Sly weighs in

by Peter Keough

LOS ANGELES -- "Without a doubt, you can't go wrong with pancakes and peanut butter with cheesecake," says Sylvester Stallone, explaining how he put on 40 pounds for his role in Cop Land. "And wash it down with chocolate milk."

A strange way to save a flailing career, but after such debacles as Judge Dredd and Daylight, Stallone was willing not only to go the Robert De Niro route (in Raging Bull) but also to go mano a mano with the great actor himself on the screen. As the lumpen sheriff of a New Jersey burg who dreams of being a member of the NYPD, Stallone returns to the kind of underdog, everyman hero that launched his career with Rocky.

"It's probably the most important thing I've done, ever. Because very rarely do you get an opportunity to validate yourself or redefine yourself. It's very hard to change people's opinion. And rightly so. To go back and play a character like this, which seems like a parallel to what's actually been happening to me, shows, really, if I have anything left."

To find out if he had anything left, Stallone had to pack plenty on in a process he found as much psychological as physical.

"I didn't realize until three or four months into gaining weight what a man like that physically feels and the loss of physical presence. In other words, you create a statement by arriving in a room with a nice tight shirt and people get an image of you right away -- they're repulsed, or they're intimidated and it just makes a statement. When you walk in the room as an average man, you have to rely upon some intelligence or charm or politeness or something to ingratiate yourself with people. For 15 years I was coming in chest first, that was the calling card and I was becoming some of the roles I was playing.

"Jim Mangold told me I had to gain weight in the mind, my brain, my soul had to get heavy. I felt that with each pound that went on there was a certain heaviness, a certain lethargy and world-weariness that this man is carrying. It started to affect the way I walked, and I said, my God, this is what Bobby [De Niro] and people experienced."

As much as his added bulk weighed him down in Cop Land, Stallone found it liberating compared to the constraints of the action-hero role that began forming around him after the success of Rambo.

"No one knew Rambo was going to go on and do what it did; there was a kind of euphoria. Pyrotechnics now had equal billing, they got bigger and bigger and bigger, and it was like a man swept up with this powerful new toy and eventually becoming part of it. After a while I was completely disregarded as an actor, and I understand it. There was no real challenge. I would lose focus, and then when the smoke would clear a year later and I'd see the end result, there'd be nothing but absolute contempt. I just accepted the money and everything; it became a job, no longer an art.

"I love action. I think adventure and action are modern-day morality plays when done right. But it's the difference between Judge Dredd and Lawrence of Arabia, both action films. You have Bridge on the River Kwai and Rio Bravo, and then you have Rambo III. One is worthy of permanence and is a brick in the wall of greatness. And one is not."

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Peter Keough can be reached at pkeough[a]phx.com.