Research Paper On Rocky Balboa

The ultimate movie thrill is the sight of an underdog coming through on top after facing what seems like the world. While that description is a little stretched to apply to Rocky, I do not know if there is a more iconic underdog story. The film tells the story of the neighborhood club boxer, from 1975 Philadelphia, Rocky Balboa who is given a long shot against the world heavy-weight champion Apollo Creed. The film Rocky is an accurate representation of the times in every aspect; not only is it based off of real people and real events, but the film itself was a real “underdog”.

The movie depicts Rocky living in pretty poor conditions in Philadelphia, which for the most part seems to be done intentionally to create the classic “rags to

riches” story that attracts the movie-goers. However, there are a number of occasions where the filmmakers did not originally intend for Rocky to look like he was so down on his luck. In reality, the movie was low on time and/or money, and in order to make it work they portrayed these shortfalls upon Rocky since he already had enough of them that it looked normal. The average film budget in 1968, just two years after Rocky, was $5 million dollars. However, Rocky did not even come close to that, as it was originally allotted $2 million which was later reduced to $1 million when Sylvester Stallone insisted he would not produce the film unless he starred as Rocky. Because of this, the film was shot in 28 days and a number of shortfalls could not be corrected with the time and money constraints.
These shortfalls included Rocky taking his friend Paulie’s sister on a date to an ice skating rink after hours on Thanksgiving. Originally, the scene was supposed to be during normal business hours but the film could not afford it. Likewise, when the movie poster came out it was made with Rocky wearing red shorts with a white stripe, but in the film he actually wore white shorts with a red stripe. No time or money could be spent to correct this, so instead a scene was placed in the film pointing out this mistake with Rocky saying that it was okay. Similarly, Rocky’s pre-fight robe was not supposed to be too big for him, but when it came in that way they had to make due and again worked it into the script. Through all of this, the film, just like it’s main character, pulled through and became larger than they had ever hoped. After being produced on just $1 million, Rocky came to gross $117 million in domestic box office sales and roughly $225 million worldwide. Not only that, but it has come to produce 5 sequels each grossing in the same ballpark amount, which is remarkable for a film especially when it is not based off of a book series.
The main character of Rocky was also inspired by real boxers from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

The first is where Rocky received his nickname and ethnicity, from the boxer Rocky Marciano. Marciano was an Italian boxer whose prime was in the 1950s, and he was the only boxing champion to ever go undefeated. The second boxer influence was the “Bayonne Bleeder” Chuck Wepner. Wepner, after having a string of eight wins in his mid-30s, was given a long shot, just like Balboa, to go against the heavyweight champion. At the time this was originally going to be George Foreman, until Muhammad Ali took him out and won the title. Still, Wepner was able to have the shot against Ali and proved that he was able to go against the odds of 40-1. Wepner did not actually win, but he was able to last into the 15th round and was knocked out with only 19 seconds left on the clock. After seeing this, Stallone was inspired and transferred some of that inspiration to Rocky and the events during the climactic match against Creed. While the¬¬¬¬¬se fighters were given credit for inspiring Rocky, I believe the biggest influence to Rocky was Joe

Frazier.
In his fighting career, Joe Frazier is considered one of the longest shots to have become heavyweight champion. Compared to other young boxers bound for greatness, young Joe Frazier did not seem to show anything that would hint at later greatness. His original boxing instructor thought he was “just another fat kid who would quit after a couple of days.” Joe had a shortened reach due to a work related accident as a child and failed every eye test he was given, and both of these were indicators that he would not become great. For Frazier to become a heavyweight champion was an even longer shot than for Rocky. Rocky could have probably passed the eye tests, and his trainer Mickey even claimed that he saw wasted talent in Rocky.
Like Rocky, Frazier struggled to make ends meet as he worked on his dad’s farm from the age of six and then later moved to Philadelphia, where Rocky was from, with his brother and worked in a slaughterhouse. Here, Frazier would work long shifts and, while thinking about boozing, would occasionally practice his punching on some of the surrounding meat carcasses. Rocky does this same thing in the movie, although he does not work there, and Rocky rather than Frazier has become known for it. Similarly, Frazier used to train by running up the Philadelphia Art Museum steps and in the movie Rocky did the same thing, again becoming iconic for it. Also Joe Frazier’s fighting style of being big and bulky, gorilla, or steam engine-like could be seen in Rocky, as Rocky would keep trucking forward in the fight. So between the fighting style, the iconic training methods, and the longest of shots, I think Frazier is probably the biggest real-life influence on the character of Rocky.
Likewise, Apollo Creed was inspired by the big mouthed, pretty boy boxer Muhammad Ali. While of course known for his boxing skills, Muhammad Ali was probably better known for his big mouth and cocky attitude. He was all about trying the show the business part of the fight, as he knew that would attract a crowd. Creed, leading up to the fight, is shown mainly with his promoter while trying to find a replacement fighter, and after doing so a way to make it a sellout. For example, framing the fight as an underdog shot and a gift in the land of opportunity while celebrating one of the nation’s biggest birthdays during the Bicentennial, a real 1976 event in Philadelphia. This mentality of finding a way to promote the fight was very characteristic of Ali, though he probably would have done so by finding interesting ways to insult his opponent instead. Creed even called the round when he would knock out Rocky while ignoring his trainers’ requests to watch Rocky on TV, as Creed was so confident in the fight. This was also very typical of Ali, as he often baffled reporters with his predictions of the fights.
Thankfully, Creed was a little more respectable in some manners than Ali. Against his biggest rival Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali took out some of his worst insults and hurled them at him. While Frazier almost invited this by saying Ali need not hold back, Frazier and his family could not help but feel hurt after some of Ali’s insults such as calling Frazier an ‘Uncle Tom”, which was one of the worst insults a black man could be called during that time. Also, Ali seemed to be much more egotistical than Creed, as Ali’s trainer would actually go out of his way to make Ali think that he was the one coming up with all the ideas in order for him to take them seriously. Creed does not appear to be quite so bad as that, but at the same time we really do not see a whole lot of him before the fight and he did not seem worried at all about the fight against Rocky, implying some level of overconfidence.
Another example of how historically accurate the movie stayed was Rocky’s second job as a collector for a local loan shark.

Now while loan sharking was not necessarily huge during the 1970s, it was being used in Philadelphia at the time. This is because Angelo Bruno, the Gentle Don, was the boss of the Philadelphia crime family at the time. He preferred to avoid violence, as his nickname suggests, and liked to use older methods of money making such as loan sharking or bootlegging. So it would be definitely possible and probable that some unskilled muscle such as Rocky could end up helping out the loan sharks. What is even more characteristic, though, is how well the movie depiction of the loan-sharking world seems to portray the era of the Gentle Don. In one scene, Rocky is sent to collect, and though he is supposed to break the man’s finger if he cannot pay, the kind hearted Rocky does not do it. When his boss finds out, rather than taking it out against Rocky, he just tells Rocky to let him do the thinking instead, which seems like pretty weak reprimanding from a crime family.

Even Paulie, Rocky’s friend who sets Rocky up with his sister Adrian, wants to go work for the boss rather than work his current job in the meat processing plant. This is in part because working for the boss, known as Tony Gazzo, seems to pretty good from what we see in the movie. The other half of the story is that Paulie is going crazy in the meat processing plant he works in. This is

not surprising, as studies have shown that butchers have significantly higher levels of psychopathology due to their jobs. Paulie’s sudden outbursts, mood swings, and alcoholism all appear to be from his job in the movie.
So looking back Rocky was very easily representative of its time primarily because it was actually filmed at the times. However in the larger scale it was representative of even more. It was representative of the real boxers from the decades before it. It was representative of the working conditions working under a loan shark in Philadelphia and working in a meat processing plant. Finally, the film was even characteristic of the story it was trying to tell, going from a low budget nobody to a multimillion dollar franchise with a now 6th sequel coming out in November 2015 following Apollo Creed’s grandson.