By Valerie Khoo
A little fur baby has recently come into my life. His name is Apollo, he is a ridiculously gorgeous ragdoll kitten and he has already taken up his position as the Australian Writers’ Centre’s newest writing assistant.
Admittedly, his current skills are less “structural editing” and more “walking across the keyboard while I’m trying to work”. But he is very committed.
So why Apollo?
If you’ve been following me for a while, you may remember my beautiful cat Rocky, who was named after Rocky Balboa. Because I love the Rocky movies.
Yes, really. I know this may be difficult to reconcile with other things you know about me. But there it is.
And if you’re familiar with the films, you’ll know that Rocky’s great rival – and later his great friend – is Apollo Creed. So when this little bundle of fluff arrived, Apollo seemed like the perfect name.
But there’s another reason Rocky has been on my mind.
The trailer has just been released for the new movie I Play Rocky, which tells the story of how Sylvester Stallone fought to bring the original Rocky to the screen.
And it is very much a story about a writer.
Most people know Sylvester Stallone as the actor who played Rocky Balboa. What they may not know is that he also wrote the screenplay. Studios were interested in buying it, but there was a catch. They wanted a more established actor to play Rocky. Stallone refused to sell unless he could play the lead himself.
It was an enormous gamble. He was an unknown actor with very little money and absolutely no guarantee that any of it would work. But he had a clear creative vision for the story and was determined to protect it.
You can see that determination in the trailer for I Play Rocky.
Now, you may not be a fan of boxing. You may not be a fan of the Rocky movies. You may be wondering why I have such strong feelings about a fictional boxer who spends an alarming amount of time being punched in the head.
But Rocky is not really a story about boxing. It is a story about what happens when someone who has been underestimated is finally given a chance. It is about dignity, determination and deciding that you are going to show up, even when the odds are very much not in your favour.
The film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, while Stallone was nominated for both his performance and his screenplay. He became only the third person at the time to be nominated as both an actor and a screenwriter for the same film.
I’m well aware that Rocky is not Shakespeare. It would not have won the Booker Prize. For several reasons, including the inconvenient fact that it is a screenplay.
But it is a story that has stood the test of time. It has reached millions of people around the world and created one of cinema’s most enduring characters.
And none of that would have happened if a struggling writer had not believed in his story enough to keep fighting for it.
That’s what I love about the story behind Rocky. It reminds us that creative dreams rarely come true because everything falls neatly into place. Sometimes they happen simply because someone refuses to let them go.
And sometimes, nearly 50 years later, they also provide the perfect name for a ridiculously fluffy kitten.
