Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness: Sylvester Stallone: Not Feeling Old!

August 05, 2014

Sylvester Stallone: Not Feeling Old!

I am not a fan of boxing but I enjoyed "Rocky" when it was released.This movie is about lots more than fighting for a living.

The story was inspiring and uplifting.
And who can forget the theme song?

I was impressed that Sylvester Stallone wrote the script and made no compromises with its production.

Although he was virtually on the breadline back then he still wouldn't sell his script to just anyone. He stuck to his principles.This lead him to a become a Hollywood legend eventually, and he's still going strong!
Good for him! He has made many movies since then.

WHEN Sylvester Stallone was nominated for Best Actor at the 49th Academy Awards for his role in Rocky (1976), Jimmy Carter had just assumed the US Presidency and Kellan Lutz was yet to be born.

Kellan who? If you know Stallone, you probably don’t know Lutz. He was born in 1985, grew up to become a model-slash-actor and made his big break in the first two Twilight films (2008-09).

Twilight is like Rocky, except instead of an out-of-work boxer with an ambition to be the best in the world and marry his shy sweetheart there is a vampire who stops buses with his hands. Other than that, the films are almost identical.

Which is how Lutz and Stallone have wound up together in Stallone’s latest vehicle, Expendables 3.

If Lutz’s youthfulness doesn’t make you feel old, Stallone’s should. In the short, he rocks a black singlet over a freshly tattooed torso, smirking the same way he did when he was making debt-collection visits in Rocky or, presumably, seducing his co-stars in the softcore porno The Party at Kitty and Stud’s (1970).

The profitability of the Expendables franchise (collective box office for the first two films was $494 million) is testimony not only to Hollywood plastic surgeons and digital enhancement technology, but to the enviable immaturity of its roster of grandpa stars.

Apart from Stallone, 68, the cast has in the past included Arnold Schwarzenegger, 67, Dolph Ludgren, 56, Mel Gibson, 58, Antonio Banderas, 53, Bruce Willis, 59, and Chuck Norris, 74, chomping on cigars, shooting from the hip and making glib observations while under fire.
The best generation X can offer in reply is to dress Johnny Knoxville up as a real septuagenarian and drive him across the US in Bad Grandpa, causing mayhem and outrage as he goes.

Knoxville’s antics were done using hidden cameras set amid real-life situations. The Expendables’ antics are done with stunt doubles and pyrotechnics. But a certain verisimilitude shines through anyway. These are not actors descending into Philip Seymour Hoffman-esque anguish of character appropriation. They are possibly the last generation of American heroes to convince themselves that youthfulness is plausible at any age.

And as if to prove the point, Stallone looked pleased with himself attending the London premiere of the movie with his wife Jennifer Flavin, who was a mere eight years old when Rocky made him a star.