Sylvester Stallone’s new memoir offers a look at his life before fame, including a memorable encounter with Francis Ford Coppola while the future Hollywood star was still working an ordinary day job.
Before becoming the boxing champ in Rocky or one of the biggest action stars, Stallone had a job most teenagers had in the 70s. He worked at a movie theater making $34 a week, and remembers Coppola coming to check on the audience response to his latest film screening for The Rain People. Stallone recalls seeing the future Godfather director in tears.
“I remember we showed an indie film called The Rain People by a young director named Francis Ford Coppola,” he writes in The Steps: A Memoir. “One night he came in to check on the crowd. ‘How’s the film doing?’ he asked. ‘Okay,’ I answered. ‘Okay? Mind if I look inside?’ ‘Sure.’
Stallone continued by saying, “I didn’t have the heart to tell him that there were maybe eight people in the theater. It was so empty you could take a nap on the floor, and no one would notice. Coppola came out a few seconds later, emotionally distraught. He was tearing up as he rushed past me out the door.”
For a young Stallone whose ambition was to become an actor, the moment left an impression on him. He wrote in his memoir that seeing the trajectory of Coppola’s career from that moment on was “interesting.”
The Rain People was a road drama film that was written and directed by Coppola when he was 30 years old. Prior to the film, he had directed only a handful of films, such as Dementia 13, You’re a Big Boy Now, and Finian’s Rainbow. The 1969 musical fantasy, Finian’s Rainbow, was a success, having won nominations at the Golden Globes and the Oscars.
His 1969 film starred Shirley Knight, James Caan, and Robert Duvall and received generally positive reviews. Critics, on the other hand, were divided on whether or not the film was considered a success and commented, “This odd odyssey was not a hit.” Seeing Coppola have an emotional reaction to the lack of screening success, Stallone wondered if it was what led to his biggest hit of all.
“Here was a man who was completely devastated by the rejection of The Rain People, one of his earliest films, but two years later he made The Godfather. A masterpiece. I still wonder if it was the lessons he learned from The Rain People that helped him make such a great film,” said the actor.
The Godfather was released in 1972 and is regarded as one of the greatest films in American cinema. It dominated the Oscars, winning Best Picture, Best Actor for Marlon Brando, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Coppola and Mario Puzo, the author of the book the movie’s based on.
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