A Rocky career and life
John G Avildsen thought boxing was downright ‘‘dumb’’ and he knew little about the writer of the boxing script he had been sent - a bitpart actor who was insisting on playing the starring role himself.
By the time Avildsen was a few pages into it he was hooked - at about the scene when the battered, washed-up boxer arrives home and starts chatting to his pet turtles.
‘‘When this script came to me from an old friend ... I said I had no interest in boxing, I think boxing is sort of a dumb thing,’’ Avildsen said. ‘‘He pleaded and pleaded, so I finally read the thing. And on the second or third page, he’s talking to his turtles, Cuff and Link. I was charmed by it, and I thought it was an excellent character study and a beautiful love story. And I said yes.’’ The film was Rocky.
The unknown writer was Sylvester Stallone, who got his wish in playing the title role.
Avildsen not only directed the movie, but received an Oscar for best director for doing so. Rocky also won Oscars for best picture of 1976 and best editing.
While Rocky launched Stallone as a Hollywood star, Avildsen remained little known by the wider public, slightly out of place on the roll of winners alongside contemporaries such as Francis Ford Coppola, Milos Forman and Woody Allen.
Although Avildsen never had the profile of Coppola or Spielberg, he already had a solid body of work behind him before Rocky.
He directed Jack Lemmon to Oscar success as a factory owner who burns down his property for the insurance payout in Save the Tiger (1973). He tended to specialise in dramas about losers.
Rocky was a film about a loser who at least comes away with his self-respect and a moral victory.
Avildsen had to wait a few years before he had another significant hit, with The Karate Kid (1984), a drama whose theme of an underdog redeemed through combat sport was so similar to that of Rocky that Avilsden dubbed it The KaRocky Kid.
He also directed two Karate Kid sequels and returned to the Rocky series for Rocky V (1990), which was supposedly the final instalment.
The son of a successful businessman, John Guilbert Avildsen was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1935.
He learnt his trade working as an assistant director with Arthur Penn and Otto Preminger and made an impact when he directed Joe (1970), a low-budget drama that has been described as the antiEasy Rider. The critics liked the film and it was a moderate boxoffice hit.
Rocky, however, got mixed reviews, although the director Frank Capra gave it his blessing, declaring: ‘‘That’s a picture I wish I had made.’’
And the public liked it too. In 1976 it was the highest-grossing film in the US. After Rocky, Avildsen had his pick of projects and chose Slow Dancing in the Big City (1978), a drama with no big names about a ballet dancer who discovers she has a debilitating illness. It was a flop.
He might have bounced back more readily, but he had made a lot of enemies, clashing with producers and stars.
He had been sacked from Serpico (1973), for example, as well as Saturday Night Fever (1977) after arguments with the producers.
He made no secret of the fact that John Belushi, one of the stars of Neighbors (1981), was foisted on him by the studio. In an interview a few years later, Avildsen said: ‘‘I thought he might be the kind of comic actor who would bring something special to serious acting, so I was wrong.’’
Avildsen’s personal life was also rocky at times. He was married and divorced more than once and is survived by his three sons: Anthony, who is a cinematographer; Jonathan, who has acted in several of his father’s films; and Ashley, a record company executive who lost touch with his father when he was 12; and by a daughter, Bridget, who is an actress and model.
She was the child of his most recent marriage, to the actress Tracy Brooks Swope in 1987. They separated in 2003.
Pinpointing the success of his biggest hit, Avildsen said: ‘‘I guess what Rocky did was give a lot of people hope. And there was never a better feeling than doing that.’’
The Times, London