Adversity is perpetual is it not? Suffering is the one constant of life. We always hope we can ward it off for good with one more possession, one more date, one more holiday, one more, one more, one more…
Our religion tells us that “the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” So, it would appear that suffering is a feature, not a flaw, of life. Since the Fall, at any rate.
If then we are bound to suffer, should we not strive all the harder to use that suffering, use it to create better versions of ourselves, to forge a better world around us, or even.. to make better art? Lord knows we need better art these days.
Modern Hollywood is the elephant’s graveyard of all that is good and holy, it is the greasy green stain underneath the toilet seat of the world, it is to children’s entertainment as John Wayne Gacy is to children’s entertainment. It was not always so; in between excreting propaganda from its seven heads and seven bowels it did accidentally make a few good movies in the past, and one of those is the original Rocky. Why is that film so good? I would suggest that it’s got a lot to with the fact that its inception was found in the midst of deep personal suffering.
Sylvester Stallone was born of an ectopic pregnancy, he was pulled out with forceps and a nerve in his neck was severed, giving his face that characteristic slight drop to one side, and lending him his iconic drawl. None of this would be a major problem, except for the fact he chose on acting as his career. Hard as it is to believe in 2021, actors back in the 1970s were expected to be able to act. Strange, but true. Having a less than fully functioning face is a bit of a handicap to expressing emotions with your face, or so casting directors in the 70s felt at any rate, because Stallone went to literally thousands of auditions over the course of several years and got no roles except for non-speaking bit parts.
He became poor. He became poorer. He did stupid things. His wife left him. He couldn’t feed his dog, so he had to sell his dog. He loved his dog. Things looked hopeless. At no point did he even consider giving up and getting a grown-up job though. Is that wise? No. Is that the Christian thing to do? Probably not. But it does demonstrate a certain stoic resignation to circumstance, and a very masculine urge to overcome circumstance.
Anyway, as his life reached its very lowest point, Stallone was in a bar watching the boxing in 1975, and on the TV that night he witnessed something that simply wasn’t supposed to happen, he watched as the massive underdog Chuck Wepner knocked Muhammad Ali to the canvas. For a moment the world held its breath, this was about to be one of the greatest sporting upsets of all time, and then Ali being the man he was, stood right back up and proceeded to mercilessly beat Wepner around that ring like a redheaded step-child. Though Wepner did one other unexpected thing that night, he didn’t stay down when he hit the canvas either, he didn’t get knocked out, and he never give up, he kept fighting a very obviously losing battle until he was finally TKOed in the 15th round.
Stallone was inspired. Here was a story he could resonate with. Here was a story we can all resonate with, because it’s all of our stories, it’s The Story. To suffer, to stumble, and to try our best to stay on our feet for no other reason than we know that that is what a man is here to do, what any Christian is here to do.
Within four days of the fight Stallone had the first draft of Rocky written. See, Sly, he recognized that if no studio would cast him in a movie, he would damn well have to make a movie script so good, that they’d be forced to cast him in the movie, if they wanted to buy it. And buy it they did. And force them to cast him in it against their protestations he did. And as soon as he got paid, he bought his dog back. The dog’s name is Butkus.
Stallone put the dog in the movie.
