Rocky

A script born from a real fight

Sylvester Stallone wrote the script after watching Chuck Wepner, a little-known New Jersey heavyweight, last into the fifteenth round against Muhammad Ali in March 1975. He refused to sell it unless he played the lead. Producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff agreed, on a budget of about one million dollars. The film grossed around 225 million worldwide and won three Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director for John G. Avildsen and Best Film Editing.

Boxing on screen

The fights do not aim for documentary accuracy. Rocky is a southpaw who takes a lot of punishment and keeps walking forward, the kind of brawler every club coach has trained at some point. The opening bout against Spider Rico was shot without choreography, which gives it the scrappy look of small-hall fight nights of the era. The final fight, by contrast, was written out punch by punch by Stallone; he and Carl Weathers, a former professional American football player, were both injured during the shoot.

What anyone who trains will recognise first is the preparation: pre-dawn roadwork, raw eggs, skipping rope, bag work and the sides of beef Rocky pounds in a butcher's cold store. The run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, shot with Garrett Brown's Steadicam, still draws runners and tourists every day; a Rocky statue was placed there in 1982. Joe Frazier, heavyweight champion from 1970 to 1973, makes a cameo as himself.

Why watch it today

The film is less about winning than about dignity: a man who wants to prove, to himself first, that he is not a bum. Mickey, the trainer played by Burgess Meredith, is the old gym coach who has seen it all and has run out of patience. The relationship with Adrian, played by Talia Shire, carries as much weight as the boxing. Bill Conti's theme, "Gonna Fly Now", is still the soundtrack of training sessions across generations.

Rocky launched six films and then the Creed trilogy. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2006, and it holds a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.