Paradise Alley: the disastrous moment Sylvester Stallone hired Tom Waits
Rocky isn’t just a great story on screen; it’s a pretty incredible story behind the scenes, too. A triumph against all odds for an actor and writer with his back well and truly against the wall. Folks were hailing Sylvester Stallone not as the meathead action star he’d become but, in the words of Roger Ebert himself, as “the young Marlon Brando”.
This hype for him as the next great talent of the age lasted until his next movie and not a moment longer though. Slowly, people realised with horror that Paradise Alley, the next big idea of an Oscar-nominated screenwriter no less, amounted to “Rocky, with pro-wrestling instead.” Credit where it’s due, though, the man (at least at the time) had taste.
He wasn’t just going to star in the film; he was also going to direct it. So, when filling out the cast and the soundtrack, he decided to kill two birds with one stone and cast one of his favourite musicians in a cameo role, letting him also put a few numbers on the soundtrack too. It couldn’t have been better casting either; as for the role of mysterious barroom piano player Mumbles, he cast mysterious barroom piano player Tom Waits.
Waits was in something of a rut at the time. He’d spent the 1970s earning a decent living releasing a string of jazz-inflected singer-songwriter records depicting the lives, triumphs and failures of those who slip through the cracks of modern America. To be clear, those records are incredible, but his work ethic had left him a little burnt out. Seven records in seven years will do that to a man, especially when, no matter the quality, they are variations on a similar theme.
As the 1980s loomed, Waits was looking for new inspiration and new challenges. After striking up a friendship with Stallone, Waits was offered the role, and he jumped at the chance. Why wouldn’t he? It was the best of both worlds. Waits had always wanted to act, and this way, he could find his footing in another medium without it being too much of a stretch from his standard persona.
Even if the movie didn’t do well, he wasn’t going to be in all that much of it, so it wouldn’t reflect too badly on him. This was the follow-up to a ‘Best Picture’ winner with the most exciting movie star on the planet, though; it wasn’t going to fail, surely?
Paradise Alley, both critically and commercially, was an absolute catastrophe. Most of Stallone’s momentum as a serious actor, not to mention all of his clout as a screenwriter, whipped away in an instant. Waits survived the worst of it, but the experience wasn’t great for him. He told Peter Guttridge for City Limits Magazine that “I went and sat in front of a piano for three weeks and then I went home. I didn’t go to see it after. I had more scenes but they got cut. I finally saw it on TV with my wife… I got really excited – ‘look honey, here I am – shit where’d I go?'”.
There are diamonds in the rough, though. The two songs Waits contributed to the soundtrack, ‘(Meet Me At) Paradise Alley’ and the absolutely magical ‘Annie’s Back In Town’ are prime Waitsian piano bawlers. At least Waits would parley his experience here into getting a prime gig writing the songs for Francis Ford Coppola’s next movie, though. A mega-budget retro musical called One From The Heart; surely that’ll be the one to hit it big, right?
