How is it possible that Rocky is 36 years old? It seems like just yesterday - my colleges chums and I were filming our parody of this very sequence. All i remember is putting our camera operator in a shopping cart and pushing him alongside our"Rocky" to get those tracking shots.
The SUNY Fredonia Library has some rather imposing steps that filled in for the Philadelphia Museum steps.
I still remember, we were all artsy fartsy "cinema" types, but this grungy little Cinderella story totally won everybody over. There was a pal of mine at the time, Dan (I'm so ashamed, I can't remember his last name) he saw a preview of Rocky and came back raving about it.
I was in Philadelphia this past weekend, seeing a wonderful Van Gogh exhibit (more about that another day) and there I came face to face with the legendary steps.
There was a huge crowd entering the museum to view the art, but there was an equal crowd who came to master the steps.
Young, old, real old, fat , skinny, out of shape, no shape- one by one , in groups - hundreds of people running up the steps. The biggest crowd was there around 7 pm, I had just exited the museum and was sitting near the bottom of the steps doing some first class people watching. By now the museum was closed, but the crowds kept coming. I heard English, Spanish, French, German- everybody knows Rocky.
Stage left of the steps at the bottom is a statue of Rocky, in his boxing trunks, hands raised above his head. As art it's a bit on the kitschy side, but as an attraction it rivals the steps-people lined up , waiting patiently for their turn to pose next to the Italian Stallion.
I think the original idea was that the statue would be placed at the top of the steps, and I believe for a time it was- then it was moved to another location, but after a bit the museum relented and let it come back to the lovely location where it now resides.
It's rather ghoulish, but I have to admit that the one thought that went through my head as I watched ascent after ascent was, "How many heart attacks happen here annually? " There were a lot of people who had nooo business running at all, let alone running up those stairs.
ps there was one unpleasant incident, at one point about 15 guys riding Motocross motorcycles came roaring up, popping wheelies, turning donuts , reving the engines and of course riding up the stairs, while tons of people were still walking up and or down. Nasty louts (the riders, not the walkers) One nit wit , took a nasty spill as he was riding up the steps.
Inside I was kinda hoping he cracked his head....... does that make me a bad person?
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