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Glenn interviews Sylvester Stallone

January 18, 2008
 Radio Clips

The Glenn Beck Program

GLENN: We have Sylvester Stallone on the phone?


 


 STALLONE: Hello.


 


 GLENN: Mr. Stallone, how are you?


 


 STALLONE: Very good, thanks.


 


 GLENN: Well, I have to tell you. To have Rambo back is quite exciting.


 


 STALLONE: I'd say for me. I mean, I never thought it was going to happen and here we are.


 


 GLENN: So here's a movie about pretty much God, family, country.


 


 STALLONE: Right.


 


 GLENN: Kind of all the things that Hollywood really doesn't like making movies about. I mean, how the hell did -- is it just because you walked in and said, we're making this movie?


 


 STALLONE: God's on commercial right now. I'm sorry, family's on commercial but he'll come back.


 


 GLENN: How did you get it done?


 


 STALLONE: You know, it's really am an act of attrition. Nobody wanted to make Rambo just like nobody wanted to make Rocky because the whole business paradigm has changed so much that it's all about use films and concept films and Rambo's considered low concept compared to what's happening today. And luckily there is a man named Javy Lerner of New Ridge Films, said let's give it a shot. I said we've got to find something pertinent to write about. So I wrote a story about Mexico and MS-13 and let's go into that area. I thought that would be kind of intriguing like a modern day western. I thought that's a little too close to home and I don't know if that's going to be around the world. So then I called Fortune magazine and certain individuals and said where is the most egregious display of human right violations on the planet? They said, Burma, and no one knows about it because the Chinese and the Burmese spend millions of dollars a year with Washington and lobbyists to suppress what's going on. So I investigated and it almost simplified it. It's like The Magnificent Seven. You have a group of small peasant being overwhelmed by the second largest Army in the Far East and they've held on for 60 years, Glenn, and they are hanging on by their nails and they have these missionaries, these Christian workers, from Oklahoma, Chicago, bus drivers, policemen, they pool their money together, they go and they bring medicine and Bibles and I thought, I could create a story around this, of Rambo being this atheist and he's a boatman going up and down the river and he's the only way they can get into Burma down the river and then the adventure begins. His story begins, a man completely pessimistic about a man who spent his entire life up to his waist in blood and realizes war is natural; peace is an accident.


 


 GLENN: Wow. So, you know, we were talking about this. It's almost, I don't know -- I don't mean this in a bad way. It's almost like Father Goose. I kind of got the Cary Grant image of, jeez, you're on the boat and you are kind of going and you're going against your will. Kind of?


 


 STALLONE: Yes. But the doing this will subconsciously, he knows that he is so dead inside, yet this one woman like one of the leads on Dexter, there was an element of innocence, that optimism. Rambo's so cynical that it's like, if I can get this one spark, this person who truly believes that life can be turned around into Burma and out alive, I've also become alive again. There's -- I have to have one foot left on the fence so that I can still believe that humanity is worth living. So I call it the King Kong syndrome where you have this wild beast and then he sees this sense of -- this woman who represents purity in the future and will go to the end of the Earth to protect her because his life means nothing, but her survival does.


 


 GLENN: You know, there's a promo out that has the pieceworkers going in and Rambo says, are you armed? And they say, no! And Rambo says, and you're not changing anything. Stallone that's right. Are you bringing any weapons? No. Well, you are not changing anything. Because that's Rambo's mentality. He's figured out that words don't work. But they do work but not in his world.


 


 GLENN: So I'm just trying to imagine the Hollywood meeting. When you just described that scene alone.


 


 STALLONE: Oh, no, it's brutal. I'll be flat out. This is perhaps the most brutal action film for sure ever made. I had a dilemma there that as we're speaking right now, the Burmese, these peasants, are being tortured and they are not being shacked. These children are being thrown live into cement of the general's homes to bring good luck, decapitation, children's heads left on spikes on front lawns of their parents' until they rot as a reminder. Rape is plugged to the Army. Kids run cannibalism. When your injury is captured, the other soldiers take a bite out of you to show that they own your show. It's beyond. So I think I cannot water this down. I cannot make this sugar-free violence. If we're going to really show Burma the way it is, then we have to cross that line and I'm asking you to go in that area. And to their credit the rating boards gave us a seriously hard R, but what you will see in this is the real deal, and it's hard. It's rough.


 


 GLENN: I can't even imagine what a real hard Stallone movie is like.


 


 STALLONE: No, it's like peanut butter and jelly, Mr. Rogers' neighborhood compared to this.


 


 GLENN: Explosive? Stallone please. If you're lucky you get hit with that.


 


 GLENN: So it comes out January 25th. Have you had any -- was there any part of you -- because I know the latest Rocky -- and in fact, if you don't mind, I've got to let my producer Stu say hello to you because he's the biggest Rocky fan on the face of the Earth.


 


 STU: Greatest movies of all time.


 


 GLENN: He means it and I'm sick of hearing it.


 


 STALLONE: Okay.


 


 GLENN: But anyway, when the new Rocky came out he said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. And he was worried and a lot of fans were worried. Oh, no, you're going to wreck the franchise. Did it all occur to you with this one, jeez, the new Rocky movie did well and it was critically acclaimed, everybody loved it; I've got to do Rambo right.


 


 STALLONE: Right, right. I do. Because the other, the last Rocky was not very, very well done. I knew that. It's the one that Rocky was undergoing brain damage and it was all off, completely off. I was working with amateurs. I wasn't on the ball. I take full responsibility for it. And it bothered me more than anything that the one character that brought me into the business I was going to let go out on a very, very sour note. And 18 years, 16 years passed and a lot had happened to me and I thought, if I'm going through these feelings, fear of the future, I said, what if the things I love most in the world are taken away, do you want to go on? I said these are subjects that I think the audience can relate to, then I have a story that's worth making. And luckily we put all that together with the fact that he's not really trying to be heavy weight champion. He wants to go back in the ring as he quotes it, to replace old me with new me. That's all, just to get the beast out of him. And Rambo, I also felt that the last Rambo was dealt with, kind of went awry and that's not the note I wanted to go out on. Also I thought what about a man, a soldier who's done everything for his country and realizes that war is natural; peace is an accident, nothing has changed; just go home and live your life because we are savage, we're born animals and it's got that kind of real atheistic look on life. Can you imagine going placement at the academy: I'm going to change the world, I'm going to make the world a better place. 30 years later they're divorced, they're alcoholics, their children don't talk to them and they're bitter and I say why did I do this? Why didn't I just become a fireman and say to hell with it? That's kind of like the way this whole Rambo situation is. Until these missionaries which represent optimism and hope coming to his life and things begin to turn around. Also, the other Rambo, Rambo III, you know, I'm in a tank top half the movie and it's more of a vein glorious attempt to run around and kind of do like beefcake with a bow and arrow and I wanted this one to be truly real, that could be duplicated by mercenaries. So to me it's a much more masculine and mature film. And again by far the best action film I've ever done.


 


 GLENN: Stu, I'm sorry, he's not going to be wearing the tight shirt.


 


 STALLONE: I'm sorry, the Spandex is out. I'm passing that on.


 


 GLENN: Sylvester Stallone, it's a great pleasure to talk to you, sir. We would love to have you on the show when you're in New York.


 


 STALLONE: I'd love to be welcome. Please welcome me on.


 


 GLENN: Anytime, sir, we'll make an hour for you anytime you want. Best of luck. Bye-bye.

TRUMP: The twilight hour of socialism has arrived

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The other day, at Florida International University in Miami, facing large American and Venezuelan flags, President Trump gave a rousing speech in Miami, including this line, the "twilight hour of socialism has arrived."

Trump went on to say:

Socialism is about one thing only—power for the ruling class. They want the power to decide who wins and who loses, who's up and who's down…and even who lives and who dies.

He then repeated a phrase that helped define his State of the Union address this year:

America will never be a socialist country.

Fittingly, Fox News posted an article yesterday exposing the overlooked evils of Che dangers of socialism that all too often disappear behind a flashy design on a t-shirt.

  1. Guevara said he killed people without regard to guilt or innocence. In an interview, Guevara said, "in times of excessive tension we cannot proceed weakly. At the Sierra Maestra, we executed many people by firing squad without knowing if they were fully guilty. At times, the Revolution cannot stop to conduct much investigation; it has the obligation to triumph."
  2. Humberto Fontova, author of "Exposing the Real Che Guevara," told Fox that Guevara created system that put gay people in labor camps. "The regime that Che Guevara co-founded is the only one in modern history in the Western Hemisphere to have herded gays into forced labor camps."
  3. Guevara opposed a free press: "In 1959, leftist journalist José Pardo Llada reported that Guevara told him: 'We must eliminate all newspapers; we cannot make a revolution with free press. Newspapers are instruments of the oligarchy.'"
  4. Guevara made racist statements: Guevara went on to write: "the black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving."

These are just some of the many historical examples of the failure of socialism. President Trump is right. If the frivolities of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Saunders catch on and spread, we could have an unbelievable problem on our hands.

Poor Jussie: His narrative is falling apart completely

Tasia Wells/Getty Images for Espolòn

Here's how the media works now: Find a story that confirms their narrative, run it constantly and relentlessly. When the real story comes out, minimize exposure of the correction. Repeat.

We're seeing this pattern play out over and over again.

RELATED: John Ziegler isn't buying what Jussie Smollett's selling either

Here are some of the knee-jerk reactions that the media had to this Jessie Smollett hoax, from Insider Edition, CNN, E! News, Headline News, CNBC, TMZ, to name a few:


Montage: Watch the Media Uncritically Accept Another Outlandish 'Hate Crime' youtu.be


And those are just the reactions on TV. It was just as bad, at times worse, in print and online. I'll give you one special example, however. Because, you know the situation is bad when TMZ is connecting the dots and seeing through this guy's story:

The sources say there were red flags from the get go. Cops were extremely suspicious when Jussie took them out to the area where he said he was attacked and pointed to an obscure camera saying how happy he was that the attack was on video. Turns out the camera was pointing in the wrong direction. Cops thought it was weird he knew the location of that camera. And there's this. We're told investigators didn't believe the 2 alleged attackers screamed 'This is MAGA country' because 'Not a single Trump supporter watches 'Empire.''

Here's the man himself, in an interview just days after the alleged beating…I'm sorry, the alleged "modern day lynching." Here he is in an interview with ABC News, complaining about people making up stuff:



Strong words, spoken by a man who, allegedly, created the whole narrative to begin with.

This compromise is an abomination

Zach Gibson/Getty Images

Three decades ago, "The Art of the Deal" made Donald Trump a household name. A lot has happened since then. But you can trace many of Trump's actions back to that book.

Art of the Deal:

In the end, you're measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.

People laughed when he announced that he was running for President. And I mean that literally. Remember the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner when Obama roasted Trump, viciously, mocking the very idea that Trump could ever be President. Now, he's President.

You can't con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.

This empire-building is a mark of Trump.

RELATED: 'Arrogant fool' Jim Acosta exposed MSM's dishonest border agenda — again.

The most recent example is the border wall. Yesterday, congress reached a compromise on funding for the border wall. Weeks of tense back-and-forth built up to that moment. At times, it seemed like neither side would budge. Trump stuck to his guns, the government shut down, Trump refused to budge, then, miraculously, the lights came back on again. The result was a compromise. Or at least that's how it appeared.

But really, Trump got what he wanted -- exactly what he wanted. He used the techniques he wrote about in The Art of the Deal:

My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward. I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I'm after.

From the start, he demanded $5.7 billion for construction of a border wall. It was a months' long tug-of-war that eventually resulted in yesterday's legislation, which would dedicate $1.4 billion. It would appear that that was what he was after all along. Moments before the vote, he did some last-minute pushing. A national emergency declaration, and suddenly the number is $8 billion.

Art of the Deal:

People think I'm a gambler. I've never gambled in my life. To me, a gambler is someone who plays slot machines. I prefer to own slot machines. It's a very good business being the house.

In a rare show of bipartisanship, Senate passed the legislation 83-16, and the House followed with 300-128. Today, Trump will sign the bill.

It's not even fair to call that a deal, really. A deal is what happens when you go to a car dealership, fully ready to buy a car, and the salesman says the right things. What Trump did is more like a car dealer selling an entire row of cars to someone who doesn't even have a licence. When Trump started, Democrats wouldn't even consider a wall, let alone pay for it.

Art of the Deal:

The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.

He started the wall on a chant, "Build the wall!" until he got what he wanted. He maneuvered like Don Draper, selling people something that they didn't even know they wanted, and convincing them that it is exactly what they've always needed.