00:00You end up writing the screenplay that everybody wants, Rocky, but everyone wants it, but you...
00:06I know.
00:13And this is where it takes on a kind of a sort of showbiz myth quality.
00:20So everyone wants to buy a screenplay, you would think already, great, I'm successful, but you have one condition.
00:26I wanted to play Rocky, and they went over a dead body, really.
00:30And I totally understand that.
00:32I was as green as they get, I wasn't like a leading man.
00:35I had very little acumen about the process.
00:39How old were you, Louis?
00:40Probably, well, actually, as you know, there's kind of a cutoff point to make it in Hollywood.
00:47Like, usually, if you're not somewhere by the time you're 28, 29, it's kind of hard to make it in
00:52your 30s.
00:53Would you agree?
00:53Yeah, yeah.
00:54So I'm like 29 and three quarters.
00:57There, I'm telling you, at the tipping point.
01:00Yeah.
01:00So we're sitting there, and he goes, no, no, we don't want you.
01:03And then this, for some reason, that's why I think this is divine intervention.
01:08The price keeps going up.
01:10And they go, and then my agent goes, don't be a moron.
01:13My lawyers go, are you insane?
01:14So I got some 30 to 60 to 100 to 200 to 260.
01:20Now, I had, I didn't have a dime.
01:23And I have a wife who's pregnant and a dog that literally doesn't want to talk to me anymore.
01:27So he's just bummed out like, Jesus.
01:31And I'd be a horrible guy to, you know.
01:33Take the money.
01:34Yeah.
01:35And he got up to some ridiculous height.
01:38And they go, and I'm literally, I had people screaming at me.
01:40Like, the agents, I, so I got up to 360, which is, in that time, about 200 million bucks.
01:46Yeah, wow.
01:46Yeah, 360 in 1976.
01:48I mean.
01:48Crazy.
01:48It was like two and a half million bucks.
01:50But, you know, I realized that I was never going to make it.
01:55There was, I was always going to be the thug, the third guy through the door.
01:59I was, I mugged Jack Lemmon, I mugged David Carradine, I mugged Woody Allen.
02:04Their handwriting was on the wall.
02:06Okay.
02:08I thought I would have a Hugh Grant career.
02:09I knew a good night.
02:10I was like.
02:11.
02:11.
02:11.
02:11.
