My Hero, Sly Stallone

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Like millions of other Americans, I enjoy many of Sylvester Stallone’s movies. But in recent years, I’ve come to think that Sly might have also been teaching me something.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic.

Self-Deprecating and Graceful

My best friend growing up was the Italian Stallion. No, not that one—not Sylvester Stallone’s fictional boxer from Philadelphia, but an actual Italian. My pal Silvio emigrated from Italy and lived around the corner from me. When Rocky delivered a haymaker to the theaters in 1976, there was no way we weren’t going to see it, and throughout high school, if I heard someone in the hallway yell, “Yo, Stallion,” I knew my buddy was around somewhere.

But while watching Stallone in his 2022 Paramount+ series, Tulsa King, I realized that for some years, I’ve been thinking of the original Italian Stallion as my pal too—especially as we both get older.

I have to confess that in my youth, I wasn’t a huge Stallone fan. I saw Rocky in the theater when I was a freshman in high school, and then Rocky II (which was just … okay) the summer I graduated. Rocky III, in my view, is a lightweight cartoon. The final 1990 cash-in, Rocky V, is practically unwatchable.

Ah, but before that series-ending clunker, we had 1985’s Rocky IV, a gloriously cheesy Cold War parable. It’s not a g...
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