SOME GREAT MOVIE MOMENTS AREN’T WRITTEN ON THE PAGE - THEY HAPPEN DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCE.

As anyone who knows me knows I love movies.  I adore these stories, often revisited and enjoyed so many times over the decades that I have lost count of the amounts of times I have watched some of them, but like anything movies can be broken down further, and very often it can be one scene in particular that pulses like the beating heart of the movie or captivates audiences in a way that in some cases wasn’t expected at first, like as an off-the-cuff example, the sword scene in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK,  a scene borne out of Harrison Ford’s need to recover from being ill that, for many people, in spite of all the other class stuff in there, is probably the most memorable moment as it embodies Indiana so well as you can see...

BUT that isn’t the moment I want to talk about, oh no, that is a mere example of what I want to discuss.  You see, the perfect movie moment I want to share with you all today is from an absolute classic, it’s a best picture winner that, I feel at least, needed to win to let America heal from the sullying of the American dream after Watergate, it propelled Sylvester Stallone to stardom and created an Iconic movie character and amazingly enough, in spite of all the great lines, the one line it is most remembered for is “Yo, Adrian!”

The film of course is

ROCKY (1976)

And the scene is this one from 3:33 onwards.

To me the second scene, “Alone in the Ring” is a pivotal moment in the film.    It’s the heartbreaking moment when Rocky realises that although he has trained hard to shake off the feeling he is nothing, that he had tried to become the fighter that his trainer always believed he could be, his opponent and their entire camp think of him as nothing, they regard him as a distraction until better fighters can come along.  After Jurgens tells him it to "Try and get some rest, kid!"  Rokcy tries to speak but can't and merely nods, disconsolately.  It is a heartbreaking moment in the film and leads to the scene with Adrian where he talks about what he’s going to do and why?

The direction, the writing, the performances and the music in this moment in the ring all sync to create this incredible mood and powerful counterpoint to the film as it drags us back into reality of this no-hoper fighting the champ.  It is truly an excellent scene.

BUT ...More importantly as I found out today, it was also not in the original script.

The scene was apparently written after the art for Rocky was done and they had “Got the shorts wrong”.  Being a low-budget picture they couldn’t afford to have the artwork redone and so created this scene, which to me is amazing.  What was in its place within the script at this point?  How was the pathos before the fight created?  WTF, man?

Now I am a big fan of movie writing and this blew my mind.  Most of my favourite comedies are from scripts that are so tightly constructed and gag-packed that you cannot imagine that any of it was improvised when they went to the filming stage (examples being “DUCK SOUP’, “PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM”, “BLAZING SADDLES” and “AIRPLANE”) and so for the beating heart from “ROCKY” just to be created because someone had done the painting wrong made me re-think this.

You see that’s the thing about Movies, like all writing, like all creative thinking in fact, it’s all improvised, from the first tap of the keys to the first-brush stroke, to the first smashing of the chisel against the marble.  The writer is a collaborative tool in the process of the creation of a movie, and, as it is a collaborative effort, it is only fitting that sometimes, just sometimes, it is circumstances and happenstance that create these perfect movie moments and not a writer sitting in a darkened room happily smashing away at the keys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YyBtMxZgQs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPrpzlyINBA
http://mike-lambert.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/some-great-movie-moments-arent-written.html