let me tell you something you already know the world ain't all sunshine and rainbows
it's a very mean and nasty place and i don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees
and keep you there permanently if you let it you me or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life
but it ain't about how hard you hit it's about how hard you can get hit
and keep moving forward how much you can take and keep moving forward that's how
winning is done now if you know what you're worth now go out and get what you're worth
but you got to be willing to take the hits and not pointing fingers saying you ain't
where you want to be because of him or her or anybody cowards do that and that ain't you
you're better than that but until you start believing in yourself you're gonna have a life
it's all about dreams you know and by the way dreams cost nothing
they're free uh the hard part is just keeping them going and
please keep them going because we're here for one simple reason he believed in the dream i believed
in a dream and our dreams come true there's no reason every one of yours can't either
when they say that films don't influence people's behavior that's not true and i
did walk into the theater and saw steve reeves it changed my life i went outside
and started lifting everything i could like you know i'm telling you it was it was truly a
seminal moment in my life and and if i hadn't i've ever seen that film i wouldn't be here today
i used to sit in this little apartment and i was a room as a matter of fact
the room was so small remember i was able to open up the window and close the door
while sitting on the bed at the same time it was like eight feet by hand by nine feet and but
the one thing about that room there was really very little distraction so i would sit there
propped up in bed and i'd go out with my big pen and legal pad and just start writing these these
stories and and most of them were were very very trivial but there was something about the process
of unrealized dreams i was always brought back to the subject because i think it's one of the most
enduring subjects and one of the most difficult passages for people to accept that they never
were realized in their own lifetime that they just didn't get that shot you know you've really
managed poverty very well you've got this down to a science you really don't need much to live on i
had like sort of figured it out so i was not um in in any way uh used to to the good lifestyle
you know what just roll the dice and you fly by the proverbial seat of your pants
all right i gotta try it i gotta just do it i may be totally wrong but i just believe in it
you know what you are what you're made of but somewhere along the line you changed you stopped
being you you let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you're no good and when things
got hard you started looking for something to blame like a big shadow i just think that life
belongs to those who can somehow make a sick joke out of it all because it does it works out if you
take life too seriously what is that old saying to those who think life is a comedy those who feel
life is a tragedy so i just try to keep it light and lively in all fairness to myself
i wasn't raised in a right way my brain has always been flipped sideways it's just the way i
have interpreted life that's why now i realize i made the right choice but back then you were a
menace i was such a good fish gutter we went to look at a home someone had for sale the
guy was maybe 85 years old he goes i know you you used to cut the best fish for some reason
some reason me and finish but yeah i would do that and just do a lot of these odd jobs because
i thought if i do all these horrible jobs at night it would leave the day open to go out and pursue
my alleged career and nothing was happening so i would take any random job from bodyguards and
dinners to chasing people i chase people out of bookstores if they rock so i thought okay let me
just take this horrible job but i know there's a plan there isn't like okay i went to four years of
college to become an usher no i went to four years of college to eventually do something in the arts
right here it is this is a no-brainer yeah you don't have to be a good writer you just have to
write and eventually that'll your inner thoughts will come to the surface and take
care of themselves to be a gifted writer it's it's freakish like you can be a really gifted actor and
a terrible writer terrible director you don't have to know what your niche is i decided it was a time
to come to california i went to california and i moved in the valley and things weren't going very
very well there as a matter of fact i had to go out and try to sell my dog because it was either
do that or or he just was not going to be very well fed and then one night i went to see
muhammad ali fight for one brief moment this supposed
stumble bomb turned out to be magnificent and the fact that he lasted and knocked the champion down
i said boy if this isn't a metaphor for life his entire life crystallized at that moment he
will be remembered for all eternity at least among the fight fans he did something extraordinary now
that that is probably what i need as a catalyst for an idea a man who's going to stand up to life
and take one shot and maybe go the distance so i started to write and it was one of those
writing frenzies and three days later it came up with the script of rocky now the script
by no means was a finished piece of material it was probably about 90 pages and maybe 10 of it
remained in the final script but it was done so we're talking a little bit and i guess i really
wasn't right for the acting part and on the way out i said oh i don't know if it matters but i do
a little bit of writing because really yeah i'm writing this this story is i have to say about
wrestlers and i might do something about boxing well yeah as well bring it around and i thought
if i hadn't stopped on the way out you know that's why i tell all actors our writers don't give up
keep talking eventually you might hit a nerve somewhere they go ah come on back and if they
didn't say come on back or bring it later and let's see what you've developed i wouldn't be
sitting here so i have to give incredible credit to their uh to their insight and their patience
and they're willing to take a chance which um it doesn't exist much anymore unfortunately
originally when i brought the script to them they were fairly enthusiastic about it the one thing
they were not enthusiastic about was me playing the part and i really can't blame him at the time
but there was something inside of me that that you know this opportunity is never going to
come around and i really wasn't used to money and i had no idea what i would be missing but
the temptation started to come forward first it was
25 grand and a hundred thousand dollars i never heard of a hundred thousand because i had like
106 dollars in the bank and like i said i had to sell my dog and things are not looking very
i'm going to get destroyed but if i can still be standing on my feet then life isn't so bad
you