By Nivedita Balu
TORONTO, Sept 12 (Reuters) – Sylvester Stallone’s life is the real Rocky Balboa story, film director Peter Farrelly said as he walked down the red carpet for the premiere of “I Play Rocky” at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday.
The film brings to the big screen the story behind the making of “Rocky,” an underdog story that has inspired many fans of Stallone’s fictional character Rocky Balboa’s sheer determination.
Farrelly aims to present “I Play Rocky” to fans of the fictional Philadelphia boxer, and to a new, younger crowd unfamiliar with Stallone’s struggles before he became the star of “Rocky.”
Stallone wrote and starred in the 1976 film, now a cultural phenomenon.
“The Rocky story is actually a true story. Rocky is fiction, but Stallone’s story is the Rocky story,” Farrelly said.
“And the message is: you never give up and you never give in. You can’t be bought out. And in this day and age, everybody’s bought out, everybody goes for the money. He didn’t.”
Asked if Stallone has watched the movie yet, Farrelly said the 80-year-old watched it alone.
“It was nerve-wracking because he (Stallone) saw it alone. And this is a great movie with a crowd. I didn’t know how he was going to take it,” Farrelly said. “But he loved it. Thank god.”
Stallone was an obscure actor before pitching the story and stubbornly refused to let studios cast anyone but him in the role.
The film was nominated for 10 Oscars and won three.
Anthony Ippolito plays Stallone in “I play Rocky”, portraying the actor’s determination to become an actor and capturing his gravelly voice, muscular physique, while also recreating the iconic scene on Philadelphia’s Rocky steps.
The film will be brought to theaters by Amazon’s MGM Studios in the U.S. and by Elevation Pictures in Canada.
(Reporting by Nivedita Balu in Toronto; Editing by Kim Coghill)
