#4. Rocky
When Sylvester Stallone came onto the scene with a movie that he’d written and starred in called Rocky, it changed the world of cinema forever. We got an immortal story of a scrappy underdog fighting to be recognized, and it won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. With a little bit of screenwriting experience and the idea for Rocky in his head for almost a year after witnessing a Muhammad Ali fight, Sylvester Stallone spent about 84 hours using a pad and a pen to write the first draft of Rocky.
The scene of Rocky running past a boat moored along the docks was a spur-of-the-moment decision from Avildsen, who made the shot himself after having Stallone get out of the car and run alongside it while they were out scouting locations. The part where Rocky’s loan shark boss pulls out an inhaler and puffs on it mid-convo? You guessed it —unscripted as well.