Sylvester Stallone had what seemed a pretty bad idea, at least to Tom Meehan: How ’bout we make a musical out of ‘Rocky’?
“My first thought was, ‘Oh no,’ ” recalls the Tony-winning book writer of “Annie,” “The Producers” and “Hairspray.” For starters, he thought the 1976 film, which Stallone wrote and starred in, was “too popular” and “debased” by all its sequels.
But it’s hard to say no to a superstar, so he flew off to Stallone’s hacienda, high on a cliff in Beverly Hills. And there — “in Stallone’s private screening room, which is the size of most suburban movie theaters” — they watched the original “Rocky” while Stallone talked.
“And it began to dawn on me,” Meehan says. “It might indeed be a musical.”
So it is. After a start in Hamburg, Germany — where “Rocky das Musical” is still doing knockout business — “Rocky” bowed on Broadway Thursday night to mixed reviews and the biggest straight male audience since “Spamalot.”
And to think: It took only 12 years.
“I asked Stallone at our first meeting how long it took him to write the script and he said, ‘Three days,’ ” Meehan recalls. “I told him it would take me at least four to write the musical.”
Welcome to Broadway! And while the show has brand-new songs and dance, “Rocky” fans will be happy to know that some things have stayed the same — like Bill Conti’s thrilling theme music, and Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” from “Rocky III.”
Stallone wouldn’t have it any other way. He didn’t let Hollywood hijack his movie — the producers wanted someone like Paul Newman to play Rocky — and he wasn’t about to let Broadway dictate his musical.
“He very strongly wanted to use Hollywood music people, people who wrote pop songs for movies with Celine Dion and Whitney Houston,” Meehan says. “But they wrote these big power ballads about ‘Someday, I’d be champion.’ I kept saying to Sly, ‘You need a Broadway team!’ ”
He suggested Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, the Tony-winning duo behind “Ragtime.” They, too, had doubts — though Flaherty happily recalls seeing “Rocky” as a teenager, then coming home and pummeling his mom’s ground beef while singing the theme song.
But they saw the film again and read Meehan’s script and realized they had a love story — that of two underdogs, Rocky and Adrian — set in and around a boxing ring.
By 2006, they had three songs to take with them to Philadelphia, where Stallone was filming “Rocky Balboa.” They found a hotel room with a piano and started playing. When they got to their song “Fight From the Heart,” Meehan says, “Stallone slammed his fist down and said, ‘That’s it! That’s what we’re looking for!’ ”
All they needed was the money to make it happen.
Enter the Germans: A Hamburg production company flew to New York, heard the score and ponied up $20 million to make “Rocky das Musical.”
Never mind that none of the creators spoke German, though Meehan took four years of it in college. They brought in a translator, even though, he notes, “it’s very hard to land any jokes in German.”
At least the engineers there had great ideas for the set. From the land of Mercedes-Benz comes the state-of-the-art sides of “beef” Rocky trains on — one of several iconic moments that bring down the house, along with that triumphant run up the museum steps (“Gonna Fly Now”) and the final, primal roar of “Adrian!,” which needs no translation at all.
Meanwhile, Stallone and his fellow producers were hunting for a Rocky of their own.
“We didn’t want someone who’d do an impression of Stallone,” Meehan says. “We wanted someone who suggested Stallone — and who could act, look right, sing, dance and box. It’s very hard to find.”
And then Andy Karl sent them a videotape from a hotel room in LA. A veteran of “Jersey Boys,” “Wicked” and half a dozen other musicals, he was hardly an above-the-marquee name. Nevertheless, Karl nailed it.
“It was hard to find someone to play Paulie,” Meehan says of Adrian’s blowhard brother. “Burt Young kind of plays himself in the movie. I think Stallone was upset that we didn’t have someone just like him.” Instead, they went for the leaner, more menacing Danny Mastrogiorgio, last seen in Clifford Odets’ “Golden Boy” — another show about boxing.
Which brings us to the fighting — and the climactic 15-minute showdown between Rocky and Apollo Creed (Terence Archie). Under Steven (“Once”) Hoggett’s direction, each punch was carefully rehearsed and choreographed at eight counts, like a dance.
“It’s a kind of Cinderella story,” Meehan says. “Rocky and Adrian are scorned by society — he’s a bum, and she’s an unattractive woman. It’s a terrific love story!”
On Broadway, that’s always something to sing about.