1. The film was shot in just 28 days with a budget of just $ 1.1 million. It grossed a whopping 225 million worldwide and won three Oscars (Film, Direction and Editing) against 10 nominations.
2. The iconic Philadelphia Art Museum stair run scene was shot with the Stedicam, invented just a short time earlier by Garrett Brown. 3. Rocky’s name is actually Robert Balboa but it is never mentioned in the film. We only know from the first scripts of the second 1979 film.
3. Rocky’s name is actually Robert Balboa but it is never mentioned in the film. We only know from the first scripts of the second 1979 film.
4. Stallone wrote the script just three days after seeing Muhammad Ali’s meeting with outsider Chuck Wepner. Wepner knocked Ali out in the ninth round and then carried him to the final round where he lost to a technical knockout.
5. The director managed to have the two giant posters with Rocky and Apollo created, even with a small budget, but Rocky’s shorts were made in red while in the film they were white. So Stallone made up the joke that they were wrong.
6. The dog in the film “Butkus” (Birillo in Italian) was really Stallone’s. Stallone sold it for $ 40 when he had no money left to survive, but after selling the script for “Rocky” he bought it back for … $ 15,000!
7. To save money, all the scenes in which Stallone runs were shot without asking permission and there are no extras but real passers-by, unaware of stars to end up in an iconic film.
8. The unforgettable scene between Rocky and Adriana in an ice rink was supposed to take place in a restaurant, but the director liked the idea and was thus rewritten entirely. Stallone wanted hundreds of extras around them but only one was hired for the budget!
9. In this film the Italian voice of Rocky is by Gigi Proietti and not by Ferruccio Amendola as in the sequels up to Rocky V.
10. Stallone was nominated for an Academy Award for Lead Actor and Screenwriter. He is the third ever to have two such nominations for the same film, after Charlie Chaplin (The Great Dictator) and Orson Welles (Fourth Estate).
11. In a first idea Rocky left the ring in the final not to remain in the world of boxing in which he did not recognize himself.
12. In the film there is no scene in which Rocky and Adriana go to the locker room together in the finale but it was shot and the image used for the posters.
13. Boxer Ken Norton was taken as Apollo Creed but dropped out shortly before filming to enter the ABC superstar contest. Thus was taken to the last Carl Weathers.
14. Frank Stallone (Sly’s father) is the ringside timekeeper, while Frank Jr. (Sly’s brother) is the guy who greets Rocky as he comes home with Adriana for the first time.
15. The production wanted at all costs a famous name as the protagonist (Robert Redford, Ryan O’Neal, James Caan or Burt Reynolds) but Stallone would never have given up the script if he hadn’t played Rocky.
ilcinegico.com