Backtrace: Why Sly Did This $6M Movie & Our Brutal Review

Stallone Steps memoir chapter 6 Ryan and Jared listen to chapter 6 of Sylvester Stallone’s memoir The Steps, the Fight or Flight section that moves from the deli to a high-school dance and back again. 0:00 Welcome, Jared returns, chapter 6 Fight or Flight 5:00 Name tag change, first mention of Frank 9:44 Trash guy confrontation, walks away 14:05 1961 Father Judge dance, Fishtown 18:48 Gets punched, feels like a coward, goes back 22:23 Cheap shot, priest beaten, chain-link fence 25:15 Shot in the triceps 29:44 Back to the deli, hammer and knife 32:00 Arrested, the Tombs 50:15 Released, apron in the trash CREDITS Book: The Steps by Sylvester Stallone (chapter 6, Fight or Flight) Hosts: Ryan and Jared

Ryan and Adrian continue the live listen of Sylvester Stallone’s The Steps memoir, still on Step One, through the deli shift, an audition, and the winter coat he had to save for.

Ryan and Adrian listen to Sylvester Stallone’s The Steps memoir, still on step one, in the chapter where he cleans lion cages and bombs a Juilliard audition.

Ryan and Doug stay cold on *The Steps*, chapter three of step one. First two agencies never get past the secretaries. No photo, no resume. Pharmacy booth, fifty cents, four poses, nose against the lens. Third office slides the strip back: professional shots only. Last name on the list. Walk-up, German accent, no secretary. He gives Mike Stallone. Then the birth-certificate fight: mother wanted Tyrone, after Tyrone Power; father blew up and put Sylvester on the form, Americanized from the grandfather, firstborn Italian custom. School years as Sylvester the Cat, Tweety, fists, suspensions. Mike ever since, except at home. That agent offers a 10 p.m. Brooklyn audition and does not come upstairs. Apartment 3D, a man called Ed, robe, sake, Death of a Salesman*, a noise in the closet. Sly leaves. Drink maybe laced. Cigarette, elevated train, proud he did not do something stupid. Bill Conti under the exit. Not *The Party at Kitty and Stud’s — Morton Lewis never shows. End of the chapter. No spoilers in chat. Fuse Gino and Sir Robert were in. Nine hours of audiobook, live and unedited, maybe into Christmas. Ryan’s Rocky and Rambo feeds; Doug is back when the clocks line up.

Ryan and Doug keep the cold listen of Sylvester Stallone reading *The Steps*. Step one is New York. Off the bus at Port Authority, heat, horns, no bed, no one he knows. Walk to 46th and 9th, Hell’s Kitchen, where it started. Born July 6, 1946. Mother in denial until labor on a bus. Forceps, crushed nerve, left side of the face, the slur. Cold-water flat, plywood on the tub, $15 rent, steel wool in the baseboards, pink mice under the sink. Father the barber who wanted to sing. Mother the cigarette girl at Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe who later claimed she was the star. She never divorced truck-driver Tommy; a four-year-old son she denied. Furniture broken. Then three years in Queens with Mama Hansen, visits once a month. Frank is not in the room yet — Ryan and Doug flag the half-brother from their Frank coverage and wait for the split. Back to 1969. Bench at Port Authority, Woodstock headline, $80, Bowery flophouses, two nights by the garbage cans, then the Sutton at $21.80 a week. Room smaller than a modern cell. Shared bathroom, shower with the clothes on, Yellow Pages open to talent agents. Bill Conti still under the steps. Ryan’s Conti interview is in the comments if you ask. Frank Stallone coverage lives on the other show.