Sylvester Stallone’s Feature Debut Finally Reaches Theaters

[BluBonnet]

Nope, that's not a typo. Yes, the feature film debut of Sylvester Stallone is finally going to reach theaters, in the way the director intended.

A fascinating story about one of those movies with a really long and complicated story!

Sylvester Stallone’s Feature Debut Finally Reaches Theaters as Its Director Intended — Over 50 Years After Filming

In 1971, 21-year old independent filmmaker Robert Schnitzer financed his first micro-budget feature the way Robert Townsend, Kevin Smith, and other maverick directors would decades later: by putting it all on his credit card. He couldn’t afford SAG actors and saw over 500 newcomers for the lead role of Jerry Savage, an anti-war activist who plots to bomb a cookware company that makes “tiger cages” used to drown, torture, and imprison people in Vietnam.

After two months of auditions, Schnitzer had a clear top choice for the role: a 24-year old unknown named Sylvester Stallone. “He was completely unique,” Schnitzer told IndieWire, adding that his partners on the film did not share his enthusiasm. “They said, ‘Do not hire him. You can’t understand the way he speaks!'” Schnitzer fought for Stallone, whom he felt was a true original, and his colleagues ultimately gave in to his wishes.

The result was “No Place to Hide,” a film that, given the vicissitudes of independent filmmaking, was only sporadically released over the next 50 years and was never properly reviewed by any of the major trade publications or newspapers. Retitled “Rebel” and re-released after “Rocky” made Stallone in 1976, the film made the rounds on videocassette and television but never got the attention it deserved as a richly detailed portrait of one of the worst moments in American history and its impact on people fighting for what they believed in.

After spending decades licensing “Rebel” to various territories and ancillary markets, Schnitzer in the 2000s decided to let all of his deals expire without renewing them so that worldwide rights would revert to him. Once they did, he remastered “Rebel” in 4K, remixed the sound, and made numerous subtle adjustments to fix issues that had always bothered him.

The result, “Rebel: Director’s Cut,” begins making its way around the country via arthouses and repertory cinemas starting June 6. (First stop: Brain Dead Studios in Los Angeles, where Schnitzer will participate in Q&As following Friday and Saturday night’s screenings.) The release provides an opportunity not only to see Stallone in his first starring role, but to discover one of the great unsung independent films of its era, a movie filled with electrifying New York location shooting, political urgency, and sophisticated moral inquiry.

According to Schnitzer, shooting in New York without permits wasn’t the problem it might be today. “Back in those days it wasn’t such a big deal,” he said. “You could just set up a tripod in the middle of the street. There weren’t too many problems with anything except paying the bills. We had a great crew and a great cast.”

Schnitzer said he recognized immediately that Stallone was a major talent. “He was torn between staying in New York or going out to Hollywood, and I said, ‘Sly, pack your bags. You gotta go out to Hollywood.'”

That cast could have had yet another future star if Schnitzer had his way. “For the part of Ray, the Black co-conspirator, we saw an actor who said, ‘Look, I’m really a comedian. Can I audition by doing a little bit of my stand-up?’ He did a five-minute routine, which was hilarious, and I said to my team, ‘I want this actor to play Ray.’ They said, ‘You don’t want a comedian, this is a dramatic film,’ and I got tired of fighting them, even though he was my first choice. I’ve lived to regret it because that actor was Richard Pryor.”