Sylvester Stallone hasn’t forgotten a decades-old exchange about Rocky that took place at the 1977 Oscars.
Speaking to Deadline in a new interview honoring the film’s 50th anniversary, Stallone reminisced about Rocky, for which he was nominated for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay Oscars. The film famously won Best Picture.
But the statues weren’t the only thing being doled out on that evening in 1977, as Stallone said he was jabbed at by screenwriter and fellow nominee Paddy Chayefsky.
“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.’”
Chayefsky, who died in 1981, wasn’t wrong; he went on to win that evening for Network.
However, as Stallone recalled, the conversation didn’t end there.
“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.”
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Stallone hasn’t forgotten about the exchange but he also didn’t appear to let it define his Oscars experience.
“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.”
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Stallone continued to say that the only night to rival the 1977 Oscars evening was when he was honored at the Kennedy Center in 2025. He was presented the award by President Donald Trump — but not without incident.
Trump introduced Stallone as “a friend of mine, a wonderful person, a really spectacular person, one of the true great movie stars there are,” before reading out his name as “Sallone.” He then repeated the mispronunciation as he put a medallion around Stallone’s neck.
Stallone was chosen as a 2025 Kennedy Center honoree alongside singers Gloria Gaynor and George Strait, the rock band Kiss, and actor Michael Crawford.
The actor is a public supporter of Trump and praised him as a “mythical creature” after he won the 2024 presidential election.
Stallone was named one of Trump’s three “special ambassadors” to Hollywood earlier this year, along with Jon Voight and Mel Gibson, though it was never made clear what the job entails.
