RIP Stephen Furst and John G Avildsen

Two more sad deaths from the entertainment world occurred on Friday; film and television actor Stephen Furst and Oscar-winning director John G. Avildsen.

Furst is perhaps best known for his role as Flounder in the hit 1978 comedy film National Lampoon's Animal House. He was a regular in the science fiction series Babylon 5 playing Centauri diplomatic attaché Vir Cotto. But for me personally, I will always have fond memories of his role in St Elsewhere as Dr. Elliot Axelrod. Alongside acting, Furst also worked as a director and producer. He died from complications with diabetes, something he has suffered with all his adult life.

RIP.

American film director John G Avildsen will forever be known as the Oscar-winning director of 1976's Rocky, but in a career that stretched back to 1970 with his debut feature Joe, Avildsen was responsible for many films including the stunning Save The Tiger, which earned Jack Lemmon a Best Actor Oscar and the first three films in the original Karate Kid franchise. He returned to the Rocky series with 1990's critically mauled Rocky V. Avildsen passed away following a battle with pancreatic cancer.

RIP.

Creed (2015)

The conclusion of Creed ends where you could say the Rocky franchise began in 1976; on top of the infamous 72 steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art with the line "not bad at all" 

It's quite an apt line because what is ostensibly the sixth sequel in the Rocky series really is 'not bad at all', in fact I'd go so far as to say there's life in the old punchbag yet.

In fact this is a rousing, stirring and thankfully largely authentic movie from director Ryan Coogler that serves as an extension to those previous films, trading on its past by focusing on the new generation and with a great contemporary attitude in the shape of the illegitimate son of Rocky's former opponent and friend Apollo Creed. Wisely, the film takes Rocky ringside and plays on his fallibility thus enabling a genuine acting performance from Stallone - who was always better when given the rare opportunity to play his vulnerable side - which saw him awarded a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor. Taking centre stage in the ring is the impressive Michael B Jordan as Adonis Creed (or Johnson as he is known for much of the film) a young man grappling with the legacy of his father, but it is perhaps his character's love interest played Tessa Thompson who truly rolls with the punches.

Being the bastard son of a former heavyweight champ, Adonis 'Donnie' Creed feels like he has a lot to prove to the world. Having been brought up in care for a good part of his childhood means that he also has a lot of fight in him. We see this by a neat parallel with Rocky's own exploits in the first film; how he is something of a regular on the circuit of savage, low rent bouts, seemingly unable to break out into the big league he dreams of. Determined, Creed heads to Philly to hook up with Rocky and convince him to become his trainer. Along the way, a lucky break means he gets his chance at the title against Pretty Ricky Conlan (real life fighter Tony Bellew) the British champ, at the hallowed ground of Goodison Park, Liverpool. But before Donnie can get there he's dealt a terrible blow when Rocky reveals he is having a fight of his own - against cancer. 

Knockout Rating: 4 out of 5 Punches

Creed is a thrill ride and a nostalgic treat that took me back to my youth watching the Rocky films in the '80s. It led to me revisiting the previous entries in the series as you have seen her eon the blog this past week. Here is my overall ratings of the films.

1. Rocky (1976) 5 out of 5
2. Rocky II (1979) 4 out of 5
3. Creed (2015) 4 out of 5
4. Rocky Balboa (2006) 3.5 out of 5
5. Rocky IV (1985) 3 out of 5
6. Rocky III (1982) 2.5 out of 5
7. Rocky V (1990) 2 out of 5

Rocky (1976)

So I watched Creed for the first time last week, which led me to revisit each of the Rocky films in turn. Starting with the original (and best) Rocky...

The making of Rocky is as much of an unlikely success story for the underdog as the one which occurs in the narrative. Shot in just 28 days for a budget of just over $1 million, Rocky went on to bag three Oscars - including Best Picture - and become the highest grossing film of 1976. Its legacy has seen a staggering six sequels (not bad for a film which features the climactic line "Ain't gonna be no rematch") its entrance into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for cultural significance, and remains a contender for the greatest sports move ever made.

Of course the most impressive factoid - especially for any budding writer - is that leading man Stallone wrote the script for Rocky in just three and a half days. His affection for the blue collar narrative of old Hollywood B movies and sporting memoirs bleeds through every page of that script and his dialogue is complete with several sharp jabs that immediately demand our attention and enjoyment. 

I'd also forgotten just how funny Rocky is, with much of the best lines going to the scene-stealing Burgess Meredith as Rocky's tetchy old coach and former boxer Mickey ("Women weaken the legs" and "You're gonna eat lightning and crap thunder" are all eminently quotable and worthy of T shirt slogans) and some truly funny, sweet scenes revolving around Rocky's hesitant courtship of Adrian (Talia Shire) culminating on their first date at an out-of-hours ice rink - offset by the proprietor counting down the minutes Rocky has paid him to keep it open. It's also refreshing to see that, though Adrian is gradually and subtly brought out from the shadow of her abusive brother Paulie (Burt Young) and out of her dowdy shell by Rocky's affection, Stallone stayed away from the cliche of the ugly duckling who removes her glasses and shakes loose her hair to become the archetypal leading lady.

As Rocky, Stallone gives ostensibly his greatest ever performance. If Brando could have been a contender in On The Waterfront, Stallone's Balboa, an amiable lug who gets beaten to a pulp most nights and collects debts down at the docks for the local loan shark, gets the chance to prove himself in a wonderfully Capra-esque urban fairytale that sees current World Heavyweight Champ Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) offer a nobody the chance to be a somebody in keeping with the spirit of America. Similarly, Stallone was the underdog with the studio bosses too. They liked his script, but they liked Robert Redford, James Caan, Ryan O'Neal or Burt Reynolds for the leading role. Stallone fought as hard as the Italian Stallion to convince them he was the right man for the job and deliberately kept the budget low to counter any losses at having a less-established name head the picture.

As a film Rocky set the template not just for other big screen sporting dramas but for the subsequent instalments in the series too. Watching it back today I was actually surprised to see just how many beats from this original that the latest film in the series Creed actually riffed on - most notably how our underdog hits the canvas in the final reel, leading to the premature celebrations of the champ.

Knockout rating: 5 punches out of 5.

Rocky VI (1986)

Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki's 1986 8 minute short feature, Rocky VI is a wicked, funny satire on Stallone's Rocky films, but more specifically a satire on the rampant bubblegum propaganda evident in what was then the latest chapter in the Rocky series, Rocky IV (the VI if this spoof isn't meant to denote '6' but is an inverted VI of the title it is lampooning - IV/4) 

The film pitches a puny looking mullet wearing Rocky (Antti Juhani "Silu" Seppälä of the group Leningrad Cowboys who provide the film's incessant, pumping tongue in cheek soundtrack - the music being extremely key in Stallone's movie after all) against Igor, a huge mound of flesh complete with Brezhnev eyebrows played by Sakari Kuosmanen. The American and Russian meet to slug it out as a metaphor for The Cold War at the Töölö Sports Hall in Helsinki, where Igor promptly beats the living shit out of Rocky, the referee and anyone he can lay his hands on in the crowd.

Beautifully shot in black and white, Kaurismaki may be having a laugh (then again, on reflection, he may be producing a more accurate metaphor for The Cold War than Stallone could ever have hoped to) but he isn't shirking technically; this is a great little short that put me in mind of Peter Richardson's somewhat thematically similar work on The Comic Strip Presents.

Watch it here;

F.I.S.T. (1978)

F.I.S.T. is a 1978 film directed by Norman Jewison from a script by Joe Eszterhas and the film's star Sylvester Stallone which is a thinly disguised account of the life of Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa.

Stallone plays Hoffa-alike Johnny Kovak who, following a stand off with his employer over an unfair sacking, rises through the ranks of the fictionalised Federation of Inter-State Truckers union (F.I.S.T.), initially taking a defiant and just stand for his members rights before succumbing to underhand methods, corruption and an unsavoury association with the mob.

Much like 1976's Rocky - Stallone's breakthrough film just two years prior to this - F.I.S.T. spends the first half of its running time exploring the cliches of  the poor boy big lug who, through sheer conviction, gets his shot at the big time. The difference here is that whilst for many Rocky seemed out of time in nostalgically harking back to those 1930s B movies, F.I.S.T. is initially set in the 1930s  and therefore feels quite authentic to the point of feeling like its been shot in aspic. Laszlo Kovacs' cinematography invests a halycon glow to the proceedings that is perhaps at odds with the hardships of a USA gripped by the Great Depression yet feels somehow right.  It's these scenes that satisfy the viewer the most as we see Kovak's rise and ultimately his class betrayal, allowing the mob into his efforts, to keep the power and everyone on side. It's not perfect, the more personal side of Kovak's story such as his wooing of a local girl tends to jar with everything else going on around it (though I love the comedy of him trying to make small talk  about the weather with her mother as he calls on her) and feels somewhat forced.

But it's really the 1950s set second half, which sees Kovak become the union president and in turn captures the attention of the senate committee who have naturally started to smell a rat, where the film loses some of the viewer's good will. The authentic working class reality of the characters salad days gives way to a less inspiring and all too familiar superficially glossy success story. Though it must be said structurally  the film remains sound by exploring a different type of betrayal here, that of a personal betrayal done seemingly to save the foundations of the union.

It's an interesting and serious performance from Stallone displaying the character's arrogance and pigheaded abrasive edge to get what he wants for his members but sadly he doesn't convince in the inspiration or charm stakes that such a character has to possess to get men to follow him. It's especially disappointing that this is the case as it's clear it is a failing in both his performance and in his co-authorship of the script. Stallone surrounds himself with actors who are just as authentic and compelling, but a superior script may have served them all better.

Ultimately F.I.S.T.'s message seems to be that a union needs to be as dirty and corrupt as any other American institution, and one which sees those who once took a stand against oppression and corruption from above turn to it themselves once in power. It's a pessimistic message, but one cannot deny the truth of such a message - one need only look at Hoffa, the real life character the film takes inspiration from - and there's a certain bittersweet pleasing tone in the notion that it is an equally vain and ambiguous senator, played with a seemingly affectionate nod to the old days of the political Hollywood by Rod Steiger, who ultimately goes after Kovak; suggesting the establishment will only really let someone get so far and how only so much power in life before they have to teach them a lesson and put them back in their place.

Overall, F.I.S.T is a film of two halves.