WE NEED A MONTAGE
and the music dovetails perfectly as Rocky cycles through the routine laid out in the script: speed bag, one- armed push-ups (“Trying hard now … It’s so hard now…”), abs pounded with a medicine ball (edgy guitar solo), hanging sit-ups, throwing hooks at hanging meat (brass is back, bringing it home). Mike, the assistant trainer, delivers the only line of the montage after Rocky finishes his push-ups: “You’re gonna kill him!” Rocky’s response, a smile and an “OK” finger loop, would be a little creepy with darker background music. Here, however, it’s the wholesomely perfect segue back to the docks and a long tracking shot of him running … “Feeling strong now” … running faster … “Won’t be long now” … and then, as the music nears its climax, Rocky reaches the famous “flight of steps that seem to stretch into the heavens.” What’s really incredible is that while the images are described in the script, the emotional flow of the montage is completely absent in the clinical description on the page, until the stairs. The magic formula that elevated the sequence – the perfect melding of music, performance, story development and a process shown in compressed time – happened organically when Avildsen dropped a ton of raw training footage in the editors’ laps (Richard Halsey and Scott Conrad, who won Academy Awards for their work) and asked Conti to supply the score. They all figured it out from there. Before that, the training sequence was just a list. This was nothing new. Sequences showing characters methodically preparing for some kind of event have long been a part of moviemaking. In The Champion (1915), Charlie Chaplin squeezes some slapstick gold from a variety of punching bags and barbells as he trains to be a sparring partner. But it’s mainly happening because the gym is an ideal, prop-heavy environment for him to showcase his physical comedy. And incidentally, that movie is about an anonymous dreamer who loves his
dog, somehow finds himself in a major prizefight, is approached by a gambler to take a dive and then trades multiple knockdowns with the champion before walking into the sunset with the trainer’s daughter. Movies like Seven Samurai (1954) and High Plains Drifter (1973) feature extended montages of residents fortifying their homes and training to defend against a coming threat. Spartacus (1960) shows gladiators working out with a variety of creative training devices, and James Earl Jones has a nicely edited session with a heavy bag in The Great White Hope (1970). Other precursors to the Rocky montages are to be found in the Hong Kong martial arts movies of the Shaw Brothers Studio. These processes are entertaining in themselves but usually don’t have much in the way of depth. Rocky movies go farther by planting an early seed to give the training sequence more meaning. It’s a version of a theater concept known as “Chekhov’s gun,” in which Russian playwright Anton Chekhov declared that if you hang a gun on the wall in one act, it better be fired in a later one. Everything should be there for a reason, in other words. In the Rocky movies, the guns can be early examples of some flaw or deficiency that will be corrected in the montage. In Act 1 of the first film, a melancholy piano version of the theme song, something more appropriate for last call in an empty bar, meanders in the background as Rocky labors to reach the top of the stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and then staggers toward home with a side cramp. By the end of the montage, he’s leaping four stairs at a time and barely breaking a sweat. In Rocky II , the gun is the chicken: Rocky’s first attempt to catch it earlier in the movie ends in humiliation, but at the climax of the montage, he snatches up the speedy fowl as easily as he would a turtle. The sequel’s script has three times as many shots described in the training
sequence. Stallone was both the writer and director this time, and he hired an editing specialist named James Symons specifically to cut the montage. It’s assembled in a much more deliberate way: A tolling bell marks the end of Rocky’s hospital vigil and the beginning of his single-minded mission, with the gravity of Adrian’s instruction (“Win.”) and the urgency of Mickey’s “What are we waitin’ fer!” hanging over the transition to Rocky doing push-ups at dawn (one-handed, naturally). The simple heartbeat of the music is like a giant rousing himself from long sleep. It mixes with the steady rhythm of sledgehammer blows and exhalations. Slowly, more instruments awaken in the orchestra. On Mickey’s command of “Faster!” Rocky adds a rapid twist to his sit-ups, then shadowboxing. More momentum is added with the pace of skipping rope. Even more with the speed bag. As the exercises intensify, voices are added to the thickening soundscape. “Speed!” “Come on!” Johnny, the assistant trainer, barks out numbers as he counts more push-ups, then dumbbell flys. As the string section swells, Rocky drops the log he has been carrying on his shoulders, thinks about giving up and then picks it up again. From there, he only gets stronger, faster and louder until the final freeze frame. Again, he’s ready. But that’s only part one of the montage. After a brief moment with his newborn son, it’s time to run. As most sequels do, Rocky II takes the most iconic part of the first movie and amplifies it. “Gonna Fly Now” has become a full disco rock experience, and Rocky’s run through the streets of Philadelphia is now faster and has more angles, more cheers and more kids, who accumulate behind him by the dozens until an entire school’s worth is celebrating at the top of the art museum’s steps. Late writer Dan McQuade mapped out Rocky’s route in an article for Philadelphia magazine and calculated that the jog had covered 30.61 miles.
The rhythm of the speed bag is a key component in a successful montage.
– it all takes about half a page. There’s a brief lull as Rocky meets his cutman and brushes off some nonsense from Paulie, then it’s back to jogging in the streets, where Rocky “resembles the Pied Piper” with all the neighborhood kids who have fallen in behind him (a scene that wouldn’t fully be realized until the sequel). And finally: EXT. ART MUSEUM STAIRS - DAY It is twilight and Rocky is alone at the very bottom of a huge flight of steps that seem [sic] to stretch into the heavens... Rocky takes a deep breath and sprints up the never- ending stairs... Halfway up, his body shows the strain. Nearing the top, Rocky pumps with all his strength and arrives at the very top... He looks down the steep stairs and swells with pride... He is ready. It was the seed of the image that would feed the Rocky franchise (and the Philadelphia tourism industry) for
the next five decades. Packaging it the right way was the key, and in that, director John G. Avildsen may have created the movie’s most enduring effect on cinema. In its finished form on the screen, that sequence of shots launched an art form that would become a staple of sports movies, expand to films about everything from space travel to chess, and become so important in the cinematic playbook that the only thing left to do was parody it using heavily armed marionettes. Cue the training montage. Composer Bill Conti’s theme song “Gonna Fly Now” is the first thing an audience hears when watching Rocky . At that point, it’s just a bold tune with no context. But at the start of the training montage, with an hour and 40 minutes of screen time and most of the hero’s journey already complete, the brass fanfare underneath the visual of Rocky starting his morning run is suddenly the arrival of hope personified. And when the high trumpets give way
to the Bom! Bom! of the tubas, it might as well be a chorus of “Game! On!” with the way it instantly sets the tone. The first shot lasts a full 15 seconds, hardly an action-movie pace, but by the time it cuts to Rocky running through a more crowded street, the waka-waka disco bass groove has been added to the mix and we are 100% on board. The self-doubt is gone. The pedestrians know something special is happening too, and you can see the dream infect them as Rocky passes, a wake of optimism washing over the cold citizens of Philly like a warm sunbeam. (Or it could be that there was no budget for extras, so these people are actually trying to figure out who this guy jogging behind a camera is. It doesn’t matter. Throw the man an orange.) From the streets we go to the gym,
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