1984's Rhinestone Proved That Kennedy Center Honors Recipient Sylvester Stallone Was Equally Inept as a Comic Actor and Power-Mad Screenwriter
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I forget the exact context, but I vaguely remember someone telling me that David Mickey Evans, the co-writer-director of The Sandlot and numerous direct-to-DVD films, spoke to their film class about his career.
Someone asked him about his screenplay for the poorly received 1996 Matt LeBlanc vehicle Ed, which paired the Friends hunk with a flatulent chimpanzee mascot for a minor league team who displays a surprising aptitude for playing baseball.
According to the person I heard this story from, Ed broke Evans’ heart. He’d written a grounded, realistic movie about baseball that happened to involve a sassy simian, only to watch in horror as the filmmakers made a mockery of a screenplay he had poured his heart and soul into.
I'd love to see the original screenplay for Ed because I can't imagine what a serious movie about a chimpanzee playing minor league baseball would look and feel like.
I thought about that anecdote while re-watching the disastrous 1984 musical comedy Rhinestone. I covered it in the early days of My World of Flops at The A.V. Club and, to put it mildly, was not impressed.
No one was! Rhinestone was a massive flop, but according to its screenwriter and its star/co-screenwriter, it once had the potential to be something special.
Fox executive Sherry Lansing reportedly told future Field of Dreams writer-director Phil Alden Robinson that his script for Rhinestone was the best comedy and love story she'd read in years. It was reportedly a country-fried romantic comedy with heart, soul, wonderful characters, and memorable dialogue.
Dolly Parton accepted the lead role of a wisecracking, big-hearted country singer trying to make it in New York City in a realm dominated by powerful male chauvinists like her old duet partner, Porter Wagoner.
Then something terrible happened: Sylvester Stallone became involved.
Here’s what the noted fantasist/egotist told Ain’t It Cool News: “The most fun I ever had on a movie was with Dolly Parton on RHINESTONE. I must tell everyone right now that originally the director was supposed to be Mike Nichols, that was the intention, and it was supposed to be shot in New York, down and dirty with Dolly and I with gutsy mannerisms performed like two antagonists brought together by fate. I wanted the music at that time to be written by people who would give it sort of a bizarre edge.
Believe it or not, I contacted Whitesnake's management, and they were ready to write some very interesting songs alongside Dolly's. But, I was asked to come down to Fox and out steps the director, Bob Clark. Bob is a nice guy, but the film went in a direction that literally shattered my internal corn meter into smithereens.
I would have done many things differently. I certainly would've steered clear of comedy unless it was dark, Belgian chocolate dark. Silly comedy didn't work for me. I mean, would anybody pay to see John Wayne in a whimsical farce? Not likely. I would stay more true to who I am and what the audience would prefer rather than trying to stretch out and waste a lot of time and people's patience.”
Stallone is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter who does not seem to understand what words mean and misunderstands comedy and music in a manner both surreal and inexplicable.
I'm not sure what made Stallone think that the "very interesting" original songs of Whitesnake would belong in a comedy about country music, or why “gutsy mannerisms” would be essential for a comedy as dark as Belgian chocolate.
Nichols’ involvement in Rhinestone seems to exist entirely in Stallone’s overactive imagination.
Stallone and Robinson agree that the film didn’t realize a fraction of its potential because a little movie about a gutsy female country singer for adults turned into a stupid broad comedy for babies.
They disagree on the cause of the film's failure, however. Stallone places the blame on Bob Clark. Stallone felt they needed the sure hand of the man who directed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate. Instead, they got the director of Porky’s, as well as more distinguished fare like Black Christmas and A Christmas Story.
Robinson, in sharp contrast, put the blame squarely on a power-mad star who had some ideas about Robinson’s screenplay that led him to rewrite the script in its entirety to focus on his cabbie character.
As far as Robinson was concerned, if Stallone wanted to know who made Rhinestone a brain-dead culture clash comedy more scatological than satirical, he should look in the mirror.
Robinson went to the unusual extreme of writing to film critics to explain that while he might be credited for writing the story and co-writing the screenplay, it did not reflect his vision any more than Ed did David Mickey Evans’.
The miscalculations begin with casting the defiantly unfunny Stallone in a wacky slob role better suited to someone like John Belushi, and saddling Dolly Parton, a naturally funny and charismatic actress and singer with impeccable comic timing, with a thankless straight woman role.
A wildly miscast Stallone embarrasses himself in the unfortunate lead role of Nick Martinelli, a New York cab driver who dreams of owning his own cab despite being egregiously awful at driving and talking to strangers.
He's introduced swerving all over the road while monologuing to a trio of cartoonish Japanese tourists who want to go to a sushi bar but end up at a country bar called The Rhinestone instead.
Dolly Parton plays Jake Farris, a gifted country singer stuck in a disastrous contract with sleazy manager Freddie Ugo (Ron Liebman), who runs The Rhinestone.
In a Pygmalion-for-dullards development, Jake bets Freddie that she can turn anyone into a successful country singer. If Jake wins, then she gets to rip up her contract and be a free woman. If Freddie wins, she has to toil in virtual servitude for five more years AND have sex with Freddie.
For someone synonymous with enormous breasts, cleavage, double entendres, and winking sexuality, Dolly Parton cuts an incongruously wholesome figure. Onscreen and off, she’s just about the nicest, most lovable artist imaginable.
Having her offer up her body and sexual favors to a total scumbag as part of a bet consequently feels like a terrible mistake that fundamentally misunderstands Parton and her down-home appeal.
Freddie chooses Nick as the guinea pig for their sociological experiment. Nick hates country music, but he agrees to be part of the bet when a new cab is dangled before him as a potential prize.
Nick is not immune to Jake’s womanly charms. When he takes her to meet his cartoonish Italian family, his dad tells his son that Jake has a banging body. He asks his son if he can handle her sexually, and asks him to call him if he’s not up to it (pun semi-intended), and he’ll take over.
Bear in mind that Nick introduced Jake as a friend rather than a girlfriend, Nick’s dad is married, and this all happens within earshot of Jake.
Jake’s dad apparently envisions a scenario where his son is trying to have sex with a gorgeous blonde but is so overwhelmed by large breasts, small waist, and shapely posterior that he becomes overwhelmed and can’t perform. The perverted papa wants his son to call him and ask him to have sex with her for him because he can’t handle a woman with a body like that.
I’m guessing that was not in the Phil Alden Robinson draft of the screenplay that moved everybody to tears. I imagine that is also true of the extended sequence where Nick tells Jake that he’s something of a musician already because he has a large organ at home that he loves to play with.
It feels like the male and female leads spend a good hour engaging in wordplay derived from organ, referring to both a musical instrument and male genitalia, but it's really only two or three minutes.
Stallone's screenplay is memorable for all of the wrong reasons. When Jake takes her protege home to learn how to live country, not just sing country, he ends up having an awkward conversation with a hillbilly singer played by Tim Thomerson, Dollman himself.
“What's it like to take heroin? What’s it like to shoot up a whole bunch of heroin?” the hillbilly singer asks the big-city cabbie.
Because this is a romantic comedy that sadistically asks for a goober, played by Sylvester Stallone, to win the girl, Nick softens slightly, and the mismatched pair falls for each other.
Alas, the only person Sylvester Stallone seems capable of loving is Sylvester Stallone. He has no chemistry with Parton, who humiliates him publicly in the third act solely for the sake of tension and stakes.
When Jake tells Nick, “I didn’t pick you. I got stuck with you, but I’m trying to make the most of a bad situation,” she’s articulating Parton’s dilemma as well as her own.
Parton didn’t pick Stallone as a costar or a screenwriter. She got stuck with him and made the most of a bad situation.
The national treasure emerged from this fiasco unscathed. She’s the sole redeeming facet of a screamingly loud, insultingly broad sex comedy.
Stallone’s meddling ensured Rhinestone’s failure, but I honestly think that the whole project could have been saved with just a few more gutsy mannerisms and a few killer original Whitesnake hair metal anthems on the soundtrack.
Incidentally, the funniest thing about Sylvester Stallone’s comedy career cannot be found in any of his cringe-inducing would-be laugh fests. Instead, it’s that Arnold Schwarzenegger knew that Stallone considered him his biggest rival. Stallone felt competitive with the former California governor, so the Last Action Hero star decided to fuck with Stallone and sabotage his career at the same time by pretending to be excited about starring in Stop or My Mom Will Shoot!, a script the savvy bodybuilding legend knew was a complete dud. Stallone took the bait and ended up “winning” the battle to star in the Estelle Getty vehicle, which turned out just as poorly as Schwarzenegger anticipated.
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