Sylvester Stallone is a writer
who stood his ground for his work. Before Rocky was released, Stallone was so
broke he made a soft porn film to pay the rent and was even forced to sell his beloved
dog Butkus outside of a liquor store for $25.00 because he couldn't afford to
feed him. He wrote the screen play for Rocky at age (at the age of 30) in three
and half days. The studios offered him $360,000 for the screenplay (About the
equivalent of $1.7 million today) with the understanding that James Caan would
play the lead. But Stallone wanted the lead because he created the character and
understood him, so he said no to the money. After a lot of negotiations, he
took $30,000 and got what he wanted. The firs thing he did was to buy back his
dog. Rocky has earned almost a half billion today.