Sylvester Stallone and His Friends' Films Podcast

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[Music]
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all right welcome everyone to the first premier episode of It's a long road the
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ramble series podcast to say that I'm honored excited and just a tad nervous
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for this episode would be an understatement because with me today I have the Creator Dr Frankenstein himself
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who created this monster of Rambo Mr David morale David thank you so much for
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coming on the show and agreeing to be uh the first episode of this podcast which will delve into the ramble series film
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franchise but I thought we should get the person on who created this character first and foremost thank you so much
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well you're quite welcome it's a special year um my novel First Blood was
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published in 1972 which is half century ago 50 years
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and it has the distinction of never having been out of print and the few
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novels can say that it's been it's been a remarkable journey to have a book that
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lasts that long well though it's incredible absolutely incredible uh
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before we get into the book I want to know David what was life like as a young
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Canadian in the 40s and 50s now I'm a Canadian myself I'm actually in British Columbia right now we'll talk about that
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a little bit later but what was life like for you as a young boy in in Ontario Canada I was raised in Southern
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Ontario near Toronto um in a twin city called Kitchener
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watero which in those days um was uh certainly not as big as it is now but
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you know everything was small then and uh watero was distinguished for its breweries and its distilleries seat
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rooms was there laats was there and things like that and um I I'm uh we're
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talking about 50 years so we're getting into age I was born in 433 my father was was a British Navy
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pilot who had come to Canada to train Canadian uh Airmen for the war and he
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was shot down um shortly after D-Day a few days after
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D-Day um and so um growing up for me was was difficult because I didn't have a
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father uh and I thought it was normal not to have a father even though I knew that something
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wasn't comparable to what my friend's situation was and my mother had one
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point when I was very young unable to to she was a brilliant dress maker and unable to support herself uh and take
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care of me she was uh forced um to put me in an orphanage for a time and this became a defining Moment
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In My Life um and uh so um Everybody
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grows up thinking the conditions they have are normal so after the orphanage my mother boarded me on a minite farm so
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I spent it I was a year on a min night farm and with great memories of it uh
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and uh Graham green once said that an unhappy childhood is a gold mine for a
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writer I didn't know I was unhappy but I was and so a lot of the themes of
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Abandonment of um not trusting people my mother remarried and The Stepfather did
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not care for children and we didn't get along and so there's a persistent theme in my work which shows up in the N first
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place uh as opposed to the film where the age difference is is not the same where uh
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uh teasel is old enough to be Rambo's father he is in effect The Stepfather
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right and so there are a lot of psychological things that from my youth uh wound up in my work well I didn't
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know that history so thank you for sharing that I know it's very personal it was going to be one of my questions
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you know because the characters of teasel and ramble in the book which I just rewrite again I've read it before
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for but I thought boy I better reread it for this interview and I'm so glad I did and the characters in that book talk
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about flawed Lively like their lives were just so flawed characters of uh the
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banam into of fatherhood um mistrust everything you just said and I was going to ask you what did you draw from I
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guess that answers that question right and one of the things it's uh when we look at the movie and
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remember I'm not complaining I like the movie a lot and I like it enough that I recorded an audio comment
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that's on Blu-rays of the film and on 4K um in which for the length of the film I
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discuss the differences and the what I see in the movie and uh I mean it's it's
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it's it's it's a good movie it's so well made on so many levels um and so I I I I
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talk a lot about um um about the differences and go go back and ask me
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that question again I I tend when I'm talking to go on a tangent and then come back and not answer the question so
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sound you sound just like me sir I I go tangents all the time I I forget what I'm talking about half the time people
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uh that know me that's one of my qualities I well why did you go to Penn State what Drew you to Penn State at the
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time oh no but back up there was a question in there that um that um I was heading toward well we were talking
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about the just the abandonment of of a fathers a father fig oh sure so in the
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movie um teas and Rambo are basically the same age right so there what we have
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is disagreeing brothers so the theme changed because of the casting now at
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one time um Jean Hackman was being considered for teasel so teasel in that
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case would have been the father son thing um so uh the sorts of things I'm
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talking about just a moment ago um those emotions
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um were built into the to the and and remember in the novel teasel's wife has
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just left him and the reason they she left him is that sort of late in the
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marriage he wanted to have children and she did not so you know now he got his
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kid and what's he going to do with him so I've always thought there were a lot of ironies uh in there U so you were
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asking about Kitchener well uh yeah so you you spent your childhood there and then you went to the menite uh yes and
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but then you ended up of course focusing on English you got a bachel of Arts but you went to Penn State what Drew you to
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Penn State well um uh and before I do that I don't want to miss this because
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nobody would except people in the region would know what I'm talking about but I took names
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of towns in the Kitchener area for the
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names of characters in the novel so in the novel there are there's a character named
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G and there's a character named Preston uh well those are real towns outside
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Kitchener so anybody reading the novel would have to smile because they they know where it came from oh great uh s
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similarly I used uh names of deputies uh for places around Penn State where I
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went to school anyway the the this is what happened I I was in in College I
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was in my my um ending my third year and um I had
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read I was had a keen interest in Hemingway and I I read uh one of the
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first critical books about Hemingway by a man named Philip young and I was
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overwhelmed by the quality of the book and in scholarship it's normally very dry but young had a way of writing that
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made you feel in love with Hemingway's pros and I um had this crazy idea that I
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would go to Penn State and study with him well you know I'm in Canada and and
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and he's in the middle of Pennsylvania and I just I was newly married uh and I
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remember going to my wife and saying hey how about you you quit your job she was a teacher and let's go to the United
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States so I can study with this guy and my wife is a very adventurous person and
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she said let's go so um I wound up with at at Penn State and there I met a my
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first encounter with a truly professional fiction writer and I'd always wanted to write fiction and uh
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his name was Philip class his pen name was William 10 and he was a science fiction writer I don't write science
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fiction but the techniques are the same and so he um I guess he sense the drive
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I had in me and so he helped me a great deal and so it was at Penn State that I started to write the novel what were the
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what was a technique or two that you could share with us that Mr Ten shared with you that helped you with your
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writing of First Blood well uh he he was a um he believed
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and we've touched on this somewhat he believed he had two things one was that
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to have a career you had to be yourself he had a Mantra which I pass on when I
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teach writing which you have to be a First Rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of another writer so
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even though I was interested in Hemingway I wasn't going to write like Hemingway because I was myself but how
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do we determine what that means and he had a theory that each of us had a dominant emotion that we were controlled
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we have lots of emotions but one more than any other emotion dominated us for
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some it was jealousy for some it was hatred right um I once when I was
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discussing this with the group of writers fell to up his handy yeah I know what you mean my dominant emotion is
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lust uh so I thought all right that could be interesting and and class had
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the theory um his name is spelled with a K that my dominant emotion Was
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Fear um because of the way I talked this
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isn't manifest anymore but I can see how it was then and the way I talk and and
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about my background um the the things because I expected everything to go to
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Pieces all the time right sure uh I lived in a state of anxiety and uh he said so he s me to
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work writing short stories about fear but it couldn't be about fear of drowning or Heights or things like that
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which are merely examples of a much deeper thing so to write examining fear
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and from that I began to go in other directions um but it was always about
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the emotions of the characters and it was always how that related to me and whenever I start a project I always ask
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myself why is this worth a year in my life what's what why is this story so
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important to me that as I elaborate on it and describe it and and dramatize it it that
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I'm going to learn something about myself um so that was his primary um the
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the thing I primarily learned from him that it's that how to be my own self how
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to be authentic rather than imitated perfect that's great advice I I'll I'll
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keep that in mind when I write my first novel it's very difficult because you know we're influenced by
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people we admire uh I didn't have a chance to talk about a television show called Route 66 which was um on the air
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from 1960 to 64 uh about two young men in a Corvette convertible who travel across the
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country and see things and have experiences they bust out and the head
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writer for that was a man named Sterling silon and in my quest for a father I had
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written just as Philip clas became my father so to speak so I wrote to Sterling Sant who began giving me advice
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and the guidance that he gave me through his writing in effect he became a kind of father and I never wrote like string
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um but again the intensity of what he did and the uniqueness of what he did
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made me want to be try to be um unique myself oh that's well
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that's amazing and are you looking at my notes sir I was going to ask you about Route 66 I can't see any I know thank
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you for answering that that was one of my next questions okay I see I see why I was like how how are you seeing my
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questions I was going to ask you about Route 66 well I'm just going to lean over here and I'll take a look no that's
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fantastic now well let's get into the uh ramble uh create character creation Now
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you were watching the CBS Evening News one night and and they were showing of course footage of the Vietnam War and
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was that your first time to see uh the current conflict on TV at that time when you saw this on the TV yes because in
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Canada at that time you know we're so used to the bombardment of
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information uh cable news and the phone and you know everywhere but let's
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remember that in Canada there there was a Canadian
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Broadcasting System um but in those days it all
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depended upon through the air through an antenna into the house very very um and
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go it sometimes you'd get a program and sometimes you wouldn't and it was uh and
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it was mostly Canadian issues so uh truly I had barely been aware of the
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Vietnam War when I went to Penn State this this sound so long ago and to me
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it's still very Vivid in 1966 and I arrived to find my fellow
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graduate students um terrified about being drafted course
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so I wanted to know what that was about and then that in turn led me to you know
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begin to understand how the Vietnam War was so so big a deal in the United
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States compared to Canada now the key here is that when I received my student card my
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student visa to go to to study in the United States with my wife accompanying
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me uh the Border um it was was um
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explained to me very firmly that I was a guest and that um political opinions
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were not something that I was allowed to discuss it may know and as a Canadian I
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understood this and I assume you do too you go to someone's house and you might hear them saying some really wretched
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things but I'm not going to argue with anybody in their own house of course and I'll you know if it's a dinner
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conversation I'll just shut up and I'll never go back but I'm not going to argue with somebody in their own house so
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similarly I wasn't about to you know have opinions about things I didn't know
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about and I think this was important because as I watched the war escalate it
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was as if I were an observer and I was seeing things and then came The Big Year
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of 1968 and in 68 Martin Luther King Jr was
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assassinated in 68 Robert Kennedy was
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assassinated um simultaneously there were riots some of
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them to do with civil rights because I mean there's Prejudice in Canada too but
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it doesn't have that you know that strong strong WR um uh almost baked into
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it a history of of slavery and and and
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uh racial Prejudice and um some of it was against the War uh so you weren't always sure
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what Riot was motivated by what um but
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even now with the contention that exists in the United States and that you're
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starting to see in Canada such as what happened in Ottawa even now it's hard to imagine a year in
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which there weren't 10 riots and I'm not talking about what happened in aotta I'm
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talking about buildings going down I'm talking cars being burned Etc not 10 not
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20 not 50 not 100 there were several hundred major riots in the United States
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that summer that year uh some cities never Rec covered parts of Buffalo are
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still Riot ravage parts of Detroit parts of Gary Indiana inner city of of Los
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Angeles uh some of some of them are still abandoned U although you know over
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the years they've been work but it was devastating and I'm looking at this as
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this Observer from another country where you know couldn't imagine this in Canada
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and I thought there was going to be a Civil War and so and just as in the United States
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today you are having people are actually actually wanting a Civil War I mean it
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it is insane um so I was watching this and as you mentioned this uh CBS Evening News
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where there was a firefight in Vietnam and there was a riot in the United States and I thought you know you turn
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the sound they're the same story and that's when I had the idea for
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first blood that I would have the war come to the United States
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in the form of one one man just one man bringing the war home and then uh and I
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I suspect you may ask me about this you may you know if you have a question there ask it because I think you know
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what I'm gonna ask what I know go ahead and start uh well it's about who is my model for the
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character um and uh he isn't talked about much
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anymore right um but Audi Murphy AUD D IE um was in his day extremely famous
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not only for his War record he was America's most decorated soldier of
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World War II and to see his citations for all
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the decorations he Reed makes anything in my no first blood
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look H aie Murphy was extraordinary in what he did in combat in fact he wrote a
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book called The helenback and when it was filmed he played himself in the movie as they
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reenacted World War II oh wow um and he was this
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um shortish thin babyfaced Texan I think he
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was 18 or 19 might have been younger and when he came back from the
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war with all the agulation he received uh James Kagney the actor was also a
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great dancer performer singer um Yankee
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Doodle Dandy is a good example um took him under his wings so
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to speak and said I think you could have a movie uh uh uh career and in fact Audie
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Murphy did have a movie career he made many many many westerns and some of them were a
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pictures such as um The Unforgiven with Brent lanaster
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and Jean Stewart or I mean say Jean Simmons um with uh John Houston
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directing so this was not shabby but most of them tended to be lower budget
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westerns in which when he was in an action scene you could see him go away
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as if he were back in the war and he had such a baby face but Steely presence
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that in one of his movies no name on the bullet the plot is
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he dressed in black comes to town sits in a chair out outside a rooming house
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and everybody knows who he is and figures he's here to kill me because they all have secrets and they basically
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begin self-destructing and he doesn't have to do anything but sit in a chair outside this building it's really very
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amusing but very intense and um he said that he would
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have liked to written another book that was instead of about his World War II
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experiences it would be about his difficulty adjusting the peace time and
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he had all the things that we associate with what we now call post- trauma stress disorder and he had a gun
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underneath his pillow he would wake up screaming and shooting there were often bullet holes where they had to take
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bring in new pictures to cover the bullet holes and uh he was arrested at
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one time for attempted murder for pistol whipping a dog trainer who AI said had
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overcharged the friend of is to train a dog um the charge was dismissed um in a
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way a tragic life after the war and I at
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the time people would know who this was uh at least certainly I did and I
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thought what would happen if AI Murphy came back from
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Vietnam and so that was you know what would happen if Audie Murphy grew a long
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hair and a beard as a lot of people aren't aware that's the situation in the novel and the police arrested him and
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they were going to shave off the beard and the hair how would AI react sure and
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so I have to laugh because it's such a to me still a great idea and so that was
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the book and then the question is who would he be against and and you know
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maybe you have questions about that I don't want to drone on but um you're not nobody wants to hear me sir you're the
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you're the guest of honor well it's better that I don't like you that we have conversation well I want to say
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that bringing the war home that was a stroke of Genius on your part I don't think and correct me if I'm wrong I
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don't want you to Pat yourself on the back but was that a storyline that was ever like introduced before like a
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violent War at home so there's one thing to bring the post traumatic stress at home but were you the first one to kind of Bring the actual physical violence
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home from war to home soil there are westerns and for is a contemporary
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Western um I modeled it as such he is the gunfighter The Stranger who comes to
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town the gunfighter and they won't let him hang up his guns um there are any number not any
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number but a couple of films I'm thinking of a Robert Taylor Western
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called Devil's doorway I 1950 51 somewhere in there in it in one of those
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ways that Hollywood head at the time Robert Taylor plays a Native American who served in the Civil War for the
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union and was decorated in fact has the Medal of Honor oh and comes back only to
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find that the local ranchers and bankers want to take his Ranch away from him and
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so he uses um a techniques from the war okay in order to fight back and
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dies that's not a happy ending there's a a picture called
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the the Lusty men no it's not the Lusty men it'll come to me it's a Glenn Ford
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film uh in which Ford was in the war and now he's a Rancher it's funny how these
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things break down into certain themes and again the bad guys are coming after
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him and he begins using tactics from the war against them and I wish I could it's a it's a fun movie wish I could uh then
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title might come to me um so in westerns it's it's a theme um that um in terms of
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the Civil War you know in civilian life afterward but I don't know of someone
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might might um might find an example but I'm not familiar with a war veteran who
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comes back who then makes war on as it were the United
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States yeah we should make it clear to our listeners who maybe haven't read your book they will be quite surprised
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if they're familiar with First Blood the film and they go read that book Rambo is crazy in the sense of he lays
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destruction to a town he destroys a town yes he destroys a town he is he's Furious about what the war did to him
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and he's been wanding the country trying to see what he's been fighting for and
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uh he has the medal of honor um but he's very confused and this
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police officer will not let him alone until finally things get so out of
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control that we have the war um and the book is structured so that the chapters
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alternate between Rambo looking at the police officer and the police officer
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looking at Rambo and they have almost an instant hatred with each other yes
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and they do not make any attempt to understand why the other person is
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behaving that way so it escalates and escalates and escalates which is
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basically I didn't think I'd ever see it but in the United States first Bloods is relevant as ever um that the novel is
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because what you have is opposing sides who are so entrenched uh that they're not interested in the discussion they're
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not interested in trying to understand each other and the the alternating chapter viewpoints became actually the
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theme of the book uh so that you you'd be in Rambo's mind you say yeah that
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rotten police officer and then you'd go on the police officer's mind and you'd say well that damn kid why doesn't he
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straighten himself up and you know they'd go back and forth like that until you know things were IR remedial well
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you said in your forward that escalating Force results in disaster nobody wins
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yes uh that that is that is correct uh that's in the novel and I mean that's
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the theme and isn't I mean it's the truth right yes um and in Rambo 4 I have
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U various opinions about various of the films um uh um Rambo 4 has a lot in it
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thematically uh I had nothing to do with the film um but a lot in it
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thematically um that uh I've never seen anybody draw out but you almost quoted
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from it there's a line in uh the fourth film um where Rambo says Wars old men
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fight them Old Men start them young men fight them nobody wins yeah um and Sly
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had phoned me before he started shooting that movie to say that in retrospect he
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thought the second and third films glamorized Warfare too much um and that
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he wanted to make a Sam penpa Rambo movie to to to take all that glamour out
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of it and he has any number of speeches in it which are really hard-hitting to
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do with the futility of but all and the stupidity of it now you brought up SCE let's get to them just a little bit so
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Rocky's one and two has been released what what was your connection to those films if any before the film got sold uh
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or sorry before syester s himself signed on to the film what what was your feeling on Stallone before before Rambo
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what was your feelings in General on slide did you have any before he was cast well you got a lot of Rocky I mean
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you know Rocky running up those Steps in Philadelphia and doing the doing the
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dance I mean it's a brilliant film and he had he was extremely um uh committed to his work
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because they were prepared to offer him a lot of money for the screenplay and he said no I'm going to star in it and so
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that's where you save your money I'm going to star in it and you don't have to pay me much you can pay me scale for
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the screenplay and with a lot of struggle he he got what he wanted um and
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good for him um I had written the novel prior to sly's movie career he'd
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been in a few but nothing like Rocky so that at the time and remembering that
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Rambo needed to have a beard because he had to look like a hippie and because
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police officers hated hippies I mean it was just forgiven I grew this
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mustache as a social experiment in 68 I wanted to see how policemen would react
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with just this and oh boy did I get
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reactions uh and I I wanted to shave it off it but my wife said she got used to it so I still have my mustache because
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my wife says I must have my mustache um but um facial hair uh in that culture um
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was an automatic guarantee that you were going to get some kind of trouble from
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authority figures uh so but by the time the movie comes out 10 years later it's
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all different right so you have Brian Den saying to Sylvester we don't like
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guys who look like you come into our town so he's got kind of long hair it's not really you know and I remember
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seeing the movie and the men in the audience who looked like Sylvester who had hair down past their years whereas
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10 years earlier they would have been clubbed for having that hair right who are now wearing that hair um saying well
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what's wrong with the way he looks because basically he was what they looked like and I thought the movie was
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going to fail at that point but then the fight in the jail happened and then you know we forget but it's a we in the film
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um and that they somehow get around well you know it's funny uh because I of course saw the film and I saw it like
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when I was 10 or 11 years old for the first time uh and of of course didn't read the book or I admit on probably
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like a million people who saw the film didn't know it was a book until afterwards that's just the reality of film media compared to yeah and but when
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I saw that scene and for many years how I viewed that moment I could be wrong and I don't know if this was the intention of uh the screenwriter and
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director is just Sly wearing or ramble character wearing the jacket and the in
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the just just being a veteran not necessarily that he didn't have a he had long hair sure but just the idea that he
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was a just a straggler kind of like uh a vagrant of course in the film he's a vagrant his vagrancy is his charge but
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just the idea that he looked unkempt in general not just long hair but that he was actually wearing the Army jacket like look at look at me I'm a veteran
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and it kind of looks like he's troubled just by the way he looks yeah yeah that would make sense to me and you know and
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and they the uh you know certainly they tried in that direction to make it happen right but
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honestly in in I remember in the theaters people saying what's wrong with the way you look so sure of course you
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know it's kind of funny but you know it was just that moment I thought oh maybe we got trouble here and then they went
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on so I imagine someone like Chris kristopherson in the role now no one
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talks about Chris anymore but at the time he was a very successful a popular musician writer my
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God you know the songs he'd written and his his Persona at the time was the hippie beard long hair thing and he had
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been in um this was after I finished the book but he'd been in um some films
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where he had the you know the beard and I thought you know that'll work uh he
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but you know it took 10 years from when the I sold the film rights it took 10
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years before the film was made there was a lot of things in the meantime and by
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then Chris was not the movie star that Sylvester had become right and more than that Sylvester had an overseas audience
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oh which was very important you know to to to broaden movies were no longer
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thought of as American audience it was a worldwide audience what did Sly get
34:51
right oh well he he got a lot right I mean the understanding from the start
34:57
that there were 26 scripts for the for the film for with different movie studios
35:04
involved one sold to the other sold to the other
35:09
and often they were ludicrous um the worst and what this is again one of
35:17
those things that maybe nobody will get unless you're a tennis fan all right somebody called Rambo the Bobby Rigs of
35:24
Guerilla Warfare now Bobby rigs was the the clown as you were tennis player who
35:33
played tennis with a umbrella over his head he was so good he could play tennis
35:38
with an umbrella over his head and beat just about anybody with just this hand and sort of prancing around he made it
35:44
look so easy right you know sort of and and and in in a cultural changing
35:50
evening Bobby rigs played tennis on National Television against Billy Jean
35:57
king that's right the the you know transformative female tennis player who
36:03
made it possible for women to be professionals and so this was the big
36:08
deal you know that he wouldn't play another guy play a woman and we'll see how this play she beat him and so that
36:15
you know changed a lot of things a lot of lot of the culture changed because of that tennis match and to show his skill
36:22
this is Rambo's skill not Bobby Rick right to show this is so I cannot believe this
36:28
he he he was in a cave right sort of like in the movie and in the novel right
36:35
but it's a commercial cave okay all right where people pay to go in right and he shows his survival
36:43
skills by breaking into vending machines this was a script idea yes oh no it was
36:49
a finished script by a very respected I won't mention his name very respected
36:55
Oscar nominated screenwriter well that's embarrassing it was terrible and when I
37:01
read that script I thought this picture can never be made um but at the same
37:08
time and this was very exciting I found this out years later I happened to be somewhere where Sydney Pollock one of my
37:15
favorite film directors was Pollock is no longer with us but he's the way we
37:22
were uh out of out of Africa Jeremiah Johnson pictures look great but people
37:28
don't think of him because the pictures were all different he didn't have a Persona as a director and anyhow he we
37:34
crossed past and he said yeah I worked on First Blood for six months wow and I said wow and he said yeah Steve McQueen
37:41
was going to be in it and you know we were just about there but then they realized that Steve was in his 40s and
37:49
in 1975 when this was shot there were no 45y old Vietnam veterans it was very
37:56
young 18 19 year old War uh by by by
38:02
1985 82 rather when the film came out it was a little more believable that Sly of
38:07
his age right he was 36 would have been a veteran so you know that in a way the
38:13
timing worked out pretty well um so do you feel that Sly though he captured the
38:20
intensity uh the the how say roughness but just I understand that the character
38:26
was changed he's not as brutal in first blood but regarding his ability or the phys I would say this is me the physical
38:33
acting that Sly does for this film is in my opinion very Oscar worthy just his facial expressions the physical the
38:40
physical acting that he does I think really captures the physical intensity of of the novel this is this is s's gift
38:48
U it sounds like it's no effort I mean he he it's a talent he can do it but it's a skill whatever it is that not a
38:55
lot of actors have and um I um had several conversations with Richard krena
39:03
and uh Richard a fine man really really wonderful man very easy to talk to very
39:09
not that Sly isn't but I'm just saying you know Richard Richard was I always enjoyed chatting with him and one one
39:18
evening he said to me uh that and Richard had a long career
39:24
he was he started as a as a child actor and went on and on and on and on you know I don't know how many decades he
39:31
had and he you know he'd work with everybody and he said in his career he'd only worked with two actors who knew
39:39
what to do in front of a camera as opposed to um emoting lines and you know and
39:47
being actors but who knew that what it came down to was there's a camera and you have to do something in it to get
39:54
attention and he said those were Steve McQueen who he'd worked with in the Sand
40:00
Pebbles and Sylvester and what Sylvester understands there's
40:08
a um Michael Kaine filmed um some lectures about film acting and in
40:18
in in it he emphasizes that eyes are the secret to film acting and and he says
40:25
and in your closeups do not blink um and Sylvester has a kind of a
40:33
deer wounded deer quality that he can bring to the role so that even with all
40:41
the implied violence that which he he the character was capable those eyes
40:47
were intensely sympathetic and and Sly like so many fine film actors tends to
40:54
take lines out so that a a a look or a gesture would
41:01
be better than any line any dialogue could be um so that what you were saying
41:07
is absolutely correct that he knows what to do with his body and his eyes especially the scene where he's being
41:14
fingerprinted is a good example the the other thing is that like McQueen similar
41:21
to McQueen props are a major thing for for
41:26
slaugh uh Steve was never happy in his movies unless he had something he was doing and
41:33
of course you watched him doing it so that the other actors disappeared so it
41:38
was sly's idea to have the knife um and there is no knife in in the
41:46
movie or in the novel um it wasn't part of the culture um but Sly
41:53
knew Jimmy Lyle the knife maker and and had collected knives and so it was in
42:00
his mindset to say let's put one let's put a Jimmy ly movie a knife in the movie so more than maybe anything that
42:08
knife as a prop defined uh the character yeah and um so
42:14
yeah he he brought I mean the whole goal is how do you personify something that
42:20
was on the page and you know he's he's brilliant now of course everyone pretty
42:25
much knows spoil alert if you want to hear a spoiler of the book well don't don't listen to don't listen to uh
42:31
David's intro to the book number one don't don't read the forward uh but here you go so of course Troutman kills Rambo
42:39
in the book and there was there was also a scene filmed alternate ending to First
42:45
Blood where trowman and ramble are having discussion and there is a gun drawn on ramble but ramble himself
42:51
shoots the gun in troutman's hat on himself so suicide uh are you and of
42:57
course you're happy with the ending of your book because you wrote that book but are you happy or not happy with despite the the sequels I'm just talking
43:03
about the original film how how are you with the ending with with the film in light of what
43:09
happened before so because I should say the film is let say it's lighter and I know there's been some discussion that
43:14
the film uh is sympathetic to uh the ramble character I think that's true but even if you look at it objectively Rambo
43:22
is just as troubled and just as wrong in the film his actions as as is teasel meaning even in the film you don't you
43:28
don't really root against teasel I never hate teasel he's also just a complicated
43:33
uh he's in the wrong place at the wrong time to both these characters they should never have met you know what I mean and they yeah so they both survive
43:41
at the end of the film which kind of is a relief you don't really want either one to die but in the books it's kind of fair because they both die so I guess
43:47
what I'm saying is are you happy that they shot the alternate ending or not I don't I don't have a problem with the
43:53
ending I mean my novel was about um Mutual of of Devastation right it's as if they
44:00
were they had nuclear arms they would have killed each other um and it was about no winners and the the colonel
44:09
troutman's first name is Samuel he is Sam he is Uncle Sam he is the system the
44:15
book as I saw it was an allegory right and that tasel was a as it were an
44:20
isenhower a Republican comes out of the Korean War he has certain values to do
44:25
with the 50s um and Rambo is as it were a disaffected war veteran um who's you know almost a
44:33
war protester and you know of the type back then that burned down building um and uh
44:41
so in that scenario there could not be any winners and the system wins I mean I
44:47
I would not change the book for a moment no um um but um once they soften the
44:56
character and that was done at the very beginning which is not in my novel in which he
45:02
visits the the the farm the whatever it is where there's a black woman hanging out the wash and he's come to see dmer
45:09
but he's dead oh my God the engent orange killed him whats to be done I mean you can parody it so well and yet
45:16
it's done so well right and that sets him up right I mean oh he's so sympathetic his friend is dead right oh
45:24
and then this bad man picks on him it's like what movies are right um and once
45:30
that once that's set up you can't kill him and in fact the first version of the
45:37
film did kill him in the scene that you describe Troutman has the gun Rambo wrenches it away from him and shoots
45:45
himself and um audience an audience in Las Vegas Nevada was
45:51
furious and I mean they were really really angry and you know the idea was you can't kill Rocky you can't kill
45:59
Rambo so that made the producers one of whom I knew pretty well Andrew vanu um
46:07
and he told me that they had no plans for a sequel but when that screening went so badly he said we had to go back
46:14
and re-shoot we had to make him live so they went back and reshot and then by
46:20
God it was a big hit uh and then they said oh we can make sequels I mean it
46:25
was it was like a an happy accident for them um so on its own the film works
46:33
very well and I mean they're just so many things great about it the acting and you know and Ted kff he's such a
46:39
good director cinematography and all that and and I always single out Gary
46:44
Jerry gold smmi oh yeah because Jerry's Music made an intent and I talk about
46:49
this in my audio commentary for the film sometimes I pause just so we can hear a
46:54
little bit of Jerry's Music it's you know for 15 seconds um and if to this
47:01
day I am bothered by the overuse of expletives in the film I don't believe
47:07
they're necessary I I know why they're there they an the sort of grittiness but
47:12
it's always self-conscious I always feel the actors know they're saying you know
47:17
these these these expletives and for effect I don't for a minute believe that
47:23
these characters would actually in that context say it and I think the film would have been
47:28
better me uh and I you know I'm a Quenton Tarantino fan right so I mean if
47:35
if I can get away with what Clinton does um but I I just feel that aesthetically
47:41
it could have been done that's the only change I would make now I'm I know our
47:46
time is running short to what you agreed to there sir I do have one sort of fantasy question if I could entertain
47:52
you with one yeah sure Cu uh the I know the film the film franchise is just a different medium like there's just no
47:58
way around it there's there's the book and we and the book should be read and loved as it is I love it it's amazing
48:04
it's the Genesis of the ramble character but the for for better for worse ramble has just it's you know Bob Crane created
48:12
Batman but then Batman has just become it's just way above and beyond even what
48:17
what the comic was it's just toys and lunchboxes movies uh and Rambo has done
48:22
that as well um but my question to you is here's my fantasy question so first blood is made they want to do the
48:29
sequels but they've come to you for a Trilogy story arc where does the ramble character go in your
48:35
storyline well um I can't talk about some of this because I was hired to write um a script for Rambo 3 that
48:44
wasn't used it would have taken place in South America okay um and I was hired to write a treatment
48:52
after the third film of of the company
48:57
Koko sometimes pronounced Koko um uh sold the rights to Miramax
49:04
and when Miramax owned the rights they hired me to develop some treatments for
49:09
them and then Miramax sold the rights again to a company called Millennium which now is
49:16
the ones that made four and five right um so uh some of this is proprietary and
49:22
I you know I can't fair enough I can't uh talk about it much um what I did do
49:29
is I wrote um in the day uh in the 80s
49:34
novelizations were very popular and without VHS tapes and then DVDs and
49:44
streaming and cable as we as we know it and all the other methods that you can watch a movie people
49:51
bought novelization so they could mentally reimagine the
49:57
film and and Andy asked me if I would write novelizations for two and three
50:04
now if they wanted it they had to ask me because by contract I'm the only one who
50:09
can write novels about Rambo okay so they needed me so I said yes but um the
50:17
scripts were so basic let us call it short 87 pages
50:26
and very streamlined plots and I thought I don't know what to do here and then it
50:32
turned out that James Cameron the James Cameron before he was James Cameron had
50:39
written the first draft of Rambo 2 and that had a drastically different
50:45
tone much closer to my novel and so I said all right if I'm going to do this
50:51
and remember they needed me um they I said if I'm going to do this I have to
50:57
be able to use parts of Cameron script and then I said and in fact
51:03
because it's my character there's some things here that I wish had been developed a little differently or maybe
51:09
more deeply so the book will be onethird what the film is onethird what Cameron
51:15
script is and onethird what I think it could be right so while I never had
51:21
scripts that I wrote filmed for Rambo I did have Rambo two and three the
51:28
novelizations published which gives people an idea of what I would have done
51:34
um always granting that I'm doing this based upon ideas that had been supplied
51:39
to me by Cameron and Sly in the first case and Sheldon leish and Sly in the
51:46
second case you know make sure we have all the writers here so um you know it's
51:51
complicated but I those those novelizations have have lasted too one of was uh six weeks on the New York
51:58
Times bestseller list well I read both uh it's been it's been a while I was one of those teenagers that bought no
52:04
novelizations just for those reasons I bought them all the time I bought like Batman Tombstone I bought all those
52:10
novelizations I love in fact they would they would released them before the movies came out yeah that's it was part
52:16
of the promotion yeah um and um and I had fun because having talked with Jimmy
52:22
ly and learned about the knives um which I did didn't know about you know before
52:28
I when I'd written first blood so I have sections in the novelizations about Jimmy's knives and
52:34
about Gil hibben's knife for the I became close friends with Gil hibbon later but you know so we even have
52:40
diagrams of the knives in the books and you know how they're made and was it's a lot of fun to supply that information
52:47
are you are you H well I me I don't see are you happy but what are your feelings
52:52
on the fact that Sly is so enamored by the ramble character like I think he loves ramble
52:58
as much as even though he didn't create Rambo he put it in in the stratosphere that it's in though his uh Global star
53:04
peel and and all that but he has like knives on display he's got I think he has just much ramble stuff as he has
53:11
Rocky stuff in his house yeah I think he may have sold some of the materials I
53:17
think he had an auction a while ago um yeah um well Sly is a not quite a method
53:25
actor but he veres himself in the roles and tries to find things that he can
53:31
relate to in a way he makes the character that he's Port portraying
53:36
himself um and U I tell you a story I love to tell about we've talked I've
53:42
never had dinner with Sylvester Stone but I have talked to him for dozens of
53:48
hours um often on the phone and he and there's this he told me this story he
53:53
says we talking about screenwriting and he said you know visual how do you do this visually he
53:59
say so he talked about one of the Ram one of the rocky films the scene is that
54:05
Rocky has come to the cemetery to visit the grave of his dead
54:10
wife and he's trying to establish that he goes there a lot yeah
54:17
so the way an ordinary screenwriter would do this is that Rocky would walk
54:25
down a path and there'd be a guy on a power mower going by and he'd say oh hey
54:31
I see your back Rocky nice to see you and they and that would say all right he
54:36
comes along so so it's Dreadful so how do you do this to make
54:42
it fresh and you know intriguing and so what he did is uh he had a folding
54:50
chair that was it it's in various times but the one he liked best it was up in a tree
54:56
so he came and he pulled down the folding chair and opened it and he sat down and that told you everything right
55:03
you didn't need any dialogue you know that he came there a lot and that they tolerated him putting the darn chair up
55:10
in the tree it's it's it's wonderful yeah and uh so that's you know what he
55:15
what he does and yeah he you know Rocky around about two different you know two
55:21
different things but um you know it's it's rare in fact for an act to be
55:26
Associated that closely with two characters it is and not only that I've said this before on my Rocky podcast but
55:32
we obviously talked about ramble quite a bit throughout the throughout that series um that Stallone you know he's
55:39
often slighted for his acting which I think is unfortunate because I think he's an incredible actor he's able to portray two characters so differently
55:45
that when I watch the ramble films and when I then when I watch the rocky films I'm never thinking oh that's Rambo like
55:51
I never I it's you're watching Rocky and you're watching like he's able to channel those characters so well they're
55:57
so different and I always say rocky is the guy you marry and Rambo is the guy you party with on the weekend he's the
56:02
guy you take home for the weekend that's funny um I I have a story I like to tell
56:08
about him please um about slide um my it's a very personal story but you'll
56:15
see why I'm doing this um my son Matthew who was 15 years old died from a rare
56:22
bone cancer in 1987 sorry yeah at the time um I Matthew was very ill and he'd
56:31
be in the hospital and then he'd be home and he'd be in the hospital and I was um
56:38
in uh LA and I had some business uh uh with Si's company he wasn't there but I
56:46
had occasion to be talking to his administrative assistant and I said to her you know
56:52
maybe you know maybe so I could phone my son and you know be something special something different
56:59
she said you know he he gets these requests but you know he never knows what's to say and it's so awkward that
57:05
he really doesn't do it I said well my son will talk to him about movies so it
57:11
be pretty easy I but you know just a thought so couple weeks passed and you
57:18
know as these coincidences in life will occur my son came home on rare occasion
57:24
when he was able to go to school and he came home with two classmates and uh the tape of First
57:33
Blood the VHS had been released they were very expensive I think I paid $50
57:39
American for for it they were very expensive um you know we think of what a CD or a DVD or you know Blu-ray you can
57:46
get a Blu-ray for 9.95 or or or less and but they were
57:52
very expensive and rare you had to order them specially but had it and uh he said
57:58
to the kids do you want to watch First Blood and of course chances are their parents would not have let them watch
58:04
First Blood you know so not that there's it's it's really a very nonviolent film
58:10
it really is but but people get you know I don't know people go crazy
58:17
so so they're in there watching it and the phone rang in the kitchen and I
58:23
picked it up and it was s assistance said uh is your son there and I said yeah she said well Sly if he's there put
58:29
him on sly's going to talk to him so I went in and I they're watching
58:36
I think it was the cliff scene right I said you want to talk to Sylvester Stallone Matthew and they all laughed of
58:42
course of course I said no no he's on the phone wow so they all ran out into
58:49
the kitchen and the two classmates watched Matthew on the phone so they're
58:54
talking for you know I it wasn't 30 seconds into the into the conversation then my son said so how are the grosses
59:02
on your latest film so they talked for about 15 minutes
59:09
and you know he didn't have to do it uh slide you know it's um um this is this
59:15
is for me a big deal and you know all these years later I still remember uh
59:20
and I'm grateful he was very kind and you know in the ultimate mat died you know in the ultimate what difference did
59:26
it make but if we want to go on an existential level that each moment matters then it was a very big deal so
59:34
anyway I think your your listeners your viewers would find that story interesting oh well I did if that
59:40
matters I did so thank you for sharing that very personal story uh before we close what's
59:46
next well my career is based upon the exploration of genres so in the 80s I
59:53
wrote uh action adventure outdo nor uh First Blood being typical in the in the
1:00:00
70s rather in the 80s I wrote uh Espionage novels and the a book of mine
1:00:06
the Brotherhood of the Rose was adopted into the only TV miniseries still to
1:00:12
this day to be broadcast after a Super Bowl I mean this is I just love to be
1:00:17
able to say that that's nice and it was published in 1984 and it too has never been out of
1:00:24
print so this is what 30 eight years wow if my math is correct and it's never
1:00:29
been out of print either and then in the 90s I wrote other kinds of Thrillers if
1:00:34
you like and in the in the 2000s early 2000s I I was interested in um non
1:00:41
supernatural horror in books that had a mood I wrote one book called creepers
1:00:47
creepers which uh takes place almost entirely in the dark in a hotel that's
1:00:52
been abandoned for half a century and um then I wrote some Victorian Thriller
1:00:59
historical books and at the moment I'm working on a western nice so so I I go
1:01:06
all over the place but I always try to do them with the difference how can I do them in a way they haven't been done
1:01:12
before how can I do them so someone else coming to the genre has to take it into account in order to move forward so I've
1:01:20
been working on a West it's very difficult because there may be more than any others genre Laden with cliches
1:01:28
right but cliches carry an emotional value to them okay they're there because
1:01:35
they're repeated so often because people find them satisfying the emotions so my
1:01:40
task has been to find substitutes for the cliches that cause that in theory create
1:01:48
the same emotion and that has required a lot of thinking and a lot of rewriting
1:01:54
and I'm it's a long I'm at 117,000 words and that's probably be my longest it'll
1:02:00
be probably 130,000 very long but I'm in it now so you know you just you just go
1:02:07
with where where the project takes you uh this has been I feel like I've
1:02:14
got a thousand questions David that I wanted to ask and uh you led the conversation which I want I I I I have
1:02:20
more questions look at this well well let's try one more and then we we'll be
1:02:25
because I always believe in leaving let's leave people wanting more but if we can do one more okay well the one question I had we're going to go back to
1:02:32
the the PTSD and the War veterans because I don't know if I told you but I'm actually a military member myself right now I've been oh you didn't
1:02:38
mention that yeah I've I'm in the Navy uh the Royal Canadian Navy I have been for 18 years and uh I haven't been to
1:02:45
war or anything like that of course not you know I've been fortunate but I'm prepared to serve if necessary if if
1:02:51
called upon um and that's what I trained for but of course when Rambo was written or when first blood was written there's
1:02:58
veterans at the time during the Vietnam war and Korean War and I'm just curious since this book has come out have any
1:03:04
veterans come up to you and spoken to you about the PTSD that is displayed in
1:03:10
the book and what it meant to them yes uh the most memorable conversation I had
1:03:17
I was at a book signing this would be when the movie came out and um a woman
1:03:24
said to me man come up wanted a copy sign and we talked I tried to talk you know it's not just here go away we have
1:03:31
conversations and a woman said in a way uh the book and the movie had uh saved
1:03:39
their marriage and the reason for that was that um he had been very withdrawn after
1:03:47
coming back from the war uh and I guess he'd seen combat I you know running around those jungles it
1:03:54
must have been terrible oh yeah uh uh and um and he wasn't the same and
1:04:00
but usually there are a few exceptions but almost always veterans who've seen
1:04:07
intense fighting won't talk about it of course yeah um they don't want to go
1:04:14
there um and when even when you read aie Murphy's to helenback the book the
1:04:20
combat scenes are very generally described right and it took me two pages
1:04:27
to realize he just described what he did to get the middle of Honor wow um and so they they she
1:04:36
said he kept it in and kept it in but when they went to see the movie um he went home and and I guess it
1:04:44
was a a a in a good way an emotional night then because he began to talk he
1:04:50
identify with the character enough that he began to talk and thereafter talked
1:04:56
more so that she began to see where what he'd been through and he began to feel
1:05:02
more comfortable adjusting to it at a time when postum traumatic stress
1:05:07
disorder was not a term that came after about 85 when the second movie was
1:05:13
coming out um so in further conversations here and there I have no
1:05:19
way to prove this um but I think the movie changed the culture
1:05:28
because until then you would see demonstrations against
1:05:36
returning American PE military personnel who' been
1:05:41
in Conflict who'd been in combat um as if it was their fault that
1:05:48
somebody disagreed with the war it had to be the person fighting it right and what I think came out of this and also
1:05:56
later you know I mentioned that that line from R4 Wars Old Men start them young men
1:06:04
fight them nobody wins um that I think the culture change I I mean you don't
1:06:10
see demonstrations against returning military personnel but
1:06:17
you did before them right so I think and again no way to prove it but I'm convinced that the that it that it
1:06:23
changed the culture um and however it Chang it in another way and this might be a good way to end
1:06:30
as I tell you this in 2010 I was part of the first
1:06:39
Uso which is the the it's a it's a service organization that
1:06:46
takes uh for lack of a better word culture to soldiers to not just soldiers
1:06:53
but military personnel because as you know the Navy you're not a soldier right um you know to to to Bases so that they
1:07:01
don't feel you know so remote and isolated right so this was the first Uso
1:07:08
author tour and to add to it to a war zone so we went
1:07:17
to Iraq through Kuwait because you can't fly into Iraq through Kuwait into Iraq
1:07:26
and uh that in itself was a revelation but the story it doesn't pertain to that
1:07:33
before going there for reasons that I still don't
1:07:39
understand because I'm not sure what good it did um we toured two military hospitals
1:07:48
in the Washington DC area and we went
1:07:57
particularly to the areas where military personnel had lost
1:08:03
limbs an arm two arms a leg two legs two
1:08:09
arms one leg W no legs no arms no legs
1:08:14
right that went on for about six
1:08:19
hours I was able to do it because I had been in a pedi atric Cancer Ward for a
1:08:28
very long time right with my son okay and I had seen bad
1:08:35
things and while this would not compare um I just said hey Matt give me
1:08:43
a hand here and I'm G get a little choked up even thinking about it
1:08:50
so to a person every one of those amputees told
1:08:55
me they had joined the military because of the Rambo films
1:09:01
wow and I said well I guess in some way that makes me
1:09:08
responsible for what happened to you right and they said no you don't
1:09:14
understand I do it again wow and I'm still trying to understand
1:09:21
that now in in the military you know it's about family not your birth family
1:09:28
it's about the unit right and what you will do for your team that is your
1:09:34
family maybe more than any other family you have and it's something that most civilians don't understand right um how
1:09:42
powerful the bond is and how someone could come back from war and go back to
1:09:49
the war because they missed their unit and that's what I think they were
1:09:55
talking about in terms of why they do it again but as one mother because a lot of
1:10:01
these people couldn't be left alone we couldn't care for themselves so inevitably the rooms were big enough
1:10:07
they had like a a lounge chair there and there'd be a mother who lived in that
1:10:13
room because this was like a six to eight month right to get the person
1:10:18
ready to be out of out of the hospital or a wife and I remember one mother there as
1:10:26
I'm talking to this fellow one of them she said oh he had to be a
1:10:36
hero and so I think about this a lot you know and some people listening to say
1:10:41
well they were Patriots right yes they were but there is a deeper level to what
1:10:49
patriotism means you know what's going on as we speak in the Ukraine in Ukraine
1:10:55
IA that's patriotism fighting back when your country is invaded right um you
1:11:01
know there are different levels of it and what would one do to protect um it's so complicated a
1:11:09
subject um and I worry a lot about people who who who say that they you oh
1:11:16
they be they do it they'd be heroes they've never been in the military but they you know yell about patriotism and
1:11:23
I don't think you know I don't think they understand what the word means um in terms of the context that I
1:11:31
just told you and the cost that it can bring so anyway complicated situ
1:11:37
circumstance and it's another example of how the book partly but mostly the films uh now
1:11:46
this is this just I'm you know I'm a professor I was a professor so I look at things from a historical perspective
1:11:52
just how things change because these object objects existed so anyway it's
1:11:58
something to think about that's an amazing amazing story and uh I dare say
1:12:03
not a responsibility on your end but just I guess for better forp it's something you live with again like I started with this interview you created
1:12:10
this monster this is a uh it's gone beyond your control at this point this character world has often been
1:12:17
compared and we forget about the films but the Frankenstein novel right and the
1:12:23
creation of which um the Frankenstein character as it were not Dr
1:12:31
Frankenstein more about the create the creation let's say very complicated yeah
1:12:37
and feels out of everything and and at the end you know walks away to freeze to
1:12:43
death um you know it's U yeah it's uh heartbreaking in its way
1:12:50
well I I just want to say to you sir that uh I have been a fan of Rambo since
1:12:56
I was 9 10 years old I've read your book I've read the three books you did uh regarding the character uh so I just
1:13:03
want to personally I here's the thing I never thought 10-year-old Ryan would ever run a podcast yeah starting how
1:13:11
life Works isn't this you know and then I'd be talking to the individual that created uh Rambo and I'm just I'm
1:13:18
humbled that you took a chance on me CU I'm no I'm nobody you know who am I calling you out uh calling you up and
1:13:24
and uh coming on the show and I thank you so much for being the first episode of my journey on this cool well the you
1:13:30
know it's the 50th anniversary and I'm very meditated this year about the character and what's happened and all
1:13:35
and you know the the way you phrased what you wanted to do I thought sure this is something I like to talk about
1:13:41
and I've talked about some things that I've never talked about before well I I appreciate that trust and uh I know the
1:13:47
listeners on my show worthy appreciate that Mr Morell and uh well here's the 50
1:13:53
more okay well right knocking W here okay thank you
1:13:59
thank you sir and have a have a good day and I hope to talk to you again okay bye-bye bye-bye now
1:14:10
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