Stallone’s New York Homecoming Brings Kafka and Central Park Zoo Into the Ring

In a rather unexpected twist, the action movie star Sylvester Stallone brought up Franz Kafka during his conversation at 92nd Street Y.“I don’t know how many people are familiar with Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis?’” Mr. Stallone asked, turning to a packed auditorium inside the cultural community center at Uptown Manhattan. The night before the release of his memoir, “The Steps,” which hit shelves on Tuesday, Mr. Stallone chose to appear for a talk in New York, where he was born 80 years ago in 1946. “He’s a cockroach,” Mr. Stallone explained, referring to the main character in Kafka’s novella, Gregor Samsa, who wakes up transformed into an insect. “But inside, he’s still human.”Franz Kafka had come up because moderator, CBS Sunday Morning host Tracy Smith, had asked about Mr. Stallone’s latest television series “Tulsa King,” where he plays the gangster Dwight “The General” Manfredi. In preparation for the role, Mr. Stallone asked himself, “What if I had a metamorphosis? What if Sylvester Stallone woke up a gangster, but you still had the same personality you went to bed with?” In the series, an Italian mobster is released from prison after serving 25 years for murder. He is sent from his native New York to Tulsa, Oklahoma to build a crime empire there. However, after two decades behind bars, he feels entirely out of touch with society, modern technology, and what has become of the criminal underworld.It took Hollywood more than 50 years to consider him “Italian enough” to play an Italian mobster. When he was 25 years old, Ms. Smith recalled, he was turned down as an extra for the 1972 movie “The Godfather.” Mr. Stallone added that he had auditioned for the guy “who stands behind the wedding cake,” and didn’t get the part because he didn’t appear “Italian enough.” This rejection was ironic given his authentic Italian American heritage. His father, Frank Stallone Sr., was an Italian immigrant, and his mother, Jackie Stallone, of Ukrainian-Jewish descent. On Monday, he told the audience that he never “fit into Hollywood,” noting, “it was like: ‘What is that? Where do you come from?’” He admitted that he didn’t like to socialize, saying, “I just liked to be alone and write and paint.”When “Rocky” won three Oscars in 1977 for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing, he was completely surprised. The other films competing that year, such as Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” and Alan J. Pakula’s “All the President’s Men” were movies with a social message. “I wasn’t sure what the statement of ‘Rocky’ was,” he said, musing that the drama about a working-class boxer who gets a once-in-a-lifetime shot at the heavyweight championship is ultimately a love story. “Never give up on love,” Mr. Stallone said with a smile.Producers initially offered him $360,000 to let another actor play Rocky Balboa, but he firmly insisted on playing the part himself. Despite the film’s success, Hollywood never seemed to fully value his artistic talents. He was never cast as King Lear or Macbeth. For years, comedians such as Robin Williams and Steve Soogan performed stand-up sketches, imitating the “To be or not to be” soliloquy in ‘Hamlet,” in his signature, slurred action hero voice.Instead of Shakespeare, he starred in the “Rambo” franchise as John Rambo, a traumatized Vietnam War veteran who struggles with severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder while possessing unparalleled survival skills.But he didn’t seem to mind. He described action films as “modern mythology,” noting that they are often “frowned upon” and wrongly considered “subservient to drama.” He argued that when they are done properly, they offer “pure escapism.” Dressed in a brown suit that he constantly fiddled with by adjusting the front edges of the jacket, he was acutely aware of his audience, like an animal hunting for prey. He made people laugh, landed sharp punchlines with his anecdotes, and even enjoyed a few moments of shock-and-awe.For example, he described his father as a “scary, tough guy” and recalled eating dinner with him somewhere “in the country.” Suddenly, his father spotted a pheasant. He put his fork down, grabbed his shotgun, shot the bird, brought it into the kitchen, snapped off its neck, and ate the uncooked, raw meat with his bare hands. “He was a different breed,” Mr. Stallone told Ms. Smith, who was cringing in her seat.Before his big breakthrough in 1977, he was an out-of-work actor whom no one wanted to hire. Ms. Smith asked him about sleeping on pizza boxes, and he joked it wasn’t too bad when he found leftovers. Stallone’s early struggle involved taking all kinds of odd jobs just to survive in New York. Most notoriously, he spent several weeks cleaning out the lion cages at the Central Park Zoo from 5:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The stench of the natural ammonia was so pungent that it caused his eyes to water and forced him to jump into the shower with his clothes still on because he couldn’t afford a laundromat. He ultimately quit because showing up to casting agencies smelling heavily of lion urine was destroying his chances of getting hired.The host avoided asking about his first wife, Sasha Czack, whom he was actually living with in Los Angeles, when he wrote the first “Rocky” script while she was pregnant with their first child. Somehow, the narrative surrounding his breakthrough has often placed him in the gutters of New York City, where he had lived before he moved to California. Regardless of the city and woman at his side, he was 29-years old and had no career, which he compared to “being a 150-year-old pole dancer.”Mr. Stallone’s book “The Steps,” he explained, is about his journey and the literal “steps” he took to climb out of that misery. “It’s important, especially if you’re going after something, to be almost impervious to any other person’s opinion, because you’re going into uncharted waters,” he said. “I believe you have to be almost self-imposed deaf, dumb, and blind… Until you realize maybe what I’m going for isn’t worth it, but at least you made the pursuit… And that’s what I wanted people to read in the book.” He paused and added, “It’s not for everybody… I had no reverse. I had nothing to go back to.” The story of “Rocky,” a man who has nothing and gives everything, has resonated around the world for decades. Mr. Stallone has masterfully retold the struggle across different ages and social standings in every one of his “Rocky” sequels. In “Creed,” Rocky has become the trainer, and the boxer is not a poor street kid from Philadelphia, but the wealthy son of the boxing legend Apollo Creed. The fundamental idea, the underdog spirit, the fight against all odds always remains the same. The audience welcomed Mr. Stallone with a standing ovation, chanting “Rocky, Rocky, Rocky” when he stepped onto, and off, the stage. One woman traveled all the way from Puerto Rico just to see him. “No one loves him like I do,” 60-year-old Minerva Muñoz from Aguada told The Sun after the event, overcome by tears. “No one, no one.“I didn’t care what the plane tickets cost,” Mrs. Muñoz said. “I didn’t care about nothing,” she said. “He is worth more than I am.” She added, “He has inspired so many and he is so handsome.”At the event, moderator Ms. Smith asked the audience how many of them would have taken the $360,000, thereby giving up the opportunity to star in “Rocky.” Not a single hand went up.

Stallone’s New York Homecoming Brings Kafka and Central Park Zoo Into the Ring

Stallone’s New York Homecoming Brings Kafka and Central Park Zoo Into the Ring

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