Sylvester Stallone Reviews the Steps: The Inside Story of Rocky

This star takes us back to 1970s New York to trace his rise, and it's a very good thread, but it is tinged with anger. The Philadelphia Museum of Art houses a 14th-century Buddhist temple, a one-hectare sculpture garden, and works by Picasso, Renoir, and Van Gogh. However, its most famous attraction is the flight of stone steps that draws several million visitors a year. These are the so-called "Rocky Steps" that Sylvester Sta

The Philadelphia Museum of Art includes a 14th-century Buddhist temple, a one-acre sculpture garden, and works by Picasso, Renoir, and Van Gogh. But its most famous attraction is the stone steps that attract millions of tourists every year. These are the so-called "Stone Steps" immortalized by Sylvester Stallone in his 1976 film about a weak boxer who must build up his strength. The climb is a lung-destroying challenge, but if the unremarkable Rocky can sprint to the top, it gives hope and encouragement to everyone below.

It's not just fans who relate to Rocky Balboa. So is Stallone, whose haunting and entertaining memoir paints the creator and his creation as indivisible but indivisible, each an extension of the other. When Stallone wrote his movie about The Forgotten Man, a blue-collar man with a good heart and a strong chin, he was completely broken and beaten. Everyone knows that Rocky is set up as a fall guy. He probably couldn't beat Apollo Creed, the stunning, charismatic and undefeated heavyweight champion of the world. Except Rocky doesn't care, he just wants to be seen, and Stallone turned his fortunes around in scripting an unlikely redemption arc for his hero.

Steps tells us how he did it—or as he likes to tell people he did it—and how we can do the same in our own lives. He advises to believe in yourself. Roll with the punches. Never throw in the towel. Her memoir reads like a terrifying self-help manual, featuring the author as guide, guru, and crash test dummy. Stallone—an avid student of narrative structure—knows that failure packs more dramatic punch than success, and he shrewdly ends his account just as his film is about to attack the Oscars. The man loses every round except the last, which of course is all that matters.

His double quote hates the scumbags who write him off and the suits who feed him junk food.

The messages can be mischievous and felt in several stories, but she spins a good yarn and puts herself center stage. He's a rough-and-tumble outsider in New York during the Midnight Cowboy era and earns a living as a foreman and cage cleaner at the zoo. He's a struggling Martin Eden in mid-'70s California, trying and failing to get his screenplays off the ground. Stallone writes in an authoritative conversational style, as if he's leaning in close and putting his arm around your shoulders. "I don't know if you know anything about dogs," he says, and "you might ask why he doesn't go to the laundry room," and "if you've never been in a lion cage, let me tell you, it's hot," and the effect is charming, engaging, and ever-so-slightly oppressive.

There are no sides to Rocky - what you see is what you get. In contrast, his creator feels more protected and controlled. He presents himself as a sweet innocent - monastic and almost asexual - but there is anger that burns through his memoirs. Every page he hates the snobs who write him down and the suits who feed him a junk diet. Francis Ford Coppola makes her wait for several hours for an audition. Richard Geer drips chicken fat on his pants. Most of all he hates his mother and father, who never wanted him to begin with and have left him with a hopeless, mechanical hunger for success. "If they were sweet and loving like the parents you see on a TV show, would I be here?" he asks. They broke him and made him: it's a complicated relationship.

In a fair and just world, Stallone might have sold his romantic screenplay about the life of Edgar Allan Poe. But now he's down to his last $80 and his first child, and so he writes the first draft of Rocky in three solid days, pouring out a decade's worth of humiliation and frustration. The producers offer him to take over the script, but he sticks to his guns and insists on playing the lead role. Suits are in vogue. His representative has a kitten, except that our hero is proven right, his hand is very profitable. Rocky — a rousing old-school melodrama with a bit of '70s grit up its sleeve — was made for a whopping $900,000. It earns 225 million dollars.

How true is this laundry list of hard knocks and life lessons? True enough. Stallone's early struggles are well documented and largely verified. As for his origin story about the making of Rocky, some consider it to be a heavily salted and twisted basic myth. The press feeds off the weak, said Gabe Sumner, former head of marketing for United Artists, in 2006. Sumner added that Stallone's claim that he confronted the studio was part of a "huge marketing campaign" in the run-up to the Oscars.

Stairs asks us to accept the author as a real-world Rocky, a humble man who has worked his way to the top. This is not a lie; This is a life story to be proud of. But he's also Apollo Creed, the scheming, self-proclaimed boatman, who knows that David and Goliath stories are good for business, and that the best American heroes are self-directed, self-made, and still a little rough.

The Steps by Sylvester Stallone is published by Seven Dials (£25). To support The Guardian, order your copy. Delivery charges may apply.