Even though Sylvester Stallone starred as The Italian Stallion in 1970, he was told he was not Italian enough to be an extra for the wedding scene in The Godfather.
Did he fuhgeddaboudit and the people that didn’t cast him? No! Did he get revenge? Hell, yes!
Stallone told Jessica Shaw on her SiriusXM radio show that 35 years later, he hired the person who told him that. And then he spent every day asking his employee if he was Italian enough now.
While that was that guy, what about Francis Ford Coppola? Stallone got his revenge on the director before the ’70s ended. And his story takes the cake…literally.
It was the late ’70s, and Stallone was riding high from Rocky winning Best Picture at the Oscars. Coppola was working on a movie called Apocalypse Now and needed a leading man. The actor was brought in to meet with him.
He gets to the director’s office at noon and waits to see him. However, the clock keeps moving, but Stallone is stuck waiting to see him. He thinks maybe if he shows the director a picture of him with Copolla’s sister, Talia Shire, who played Adrienne, it will help get him seen. But it didn’t work.
When 5:15p rolls around, a hungry Stallone is pissed and goes into the coffee room. That is where he sees a 7-layer jelly cake, and it looked scrumptious. Just as he was going to take some, he noticed a toothpick with a flag on it that read, “Hands off! Property of Francis.”
What does he do next? Stallone went all Rocky on the cake and smashed it like it was Apollo Creed’s face. And then he left the office covered in cake.
How did Copolla react? He called up Stallone screaming. He was so mad. Actually, the Oscar winner went so berzerk that he threw his statuette out the window.
Obviously, Stallone didn’t get the part, and he is OK with that. That is because he heard it was a hard production to work on.
And it all worked out in the end. Stallone did his own war film. You might’ve heard of it; it is called Rambo. I would rather watch that any day over Apocalypse Now.
So the moral of the story is never tell an Italian from Hell’s Kitchen; he is not Italian enough if you want to have your cake and eat it too.
