if you could go back and recut your film
i guarantee you
you would approach it with
a sensitivity and a wisdom and a
confidence you go ah
why didn't i see that before i didn't
believe in myself as a filmmaker the way
i do now
now i realize what
is really valuable
35 years later what is the metaphor that
you're making
with this different version of the fight
a warrior is a warrior to the very end
and though he may be defeated he won't
go quietly into their good night i just
think it'd be great for him to rally so
it is a complete slaughter then you go
oh
apollo creed did go down
fighting he didn't go down being
slaughtered
and now it is the russian girl standing
there the russians trying to intimidate
creeds
[Applause]
come on
before rocky
could have stopped the fight and didn't
this time he's dropping the towel but
that punch hits at the same time so as
the towel drops everything drops his
life drops he's just a second late
[Applause]
oh
you had to do again you wouldn't kill
paulo never if i if i had to do it ever
again i never would have killed apollo
absolutely not it was uh foolish i
thought i needed that kind of
springboard to protect the drama
on his really great
powerful velocity forward
him in a wheelchair he would assume the
role of mickey
and you know now his physicality has
been diminished we would have seen a
different side of apollo he could have
opened up to all these other things that
we didn't even know about him
because he's now in a wheelchair
and he would have kind of like been a
father figure mentor
brother
been really great
like he would have been embraced by my
family
then he has his family too
well what about that whole thing
yeah it would have been him would have
changed the rockets from there he would
have changed the entire trajectory of
all the rockies i mean
there would have been
rocky five would have never happened and
iraqi six maybe never would have
happened
that way
and creed yeah well creed probably never
would have been made
when you were writing the script was
that the theme it was prominent in your
head guilt
um
not as much
not not as profound i thought it would
be i was thinking more of just a tale
like a great adventure
and i didn't think of the ramifications
like okay he dies
it's like the death of a legend like
muhammad ali
it's like it has profound repercussions
i think the biggest problem i had as a
younger filmmaker was
lack of patience and confidence and
extended the moment
i was always very cognizant okay well
the audience is going to get bored jump
ahead
instead of
giving them
the benefit of the doubt and let the
emotions sink in i would rush right
through it and now
i completely
see the uh
fallibility and all that it's very
frustrating it really is that's why i'm
so happy to get a shot of this it's like
imagine getting a shot to re-edit your
life as i go back and do things that you
always wanted to do you know obviously
you can't do that with everything but
that's the beauty of film
so
i guess i didn't peruse all this stuff
in depth
and now i see i went
it was all there
so you've never seen this take never
since you shot it i've never seen it
since 1985.
you can't win
adrian
adrian always tells the truth
you can't win
adrian always tells the truth
and the more i can mine out of this
stuff
the more the audience is going to take
away something besides just a fight
they're going to take away uh-huh we
went through a journey lose this
lose that
and here we go keep going this is where
i'm going to go from
so i hit him you cut around to this and
you see me then shuffling
gets out of the corner now and now once
more is drago backing rocky balboa up
with a jab and balboa is not staying on
balance because of the long jab of the
russians
[Applause]
is not staying on balance because of a
long job
keep working
now this means more
because you didn't see it before is the
complete opposite of what
the original was where i take a complete
beating
this is like interesting like people are
not going to expect this i'd like to
optically blow this up about 10
and do this
see how it's coming in from this angle
and right now so you see him doing this
but then you see him coming in
underneath
not good
i wanted to be like that so it looks
like he's
coming from above which he would he's
six foot five see what i mean right
right now he's throwing a punch here
which makes no sense
[Music]
there it is right away that's that's a
hundred percent better
this is a morass of self-discovery kind
of like a swamp the deeper you get into
it
it becomes cinematic quicksand
and
if someone doesn't pull you out you're a
goner what do you feel watching this now
i i feel foolish
i said my guy
he sounds like
the ship sailed
circus left town
and that's why this is
a mixed bag of emotions right now makes
me very angry
gratified but also angry that i didn't
see it at the time
but isn't that
the conundrum of life
it really is if i only knew then what i
knew now
here it is
[Music]
i'm a happy man
i really think that we nailed it
we deliberate the knockout blow i
finally said what i wanted to say i
should have said 35 years ago
that man man all of us are entitled to
follow our dreams to stick to our
beliefs no matter what the consequences
because in the end that's
all you have
is the faith in yourself
and if you keep believing in that
eventually it will come true
you