Stallone's The Steps: A Rocky Memoir Rich in Yarn, Laced with Anger

Sylvester Stallone's new memoir, The Steps, retraces the making of Rocky, his 1976 film about an underdog boxer — and the Guardian's review calls it "a great yarn" that is "laced with anger".

The book takes its title from a flight of stone steps. Not just any steps. The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds a 14th-century Buddhist temple, a one-acre sculpture garden and works by Picasso, Renoir and Van Gogh. Its most famous attraction is the staircase outside.

The so-called "Rocky Steps" draw several million tourists every year. That's more than the museum's Renoirs can claim. The climb is a lung-busting challenge, but the film's logic is simple: if unremarkable Rocky can sprint to the top, he gives hope and encouragement to everyone down below.

Who is the book really about?

Stallone, it turns out. The Guardian review notes that it isn't just fans who relate to Rocky Balboa. Stallone's "entertaining rags-to-riches memoir paints the creator and his creation as all but indivisible, each an extension of the other."

The parallel is concrete. Stallone was flat broke and beaten down when he wrote his film about "the forgotten man" — the blue-collar schlub with a good heart and firm chin. He wrote a down-and-out fighter and then, by his own account, became one who got up.

The setup of the 1976 film is well known. Rocky is being set up as a fall guy. He can't possibly defeat Apollo Creed, the dazzling, charismatic, undefeated heavyweight champion of the world. Except that Rocky doesn't care. He only wants to be seen.

What does the memoir add?

Context, mainly. In scripting an unlikely redemptive arc for his hero, the review observes, Stallone wound up transforming his own fortunes as well. The memoir sets that story in 70s New York, where the breakthrough happened.

The reviewer's verdict is double-edged, though. The anger threaded through the book is the review's sharpest observation. A rags-to-riches story told by a man who made it, and who hasn't quite forgiven the ragged part.

For readers, the appeal is obvious. Rocky remains one of cinema's durable underdog stories, and the steps still do brisk business. A memoir from the man who ran up them, broke and desperate, then famous, has a built-in arc most novelists would trade a Picasso for.

The book will interest anyone who wants the inside account of how a broke actor wrote his way into his own screenplay — and what it cost him.