Rocky Notes

November 28th, 2012

Obama had been re-elected. I must have been in my program. I may have been limping, but was no longer on crutches.

At some point I decided to sit down and watch the 1976 classic Rocky. It was my first time...possibly...?

And, according to what I was typing, it looks like I was live-blogging it, for some reason...

Maybe I was drinking too, as it trails off...check it out:

*****

I just started watching Rocky. I believe that this is the first time in my entire life that I'll be seeing it. The first five-and-a-half minutes are about the saddest thing I've ever seen. That's a nice hat Rocky's wearing, bouncing the racket ball in his non-boxing introduction. Quaint apartment.

He's a hoodlum. How cool. Couldn't bring himself to break the thumbs. Lock combo in the hat. Nope. New lock. Booted from the gym. I didn't know that Mickey thought he was a bum.

Talia Shire's shop across the street from the gym? Makes sense, Rocky's world on two sides of the same street.

Taking the girl home was a nice touch.

They could subtitle this film "Apollo Learns About Hubris".

Rocky in the glasses is classic. Pauly deserves a crack upside his head.

Finally the fight! Only thirteen minutes to go?

*****

I didn't even describe the fight! I remember it was pretty even. I remember thinking Rocky put up a better fight that the sequel, when he gets hammered the whole match only to miraculously knock-out Apollo in round 12.

But I remember that the point of the movie is that Rocky "went the distance," which makes sense in the scheme of the first movie, and maybe not in the wider Rocky-verse, which is up to (checks notes) 9 movies now.

Rocky seems like a dim-witted thug, forever led around by his benefactors, who are mobsters. Is he Forrest Gump, the thug, fighter, and pugilist? Okay, that's cool, I get it, and that seems like an interesting movie universe. 

It may not make it to getting saved by Michael B Jordan. Just a drooling, battered thug, unable to speak properly after two fights with Apollo Creed sounds about right...