The Sheila Variations

A new discovery

Okay, so you know how Rocky comes into the pet shop every day and tells a bad joke to Adrian? Trying to make her smile? (I am convinced that the reason he would fall for a girl like Adrian - or one of the reasons - is that she doesn't roll her eyes at his bad jokes - she's too shy - she's not sophisticated - and that's a good thing - she wouldn't blow him off - she would never make him feel dumb. She may not laugh openly at his jokes ... but she's somewhat of a safe harbor, with all of her shyness. She doesn't make him feel dumb, or like a bum.)

Okay, so onward.

There's a scene where he comes into the pet shop - it's maybe the 5th or 6th scene into the movie - it's nighttime. He comes out of the gym across the street - and walks into the shop. This is the scene where Talia Shire is filmed mainly through the bars of the bird cage. Rocky is kind of aimless here - he has nothing to buy, no errand, nothing even made up ... He's just had kind of a bad day, he lost his locker at the gym, and he has no one to talk to. It's so amusing because Adrian never responds to Rocky's conversation ... and yet you never feel that it's a one-sided thing. She never speaks ... but he's not hitting a blank wall here. He's not being rejected by her - even though sometimes it's hard work. He likes the work. He likes trying to make this geeky plain woman smile. If she smiles - it makes his day.

Okay. Focus, Sheila. Focus.

He walks into the pet shop. She's busy with the bird cage. He starts talking with her, saying nothing. "Cold night, huh?" No response. "You could get pneumonia on a night like this." No response. He glances at her. "You need help with that cage?" No response. He says again, "Cold night." No response. He glances down at the huge dog in the cage. Says, friendly, "Hey, Butkus, hey." Nothing from Adrian. Rocky then says, "There's a good game down at the Spectrum tonight." No response. Adrian busy at the cage. Rocky is not looking at Adrian, just messing around with that ball he always carries in his pocket. Says, "Want to go to a basketball game?" (If there is a more quietly vulnerable moment on film, I want to know what it is. Anyone who has ever asked anyone out - will know exactly what he's going thru in that moment.) Rocky glances at her. She doesn't respond. Doesn't even acknowledge that she has just been asked out. Shire plays all of this perfectly. You just know that this woman is not a snot ... that's not why she isn't speaking. She isn't speaking because she is shy, she has never been paid attention to, and she is pretty "emotionally battered" (those are Stallone's words for her) - she cringes. She tries to be invisible. She tries to stay out of Paulie's way. She has been "discarded" (those are Shire's words). Rocky somehow gets all of this - and even though Adrian doesn't really give him the time of day - he somehow gets that she just can't. Yet.

So after the basketball game moment - Rocky then goes to talk to the birds - which is great. It's like he's taking the pressure off of Adrian. "Don't these birds look like flying candy?" Pokes his finger thru at them and says, making a Rocky kind of joke (ie: bad): "Hey! I'm a giant worm!" But making a big show (for Adrian) of being friendly - being nonthreatening - how safe he is to this little shy woman behind the desk. (The way she is filmed in this scene she is in the cage with those birds. And funnily enough - the symbolism isn't too heavy-handed. It's more like poetry - a poetic moment. Sometimes in life you have moments where you embody something bigger - a theme, a metaphor - you look at something and you say, "Wow. That is almost a literary conceit". That's what Adrian in the cage is, for me. It's not like: Oooh, heavy symbolism here! It's just a gentle reminder of some of the deeper themes of this piece, and how Adrian fits in to the overall story.)

Then Rocky says to Adrian - "You need somebody to walk you home?" She shakes her head no, thru the cage. We now see Rocky's face in the little mirror behind the counter - so we see the back of Adrian's head and Rocky's big mug - with the Band-aids on his eyebrow, the bruise on his eyelid - the black hat - he looks like a thug and a half, I tell ya. But he wants to walk her home. He wants something. He wants to connect. He wants to talk about his day to someone who gives a shit. It's a lonely cold world out there, man. Mick gave up his locker today to someone else - and that hurts. It hurts. But Rocky can't say to Mick, "That hurts my feelings." He has no friends. His only "friend" is the loan shark - but he can't open up to the loan shark. Besides - a statement like, "That hurts my feelings" is something that only women get to hear. This is Rocky's world. The woman gets to see the soft underbelly - nobody else. This is like Bogart. Bogart never played a guy with a bunch of male friends. He had verbal sparring partners (like Claude Rains in Casablanca) - or he was a caretaker to someone who was less of a man (like the drunk sidekick in Have and Have Not) ... but these were not intimate male friendships. The most intimate he got was maybe with Sam, the piano player - Sam knows him at his weakest, drunk, and upset ... and it's okay. That man will not hold it against Bogart. But in general, Bogart is alone - solitary - and only the woman gets to see the vulnerability, the hurt, the anger, whatever. And only the right woman. The floozy at the bar in Casablanca is treated like the whore that she is. But the right woman? She gets the key to the palace. Which is not easy to come by, obviously. The women have to work for that damn key.

This is a different sort of reality than some other movies - where the woman is the peripheral (see all of Brian DaPalma's films for examples) - the REAL relationships are between men. Women are peripheral, kind of silly, only good for one thing, are NOT to be trusted, and have no business mucking around in the male world.

Howard Hawks' movies were all about a woman who can play with the big boys, a woman who submerges her femininity enough to hang out with men. It's an interesting tension - it makes for some damn fine dialogue.

But the Rocky character - like Bogart's characters - is the hard outer shell guy, with the soft inside. Why do you think Rocky's pets are turtles? You think that's an accident?? Ha. He doesn't have a dog, or a cat. He has turtles. Stallone said in one of the interviews on my DVD - "Rocky is capable of great violence in the ring, or when certain buttons are pushed - but inside he is very pliable. Very impressionable."

I believe that this is one of the main reasons why Rocky wouldn't be interested in floozy women. I could see that a woman like that might ... mess him up, emotionally. I don't know how to say it right. Not that Rocky is a weak guy - obviously not - but I think what he is interested in is ... connection - and being listened to. If you notice in his scenes with Adrian - he's not asking her about her life, or trying to draw her out. No - maybe he senses that that is too stressful for her. What he does in those scenes is talk a mile a minute about his own life. This does a couple of things. It takes the heat off of Adrian - she doesn't have to try to converse, or respond ... Rocky doesn't want her to feel uncomfortable. He'll do anything for her to just relax - and so him babbling on and on seems to loosen her up (watch her in the ice rink scene - his courtship methods are working). But can you imagine a floozy hardened woman listening to that chatter? She'd not get it. She wouldn't listen to him. She would think him talking on and on about how he bought the marbles to go in the bottom of the turtle bowl - was stupid. He won't subject himself to that. I would imagine Rocky goes to hookers - that's just a guess - he seems like a practical enough guy to go that route - and it just seems logical, in that crowd, in that world, that that would be how he'd handle loneliness - but he would never make the mistake of falling in love with any of those types of girls. It's funny - the scene where Rocky goes to take Adrian out - and they walk out of the house, and they're all awkward, and weird with each other, and blah blah - Stallone says in the commentary, laughing at all of the behavior - "You know - she's never been on a date before - he's never really been on a date either ... It's all just awkward."

Sigh. I keep trying to stay on topic but I just cannot.

Okay. Back to the scene in the pet shop - which will then set up what I REALLY need to talk about - which is my "new discovery" from the 2nd scene of the film (when Rocky comes home and talks to his turtles after the fight).

After Rocky says, "You need somebody to walk you home?" and she mutely shakes her head - he says, "If I were you, I'd take a cab home. Every other block there's a creep around here." Long pause - you can see him checking in with her - it's so hysterical, so vulnerable - he's trying to say, "I'm not a creep!" - but he's got the black eye, the black hat, the fingerless gloves - it's just so funny.

Then finally he gives up and says, "I guess I'll be going. I'm gonna go home and make up a joke to tell you tomorrow." (My heart just aches in that moment. He's trying so hard with this desperately shy woman. It's so nice. Painful.) Again - no response from Adrian. Then he says, "Good night, Adrian." He opens the door - we see her thru the bird cage - she looks up and says, "Good night, Rocky." That's all she can get out, when she is in his presence. But she says it kindly. There's not a moment where you feel like she's "Oh for God's sake, would this guy leave me alone??" That's a hard line to walk on - it so easily could have tipped over into Adrian being an annoying person - but it never does. You just ache for this poor woman. You so want her to just let go, be happy ... but it's gonna take a huge leap, man.

And it's set up, thru the film, that the way Rocky courts this woman is to make up jokes - and tell them to her. When he's complaining to Paulie about how he's getting nowhere with Adrian - he says, "Every morning I go in there and I tell a joke. Every night I go in there and tell a joke. Nothing. She just looks at me like I'm a plate of leftovers."

Now. Back to my "new discovery" (and maybe I'm an idiot and this would be obvious to anybody - but I just figured it out.):

In the second scene of the film - Rocky comes home after his fight, all beat up. He talks to Cuff and Link. He wanders around. He has a beer. Then he has this whole fascinating moment at the mirror. I'm sure any Rocky fans will remember this moment. It's terrific acting, first of all. There are all these pictures of Rocky (only they really are Stallone - his 3rd grade picture, his real parents, etc.) stuck on the mirror. Rocky walks over to the mirror - and he's holding the can of turtle food in his hand - and he looks at himself in the mirror (and he looks like hell) - and starts to talk. This is what he says, in a kind of listless voice:

"There were more moths in the turtle food - more flies ... no ... There were more flies than moths in the turtle food ..." (He seems to be blundering about - trying to say something - then he gets frustrated - tosses the turtle food down and says:) "Oh, who the hell cares."

It is then that he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror - the sullen bruised face - and there's the 3rd grade picture right there - he looks at it - looks at himself - looks back at it - This moment feels like it goes on forever. It's heart-breaking. A truly private moment. As private as Travis Bickle's "You talkin' to me?" (a movie which, incidentally, opened the same week as Rocky - Rocky beat it for Best Picture) ... Bickle has the loneliness that has turned him into a psychotic. Loneliness can do that. That's what that fantasy horror moment of "You talkin' to me" is about. At least that's what I see. Wow. Like Eleanor Rigby. All the lonely people. If anyone had ever listened to this guy ... would he have turned out this way? If anyone had shown him just a tiny bit of tenderness? Loneliness is not for sissies, man - it can mess you up for good. Rocky's isolation is just as acute - but it has not grown so malignant, it has not been turned so far inward - that he has become a sociopath or a psychopath. But his long moment of staring at himself in the mirror - with total honesty - no illusions - after babbling something about the turtle food, then giving up on that (whatever it was) - and catching sight of his 8 year old face. Which stops him dead. He overplays NOTHING - but what I see in his face is: What. The hell. Has happened to me. Who is that 8 year old boy? I'm 30 years old. I just got paid 40 bucks to get the shit kicked out of me. My only friends are turtles. What the hell has happened. No self pity. Just isolation, and aware of his own aloneness.

SO. Okay, I'm almost done, I promise.

Next scene: it's the next morning. Rocky goes to the pet shop. This is our first time meeting Adrian. And also this is our first time in the movie seeing the other side of Rocky. Up until this point - we've had 2 scenes - and while there is a gentleness and a humor to how he talks to his turtles - we like the guy - what we have mainly seen is a scowling guy, fighting in some dingy club, smoking, with blood dripping down the side of his face, no expression, no fire in the belly, nothing. So then we see his face thru the pet shop window, and he's waving at the little puppies, and giving Adrian (although we can't see her yet) a brief wave and we're like: Hmmm. Who IS this guy?

So he comes into the store. I love (and I mean, LOVE) his first line to Adrian. "How you feelin' this mornin'? Full'a life?"

Makes me want to cry.

You can suddenly see this man's good heart. "Full'a life?"

How anyone could look at cringing Adrian, in her maidenly-aunt sweater, her horn-rimmed glasses, her hair pinned back in the largest barrette ever manufactured - and say, as though expecting a "Yes" for an answer, "Full'a life?" is a mystery. She so does NOT look "full'a life". Not in the slightest. But that's the kindness at the heart of this Rocky character. She actually is "full'a life" - it's just underneath all that other stuff.

"How you feelin' this mornin'? Full'a life?"

Adrian can barely look at him. She mutters, "I'm doing fine."

Rocky looks HUGE in that environment. Like he is sucking up all of the available oxygen just by standing there. He says, jovial, loud, "How's the turtle food this week?"

Adrian doesn't look at him. "Fine."

Then Rocky says - and you can so see him just needing her to listen - even though she's not looking - watch how at one point he reaches out and taps her - basically like, "Hey ... hey ... Adrian ... Adrian ... listen ... listen ..."

So he says, "I'm kinda aggravated this week."

Now - what he WANTS her to say is "Why?" He wants her to say "Why?" because (and this is part of my new discovery) - he needs her to set up his bad joke. If she says "Why?" - then that's like the "ba-dum" to his "CHING". It's a little comedy routine he's trying to start here. This is what he does every morning.

But Adrian does not say "Why?" because - that would mean the conversation would have to be prolonged - and she can't bear it - so she says, "I'm sorry."

Dead stop.

Then Rocky (and you just have to laugh at him) says, "Don't you want to hear about it?" Still trying to get her to participate in his joke.

Adrian's boss pushes by him and says something like, "I'll tell you somebody who doesn't want to hear about it."

But Rocky - no guile, no malice - says, "Hey, Loretta, how are you ..." (or something like that) - then reaches out and pokes Adrian in the back - "Adrian, don't you want to hear about it?" He is determined. He will tell her this joke, dammit, even though her BACK is to him.

He then goes on to say, "The turtle food last week had more moths in it than flies. And the moths get stuck in the turtle's throats and they cough - and I have to then smack them on the back. And they get what? What do they get?"

Cut back to Adrian, who is having a harder time resisting this onslaught now.

Rocky says, grinning, pushing her, "Come on ... they get what?"

She shakes her head - shy - and he says, "Shell shock. They get shell shock."

Despite herself, Adrian smiles. She tries to hide it, but she can't.

And so this is a good day for Rocky. A very good day.

And NOW I can see that what he was DOING in front of the mirror - was practicing the joke - and trying to come up with the right order of words so that his lame punchline would be funnier. I never put that together before - I thought he was just talking to himself ... maybe carrying on a conversation with himself to fill up the empty air, the silence in his house ... I never really thought about it. But I just realized yesterday that no: he is practicing his joke.

This makes the triumph of getting her to smile in the next scene even more touching. Because look at the look on his face during his "rehearsal" of the joke. He looks hopeless. Nothing ever will change. He is at the bottom of his life, the bottom of the barrel. He's 30 years old. He has no life. And here he is - trying to make up a joke for this woman who won't even look at him - and oh fuck it, who the hell cares.

But then in the next scene - it's bright sunshiny morning - and he walks into the pet shop, it's a brand new day - and boom. He has figured out the wording, the punchline, the fact that it's the MOTHS that are the problem, not the flies, he has worked out how he wants to tell it, and even though she can barely look at him - dammit - this is what he is committed to in this moment: He is telling her a joke.

And for a second - when she smiles - for just a split second - it seems to Rocky that maybe his life is not nothing.

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