Articulate and charming, introspective and inspiring, intelligent and refreshingly down-to-earth, Sylvester Stallone lit up the stage of the Arlington Theater like few before him on Tuesday night, when his 40-plus-year career was celebrated as part of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Montecito Award tribute event.
The actor/director/writer hit the Hollywood scene with a bang back in 1976 by writing and starring in Rocky, the multiple Academy Award-winning film, and continues to wow critical and popular audiences to this day, most recently winning a Golden Globe and the Oscar nomination for best supporting actor in the 2015 film Creed, the seventh film of the Rocky series. In the usual SBIFF tribute format, Stallone subjected himself to nearly two hours of personal, anecdote-laden banter with critic Pete Hammond, watched clips from more than one dozen of his films, and then graciously accepted the Montecito Award from his friend Carl Weathers, who starred as Apollo Creed in Rocky.
Dressed in a slick suit with a red-orange tie that nearly matched the color of his bronzed skin, Stallone was greeted with a standing ovation upon walking onto the Arlington stage, and proceeded to crack jokes about seeing his hairline recede in technicolor. His reflective tone quickly got inspiring, though, in describing the endurance of his career. “I just feel very close to this sort of Rocky attitude, this philosophy,” said Stallone. “I think the majority of the world, perhaps all of us, are underdogs in some way. Just when we think we have it together, something happens, which we call life. And we don’t have it together, and we have to struggle and fight to keep some equilibrium.”