01/27/2024
Stallone was a huge star when he was playing John Rambo in the 1980s.
Years earlier, and well before his massive fame (on March 24th 1975), he'd watched the Muhammad Ali and Check Wepner fight on television. Later that night he started writing a first draft of the script for Rocky, which took him less than a week to finish.
He tried to sell that first movie of his to just about every major Hollywood studio, with the intention of playing the lead himself, but nobody would agree (Winkler-Chartoff Productions ultimately offered him more than $265,000 just for the rights, with plans for someone like Robert Redford or Burt Reynolds to take it on).
Sly had been a minor actor up until that point, so it was presumptuous, actually unheard of, for him to think that he might be able to get his script sold with himself attached in a lead role.
In an interview with the BBC in 1977, Sly said that at that time he had $106 in his bank account, a $300 apartment rent that was many months overdue, as well as a pregnant wife, and a hungry bullmastiff who he couldn't afford to feed.
Eventually, he closed a deal, and while he accepted a substantial budget cut to compromise and act as the lead, the rest is history. Including Sly's $20,000 retainer to make the film, it cost the studio $960,000 in total to produce Rocky.
Sly said that as inspiration for the movie, he had simply taken his own plight (that he couldn't get a break in life), which he didn't think was unique, and applied it to boxing.
Rocky was inspirational in part because his character refused to give up. He had a goal, and even though it seemed impossible, he had the grit and determination to keep working towards it until the end (just as Sly did with his script and goals for his film and career).
All of this to say: Very few things in life are truly unachievable.
In my work, I often hear suggestions from others that buying a home today is impossible for first-time buyers, given market conditions. That's not true. Don't let anyone convince you that home ownership today is "impossible." It's certainly more challenging than ever before, but worth goal-setting around and planning to achieve, if you really want it.