'I Play Rocky' director raves about Sylvester Stallone

Peter Farrelly is making the film on the behind the scenes of Sylvester Stallone's Rocky, which shot the actor to stardom, titled I Play Rocky.

Sharing a few details about the project, the Green Book director gushed about the writer of his biopic on the struggles of the First Blood star. 

"It's one of the best scripts I've ever read. The guy who wrote it, Peter Gamble, came out of the blue. The guy teaches at USC. Toby Emmerich gave it to me, he's a producer on it," he told Variety.

He continued, "And he said, 'Hey, read this script. I think it's special.' It's about the making of Rocky, and there's a lot that I didn't know. Stallone was homeless when he wrote that script, he was living in Penn Station, and he was doing ******* ****. He was broke. He had to sell his dog."

"He goes, “No, I play Rocky.” And they said, “OK, we’ll give you 50 grand.” This is a homeless guy. And there is a “no.” It got up to 350 grand, and they said, “Take it and walk away,” Peter referred to the 78-year-old's efforts to convince the studio on backing his film which later won the Academy Award. 

“I’m not doing that. I want this movie.” So they gave him the movie to do it, but he had to sign a contract that if he got one day behind on the shooting, he’s out — and he agreed to that."

"So they kind of sabotaged him. On the first day of the shoot, the studio said, “We need the exterior shot,” so they did every running shot in that movie on day one. He ran 18 miles. He ended up in the hospital. Day 2 was punching the meat. The meat is supposed to be cold, but no, it was frozen rock solid. He said, “No, this has to be thawed out," the 67-year-old noted.

'They said, “Well we could thaw with hair dryers, but it’s gonna take three hours.” He’s said, “Let’s do it” and broke both of his hands. He went to the hospital four times while making this movie, and he had four weeks to make it with $1 million. He did it."

"So this guy went from homeless to winning the Oscar. The character Rocky had a job at the beginning and he didn’t win the fight. He lasted in the fight. To me, this is a better story," Peter concluded.