Sylvester Stallone: The Forgotten Auteur

One of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century is not getting the credit he deserves

Throughout my entire life, I’ve always been fascinated by auteurs.  The term is typically applied only to filmmakers, but in my mind an auteur is any artist who single handedly manifests their vision and brings it into the world.  This can include writer-directors, singer-songwriters, novelists, philosophers, and stand-up comedians.  They have an idea or a concept, and they execute it all the way to the end.  The material is solely derived from them and their spirit.  

I’ve gravitated towards their work and absorbed myself in it, feeling the distinct thrill that comes with seeing the world through someone else’s eyes.  A non-exhaustive list of my favorites includes:  Richard Linklater, David Foster Wallace, John Mayer, Jerry Seinfeld, Quentin Tarantino, Taylor Swift, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Father John Misty, Friedrich Nietzche, Bo Burnham, Toni Morrison, Larry David, Louis CK, Damien Chazelle, Fran Lebowitz, Bill Burr, Lana Del Rey, Jonathan Franzen, Carl Jung, Ed Sheeran, and Kanye West (Before…well, you know).

But there’s one auteur I love who has probably impacted my life more than any of the others I listed here.  I believe he’s a historically talented visionary, and he gets nothing close to the credit he deserves.  Who am I talking about?  You guessed it, Sylvester Stallone.

I am not joking.  I’m not doing that ironic hyperbole thing people on the Internet (still, inexplicably, over twenty-five years into this nightmare) love to do.  I genuinely believe Stallone is a once in a generation filmmaker. He doesn’t have the critical acclaim, awards, or accolades that any of the artists I mentioned above have, but he’s created art that has moved millions on a deep and profound level.  I should know, I’m one of them.

First, Stallone meets the technical requirements for auteurism.  He’s been a writer-director on seven different movies, movies that he also starred in.  Rocky and Rambo are his two most well-known franchises, and he wrote every movie in their canon.  The guy isn’t just some dumb actor that lucked into his most iconic roles, he created them through sheer force of artistry and will.   

Beyond all that, Stallone stands out for what he does once he’s actually behind the camera.  The finished product he puts out is singular.  I can’t think of any other movies that have the same effect on the viewer that the Rocky movies have.  I’ve seen the final fight in Rocky II, I don’t know, at least 150 times.  But I’m still on the edge of my seat every single time that I watch it.  My heart is in my chest whenever I see Rocky and Apollo struggling to get off the mat in the last round. 

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to generate the amount of emotional investment required to make these movies successful?  The entire project hinges on the viewer being swept up in the action, getting completely absorbed in every single punch.  If you’re not giving the audience goosebumps when the fight climaxes, you’ve failed.  I recently watched Raging Bull for the first time.  The fight scenes were laughable compared to the action in Rocky III.  Jake LaMotta cartoonishly throwing his fists at the camera does nothing for me.  I still lose my mind every time I see Rocky going full berserker mode on Clubber Lang and screaming in his face “You ain’t so bad!”

And that’s all Stallone.  He paced out the rhythm and action of the fights, and he captured it on camera perfectly, so that you’re completely captivated by what’s happening in front of you.  Every single one of the iconic goosebump moments in that franchise were a direct result of his artistic vision.  Who else has given us something like that?

It’s not just the fight scenes that make those movies great either.  They’re all fantastic, but the fights pay off the emotional beats of the story leading up to them.  We desperately want Rocky to triumph in the final fight because we’ve seen everything that he’s gone through to get there.  We’ve also seen how much physical effort he’s put in courtesy of the training montage, an American art form that the Rocky movies single handedly invented.  To put all of that together, and have it work from beginning to end, is a massive achievement.  To do it multiple times over a franchise is unprecedented.

And let’s not gloss over the fact that Stallone is doing all of this while in crazy stupid shape.  He’s in the kind of shape that requires obscene amounts of dedication to diet and exercise.  To get to that level while writing, directing, and acting in a major motion picture is a level of Nietzschean endurance, performance and achievement I can’t even begin to wrap my head around.  That saying is right, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything.

The proof of Stallone’s artistic success is in the way viewers react to the Rocky movies, and what these movies mean to them. During the credits of Rocky Balboa, we’re shown a montage of everyday, ordinary people running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Writing that last part feels too technical, since everyone knows them as “The Rocky Steps.”  The museum is practically an afterthought.  But, whatever).  We see dozens of people, young and old, running up those steps, jumping up and down with their hands raised in the air once they reach the top, smiling from ear to ear.  They look so damn happy.  But that’s the effect these movies have.  They’re so personal and heartfelt and moving and triumphant and inspiring, and they hit viewers in such a direct and powerful way, that everyone who’s seen them feels like they have a personal relationship with Rocky.  We feel like Rocky is our friend and mentor.  That’s what made Creed work so well.  Stallone was finally playing the trainer role, dispensing advice and encouragement to Adonis and, by association, us, the audience.  It was a Rocky movie about watching Rocky movies.  But none of that would have worked without the direct personal connection Stallone had built up with the audience over the previous 40 years.  And it took another singular auteur, Ryan Coogler, to notice that and capture it.

Stallone became an auteur out of necessity.  As a struggling actor in the early 70s, he couldn’t get cast in anything, so he had no choice but to write his own stuff.  Eventually he got to a point where studios wanted to buy the Rocky script from him, but he wouldn’t sell unless he could play Rocky.  Stallone, who was flat broke at the time, turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars (In the 1970s no less.  Think of how much that was worth back then) multiple times just so he could do it his way.  Imagine the courage it takes to continue to insist on yourself in that situation.  This money would solve all of your problems, and you’re saying no unless a movie studio casts you, an unknown actor, as the lead in a major motion picture.  It’s insane.  But Stallone knew the money would run out in a few years, and then he’d be right back to where he started.  He’d rather go down swinging than take the easy way out.

Obviously, it paid off.  Rocky won Best Picture at the Oscars and made a boatload of money.  When it came time for a sequel, Rocky director John G. Avildsen, fresh off his own Oscar win, was allegedly too coked up to be bothered.  So Stallone stepped in and directed the sequel based on a script that he wrote.  The rest is history.

There’s a great documentary on Netflix about Stallone’s life and career called Sly.  While Stallone has been portrayed in popular culture as a dim-witted lunk, in Sly he comes off as incredibly intelligent and insightful.  He speaks on his career and the nature of art in such a deep and profound way.  Listening to him, you realize how much thought, heart, and soul went into the movies that he made.  They weren’t an accident.  They were the product of an intentional artist at work, one who had something profound to say.  

Stallone explains how each Rocky movie is about where he was at in his life.  Rocky is about being the underdog trying to get your one shot.  Rocky II is about trying to prove your initial success wasn’t a fluke.  Rocky III is about getting soft from success and rediscovering the hunger that drove you when you were starting out.  Rocky IV is about becoming so bombastically successful that you’re basically a cartoon character who single handedly has the power to end the Cold War.  Rocky V is about what you would do and who you would be if you lost it all (A lot of people talk down on Rocky V, but I like it.  Rocky telling Tommy Gunn “My ring’s outside” is one of my favorite line readings ever).  And Rocky Balboa is about trying to prove to yourself and the world that you’ve still got it after all of these years. 

The point I’m belaboring here is that Stallone had something deeply personal he wanted to share with each movie, and he crafted a film to help him express it.  Those movies then impacted the audience because they related to what he had to say, and the way that he said it.  I can’t think of a more clear example of a genuine auteur than that.

There are a few moments in the doc where Stallone expresses regret, saying that he wasn’t there enough for his kids while they were growing up.  He now realizes that it was more important to be a present father than to make movies like Over The Top.  In his mind, the movies weren’t real, his family was.  I understand where he’s coming from and feel for him on this.  Even as someone who has achieved no tangible success in the artistic field, I do know that the drive for achievement can become all consuming, to the point that you neglect those who are closest to you.  But the movies Stallone made were real, simply because of the way they were received and what they meant to the audience.  I mean, Rocky is the single most inspirational character of all time.  That’s an unbelievable achievement.

The movies he made genuinely impacted people’s lives.  They inspired and pushed them to strive for great things.  That’s a gift he gave to the wider world.  I know the Rocky movies were formative for me, and inspired me many times over during my football playing days in high school and college.  And they definitely inspired me throughout my decade-plus pursuit of a career in stand-up comedy.  Art is about making the audience feel something and reminding them of who they are and what they can be.  And there aren’t many works of art out there that have done that more than the Rocky franchise.

So the next time there’s a Rocky marathon on AMC (Which is probably this weekend), stop for a moment and take in what you’re watching.  Try not to see it as a sports movie or a cheesy action movie or whatever, try to see it as one man telling his story to an audience, hoping it resonates.  You might finally see Stallone in a different light, the one he deserves to be viewed in.