“It ain’t about how hard you hit… It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward” is the famous and iconic line from Rocky. It’s so ubiquitous the line even made a resurgence during the TikTok and Instagram era as the backing voiceover that’s laid over inspirational videos of wannabe entrepreneurial types and fitness influencers taking ice baths as dawn breaks.
But looking past the fact the line has now transcended the movie itself and ventured into the realm of parody, it was a passage of dialogue that summarises a great classic story of triumph and determination, making Rocky one of the best sports dramas of all time. Many across the globe found the film’s core message hugely moving and inspirational. But one person you might not have expected to resonate with the story quite so profoundly is Quentin Tarantino.
In 1970, Sylvester Stallone had written the script for Rocky, which allegedly only took him three days to complete. The script tells the story of Rocky Balboa, an Italian American journeyman boxer, who lands the chance to fight the heavyweight champion of the world, Apollo Creed, as no other fighter is available for the champion’s upcoming bout. Balboa’s journey follows as he prepares for the big fight, which entails unorthodox training methods such as punching huge slabs of meat and running up lots and lots of steps.
Stallone has gone on record as saying he wrote the film out of desperation and penned it as a vehicle to get himself into a significant leading role. Major studios at the time had offered to buy the script from Stallone for a six-figure sum, which sounded like a great deal, except he wouldn’t be able to star in the picture, and so the star refused the offer.
Eventually, in 1976, Stallone made a deal with United Artists, who agreed to finance the picture and cast Stallone in the lead. Rocky went on to win three Academy Awards and birthed a franchise of extremely lucrative Rocky movies that followed soon after, and the rest was history. It’s this triumphant backstory of Rocky and Stallone’s bullheadedness that Tarantino found so inspiring.
“Rocky was a very important movie to me when I saw it at 12 or 13. It didn’t make me want to be a filmmaker, but it made me want to be involved in film,” Tarantino told Inquire. “Stallone’s whole story of writing the Rocky screenplay was influential to me. He was like a people’s champion as far as I was concerned. I remember rooting for him at the Academy Awards, like somebody had snuck into Hollywood,” the legendary director added.
It’s no wonder Tarantino resonated with Rocky, as, like Stallone, his entry into the movie business was also unorthodox. Tarantino had worked as a video clerk for years before arriving in Hollywood during the 1990s, and he says his job in the film store, watching countless movies, was his version of film school.
Similar to what Rocky was for Stallone, Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction seemed to come out of nowhere and cemented his place as a new voice in cinema. “When I did Pulp Fiction, I felt a similar way, like I had somehow gotten across the wall,” said Tarantino.
