It’s not a bit of brilliant, new, 21st-century insight that movies are in the business of selling dreams made to seem real. The perspective is as old as cinema itself, and sometimes, the more outlandish the dream and the more outrageous the film version of reality; the better the results.
But once in a while a film comes along that turns the idea upside down or inside out. The movie itself makes an impossible dream become an incredible reality. By any measure, “Rocky” is a champion in that field. It is the first of 17 movies for 2017, showing at 7:30 pm on Friday and Saturday, Jan. 20 and 21, at downtown Hoquiam’s 7th St. Theatre.
In 1975, when Sylvester Stallone was a struggling actor and newlywed with $106 to his name, he became convinced that his only chance at success was to write a screenplay that would feature him in the lead role. After watching a closed-circuit telecast of unheralded club fighter Chuck Wepner defying the odds and all predictions by battling boxing legend Muhammad Ali into the 15th round, Stallone was inspired. He wrote the first draft of “Rocky” in three and a half days and held out for a deal that would let him play the uneducated but kind-hearted working class Italian-American boxer, Rocky Balboa.
The 1976 film was a monster hit, won three Academy Awards including Best Picture, and put Stallone’s career on the fast track to superstardom. Although winning neither, his dual Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Screenplay put Stallone in a very rare club. Only two others had received Academy Award nominations for acting and writing in the same film: Charles Chaplin and Orson Welles. Forty years and six more “Rocky” movies later, Stallone joined an elite group of only six actors who have received two Oscar nominations for playing the same character in different films, his for “Rocky” and a Best Supporting Actor look for 2015’s “Creed.”
Doors open at 7 p.m. for the 7:30 showings. The theater is located at 313 7th St. in downtown Hoquiam. Tickets are $5 and will be available at the door. Advance tickets are available at Harbor Drug ad Crown Drug in Hoquiam, City Drug in Aberdeen and at the website, www.7thstreettheatre.com. For more information call the theatre at (360) 537-7400.
