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Brooks Peterson
Monday, March 12, 2001
A Sly strategy for salvaging a film career
Y'know, there is deep down inside us a quiet place that no one else ever visits. And there's some squirrelly stuff there that never sees the light of day.
Or never used to see the light of day: Thanks to schlock TV and its practitioners - Jenny Jones, Ricki Lake, Jerry Springer and on and on and on - there is no quirk, no fetish, no mania so weird that it cannot be hauled bodily out and put on display.
But some good may come of all this. If nothing else, it gives those of us who have less gaudy foibles the courage to face them. For instance, I shared with you some time ago my weakness for . . . well, for Sylvester Stallone movies.
You know Sly. Everybody knows Sly. He burst into our consciousness in 1976 with "Rocky," a lovable mutt of a movie about a lovable mutt of a broken-down pug who through a wildly improbable chain of events finds himself in a bout with Apollo Creed, the world heavyweight champion. It was - it is - Cinderella in boxing trunks. It dared you to resist it - and of course you couldn't.
The rest, alack, has been a succession of movies that have at best been forgettable. A handful, though, can lay claim to an awfulness that has a certain grandeur about it. Names? You want names? How about "Nighthawks"? "Rhinestone"? "Tango and Cash"? Hands down, though, the all-time stinkeroo has to be "Cobra," whose plot is shot through with (almost) as many holes as Stallone's character blasts in his adversaries.
But all of us who share this weakness have covered this ground many times. Now it's time to move on to . . . the next step.
I mean, look, you can't really blame Sly: He's got a living to make, for crying out loud. And if the money guys keep giving him this wretched material (or, alternatively, bankrolling his own wretched material), well, what can you expect? Let's be fair.
I suspect that Sly Stallone, if you were to ask him, has a deep-down yearning to break out of the action-figure, macho-dude mold in which he's been locked for so long - to sink his teeth (figuratively speaking) into some mature, introspective, thoughtful material. This is a man, I believe, who is yearning to grow professionally and personally . . . and I think he deserves a helping hand from the rest of us. Don't you?
OK: Here are a few nominees for additions to the Stallone ouevre:
"Remembrance of Stuff That Used to Be: The Marcel Proust Story": Here, surely, is an inspired antidote to the film community's insistence on pigeonholing Sly as a musclebound, if well-intentioned, goof. As the introverted, retiring, exquisitely sensitive intellectual, the actor could once and for all slip the surly bonds of typecasting and soar as the prime mover of a biographical drama set in a cork-lined bedroom in which . . . nothing . . . ever . . . happens.
Wait, there's more:
"The Heart Wants What the Heart Wants": Another biopic, of course. In this one, Sly breaks more new ground as Woody Allen, the angst-ridden but endlessly witty New York nerd who compensates for his problematic relationships with women by perfecting a brand of humor that is at once intensely cerebral and self-deprecating. Of course, in the end Sly/Woody gets Diane Keaton . . . not to mention any number of other babes.
And, finally, a collaborative effort that could rock Hollywood to its foundations:
"To Wong Foo, Here's a Knuckle Sandwich! Love, Rocky Balboa": In this one, three of Hollywood's manliest men get in touch with their feminine side. Sly, Steven Seagal and Jean Claude van Damme star as a trio of drag queens who embark on a rollicking cross-country odyssey in which preconceptions are shattered and (needless to say) lots of heads get busted. Not to be missed.
C'mon: If we all pitch in, I think we can fire up the old four-by-four and drag poor Sly out of the tar pit. What the heck: Beats sitting around and waiting for "Rocky XXV: The Social Security Years," don't it?
Brooks Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com
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© 2001 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a
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