Sylvester Stallone dished on his film "Rocky" at the foodie fest Drink Las Vegas at the Bellagio. @JPASC24 What happens in Vegas did not stay in Vegas.
Sylvester Stallone appeared at the four-day food and beverage fest — Drink Las Vegas at the Bellagio — over the weekend, where the “Rocky” star regaled fans with some behind-the-scenes tales of his 1977 Oscar-winning film.
Turns out that the classic on-screen smooch between Stallone and his co-star Talia Shire — which has been named by Backstage as one of the top 10 movie kisses of all time — was actually, “the kiss from hell,” Stallone said.
The moving scene, of course, calls for penniless pugilist Rocky Balboa to lock lips with his geeky goddess Adrian.
Fifty years later, Stallone — who also famously penned the “Rocky” screenplay — recalled at the classy Carbone Riviera lunch in Sin City, “So Adrian comes to my apartment. She’s never had a boyfriend. Me, I’m kind of a loser… scary, in a torn wife beater shirt. Not exactly that safest looking guy. In this cockroach infested dump.”
But there was a record-scratch moment on the set, Stallone said, when, “Then I go in to kiss her — pull the hat off, the glasses — and… her nose is running. Badly. So we go in for the kiss and she goes [bad coughing noise]. And I go, ‘Oh my God!’ And I have to keep moving forward. There is no reverse. So I knew exactly as soon as I kissed her that within an hour I had the flu.”
Soon after the fateful silver screen make-out sesh, “I’m in bed. Runny nose,” Stallone said. “I’m serious! [I’m] losing weight. [I’m] hot… That was the kiss from hell.”
“But it worked! It worked!” he enthused.
The making of the film is the subject of a movie that’s now on a trajectory for its own potential Oscar run, “I Play Rocky,” directed by Peter Farrelly with Anthony Ippolito as Stallone.
At the Bellagio foodie event, Stallone appeared in conversation with the dapper president of entertainment at MGM Resorts International, and former CAA agent, Ryan Abboushi.
The “Tulsa King” star, 80, also elaborated on his years-long rivalry with fellow action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger, 79. “That was no joke… for 20 years,” he said. “But I like that. Because that made me work harder, it made him dig harder. I kind of used to challenge [people], ‘Oh that guy did this? Bury him!’ That aggressiveness has gone to the side. I don’t need to prove that anymore.”
