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Sylvester Stallone Press Conference

Was it hard to bring Rambo in at an R rating? Did you want more?
Sylvester Stallone: “I couldn't believe it, first of all. When babies are being bayoneted and people are getting [killed] I thought, ‘This will never go.’ We presented it but I did have a caveat with the MPAA. I said, ‘Guys, this is happening today. If we're ever going to do something responsible where art has the ability to influence people's awareness, impact the lives of these people, don't dilute it.

Don't water it down. It's got to be uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable. It's miserable. It's distasteful. It's horrifying. But if you're not going to do it, don’t do the movie. Don’t do violence light. It's just wrong. Don't cut away too soon. Just let it sit in. I want people to feel it.’ To their credit, they allowed this film to be as truthful as it could.”

What was the most challenging aspect of doing this film?
Sylvester Stallone: “For sure it was the ongoing threat of the Burmese while we were shooting in Thailand. There were a lot of secret police over there and they knew exactly what was going on. And especially all these people, and I won’t mention names, doing drug dealing between the Burmese General and people on the other side of the river. It’s really a bad and sad situation

Life is very cheap over there. You get shot and nobody will ever find you. At first I didn’t worry about me, but I really felt bad for the crew because I thought that’s how it would start, with the intimidating of the crew.

And they did intimidate them. For a while we could not get any Burmese to work for us at all, until one man stepped up and it opened the flood gate. All you see in the movie is authentic. Real amputees who had lost their legs in land mine accidents. The man who started to show the other Burmese they had to do it was the one playing the villain in the movie and actually in real life he is a rebel fighter. But by doing this film his family was arrested and put in jail in Burma.”

Was directing a Rambo harder than a Rocky?
Sylvester Stallone: “It was so difficult indeed. The editing took forever. Compared to Rocky I thought this would be easy, and it wasn’t because I wanted it to be brutal and real. When you see lots of these films, you don’t even know how complicated they are to put together. A battlefield is a terrifying situation to look at and I wanted to get all of it there. It was very hard because of the timing of the editing, the choice of the music, and trying to figure out the female character and for her to realize that war is natural and peace is not. This woman has to listen to Rambo telling her, ‘You’re not going to change anything and men will be always in turmoil. This is never going to stop, no matter what you do. Don’t think we can hold hands and it’s going to be peaceful forever.’ She got to learn it the hard way.

How do you make Rocky and Rambo relevant today?
Sylvester Stallone: “If I were trying to go after a youth audience and trying to find something hip, using certain music and whatever, I think that would be pretty obvious and be rejected. There's some things that never change and are universal truths. As you get older, they become more and more apparent about how difficult life is, like the speech in Rocky about taking punches and life gives you punches. The young people who would support Rocky more than even people my age I think really enjoy and embrace those kinds of lessons. I think the lesson that is somewhat presented here, that war is hell and there is no winner ever, and unfortunately people just have to find it out the hard way, will translate. And eventually after a man takes that journey, a woman takes that journey, you always hope that you can go back home, that there's still some gateway back to peace, peace of mind where you can start to rebuild. That's the only thing I hope works.

I think it does work because they're just universal truths that never, ever change. No matter what society is, just everybody wants freedom. Everyone wants peace of mind, but it comes at a horrible price.”

Are there any more Rocky movies on the way?
Sylvester Stallone: “No. They talk about ‘Son of…’ but no. I got so lucky with the final image of Rocky, the rack focus and the fade. I can't go any further. It was a miracle that it even got done. I'm just glad. That was my finest moment. I was so happy with it. I just wanted to end it on a certain note and was lucky to get that shot.”