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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.

Oil & Gas firm CEO behind EPIC North Face troll: In a 'woke' world, TRUTH about fossil fuels is 'controversial'

Apparel company The North Face recently stated that it would no longer make jackets for oil and gas companies because it doesn't want to be associated with the fossil fuel industry. In response, Colorado-based oil and gas company Liberty Oilfield Services rented full billboard ads to remind The North Face of the truth: "Globally, 60% of all clothing fibers are made out of oil and gas. For North Face, it is likely 90% or more."

Liberty CEO Chris Wright joined Glenn Beck on the radio program Tuesday to discuss just how much of our economy — beyond outdoor apparel and energy — wouldn't exist in a world without fossil fuels. And he warns that many companies are now deeming this truth to be "controversial."

"I have been for years, trying to get a real, honest dialogue about energy going," Chris told Glenn. "So we took this opportunity to point out that North Face jackets are ... almost completely made out of oil and gas. How can you choose not to associate with the essential material your equipment [is] made out of? So we put a billboard up ... the billboard says, 'That North Face puffer looks good on you. And it was made from fossil fuels.'"

"Most billboard companies did not want to run that billboard. They thought it was controversial," he added. "And Facebook put a hold on our brief video just saying the jacket looks good, this is what it's made out of. In today's world, that is controversial."

Watch the video below to catch more of the conversation:

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.

'I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person': Yale School of Medicine guest speaker goes on race-hating rant

Image source: Video screenshot/ Photo by Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images

During a lecture at the Yale School of Medicine's Child Study Center, a New York City-based psychiatrist told students and faculty that she fantasizes about "unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way," among several other shockingly race-hating statements.

In April, Dr. Aruna Khilanani — a New York-based forensic psychiatrist and psychoanalyst — delivered the talk called "The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind" virtually as part of the Yale School of Medicine's "Child Study Center Grand Rounds," a lecture program for "trainees in child psychiatry, psychology, and social work, faculty, clinicians, and scientists."

On the radio program Monday, Glenn Beck shared several quotes from an audio recording of the lecture provided by Bari Weiss, a former opinion writer and editor for the New York Times.

Here are a few of Khilanani's statements from the audio:

  • "This is the cost of talking to white people at all. The cost of your own life, as they suck you dry. There are no good apples out there. White people make my blood boil."
  • "I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a f***ing favor."
  • "White people are out of their minds. And they have been for a long time."
  • "White people feel that we are bullying them when we bring up race. They feel that we should be thanking them for all that they have done for us. They are confused, and so are we. We keep forgetting that directly talking about race is a waste of our breath."
  • "We are asking a demented, violent predator who thinks that they are a saint or a superhero, to accept responsibility. It ain't gonna happen. They have five holes in their brain. It's like banging your head against a brick wall. It's just like sort of not a good idea."

"We must take a stand. We must speak out, because this is evil," Glenn said in response to Khilanani's shocking lecture. "I don't care who you voted for, you know this is evil."

Watch the video below for more details:

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.

INFLATION collusion? What's REALLY fueling the rising food & housing prices?

The prices of our houses and food are already rising fast, but they will skyrocket to record highs if we don't fix the problem soon. So what's causing the inflation?

On the radio program this week, Glenn Beck said he doesn't believe it's the fault of our loggers, farmers, or truckers — many of them are really struggling. But the big corporations that control these industries are making record profits, all while the Biden administration is making some very odd decisions that could make the crises even worse.

Watch the video below for more details:

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.

Gov. Abbott issues disaster declaration, vows to defend Texas border: ​'They came in to the WRONG state'

The crisis at the border continues to worsen, with the U.S. Border Patrol recently releasing some shocking statistics that illuminate just how bad the situation has become. But Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) is doing everything he can to prevent any additional unlawful crossings into the Lone Star State.

Abbott joined Glenn Beck on the radio program Wednesday to describe recent action he has taken to ensure that those who do cross into Texas illegally know they came to the "wrong state."

After noting that both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris "have completely abandoned post as it concerns the Texas border," Abbott explained how "Texas is stepping up" to combat the flood of dangerous gangs and cartels, human traffickers and drugs he says are pouring into border communities.

"Beginning in March, I deployed a thousand Texas Department of Public Safety officers to the border. I deployed the National Guard to the border. And they made well over a thousand arrests of some of these criminals we talked about. They've apprehended more than 33,000 illegal immigrants coming across the border." Abbott said. "But because of the way the Biden administration has abandoned the border, we are now elevating our game. What I did yesterday, in response to more than a dozen counties along the border ... I granted their request for a disaster declaration," he added.

Abbott went on to describe how his disaster declaration gives Texas the authority to toughen penalties for lawbreakers, including criminal trespassing, smuggling, and human trafficking.

"We're going to begin arresting everybody coming across the border and charging them with criminal trespass and putting them in jail. They are coming in here, thinking they'll get the Biden free-ride, and go wherever they want to go. Not in the state of Texas. We'll start arresting them right and left, and putting them behind bars, and saying they came in to the wrong state."

Asked by Glenn if he is prepared for the inevitable "media onslaught", Abbott simply answered, "We're prepared to see a reduction in the number of people coming across the border — because Texas is enforcing the law, period."

Watch the video clip below for more:


Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.