'40 Years of Rocky: The Birth of a Classic' director Derek Wayne Johnson additionally admits there were several things that surprised him about the making of the iconic 1976 film.
- Jun 5, 2020
AceShowbiz - Sylvester Stallone is glad his plans for an ice skating scene in his breakthrough movie "Rocky" fell through, because the end result was better than he could have imagined.
The movie star has narrated new film "40 Years of Rocky: The Birth of a Classic", which features home videos and behind the scenes footage from the 1976 classic, and in one segment he talks about the iconic skating scene he filmed with co-star Talia Shire, revealing it would have looked a lot different if he'd had his way.
"I had written this scene for 300 extras," he explains. "Adrian (Shire's character) was supposed to be taken out on the ice by this incredible ice-skater and he's showing off and Rocky is sort of humiliated. Then I get into a sort of a beef with the fella (as Rocky)."
"I show up on the set and they said, 'We've had to cut the extras back a little bit...' And it was to none with no heads up. I had to rewrite it with just the two of us on the ice and since I can't ice-skate Rocky runs alongside of her. She was not exactly Ice Capades either! It reflected that neither one of them was very graceful in life but together they're a perfect fit. It turned out to be 1,000 times better than if there had been a big crowd, so I got very lucky on that day."
Meanwhile, the new documentary's director, Derek Wayne Johnson, admits there were several things that surprised him about the making of the 1976 film, including the fact filmmaker John Avildsen had to shoot a pivotal boxing match around a beauty pageant.
"The final fight, you find out in our documentary that a beauty pageant was scheduled in between filming," Johnson explains. "So they had to film, wrap, set back up for a beauty pageant and then set back up the next day. I just thought that was so funny. It's just low-budget filmmaking at its best."
