‘I Play Rocky’ biopic lands a knockout debut, sparks Oscar buzz

TORONTO − Of course, the movie about the making of “Rocky” is also an underdog “Rocky” tale.

At Toronto International Film Festival, newcomer Anthony Ippolito got a grand introduction to the cinema world – and perhaps the Oscar race – at the Sept. 12 world premiere of “I Play Rocky” (in select theaters Nov. 6). The 27-year-old New York native plays Sylvester Stallone in a biopic of sorts that follows Stallone as a struggling actor who couldn’t get a good part, so he wrote himself the lead role in the screenplay for “Rocky.”

When producers and the studio want to hire a name star, Stallone sticks to his guns ("I play Rocky," he tells them over and over) and forces them to cast him as boxer Rocky Balboa. He then navigates a stressful albeit successful production on a low budget.

Being Stallone in the movie “took a lot of effort,” Ippolito acknowledges in a post-premiere Q&A after a standing ovation, and he’s “grateful” that director Peter Farrelly and others “were willing to take a chance on me. The movie shows it’s not easy to be an actor sometimes and this is absolutely surreal.”

Farrelly thought Peter Gamble’s “I Play Rocky”…

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/entertainment/