Then the numbers starting coming down for what they were going to pay for the script if they could cast somebody else. It started at $20,000, then it went to $100,000 and it got up to $360,000. It would be the equivalent of a $2 million script today. So I did a lot more soul-searching. Intellectually, you’re a fool if you don’t take the money. But emotionally, I said, “Could I live with myself for the rest of my life knowing I sold off the script and didn’t stay with the project?” Having grown up in the streets, I knew millions of Rockys. I knew the smells, I worked those docks in Philadelphia, I knew what these people were all about. I love pseudo-tough guys. You see them coming down the street and you move to the other side, but if you ever had a drink with them, you’d realize they’re not bad. “Rocky” was a modern-day fairy tale of how you hoped or wished life could be. I was 29. It was the time–it was now or never because I knew that this opportunity would never come again.
The studio finally agreed to cast me, but with tremendous contingencies. The producers had to put up their houses as bond, and the movie had to be made in only 28 days. It had to be done for under $1 million. It was down to the bare bones. Everyone worked for, like, $360 a week. I put everyone in it. I put my dog, my brother, my father–anyone who would work for free was in that movie. I wore my own wardrobe and changed in the back of a station wagon. Just a few months before, I had had to sell my dog because I couldn’t afford to keep him. And then when the movie finally came along I had to try and buy my dog back. The other family had owned it for six months; they weren’t exactly thrilled, but I said, “Please.” I said, “This dog”–his name was Bupkes–“belongs in the movie.” He had suffered along with me for two years. I said, “Please let him have a shot in the movie.”
