self-conscious – didn’t have the acting juices flowing – so he said, cockily, “Well, if I read this with a real actor, maybe I’d do better!”

    Stallone started laughing when he remembered that moment – and when Weathers left the room, Stallone said, “That guy totally IS Apollo Creed – we have to hire him!”

    And so they did – and of course they promptly learned that he knew nothing about boxing.

    But it all worked out in the end!

  22. red says:

    Oh, and Weathers TOTALLY did not want to do the entrance as George Washington at the end. He felt really really scared about doing that, about how it would be perceived – like he was mocking the whole thing, or like he was trying to be white – and he spoke of his concerns about this with Avildsen the director who said that if it ever seemed like that was happening with the scene, then they wouldn’t use it. He reassured him … and Weathers trusted him and so he did it- and if you watch it, he just does it 100% – there isn’t a smirk visible, he is totally committed to it.

    It’s pretty cool – you would NEVER know that Weathers was scared and insecure about doing that.

  23. Lisa says:

    That’s what I mean. You’re a life-long Red Sox fan, so all the names and places and games meant something to you. And that’s great. I think that’s who he wrote it for.

    But it was marketed as a book about a baseball fan’s love for his team. That, to me, means people who weren’t Red Sox fans could read it and it still mean something, because who doesn’t love “their team?” But it was too insider for me. I didn’t know the people or the places or what happened in what game and he didn’t explain it.

    I don’t think it was his fault. I think it was the publisher’s and ESPN’s fault for pushing a niche book to the general public.

  24. red says:

    Yeah, I wasn’t at all aware of the marketing plan or how it was marketed – because it was a done deal that I was going to buy the book anyway, you know?

  25. Dan says:

    First you beat me into watching Carry Grant movies. Now it’s Rocky. What next Sheila, what next!?

  26. red says:

    Dan – I promise it’ll be something cool. I won’t suddenly get into Jewel or anything like that.

  27. Dan says:

    That fact that Jewel is American Idol is sooooo… just.

  28. Nightfly says:

    Part of the problem with the book was that Simmons essentially took a few years’ worth of his columns about the team and their run and compiled them (with a few elidations and edits). A casual fan can handle that for fifteen minutes per week, but in book form? Yikes.

    I love Simmons’ writing for the most part – he’s the only guy at all who could have helped me follow pro basketball even casually; even Ralph Wiley didn’t do that. Basically, he’s the print version of Harry Carey, “A fan with a mic in front of his face,” and it usually works.

    What Simmons objects to with Adrian, Myra Fleener, etc. – the Wet Blanket Effect, if you will – is on one hand perfectly understandable, and on the other, perfectly ridiculous. From a dramatic standpoint, you ALWAYS have to have some sort of Wet Blanket Effect, a conflict, doubters (even if it’s just internal doubt) to overcome. In a movie with a relationship, it’s often the other half of the relationship that’s the source, and it reflects real life – NOT because women are wet blankets, but because most relationships have a dreamer-thinker dynamic between the two partners. (In my relationship, I’m the “let’s open our own frozen-yogurt theme park empire!” half, and Ladybug is the “let’s save up for a down payment on a house instead” half.)

    In this case, it’s understandable for Simmons to be frustrated – he’s SUPPOSED to be, if he’s properly identifying with our heroic dreamer. But if he IS frustrated, that means that the movie has done its job well, so griping about it is ridiculous. A movie hero with no odds or doubts to overcome is boring as hell. “ACCOUNTANT MAN! Ninety minutes of columnar ACTION!”

    At least to his credit he’s been running a sidebar in his columns for Sports Gal to call him an idiot once a week. She’s often right about it.

  29. red says:

    Nightfly – and that’s fine if it’s set up as a character thing – but like I said, and like I wrote in that Field of Dreams piece – more often than not – it is just plain LAZY.

    Many men don’t see women as separate from them. They can’t imagine that they are … separate entities who might have their own issues or feelings or journeys. Annie Kinsella is not the same as her husband … she has to go through it in her OWN way. The same with the wife in The Rookie. It’s not that she’s a wet blanket, it’s that it takes her a longer time to accept … and meanwhile … it is taking HIM a long time to accept … because he really needs it to be a JOINT decision, rather than a singular one. But … on some level … he will have to choose this alone.

    What I resent is women not being seen as three-dimensional characters in these kinds of stories. The wife in Miracle is a perfect example. That was LAZY. And I liked that movie – but I felt that that character was lazily written – and the guy who wrote it just didn’t know what to do with the wife, and so put in the “wet blanket” cliche as a sop to the women in the audience. It’s condescending.

    And lazy writing.

  30. red says:

    Oh, and here’s another thing:

    Sometimes you just need to tell a story that has no women in it. And that’s okay. Don’t throw a woman in there as a sop to what you think women want. Grr. I hate that.

    If you can’t create a woman who is 3-dimensional – and has her own shit going on – then leave her out of the movie.

    Stallone said he always knew that the key to the entire series was not the boxing – but the relationship with Adrian. There’s the heart. Imagine Rocky without Adrian. It’s kind of hard to do. It just would be WAY out of balance.

    And what is great about the movies – at least the first one, especially – is that she is JUST as bizarre as he is. Cause he’s bizarre. He wouldn’t be a good “fit” with just any woman. Imagine him with a hard-drinking bimbo. That might be who you would expect him to be with … but it just wouldn’t be … right … He needed this strong personality to balance out his own.

    The movie would have been … diminished somehow … without that particular story-line. Adrian is a particular kind of girl who brings out a side of Rocky that you don’t see anywhere else.

  31. Nightfly says:

    Sheila – agreed on all counts. (And anyway, Timothy Busfield was the Wet Blanket of Field of Dreams.)

  32. red says:

    Timothy Busfield! HA! Excellent call with the name – I probably would have said “elliott from 30something” – but yes, totally true. Certainly a thankless part. One of the reasons why I loved that movie is because of that Timothy Busfield part – Annie Kinsella was then freed up from having to be the killjoy. She could be an individual. You really felt a marriage there.

  33. red says:

    Dan –

    I know! Jewel! I didn’t find her as overwhelmingly annoying as I normally do – but I guess that’s because she’s out of her typical atmosphere – so she’s a bit subdued.

  34. Dan says:

    //Many men don’t see women as separate from them. They can’t imagine that they are … separate entities who might have their own issues or feelings or journeys.//

    Exactly. Most men want women. Only some like them. Big difference.

  35. red says:

    Dan – did you ever see The Rookie?

    is that a dumb question? hahaha

    I loved that movie. I loved his journey – that’s the main reason why I loved it – but I thought the wife, played by Rachel Griffiths, was a big part of why the movie is successful.

    He needs her to back him up – yet he has too much pride and also self-doubt to say, “Hey, can you back me up?”

    And she comes to it on her own – and once she makes the choice to back him up, she is with him 100% – even more so than he is.

    I don’t know – I just loved the way that character was written. It could have been a cliche (which, yeah, I think a lot of the time, like you mentioned – comes out of a dislike – a contempt for … ) – but it wasn’t. She was a real person, and it felt like a marriage – of two individuals – trying to work out this situation.

  36. Dan says:

    Haven’t seen The Rookie yet – is that with a Bridges in the lead?

  37. red says:

    Dennis Quaid!

    He’s this high school chemistry teacher who hurt his arm playing in the minor leagues when he was 19 or whatever – and so he gave up on baseball – married – had 3 kids – coaches baseball at the high school – and through various circumstances – he ends up trying out again for the major leagues (and he has to hide it from his wife – he’s embarrassed -I mean, he’s 45 – trying out for the major leagues??) – but anyway, it’s based on a true story (probably VERY loosely based) but Quaid is great in it.

    Some cheesy elements like most sports movies – but lots of really spine-tingly moments.

  38. red says:

    Okay, I am going out now to try to track down Rocky III. There are 4 video stores I am going to try. I do not want to wait for one more day to see it again! I think the last time I saw it was … sheesh, college??

    Must see it again. MUST.

    wish me luck.

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