Sly

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Do I have regrets? Hell yeah, I have regrets.

But that also is what

motivates me to overcome the regrets.

To, like, fix it.

And I do that through painting, or I do that through writing.

'Cause I can't fix it physically.

It's gone.

You know, that fucking thing called time.

Just…

Gone. You know, I look at… Like, of you're ever on a train,

in every window… …scenery is going by.

It's like a photo. Wham, wham, wham.

And you're never coming that way again.

And that's what your life is. Whoosh!

Snapping images seen whipping by.

And you can't… It's gone.

It's really easy to become complacent.

I thought, "I gotta do something drastic."

Everything is getting kind of mundane, repetitive.

I can feel myself withering a little bit, drying up,

like an old fig that fell off a tree. You know, you're drying up.

Jesus, what am I gonna be around for? Another 20 years?

I don't wanna be complacent for 20 years.

So I said, "Well, you really want to get the adrenals going?"

"Leave."

And that's why I gotta move east.

Nothing, I think, inspires you than taking your house or your history,

balling it up. You know…

Who is this man, Sylvester Stallone?

Artist, writer, poet, performer,

enormous celebrity.

How does that happen?

Sly is a guy who always will go down his own path.

And if that path doesn't exist, he'll run the road himself.

He was a self-creator.

Ostensibly, he didn't appear to be a great actor.

He didn't have obvious charisma.

But he invented something else.

An actor who writes and directs himself.

He's not the first person to do it, but he was the first superstar to do it.

He really understood what people wanted to see him do.

I was invested in the Stallone story

as if it were my story.

It was my daydream of… of what could happen in a career.

There is no one that has stepped into three franchises.

The genius behind that.

This was not an accident.

Can you show me some of those cassettes that you found while packing up?

Yeah, I got some.

Let's see.

This is New York Times.

Could you do me a favor?

I start off by quoting from your press release,

and then you pick up the story where I leave off. Right? Okay.

"Sylvester Stallone was born in the tough Hell's Kitchen section of New York

in the sweltering summer of 1946."

Holy shit.

I never, ever, ever thought I would come back here.

I was born in Hell's Kitchen. I was New York.

I haven't been here in 65 years.

You guys livin' here?

No, I'm 45th.

-Yeah? -Yeah.

-I used to live here. -You lived in this block here?

-Yeah, absolutely. -What was the neighborhood like then?

-It was rough. -Yeah?

Well, it was really Hell's Kitchen back then. Yeah.

I remember, the window was always open.

So you learn a lot about human nature,

and you're observing life.

You're watching a movie.

"Hey, when you coming over?" "I'm coming over tomorrow."

"Shut your friggin' window."

It's back and forth.

I remember my father, like, always wearing, like, an Italian T-shirt,

and, like, just… it looked like something out of an Arthur Miller play.

View from the Bridge, it was… That's my life.

My father came to New York. That's where he met my mother.

He's a barber transitioning into "cosmetology"

'cause there was more money as a hairdresser.

Our father was also very self-conscious because I don't think he was educated.

Any kind of slight or insult would, like…

He'd go off.

Our mother was pretty bad too.

She was pretty handy with the old hairbrush and the shower brush.

She had long nails that'd never break. She'd go, "Come here, you!"

My mother was a cigarette girl at Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe.

That's primarily where the money was coming from.

My father told me that… she just was afraid to have a kid.

Even though she was nine months pregnant, she kept riding around on the bus.

And she'd gone into labor.

Somebody smart enough to get her off the bus,

they carry her into a charity ward.

And that's where I was brought into the world,

via this accident,

which kind of paralyzed all the nerves on the side of my mouth.

So I was born with this snarl.

She was quite eccentric, colorful,

very, very, very outspoken and unpredictable.

I know I've got a certain kind of…

ferocity from my father, no question.

Our mother and father, it was like clockwork.

I'd be up in bed, and you'd just hear them screaming and yelling.

My father…

And I was petrified… 'cause, I mean, I could just feel the reverberation.

I think they both were so self-absorbed with their own stuff, my parents,

that they just pawned us off.

The majority of the time I was living in a boarding house.

Basically 12 months a year,

never went home, 'cause they just didn't have time.

They were both working.

And people say, "Oh, you feel deprived and you weren't nurtured."

I thought, "Yeah, that's true."

And maybe the nurturing comes from

the respect and love of strangers.

To feel embraced and loved

by an audience,

it's insatiable.

I wish I could get over it, but… you can't.

I think movies for me and him were total, absolutely escapism.

I would spend untold hours in theaters, and I don't care what it was,

I'd sit there and watch this thing five, six times

and then go home at four in the afternoon.

That's the life I wanted to lead. That's the ideals. Grandeur.

That's hard work, and triumphs over evil.

I always had hero worship.

I wish I could be the guy who saved the bus full of children.

That's who I want to be. I want to be the guy who

saves people.

I would stay alone in my parents' room,

and they had a cheap Woolworth's three-dollar, $2.99 mirror.

I would sit there and do things all day in the mirror,

whether it be imitation…

While someone is singing, I'm lip-syncing.

Or go see a movie like Hercules,

and I'd come back and try to imitate Steve Reeves.

The moment in Hercules Unchained, when he steps up,

and he pulls the temples down,

and this… ridiculously handsome,

well-built, perfect male role model…

That did it.

I go, "There it is. That's the road."

'Cause I finally had a role model that I idolized.

And my destiny to fulfill!

My father realized he's not going to make it in New York,

so they took off to Maryland.

We came from broken marriage.

I mean, I came home from school and no one was home.

My mother had taken off.

They went to court. It was terrible.

I went with my mother in Philadelphia,

and my brother stayed with my father in Maryland.

Complete country and crickets, pretty isolated,

and there were only horses.

I've been… For some reason, I had an affinity with horses

since I was five or six years old.

Not good horses, just horses my father would buy.

Twenty dollars, $25.

He didn't have much money, but somehow he got involved with a polo team.

And everyone in polo had beautiful horses, great trailers, ranches.

We had a… …a dump.

The horses, most of 'em had medical problems.

Some of 'em, if you pulled up too quickly, they'd go blind.

So I started playing polo,

but sandlot kind of polo, like, low level.

But I learned. Anyway, I started getting better and better and better.

And then when I was 13, I was starting to get ranked.

I'm gonna get nationally ranked.

My father

wasn't liking that so much.

And in the middle of a game,

I was going for a nearside backhand,

and I didn't do anything wrong,

he goes, "You're pulling too hard on the horse!"

I said, "I know what I'm doing." He goes, "You don't!"

"You don't know what you're riding." Screaming from the stands.

And finally I pulled the horse up to get ready for another throw,

and he comes out of the stands,

grabs me by the throat, throws me on the ground,

takes the horse, and walks off the field.

And I laid there and I went,

"I never want to see a horse again in my whole life."

I was raised by a very…

physical father. You know? I mean…

So I was no stranger to serious pain.

And I think it just became, "I'm not gonna break."

No matter what he did, you know? I'm just not going to break.

I think my father was jealous.

My brother, he was a problem guy.

He was truant. He'd get in fights.

He wasn't a good student, and he got thrown out of all his schools.

I went to 13 schools in 12 years.

They put me in a military school. I don't think I was there for a month.

Well, he was kind of incorrigible. He got in a lot of trouble.

He went to Devereux School,

which was kind of a school for wayward kids, I guess.

And that's where he kind of started getting the little bug for acting.

And then he went to college.

That's when he got serious about the acting stuff.