Sylvester Stallone: Corporate studios killed the "classic movie"

Rocky was just a huge huge risk. Are studios today taking those same type of risks?

The big corporate ones, they they they've got themselves into a real predicament because what they think works, so you know, the $400 million production. But if it doesn't work, heads are going to roll.

I mean, you made a just a massive bet on yourself. Would you make that same bet today?

That's a very profound question. Today, at my age, me,

Sylvester Stallone is one of the most unlikely business success stories in the history of American entertainment. A kid from a cold water flat in Hell's Kitchen who turned down $300,000 for a screenplay because he refused to let anyone else play the character he created. And in doing so, made one of the greatest high risk, high reward business bets in Hollywood history, building a franchise empire spanning Rocky, Rambo, the expendables and now Tulsa King. That has generated well over a billion dollars in combined box office licensing and streaming revenue across five decades. Stallone is still full systems go coming out season four of Tulsa King on Paramount Plus and releasing a new memoir called The steps. It's a real honor to welcome Mr. Stallone for this special episode of Power players.

Um, welcome. Thank you for doing this. I I really appreciate it.

Wow. Thank you. I it's nice to talk about something that you enjoy.

And I enjoy. I've watched every season of Tulsa King. I'm always traveling, but I watch it at all assorted times and I've become hooked on Dwight Manfredi. Uh, how is he going to be different, you know, in this season compared to the prior seasons? You have made, I mean, this is what you do. You unlock like new layers in these characters each.

Well, of course, the opposition has to be almost insurmountable. and that creates the story. I just don't think you ever want your uh protagonist going downhill where it's too easy. You must be fighting gravity. and while coming back to New York, this we're talk, well, are we talking about the fourth season coming up? I see I'm still on

Coming up, of course.

I'm one season ahead of you. Oh my god. Well, season four that's about to come up, we are now presented with a whole different kind of group of bad guys and it it's it's something that also deals with technology. see today as you know with AI and just new personalities that I have no sway over. and it's and also I'm dealing with some unforeseen tragedy. So it's going to be I think quite good, but then again I'm being haunted by New York. You have gangsters coming after me. And that's the key because Dwight, just when you think he's got it together, no. not at all. So I I I think we have like three levels of what would you say like dark drama, suspense, like three major villains. So it's going to be great.

Do you still, when you are thinking about unlocking the next chapter in Dwight Manfredi's life, do you still go back to how you did it when you were creating Rocky. I mean, you're locked in a room, blinds are shut, you're just ignoring everything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not exactly an earth-shattering secret, but I I get up at like 5 every morning, 4:45 and study my lines. because your brain is fresh and it's the last thing I want to do. So if I can do that, you know what I mean, you just that's the whole point to me is doing something you don't want to do because the end results are going to be worth it. rather than studying, oh yeah, let me watch the football game, look at a live football game. It's listen, I'm tempted, but that's pretty much well, so I put a lot of work in the sequels because

you got away with the the first time is easy in a sense because you're you're coming, there's no baggage. Now, to top that, to top that, to top that. People don't understand sequels are 10 times harder than the original. They really are. because you've lost the element of surprise. So Dwight has to have everything around them has to be magnetized, magnetized, magnified.

That's from getting up too early, too.

I know magnified uh to keep the audience interested.

Do these characters that you create, I'll stay on Dwight for now. They do they almost torment you? I don't know, they have their own lives of their own it feels like just from the outsider looking in.

Yeah, they they do, but but luckily, uh I try to focus on there's even in the darkest guy, there's a sense of like nobility and optimism that I'm doing something good even though I'm sort of a bad guy. I'm not as bad as that guy. And or like with Rambo, uh he he's a killing machine, but what who he's taking out are these oppressive, horrible people. So yes, yes is he a murderer? Yes. Is he murdering the right people? Yes,

Dwight Manfredy didn't exist what four or five years ago and it's a character you you created. I mean you created this character and and and really, it was another big bed on yourself that you can play this character and and just crush it. Like what drives you to keep making characters like this?

A lot of people assumed that I was Rocky. You know, you know what I love when every time I hear an impression, how you doing? like I talk like that, you know? And then Rambo is monosyllabic. He he doesn't talk. He reacts. And I said, God, am I ever going to play anyone close? And so finally with Terry Winter and Taylor and a few of the other writers like Joe, I said, why don't we do something where I do nothing. You know what I mean? I said, well, what if you woke up in the morning, you're a writer, this and that. But now you're a gangster but you still have the same sense of humor, same rhythm. Oh, you know, I like sausage in the morning. In other words, nothing's changed. but you're a gangster. So you the hardest thing is so you just let your emotions naturally roll. So it's like if someone comes up and puts a gun to Sylvester Stallone's head, I'm going to react, you know, like Sylvester Stallone would. You know, I'm not going to try to Rambo on you, oh you disarm him and break 10 guys' hand, you know what I mean? going on that kind of thing.

Yeah, I know.

No, but you know like like if you put a gun to Rambo's head, he's going to smash your hand, he's going to chop you, he's going to throw you off a roof. Dwight would go, you know what? You could probably find a better place more use for that bullet for somewhere else. You know, he would do something to try to use his wit to disarm the situation. So the point is, I'm enjoying this so much because I am playing myself if I was a gangster.

Out of all, you know you just met, I mean Rocky, Rambo, Dwight now and a lot of others. Is Dwight the most like you on a human level?

Without a doubt. 100%. Um, like when he has his furious moments and his self of his sense of self-righteousness, one studio goes, he's kind of brutal sometime I go, that's the point. That's the dichotomy. He's funny or I buy ice cream with you, whatever, but when he comes across someone who is such a dark character, I've always said, I when when you dispose of the bad guy, it has to be almost a ritual. It can't be bang, he's gone, ow, that hurt, he died. It has to be like like blown up and paled on a horn, like something that the audience goes, wow, this is biblical. This is super righteous. Dwight really does have that brutal element in there. It's down there. He is like scary if you get to that core. and I sort of identify with that because I think every man has that breaking point and every woman that absolutely defies logic, sanity, it's just they they go feral.

All these, you know, amazing characters you've played, they all, they all live on. I mean, they come out of insurmountable odds. I look at Dwight just getting shot out of various situations. Well, will will Dwight be the character that doesn't make it out, that doesn't live?

Sorry. As a matter of fact, he's going to have a nice send off Sunday. He'll probably be in a you know, on a boat, on a river with swans, you know, a sunny day. I just I don't because there's a a few gangsters lives who I've chronicled. The ones that know when to get out and change location. Like there was a guy named Owney Madden, so he decided that everybody wanted to kill him in New York and where does he go? Hot Springs, Arkansas. is wonderful life.

Nobody will find him there.

No, not anymore.

Um, you know, looking back at at Rocky because this is the first time we've talked. So I got to ask you this one. I mean, you made a just a massive bet on yourself. Would you make that same bet today?

That's a very profound question. Today at my age, me? No. No, because I know how miraculous. Back then, you had studio heads that didn't rely upon the publicity department to say how many tickets we can sell. They'd say, you know, I got a gut feeling. I got a gut feeling. I'm going to, you know what, there's something, something's bothering me here. Let's go for it. And there that was the era of the 60s and 70s when they made all these profound movies. And that's gone. And so when they say cinema's changing, it's not cinema. It's the people that control the green light. That's what's changed drastically. It's become incredibly, um, well, you know the word, it's just scientific.

Corporate.

No.

Yeah.

Corporate. So uh because it would never happen. I I wouldn't be that foolish to think that we would have that sort of, um pioneer spirit. Let's take a chance on the guy. No.

Rocky was just a huge huge risk. Are studios today taking those same type of risks?

Uh no, no, no, no, no, no. I there might be a few like A24 and things, you know, the smaller ones. But the big corporate ones, they they they've got themselves into a real predicament because what they think works like, you know, the $400 million production. But if it doesn't work, heads are going to roll. And people are looking for identifiable stories, simple stories. You know where they're finding them now? On streaming, on uh dateline, on 2020, you know, real human interaction. But I don't think we're going to ever see them again in abundance. like Dog Day afternoon or Pacino kind of films or mean streets or great films like The Lion in Winter or Becket. Forget it. It's sad, but it's true. And I don't think the audience wants it either too because you know, this generation doesn't have that same education that I had. You know, the way schooling is, they don't teach the classics, they don't think poetry, you don't teach the raven. So it would be quite alien to them. I don't even know what they teach, but the one thing they do rely upon is complete and utter fantasy, escapism, which every young man, you know they they love that. Of course, who wouldn't?

Then is the era of creating classics over in movies?

Yes, I think so. They are. Uh I mean, of course there's always an exception to every rule, but you they are creating mini classics. The sad thing, seriously for me I love is that you'll have a streaming series and some of these performances are fantastic. and if they had been in a feature, you'd win an Oscar. Actually, they're better than most of the Oscar performances, but they're just considered episode nine, episode 10. Like I'm watching this series called Furious. And I'm going, my God, these these actors are spitting blood. you don't see that on a feature and I'm going, wow. and it'd be like, they don't understand, they do it 10 times in a series. It's mindboggling. Uh but that's where you that's where you find the great drama. Unfortunately, no one puts it in the same category as like Oscar, which they should.

Looking over the next few years of your life, you know, when you think about your business and everything you've created, do you think you'd get to the point where you can get the rights back to Rocky? Is there ever a Kumbaya moment where that happens?

God, I've tried. No. Uh that was, you know, I want to get into it, but it was it was it was pretty locked up and there was a lot of, you know, maneuvering behind the scenes. Believe me, I've tried because I said, wow, it's like, can I visit my child once in a while? You know what I mean? that sort of a thing. But uh you know, time has moved on. I've been very, very lucky, so I I try not to dwell on that because the answer is absolutely not.

Is there another major character that you will still want to play or do want to play after Dwight?

Uh, no, there really isn't. I think Dwight, I think will take me into the sunset because that character is so ingrained in me. But there are like, I'm rewriting, are you ready for this? This is this is like stale news. I'm rewriting Poe for like the 15th time. And of course, I, yo Poe. I've certainly passed playing it and I never was the right guy to play it. But I would love to direct something like that. But even Poe to work today has to be cinematic and visual as opposed to auditory and and a lot of linguistics. People don't want to hear this. They they want to see what poet is thinking and writing. So it becomes kind of a um classical horror.

It's amazing.

You know, how, you know, these these icons that you have created, how do you, you know, I watch them on reruns constantly. This is really all I do week in and week out. Has someone approached you about, I don't know, Aying them? You know, making like AI characters

so they live on forever?

It's so funny you say that.

No, you're right on. And of course, I've gotten a lot of blowback from that. But I'm thinking if Harrison Ford, myself, another actor wanted to do the prequel. Like, how did this guy get so screwed up? What happened like in Rambo? You have AI now, which they tested that they take me to 18 years old when he was happy go lucky. He was the captain of the team, was the most popular person in school. He joined the army because he thought, oh, this will be fun for two weeks. And then you see the metamorphosis of how he was just his soul was torn out of his body. That stuff is fascinating, but every other person in the movie is real. They're just doing one character, you see what I mean? And that I said, wow, that'd be interesting. That could really. So there's so many characters you go, how did he get so crazy or how did he become this? And then you, oh, got it. Got it. Now you understand the evolution. That that is something I'm working on.

It amazes me folks haven't approached you sooner about that. I mean, the characters live on.

Well, they're afraid. They're no, there's there's a there's this a a very chilling effect when you bring up AI in the art community. and I totally get it because boy, it makes things so much easier. You know, I'm I'm I'm a writer and writing is like having your fingernail pulled out every day. It's horrible. It's like, hey, I can't wait to get up and write.

I can relate though, not to your scale, I can relate.

Of course you can relate. You go, oh God, like it's sunny and the kids are out playing. I'm in a dark room exposing my stupidity word by word. that kind of a thing. And so, I thought, wow, with AI, everyone goes, okay, would you give me 15 different reasons why this character and wham. So the brain is going to shrink to the size of a lima bean soon.

What do you worry about now at 80? and I can't believe, I can't believe that you didn't worry about at 30?

Everyone has tons and tons and tons and decide to regrets. When people say they don't have any regrets, I go, then you have no soul. and you have no memory because we make mistakes on the road on the path for life. It just does. You know, we weren't born with this incredible erudition where like, I know it all. No, you don't. So you have regrets. And I realized you can't fix those. Yesterday's dead, future is unknown. Today is all you got. So I really have focused now about the egoism and the narcissism that you have to have somewhat an abundance to be an actor. You need the love of strangers. You want to go out there and go, do you still like me? You know, that kind of thing. And that usually comes from childhood where, you know, you're it was devoid of love. Now I've said, I don't care anymore. I just want to give it. I don't want to receive it. To my wife and my children, I am focused on every word they say on every nuance. I'm going because I'm not going to be here long, really take it in because all you did before was worry about you. and instead of like if you bring children into the world, guess what? That's your responsibility. You know, some people take better care of their animals than their children. So, um, that that's what I focus on. Really trying to do some kind of redemptive work and make them happy and leave a good memory.

Mr. Stone, thank you so much for doing this. Maybe uh at a future date we can talk watches. I'm a big fan. I know you're a big watch fan and

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know we're out of time here, but thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it. Yeah there we go. Oh, that's amazing. I I'm just I know I I pulled out my my Panerai here, you know, in inspiration of Daylight, you know

I know, if I had known, I would have joined you.

All right, next time. Thank you so much. I greatly appreciate it.

Got it, buddy. Take care.

Take care. Thank you.

And that's it for the latest episode of Power Players.