Shamans Among the Machines

There are some interesting points starting at 15:25+ for about 5-10 minutes. The whole thing is very interesting, so check out what you have time for.

Anthony Robbins was having dinner with Sylvester Stallone a few years back and Robbins asked Stallone to tell him his life story. Stallone explained that he knew his whole life, ever since he was a kid, that he wanted to be in the movie business. He went to every agent in New York—many of them several times—but he couldn’t get any parts because they kept telling him that he looked and sounded stupid (which, incidentally, is because he was pulled out by forceps when he was born).

Stallone kept trying to get parts, and he kept getting rejected. He was starving and couldn’t even afford heat in his apartment. His wife kept screaming at him to get a job, but he wouldn’t settle for something that wasn’t his dream. He was going to be a movie star and he was going to burn all other bridges.

He then decided to write a screenplay. The first screenplay he sold was titled “Paradise Alley” and he sold it for $100. Unfortunately, nothing much happened after that and he got to the point where he was so broke that he hocked his wife’s jewelry. She hated him after that and their relationship was basically over at that point.

Now all he really had left was his dog. However, he didn’t have the money to feed him, so he went to a liquor store near to where he lived and stood outside trying to sell his dog to strangers for $50. Finally, one man stopped and negotiated with him and bought his dog, his best friend, for $25. Stallone says that was the absolute lowest point of his life.

Two weeks later he was watching a fight between Muhammad Ali and Webner, this white guy that’s getting bludgeoned but just keeps on coming, and he got an idea. When the fight was over he started writing and he wrote for twenty hours straight. The screenplay he wrote in twenty hours was “Rocky”.

He then went out and tried to sell the script to agents. He was turned down several times but he finally found some people who wanted to buy it for $125,000. However, Stallone told them that part of the deal was that he had to star in the film. He told them: “That’s my story; I’m Rocky”.

But they didn’t want a no-name to play the lead role in the movie, they wanted a star. In fact, they were thinking of Ryan O’Neal. Stallone indicated that either he got the role of Rocky or he wasn’t selling them the script. When they told him he couldn’t play Rocky, even though he didn’t have a cent to his name, he turned around and walked out.

They called him a week later and offered him a quarter of a million dollars not to star in his own movie. He turned them down. They then offered him $325,000 and again he said, “Not without me in the role of Rocky.”

Finally, they compromised: they gave him $35,000 and a stake in the movie, and he got the role of Rocky. They made the film with a million dollars and it grossed $200 million.

The first thing Stallone did when he got paid for the script was to go back to the liquor store and buy his dog back. Know your outcome, believe in yourself, and persist, regardless of naysayers.

This is one of the best short films that I have ever seen.  It really shows you the importance of attitude and how it affects others and how it can be contagious.  It is some of the best 16 minutes that you will spend today.  Enjoy this as much as I did.

Created by OverthinkingIt.com