Sylvester Stallone recalled a decades-old exchange with screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky at the 1977 Oscars. Stallone said Chayefsky approached him and told him his screenplay would never win, claiming he was confident because he was president of The Writers Guild. Stallone added that Chayefsky then predicted Rocky would not win Best Picture, saying Network would win instead. Stallone described the bluntness as a shock and said Chayefsky walked away after delivering the predictions. Chayefsky later won Best Screenplay for Network, while Rocky won Best Picture. Stallone said the experience felt profound and that he believed he had peaked after the win, yet the moment remained memorable decades later.
""He's a tiny guy, very brazen, and he comes up to me and says, 'You're new in this town,'" Stallone, 79, recalled. "'First of all, your screenplay is never going to win.' I go, 'Why do you say that?' He says, 'Because I'm the president of The Writers Guild, and mine is going to win.'""
""He goes, 'You're not winning Best Picture either, because Network is going to win Best Picture.' I thought, 'Holy crap!' I'd never been hit with such blunt force, and then he walked away. He got Best Screenplay, but we got the big one.""
""Me being me, it was all quite profound, and after we won, I thought, 'The good news is, I've peaked - and the bad news is, I've peaked,'" he said. "I'd just turned 30 years old and was like, 'How are you going to top this?' But here we are, 50 years later, and we're still talking about it.""
Read at The Independent
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