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1. Who wrote the screenplay and plays Rocky Balboa?
Sylvester Stallone
Stallone wrote the script after watching journeyman Chuck Wepner go the distance with Muhammad Ali, and refused a large offer rather than let a star play Rocky. He was nominated for writing and acting, as only Chaplin and Orson Welles had been before.
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2. Who directed Rocky?
John G. Avildsen
Avildsen won the Oscar for it, and the film took Best Picture over Taxi Driver, Network and All the President's Men. He had just directed Jack Lemmon to an Oscar in Save the Tiger; Stallone directed the next three himself, and Avildsen returned for Rocky V.
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3. Which city is Rocky's home?
Philadelphia
Rocky lives in a shabby room in Kensington and fights for small purses in smoky local clubs. Much of the city footage was shot without permits, and the man who tosses Rocky an orange in the Italian Market during the montage was a real vendor acting on impulse.
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4. What is Rocky's boxing nickname?
The Italian Stallion
The champion picks Rocky off a list of local fighters because he likes the nickname and its ring on the Bicentennial. It was also the title under which an early soft-core film of Stallone's was re-released to cash in on his fame.
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5. Who is the heavyweight champion who offers him a title fight?
Apollo Creed
Apollo is modeled on Muhammad Ali, down to the showmanship, and needs a replacement when his scheduled challenger breaks a hand. He treats the bout as a Bicentennial publicity stunt, entering dressed as George Washington and then Uncle Sam, and barely trains.
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6. Who plays Apollo?
Carl Weathers
Weathers, a former Oakland Raiders linebacker, got the part after an audition in which, reading opposite Stallone, he complained he could do better with a real actor. Ken Norton, a heavyweight who had beaten Ali, was first choice and dropped out.
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7. What is Rocky's trainer called?
Mickey Goldmill
Burgess Meredith plays him, a long way from the Penguin in Batman, and his was one of the film's four acting nominations. Mickey has just given Rocky's locker away when the title shot comes, then turns up at the apartment to beg his way in.
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8. What are Rocky's pet turtles called?
Cuff and Link
Rocky keeps them in his apartment with a goldfish called Moby Dick and talks to them when nobody else will listen. They were Stallone's own turtles, and the same pair, grown much larger, turned up again in Creed II more than forty years later.
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9. What does Rocky gulp down at dawn before his first training run?
A glass of raw eggs
He cracks five eggs into a glass at four in the morning and gets them down in one go, then sets off on a first run that leaves him wheezing. The runs were among the first scenes ever shot with a Steadicam, which its inventor Garrett Brown operated himself.
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10. Where does Adrian work?
A pet shop
Adrian is the shy clerk at the pet shop, and Rocky's daily visits to buy turtle food and tell bad jokes are the whole courtship. Talia Shire, who plays her, is Francis Ford Coppola's sister and had just been Connie Corleone in the Godfather films.
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11. How is Paulie related to Adrian?
He is her brother
Paulie, played by Burt Young, treats his sister as a live-in housekeeper, and his resentment boils over when he throws the Thanksgiving turkey out the back door and, later, wrecks the apartment with a baseball bat. He sticks around for the whole series.
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12. What does Rocky punch during unusual training at Paulie's workplace?
Hanging sides of beef
The scene was shot in a real Philadelphia meat plant, and Stallone has said he hit the carcasses hard enough to damage his knuckles. A TV crew films him at it, and Apollo's trainer Duke watches the report with alarm while the champion barely looks up.
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13. Which building's steps does Rocky run up?
The Philadelphia Museum of Art
The seventy-two steps are now known locally as the Rocky Steps, and the bronze statue Stallone commissioned for Rocky III stood at the top for a while before the museum objected. After years at a sports arena it came back and now stands at the bottom.
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14. Who composed the score and its famous training theme?
Bill Conti
Conti's theme, Gonna Fly Now, went to number one on the Billboard chart, with a lyric of a few dozen words by Carol Connors and Ayn Robbins. It was nominated for the song Oscar but lost to Evergreen; Conti later won for The Right Stuff.
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15. What does Rocky say is his personal goal for the title fight?
To go the distance
The night before, he tells Adrian he cannot win, but that lasting fifteen rounds would prove he is not just another bum from the neighborhood. He does it, flooring Apollo in round one, and loses a split decision he barely hears while shouting for Adrian.
