Before Rocky Balboa climbed the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and long before he ever came back to defeat Apollo Creed, the iconic boxer was just an idea in Sylvester Stallone’s head. The 30-year-old was basically homeless and struggling to make it as an actor. But he wrote a good script for a moving and honest sports drama—one that he would also reportedly demand to star in or it would never see the light of day.
That’s how much Stallone believed in his work, and now the story of his perseverance has been adapted into a full feature biopic titled I Play Rocky. The film, out in theaters on Friday, November 6, stars Anthony Ippolito (The Offer) as a young Stallone who is desperately trying to get Rocky in the right hands. Once he does, he can tell that the United Artists film studio wants it badly enough to let him play the lead, turning down offers of millions along the way just so he can secure himself a future in Hollywood.
While many biopics fudge the details, most of I Play Rocky is spot-on. He conceived the story after watching a 15-round bout in 1975 between heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner. He turned down massive sums of cash as the studio tried to buy him out from starring in the film, and he was forced to temporarily sell his dog just to afford food for himself.
It’s even true that he starred in a softcore porn film, The Party at Kitty and Stud's, where he was paid $200 for two days of work and full-frontal. As Stallone told Playboy in the late ‘70s, “It was either do that movie or rob someone because I was at the very end of my rope.” If there’s anything I Play Rocky stretches the truth about, it’s that Stallone didn’t write the script in a mad flurry. But the rest—even the scene that shows Stallone punching frozen meat until his fists bleed because the meat hadn’t thawed yet—is all how it really happened.
Plus, Ippolito’s impression of Stallone is one of the best performances we’ve ever seen in a biopic. After seeing the film, Stallone even told Ippolito that it was like looking in a mirror. And as the actor told Esquire last month, his journey to land the role in I Play Rocky wasn’t that different from Stallone’s original pursuit.
I sent in a tape that I recorded in my grandmother’s basement, because it was very much stuck in the ’70s and just felt period correct. Then, when I got my hands on the script, I devoured it and sent another tape. You feel sometimes like you’re sending your stuff into an abyss, especially when nobody’s asking for the thing in the first place.” Eventually, Ippolito was called in and it all took off from there.
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