Film Dunce is a weekly series in which one of our writers finally succumbs to the lure of a movie that has long been a big part of our culture that they have never seen. Seen through fresh eyes, we evaluate, enjoy and sometimes get bored by these titans of mental real estate.
“You know what my favorite thing about Philly is?” asked my friend Matt upon hearing that I’d be moving to the City of Brotherly Love. He was eating a sandwich called The King of Meat at the time, so my first guess was his perceived easy access to cheesesteaks the city offered. He shook his head, a smile forming around the wad of smoked beef in his mouth. “The greatest thing is that when you ask people from Philly who the best athlete to come out of the city is, they don’t say Mike Schmidt or Wilt Chamberlin. They say Rocky Balboa. They think he’s real!”
Two years into my tenure in Philadelphia, I’ve debunked Matt’s claim (people here know their sports too well for it to be true), but I admit that he’s onto something. When you talk about Rocky (the man or the movie) in these parts, people get a shiny look in their eyes and take a proud, slightly puffed-chest stance while they nod their heads. “He’s the epitome of a Philadelphian,” one bartender recently commented when I repeated Matt’s little joke. “Scrappy. Tough-as-nails. Honest. A real guy, you know what I mean?” I nodded and smiled, said sure, that was what a real Philadelphian was like. I kept my dirty little secret to myself – I’d never actually seen the movie.
In reality, I’d never really wanted to see the movie. Boxing ain’t my thing. I’d seen bits and pieces and it looked like a dark story that took place in a dirty, depressing neighborhood. I’d seen enough that I got the cultural references, knew who Apollo Creed and Paulie and Adrian were. I live a stone’s throw from the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, and figured that between my proximity to such a hallowed ground for Rocky lovers and the fact that I brought all out-of-town visitors there to do their obligatory victory run to the top, I was golden. No need to see the movie at all.
When I confessed this via email to a Philadelphia-born friend living in New York, I got no response. Three days later, a package arrived for me: his digitally re-mastered collector’s edition DVD of the original movie and a note saying “Don’t call me or email me until you watch this. There will be a quiz.”
Fair was fair. If someone living in my home state of New Jersey confessed to me that they’d never listened to Bruce Springsteen, I’d probably take the same route, sending them copies of my carefully curated Ultimate Springsteen Mix (volumes I through IV) and telling them not to bother me again until they’d listened to it, preferably while driving down to the shore.
So I popped in the DVD. I was expecting the dingy, low-light setting and gritty feel of the film. What I wasn’t expecting was to be totally charmed by Rocky Balboa. He had pet turtles! He talked to them! I had always pegged Rocky as the strong, silent type, a nearly-mute, vaguely incoherent thug. I was surprised when he turned out to be a quirky, constantly-jabbering, vaguely incoherent nice guy, albeit one who was charged with breaking the thumbs of debtors for a living. He really did seem, as the bartender said, like a real guy, a real Philadelphian from the neighborhood (despite the fact that he didn’t try to cover his New York accent with a Philly one) who would look out for your little sister, pummel the guy who gave you a hard time and fix your grandmother’s TV when it went on the fritz.
Rocky throws plenty of punches during the course of the movie – most iconically at sides of meat – but for a movie about a boxer, I was surprised at how little boxing is in the film. There are no real fights aside from the beginning and the ending, and even in the big culminating fight scene, three-quarters of the match isn’t even shown, just alluded to via the round numbers a tartlet dressed like the Statue of Liberty holds up every few seconds of the montage. Going in, I’d been anticipating watching rounds and rounds of preliminary bouts on fast-forward but instead didn’t reach for the remote once.
What I think I waited too long to realize was that at its core, Rocky is about redemption, good vs. evil and human relationships. It’s not really about boxing, despite the fact everyone I told about this piece would immediately start shadowboxing me the second I mentioned that I had to watch it. The announcement of the fight’s winner is pretty much anti-climactic – I was more rooting for Paulie to get past the security detail and into the ring than I was for a Rocky win. Most of all, I was rooting for Rocky and Adrian, the couple that “filled gaps” so perfectly, and had the kind of relationship that should make absolutely no sense and so often leaves the viewer with that “I don’t buy it” feeling. It felt real here, like they truly needed one another. Sure, the last 20 seconds or so of the movie are pure cheese but they’re good cheese, satisfying cheese, warm and fuzzy cheese (not that actual cheese should be warm and fuzzy, but you get my drift).
I get it now. It’s the perfect movie for Philadelphia, with the perfect hero for its people. It’s an honest movie, and one that I’m sorry I took so long to see. This morning, I walked down to the Art Museum, past the Rocky statue that sits at its base and though my eight-months-pregnant body can’t really run them like Rocky did, I did waddle my way to the top to gaze out over the city, realizing that I actually felt more at home than I did the last time I stood there. And even though I know, like real Philadelphians also know, that Rocky isn’t real, I half expected to see that sweatsuit-clad figure lumbering up the steps, doing his city proud.
by Tara Pierson Hoey
