Latest / Motivation Mindset Podcast / Sylvester Stallone’s Brutal Truth — The Speech Nobody Dares to Face

Transcript

Sylvester Stallone’s Brutal Truth — The Speech Nobody Dares to Face · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Me or nobody is going to hit as hard as life.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: how hard you can't get hit and keep moving forward,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: how wind it has done. Everybody gets hurt, either metaphorically,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: sabbolically or physically. They get hurt, and you root for
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: that person who gets hurt. Get up because we all
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: get knocked down. And that's just a credle I've followed
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: my whole life. Life is undefeated. You can't beat it.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: What's the matter with you?
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: There is no tomorrow. You just have to go on
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: the defense that inspired the Lion. No one punches harder
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: than life. I felt that, jeez, if I was going
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: to go down into professional obscurity, I wanted to at
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: least have the opportunity to say to myself, what you tried.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: It dawned on me that we basically are in a
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: movie from the time where and then well you get
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: to be around eighteen twenty. You're now the director of
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: your movie, which is called life. And I ask you,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: knowing that if you were in a movie of your
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: own making, would you be proud of the part you're
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: playing I certainly wasn't, and I took drastic steps to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: change all that. The point being, if you're producing this
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: film called you make.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: It the way you want to make it, and.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: To really progress, old skin must be shed before a
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: new skin can grow. I don't know if that makes sense,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: but that's pretty much the truth. You don't like this skin,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: drive it off and become a different character.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: I was raised by.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: A variant as a godfather, you know, I mean, so
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I was no stranger to serious pain, and I think
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: it just became I'm not going to break no matter
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: what he did, you know, I'm just not going to break.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I had a very tumultuous upbringing, rough father, rough everything,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: and I was thin. I just was not genetically what
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: you say a mesomorph. I was an ecto morph. And
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I went to see a film one day and it
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: altered my life completely.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: It was Steve Reeves and hercules.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Unchained, and when he struck that pose, I had an
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: epiphot of him. That's who I want to be. That's
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: that's a man. That's oh my god. And I ran
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: out of the theater after that and with the junkyard
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: and started lifting little great drums or anything that I
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: could lift. It was like thirty pounds whatever. And I
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: never stopped, and I did build on armor. It was
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: like I felt I could really take care of myself.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I could inflict punishment rather than take punishment.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: And I never stopped. Always had hero worship.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: You know. I wish I could be the guy who
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: saved the bus full of children. That's who I want
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: to be. I want to be the guy who saves people.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: I think everybody here put under the right circumstances, and
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: their children or their wife or entire trouble put their
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: life on the line. I don't give you a kid
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: fall in a tire cage. You wouldn't think twice about
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: jumping in. So everyone has the hero syndrome in them.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: They do.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: You just have to push the right button.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: I used to sit in this little apartment and I
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: was a room. As a matter of fact, the room
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: was so small. Remember I was able to open up
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: the window and close the door while sitting on the
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: bed at the same time. It was like eight feet
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: by eight feet by nine feet. But the one thing
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: about that room there was very little distraction. And he
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: painted the windows black so he could write. I did
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: paint in black because I don't know what time. It
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: didn't matter what time was, Oh it's time for breakfast
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: right away, either railed or so I'll have breakfords that
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: I'm hungry. I don't need to know what time is.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: That kind of thing.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: So I was trying to eliminate all the excuses because
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: it's hard to write. So I would sit there propped
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: up in bed, and I go out with my big
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: pen and legal pad and just start writing these stories.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: And most of them were very, very trivial in it,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: but there was something about the process of unrealized dreams.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: I was always brought back to this subject because I
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: think it's one of the most enduring subjects and one
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: of the most difficult passages for people to accept that
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: they never were realized in their own lifetime, that they
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: just didn't get that shot. The more I thought about
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: this kind of street like character that just is totally
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: miss represented.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: By the way he looks physically. Just the way he.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Walks down the street was enough to say, people, Oh,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: dismiss him. He kind of looks like a bully. It
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: looks like a dark kind of character. And I thought,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: you know, that's an interesting character because they're always unrealized. Well,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: that festered in my mind for quite a while, and
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: then eventually I decided it was a time to come
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: to California. Also went to California and I moved in
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: the valley, and things weren't going very very well there.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, I had.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: To try to sell my dog because it was either
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: do that or he just was not going to be
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: very well fed around the house. I did sell my
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: dog at a seven eleven.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: It was either that or.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: And then one night I went to see a Muhammad
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Ali fight, and what I saw was pretty extraordinary. I
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: saw a man they called the Bayone bleader, who didn't
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: have a chance at all against you know, the greatest
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: fighting machine supposedly that ever lived, slipped level, shot to
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: the level, and for one brief moment, this supposed stumblebum
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: turned out to be magnificent in the fact that he
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: lasted and knocked the champion down. I said, boy, if
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: this isn't a metaphor for life, his entire life crystallized
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: at that moment, he will be remembered for all eternity,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: at least among the fight fans. He did something extraordinary.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: I said, now that that is probably what I need
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: is a catalyst for an idea, a man who's going
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: to stand up to life and take one shot and
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: maybe go the distance. Really don't matter if I it
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: was this flight, really don't matter.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: If this guy opens my.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Head, that's all I want to do is go to distance.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: So I started to write, and it was one of
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: those writing frenzies, and three days later and came.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Up with the script of Rocky.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: At that time, I must admit my life was definitely
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: on the way, at least professionally. I was emotionally, spiritually,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: physically bankrupt, at about one hundred and six dollars in
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the bank. I had a landlorder email landlord. But she
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: was so big that when she came to collect the rent,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: like an entire shadow would cover the building.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: You know, It's like a total eclipse.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: And I mean, I'm not a small man, but she
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: was a vicious individual, and she would have thought nothing
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: about taking my car and bending it in half. And
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: she didn't get her money. And so I had one
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: hundred and six dollars. The rent was three hundred at
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: a pregnant wife. So you might say I had quite
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: a bit of fuel to sit down and write the script.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I wrote the script in about three and a half days,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: and only because I could hear the wolf at the
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: door a little. But here's the caveat. I'd say ninety
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: percent was terrible. I believe in getting something done, no
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: matter how flawed, just to get to the finish line,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: just to get it out, just to get it out,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: because I find the procrastination and diversion is something that
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: writers reveling. Oh I hope that phone rings, you know.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, I hope someone advites me to the beach,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: because or let me see, what would I rather do?
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: A play golf or sit at this desk continually reminding
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: myself of how stupid I am because I can't come
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: up with an idea.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: I feel for writers now.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: The script, by no means was a finished piece of material.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: It was probably about ninety pages, and maybe ten percent
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: of it remained in the final script, but it was done.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: I was on a casting call, so we're talking a
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: little bit, and I guess I really wasn't right for
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the acting part. And on the way out, I said, oh,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it matters, but I do a
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: little bit of writing. He goes really he says, he's yeah,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: I'm writing this story. I have this thing about wrestlers
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: and I might do something of a boxing. Well, he says, well,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: bring it around. And I thought, if I hadn't stopped
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: on the way out. You know, that's why I tell
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: all actors our writers don't give up.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Keep talking.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Eventually you might hit a nerve somewhere and they go, ah,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: come on back. And if they didn't say come on
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: back or bring it later and let's see what you've developed,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't be sitting here. So I have to give
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: incredible credit to their to their insight and their patients,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: and they're willing to take a chance, which it doesn't
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: exist much anymore. Unfortunately, originally when I brought the script
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: to them, they were fairly enthusiastic about it. The one
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: thing they were not enthusiastic about was me playing the part.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: And I really can't blame them. At the time, Ryan
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: O'Neill was a candidate, Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford, Jimmy Kahn,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: and they all were at the top of their game, and.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: So I could see it.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: But there was something inside of me that, you know,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: this opportunity is never going to come around, and I
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: really wasn't used to money, and I had no idea
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: of what I would be missing, but the temptation started
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: to come forward. At first it was twenty five grands
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: and one hundred thousand dollars. I never heard of a
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand because I had like one hundred and six
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: dollars in the bank. And like I said, I had
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: to sell my dog and things were not looking very
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: very good. My forty dollars car had just blown up,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: so I was taking a bus to work.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: And still it didn't matter. I wanted to stick with it.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Then it went up to one hundred and fifty one hundred
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: and seventy five thousand, and went up to two hundred
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: and fifty thousand, and it went up to three hundred
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: and sixty thousand.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Now my head was starting to spend.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: Famous story is that you turned down all this money
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: for the screenplay of Rockey because they wouldn't let you,
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: didn't want.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: You to be in it?
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: Right? No, can you blame one who was You know
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: what I've never heard you talk about is what is
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: in you to be able to turn that down when
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: you don't have anything?
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: It broke man.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: I was.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: I was flat as broke.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: I meane seriously, But it depends how well you know yourself.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I knew my personality that if I sold it that
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: was probably a million plus by today's dollars, a millionaire,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: and someone else did it and it was successful. I
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: would have never forgiven myself. I know, in the back
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: of my mind, if I sell the script and it
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: does very very well, I'm going to jump off a building.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: And if I'm not in it, there's no doubt about it,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave in front of a train.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be very, very upset.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I would have been a broken, embittered man for the
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: rest of my life. So I realized we have in
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: our in our entire futures, about three or four serious crossroads,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: and that was my first one.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: That's a real serious.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Crossroad where this is life altering and it's not about money.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: I know I will be destroyed and I will destroy
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: everyone around me. I'll be such a miserable human being
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: for selling out. This is what the whole movie was about.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: It's not selling out.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: You knew that you would. I know, I just I
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: just know how I work. I know my engine will
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: do and what I would have been dead, because when
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: you're broke. I actually mastered the art of poverty for
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: a while, you know, you figured it out. We have
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: spaghetti one day a week, and this is that I managed.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: And I still had to blatant optimism. But if I
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: had sold out, oh my god, and I knew it. Hey,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: they tried, I mean believe it.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: They tried it.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: So this is one of those things where you just
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: roll the dice and you fly by the proverbial seat
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: of your pants say oh, I gotta try it.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: I gotta just do it.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I may be totally wrong, and I'm going to be
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: taking a lot of people down with me, but I
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: just believe in it. I felt that, jeez, if I
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: was going to go down, at least into professional obscurity,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: I wanted to at least have the opportunity to say
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: to myself, what you tried. If nothing else, I had
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: a good home movie, My parents would enjoy it. What
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: is healthier to live under the illusion and still have
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: a little glimmer of hope that you could have been great,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: or actually have an opportunity to be great, and then
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: you blow it and you realize you're a failure. So
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I think that the easier route is to live under
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: the illusion. Say, you know, if I'd had that chance,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: I would have beaten all of them. Then finally it
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: was being shown that the director was killed and this
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: was going to be a test, and there was about
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: nine hundred people invited, and it was a packed crowd,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: and the movie was playing terribly. My mother was sitting
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: next to me, and the laughs weren't coming with the
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: felts too, and the fight itself seemed to be listless.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: The response was and I sat there as everyone filed
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: out of the theater and I couldn't believe it.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: I really blew it. It was all l I don't know.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: It was nice while I lasted, but I guess when
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: you get down and you show it to the big boys,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: they're just.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Not buying it.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Anyway, I sat there and literally there was no one
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: left in the theater because I didn't want to. I
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: was humiliated and sat by the whole thing, and even
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: you know, I walked her out and I was walking
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: down the steps and there's three flights down, first flight,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: second flight, and then by the time I turned for
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: the third flight, the entire audience was down. There there
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: was nine hundred people waiting, and they started to applaud,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: and I mean truly applaud, and I said, how could
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: you doubt me?
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Mom?
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: I'm shocked, and it's like I really just completely came apart,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: and there's there's so there will never be a moment
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: like that ever.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, I truly was over. I said, is it.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go back home, take my dog and
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: go back into you know, trying to eat out a living.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: And they were all there and they responded in a
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: way It's like, I don't know if that's the way
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: they did things in Hollywood, but they saved it up.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: And I'll never get over that moment. I just looked
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: at all these people and are plotting of it, and
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: it's been all downhill since. At the very end of
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: our lives, if we can still say, you know, we
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: were never humbled. We were knocked down, but we got up.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: And I can say I lived life with integrity, and
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I took all the blows, as the song says, and
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: I still prevailed. I think that's a good epitaph for
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: anyone