About the only benefit to being up at 3:30 am is sometimes catching some very interesting radio shows. Anyone familiar with amplitude modulated broadcasting knows about a phenomenon called “skip”, where the radio signal bouncing off of clouds (at night) in conjunction with humidity and barometric pressure can result in reception of some far off stations. That happened to me Wednesday morning when I happened to turn on my Panasonic RF-P50D (a transistor radio that has the most amazing selectivity and sensitivity).
Kmox CBS Saint Louis broadcasts at 1120 on your AM dial. Their show ‘Our American Stories’ featured the making of Sylvester Stallone’s ‘Rocky’, which began on this date in 1976. The movie’s success was as improbable as the character’s. While $950,000 went a lot further then it does today, it was still a shoestring budget for one hell of a lot of movie. I had forgotten that Stallone wrote it. It was his baby all the way, he birthed it. Without his gumption this amazing movie never would have saw the light of day.
As a seventeen year old when it came out, I thought it was a boxing movie. Ha. All it encompassed was the sometimes pretty, sometimes ugly story of human triumph. Not bad for 2 hours. The story about the casting was a hoot. Meryl Streep, Bette Midler, Cher all wanted the Adrian role. Francis Ford Coppola’s sister Talia Shire got it. Stallone wanted Lee J. Cobb for the ‘Mickey’ part. Cobb tells Stallone, “I don’t read” (audition). ‘Apollo’ played by Carl Weathers after making mince meat out of Stallone in the boxing audition, “Maybe he’ll get better.”
To hear Sylvester tell about Ken Norton auditioning, Joe Frazier, brought back all the memories of just how huge boxing was in the 70’s. In fact I was completely unaware of the real life inspiration for the movie, the March 1975 bout between longshot Chuck Wepner and reigning World Champion Muhammad Ali. Wepner was within 20 seconds of going 15 rounds with the champ before succumbing. Unbelievable.
Shooting on the streets of Philadelphia when nobody knew who the hell he was. Doing the ice skating scene where it was supposed to be with 300 extras and 1 shows up. Stallone said that if it hadn’t been for the invention of the Steadicam in 1975 and the mobility this new equipment afforded, Rocky never gets made. A truly fascinating story at 3:30 am.
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