Stirling Silliphant: The Fingers of God by Nat Segaloff

son’s love by entering an arm-wrestling contest. “I have managed to expunge from my memory the where and how of my getting involved in this disastrous project,” Silliphant added, “but no matter how many sponges I pass over the blackboard, I can’t erase the underlying chalk which spells my own fucking fault. It was to be a quick rewrite of an existing script and the money was good and I was about ready to buy a new BMW in Munich — or some such nonsense — so I went along with the producer to the brick-walled house in which at the time Stallone was serving time. I was tempted to ask where are the Dobermans, but I didn’t. When I met Stallone, I was surprised to see how small he looked. But of course I am a person, not a special camera lens. I will tell you that I found him at this first meeting charming, respectful, and intelligent. I dismissed at once everything I had heard about him that had been negative. He told me a few ideas which he had which he thought might help in the rewrite, then encouraged me by saying, ‘It’s your ball, Stirling. I don’t have to tell you what to write. But if at any time you get stuck or want to bounce ideas around, call me.’
    “A few days into the rewrite, I did find a need to talk to Stallone. I was seeking his reaction to some Indian stuff I was adding to the mix. I called him. I found myself in a Kafka novel. There was no way I could get through. The entourage had closed in around their deity. What did I wish to talk to Mr. Stallone about? It’s about making him part-Indian, I explained; you see, before he goes to Vegas he needs to renew his strength — his soul. It’s much like the sun-dance performed by the Lakotah. But in this case I’m inventing a really weird sort of Apache ritual involving a lot of rattlesnakes. Click ! Why is he calling our Sly about rattlesnakes ? I persisted, however. I called the producer, I called a few art galleries where the rumors were he might be showing up, I called the restaurants he’s known to haunt (if that is the proper verb). No Stallone. So I went ahead on my own. Goddamn rattlesnakes and all. I finished the rewrite in short order, turned it in. The producer loved it. I got my money. But never a word from Stallone. Until a while later I get a letter from the WGA about writing credit and I discover that the screenplay is by Sylvester Stallone and Stirling Silliphant, based on a story by a couple of honest and innocent other writers. [258]
    “The term going ballistic came into being at that moment. I prepared an appropriate letter of protest to the WGA Arbitration Committee and sent along the supporting materials, story notes, research and finished script, and shortly thereafter Rocky was knocked out of the ring. He not only was not granted first position, he was granted no position. I was given sole screenplay credit.” (Not exactly; keep reading.)
    “Now here we have a case of winning the battle and losing the war, because the finished film was about as embarrassing as most Stallone films — except that in this instance I stood clearly delineated as the dumb sonofabitch who had written it. I can’t possibly explain to you the hundreds of little cuts and jabs that were performed upon the screenplay I turned in. All the Indian stuff was out. Rattlesnakes? Forget it. The relationship between the truck driver and his estranged and dying wife had been turned into a comic strip. The ‘love’ scenes between father and son somehow were trivialized. Much of my dialogue was changed, not so much in its narrative sense as in its literary sense. Wherever I might have written a piece of dialogue which had at its center some kind of feeling or concept, it seemed to have suffered a sex-change. Or maybe it’s just that Stallone can’t get too far beyond ‘Yo.’ I’m simply at a loss to explain how it ended up so badly. Even if I just came right out and said, hey, I wrote a bad script, it still wouldn’t explain the depths to