Rocky and Rambo Toys and Videogames Mini-Retrospect

[00:00:00] This podcast is a production of Unfiltered Studios. If you would like to know more about joining Unfiltered Studios, please visit our website at unfpod.com for more information. And you write Rocky and the studios like it. You finally get acceptance and they say, okay, look, we don't want, you say, I want to be the star of this movie. And they go, look, man, you're nobody. That's true. And you turn down how much money for them to just buy the film and put, I don't know, who'd they want to put in there to start?

[00:00:27] They want to put Ryan O'Neill, Jimmy Conn. They wanted to put Nick Nolte. Did people say to you, listen, Sylvester, you'll get your chance to act. Sell the movie. Make some money. Including my agents. They said, are you crazy? This is ridiculous money. $360,000 by standards back then? No. I said, look, guys, I really mastered the method of living on nothing, of eating basically cobwebs. And it's okay. I'm not, I know in my mind, if I sell it now and it becomes good. You'll kill yourself.

[00:00:55] I will kill myself. How long, how long did you have to hold that? In other words, they said to you, here's $360,000 for Wright and Rocky. Go away and leave us alone. About, about three months. But to the, here's what's different in Hollywood. The producers there went against the system and had to mortgage their own houses. Mortgage their houses to get the money up and get the studio behind in the bond to guarantee. Try that today. Yeah. Good luck. Who did you pressure, like who was, what studio and who was the studio? United Artists. United Artists.

[00:01:25] And they sat down, you said, we love your script, but you cannot do this. Yeah, but who are you? And you said, I'm walking away from $360,000. So when did you get the call that finally, okay, we'll let you start it? Did you have to go audition for them? No, what it is, is they finally broke it down and said, we can do this film. If you're going to be in it, we have a 14, no, it was a 14 day thing where we can fire you anytime if you do anything wrong. And, and more importantly, we can reduce it down to 900 grand all in. And if you can do this thing in under 30 days, okay.

[00:01:53] If not, it's, it's over. So you shoot the whole thing in, uh, 28 days, 28 days, the whole first Rocky. The whole thing. Unbelievable. I know it is. Why can't I do that every time? What happened? Because it becomes too important. It becomes too important. If you would just knock out movies like that without all that. And that is the truth. You got spoiled. No, but it is. But you're afraid of failure in a sense. I know. It's like, what happened? It's great when you're working out there and you're just changing the back of a pickup truck at all. There's a certain kind of energy about it.

[00:02:22] And you don't become so caught up in my right angle, my makeup, this and that. And things happen that are so visceral. But you're right. As we become more pampered, more spoiled, more reserved, we take a little larynge into the set. Right. And you know what? You lose your edge. You lose your edge. There's no doubt about it. Everyone's best work. When you were starving. Five years. How long did it take you to write Rocky? I mean, literally sit down and start writing it. Well, it took about, this will sound pretentious, but it took three days, of which 90% was terrible.

[00:02:50] But the German, the idea was there. Right. That was it. And then after that, it took maybe 25 rewrites. You have to keep going. Like one day, you'll say, can we make the black guy Jamaican? Can we make this guy? So you have to make, okay, man. You have to change all the dialogue. Awesome. And then you come back, pow, pow. Two and three. Bam. Big. We missed. We loaded it. We edited it.

[00:03:20] Sometimes we get so deep into conversation that we have separate segments worthy of their own place in the sun. is a reshuffled mini episode.

[00:03:37] What I'm fascinating, and Cam, let me know if you're going to be talking about this later,

[00:04:18] is that Rambo, despite being one of those video game-y movies, has never had a good video game. It's actually... Well, it's a contra. Yeah, well, exactly. Contra fucking ruled. But the games that actually are called Rambo, some of the lowest rated games ever have been Rambo games. There was an original NES game that sucked. There was a not-too-long-ago on-rails shooter that was completely panned. It's just amazing for such an action-heavy film that all video games based on it have just been garbage.

[00:04:48] But you're right, Contra is the best one, and it's not even... It's more of a predator-type movie. I mean, they basically stole the artwork. Most video games based off shows have never really been too successful, have they?

[00:04:59] That's the problem. They don't hire the right people, and they rush it. And yeah, there was a PC game that was pretty much made fun of. It wasn't very interactive. It was glitchy.

[00:05:29] But yeah, I only dug the 2008 arcade game, where you actually got to shoot like them and everything.

[00:06:25] Fortunately, though, Rocky has had some good video games. I've heard good stuff about the 2002 game. The people who worked on that later worked on Rocky Legends, and that's just it. The way you progressed, you could unlock all your favorite fighters. Think you can beat this Italian tank? Come on!

[00:07:14] I know they did a Creed video game. Yeah. That's some decent... You know, I'm thinking like more... Rated T for Teen.

[00:07:42] You know, you want to take a day off. Sorry, Rock. Just thinking about what it took to get here. Good. One step at a time. One punch at a time. One round at a time. You're ready for this.

[00:08:09] It's about how hard you can get here and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done.

[00:08:39] More recently, has McFarlane toys ever got their hands on Rambo or Rocky? Let's see. I can't... I've seen Rocky... They've redone the Rocky line. Yep. With Stallone's permission. There's even some Etsy customs, yeah. Yeah. Those I probably wouldn't mind getting a look at. But yeah, you're right. There is a McFarlane from Movie Maniacs toy line. Yeah. But they have Rocky in the golden black trunks.

[00:09:07] They have Apollo Creed with his patriotic... Patriotic one. You know, Uncle Samuel form. They've got Clubber Lang and that was done right. They have Ivan Drago who looked... That one is like... It's awesome. It should come with a press on the back saying, I must break you. He dies, he dies. That is a total 80s workout tape. Oh, my God. He dies, he dies. This is the top one ever. But I think that's the thing that blew me out of the water. When they started to make these customs for Rocky from some of these companies, it's like, how much?

[00:09:37] What the fuck? Yeah, I'm not paying that much. Yeah. I even have actual boxing gloves that are Rocky style that goes to 300. And you're like, good grief. Okay. This is the one I hit the Drago with. This is the one I hit Clubber Lang with. This is the one I hit... Yeah, I was going to buy an art book recently, but it's too fucking expensive. Did you guys ever see Eddie Murphy in... I think it was Raw when he talks about

[00:10:07] watching the last Rocky movie. Yes. All these Italian guys are going, yo, slot. Yo, yo, slot, man. Yo, this next movie, he kicks this... He says this bad Italian word for black people. And he's like... Thank you for your self-help. Yeah, this movie motherfucker, he beats the shit out of him. And like, yo, I'm standing there, you stand there, I'm standing there lying, there's this people going, this is a tiny white man.

[00:10:35] A man was found with a popcorn box shoved up his ass today. Yeah. Oh, that's what was cool too. You saw so many celebs commenting on the franchises. Like, it was cool to kind of have... Not only people going, hey, I like it, but also, I get it. I get why it's... It was in the zeitgeist, man. It was a big... We'll return after these messages. All right, folks,

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