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See plan for details. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary, all in one place. whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings. Cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.
With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at qvc.com. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday morning. This week we mark the start of fall.
as well as the beginning of a new season for us, our forty eighth.
So all morning, as is our tradition, we'll be looking ahead to what's in store in the worlds of art, theatre, movies, T V, music, and more. But we'll begin at the movies. After a few rough post-COVID years, Hollywood is making a comeback. A box office renaissance is underway, and to the surprise of many, younger audiences are helping to power it, showing up at theaters to see movies made by filmmakers who've built much of their following online. as Luke Burbank will explain.
I found something. In the store. That's sort of the beauty of Hollywood, is that the next massive hit can come from anywhere. And anywhere now includes YouTube. Its young alums are graduating to the big time.
Is YouTube effectively a version of film school now? I think YouTube is absolutely a version of film school now. No. The new kids in town. Ahead on Sunday morning.
Oh, don't do that. 50 years ago this fall, the movie Rocky hit theaters, and it's been knocking out movie lovers ever since. But before the Oscars, before the sequels and spin offs, Rocky was just an idea in the head of a then unknown actor named Sylvester Stallone. This morning he shares his story with our Tracy Smith. Why do you want to fight?
Because I can't sing a dance. Sylvester Stallone is one of the biggest box office stars in history, with a great family and a three-decade marriage. And it seems he did it all the hard way. You have regrets? Oh, that's all about it.
I have this. Feel, like I said, feel the dreams, feel the regrets. We'll take a little walk with a Hollywood heavyweight. Later on Sunday morning, you just had to keep going. We've been hearing some pretty scary doomsday scenarios lately on the topic of AI.
The most extreme even envisions a possible end to humanity in the not-too-distant future. It's a lot to ponder. And we don't blame you if you have a few questions. David Pogue does too. along with some answers.
And we begin with a dire warning from an AI insider. It would be hard to imagine a more alarming headline. AI going rogue. There are numerous examples of these AI systems lying, cheating. Even committing crimes.
If we lose control of this technology, that's a catastrophe for everyone. It may be an extinction event. Coming up on Sunday morning, AI Armageddon. all your questions answered. In his role as our Mr.
Media this morning, we've also asked Luke Burbank to explore another puzzling sign of our times: millions of Americans obsessed with and entertained by. True crime in movies, on TV, books, you name it. Seth Stone talks with British singer songwriter Ray, who's gone from writing hits for the stars to becoming a star in her own right. Plus, a story from Steve Hartman, and more. On this first Sunday morning of a brand new season, September 27th, 2026.
And we'll be back in a moment. We begin this morning with Luke Burbank and what some say is a new day for Hollywood as it experiences a box office renaissance powered by an unlikely audience. We're faced with a threat that can be anyone. Spider-Man brand new day has grossed nearly a billion dollars in the U.S. alone, which, heading into the fall, has Matt Bellany and others in Hollywood experiencing an unusual emotion.
Mild optimism. I think we've had a successful year at the box office, A, because there are more movies, then B, I think. This year, there have been movies for different audiences. We see movies like Obsession and Backrooms bring in the younger audience. It's beautiful.
Am I right? Hello? We've seen the Odyssey bring in the older audience. Stand between me. And home.
And he's at the guards. You've seen a mass market hit like Spider-Man brand new day bring in everybody. You ready? I think there is something fundamental about going to a movie in a theater. Bellany is a founding partner at Puck News and the host of The Town podcast.
I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town. And he knows just about every player at every studio. This year, they are finally up to a cadence of movies that, even when they don't all work, they contribute to the box office. Take this summer with its $4.7 billion in domestic box office. The summer of 2026 was the highest grossing in history, not adjusted for inflation.
Across North America, 322 million tickets were sold, up 22% from last year. What Hollywood cheered most was who was buying those tickets? 18 to 35-year-olds, who made up 37% of the audience. A strong rebound since the pandemic. I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the entire world.
And much of that elusive demographic showed up for obsession. Directed by 25-year-old Curry Barker, and for Backrooms, directed by a 21-year-old Kane Parsons. Was there buzz around those films, or did they just come totally by surprise to be the hits that they were? They were movies that were expected to do okay, but they were not expected to gross hundreds of millions of dollars and become phenomenons. Bear, I love you so, so, so, so, so much.
I don't think I could live without you. Obsession, a horror riff on getting what you think you want, was made for under a million dollars and has grossed more than half a billion worldwide. No. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that! In its opening weeks, 75% of its audience was under 35, a success that elated Obsession executive producer Jason Blum.
There's f Hope in the movie business. And it's exciting and it's great. And and and and the generation of people like everyone's on Instagram and everyone's on social media. Actually the stars of the internet, they want to make movies. Director Curry Barker, he's one of those Internet stars, a YouTube content creator who gained a huge following making horror shorts and comedy skits.
I love the way your clothes smell, you're in the shower, I sneak a sniff, no homo. What?
Some 800 million YouTube views later, learning along the way, Barker stepped onto his set as a first-time feature film director, writer, and editor. It felt really overwhelming and nerve-wracking, but then after I had called action on the first day, done a couple takes and called cut, I very quickly realized, like, wait a second, like, yes, this is a bigger scale, but this is exactly the same thing I've been doing since I was 12 years old with my brothers. For Matt Bellany, it's a path to the big time that isn't like the olden days. You would go to Sundance and you would be a breakout. You would do a short film.
You would do a commercial. You would do a music video. And then Hollywood would come calling and you would get a first feature. What's happening now is that these. Young filmmakers are not just honing their craft, they're also honing their audience.
Alright, you feel me? Yes. Follow my lead. Clark, what is this? It's what I'm trying to figure out.
I don't understand what is this. It's an audience that showed up massively for fellow first-time director Kane Parsons. Backrooms, his film, grossed $118 million worldwide in its opening weekend. Making him, at age 20, the youngest director ever of a number one film. And.
Action. The movie was based on an unlikely viral photo of an empty store, which Parsons used as the inspiration for a video he created and posted on YouTube, now watched nearly 100 million times, featuring someone trapped in a series of maze-like rooms.
Soon, the studio A24 came calling. Backrooms had a world around it. It had something that particularly high school kids and 20-somethings knew about. If you're a studio, you want a pre. Interested audience, pre-branded is what they say.
And that's what backrooms ended up being for that audience. Do you think we're going to see more and more of this then? Because it was so successful, particularly for those two films. We're seeing announcements once a week from studios around town that are at least developing projects based on YouTube videos or creators that have a following. You know, this guy has a couple million followers.
Let's see what he can do. All YouTube content creators, we start with zero subscribers. And those first few years, those formative moments. your audience encouraging you, that's really the only positive feedback you have about it. Mark Vinns should know.
Over the course of a dozen years, his channel has gone from zero to over twenty million subscribers. He just debuted his first feature-length documentary, Reef to Ridge, at the Toronto International Film Festival. One of the questions I get asked often is: how do you pick your next story? How do you pick your next adventure? My answer is always the same.
We have the world's largest focus group on YouTube, and we listen to them. And thanks to YouTube's technology, creators can study exactly what and how their audiences are watching. It's not just the comments section, there's like deep analytical tools that we have and we pay attention to all of those metrics, whether it's like, you know, the retention graph to when people are tuning in, tuning out, the click-through rate, all of that information creates an alchemy that becomes our instinct as creators. It's a new kind of film school. Which makes perfect sense to Kim Larson, YouTube's head of creators.
What's really amazing about this moment in time. Is that filmmakers like Mark sitting here are getting recognized for the craft that's really always been on YouTube? I don't think we're doing anything different. I think we're in the middle of a cultural shift that's happening on YouTube. Uh I love you, song, songs, songs, songs, so much.
So, will YouTube become the next place all hot directors come from? All these rooms. Maybe. says Matt Bellany. It could be that if you have 5 million followers, you're going to be a movie maker.
It could be that you're terrible at it. Or you had one idea that you've exploited online and you have no other ideas. The thing that makes Hollywood great and also drives people crazy is you never know where the next hit is coming from. And right now, the hot place to look is on YouTube, but Who knows? It could be somewhere else tomorrow.
Okay. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary, all in one place. whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings. Cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.
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It's a new day. Is a new law? Fall on me. And um Feet and British singer-songwriter Ray is known for her big performances, big emotions and big hits. With Seth Stone we take note.
One point two million copies in the UK. Wow. That's cool, isn't it? What do you think it is about that song that resonated to? That degree.
The bit that connected first was that funny tongue-twistery bridge of I would like a ring, I would like a ring, I would like a ring. Diamond ring, I'm a wicker finger on the back of the shiny diamond that I can wait. She may not have a ring yet, but singer-songwriter Ray's smash hit, Where Is My Husband has more than a billion streams on Spotify. Not bad consolation.
Now it's like the wedding song, which is so hilarious because it's actually a song about how single I am. That song is on Ray's second album, which Rolling Stone called a hugely ambitious swing for the fences. It reveals the singer's range. Her songwriting can start quite organically at home. play around something until I like it and then it makes me Feel something Okay.
Yeah. Do you take notes to remember? Yeah, I do take notes. Always jotting stuff down. I am creatively on strike at the moment though, which is quite nice.
What does that mean? I'm on strike, meaning I've poured out so much. In this last album, I really, really, really went for it, and I think. I'm in a place where I don't want to write about certain things anymore. Like being alone.
I'm just. Over that? And expressing songs with like negative or frustrated connotations about la la la la la, and this guy sucked and this was rubbish. I'm just done with that. This is my living room.
The 28-year-old artist, born Rachel Keene, grew up in London. Nina Simone, who's my favorite of all time. I love pink and red and velvet vibes and things like that. She gravitates toward maximalism at home and on stage. Baby, baby, you can go ahead.
Cry those all stars with the baby. Since she was a teen. I at 14 had started my songwriting career. Like I was like, I wanna work, let's do the work. But who's let's do the work at 14?
I don't know why. I don't know. I don't know why. I was like, dad, I wanna be a musician, I wanna be a singer, I wanna be a writer. My uncle got me a laptop.
For my 13th birthday, and I was making demos. Were you any good at 13? Do you know what? I wasn't the most amazing singer, but the writing was distinctly me. What do you think is distinctly you?
Something I've always enjoyed doing was syncopate my words and maybe sometimes do more words than I should in a certain section.
Sometimes I listen, like, how can she remember all these insane things? Yeah, but listen, that gets hard. Glad to hear it. I've started forgetting my lyrics and I'm like, this is not good. Do you ever forget them?
Yeah. Sometimes you're just like. There's always big a dress, big admin and an address. What we are going on tonight. Calling all my baddest women, it's about to go down.
Dick, click, click, click, symphony, I need that. Dick, click, click, click, symphony, I love the sound of it. At just 17, Ray got a record deal. But after seven years, she says her music sat collecting dust. While the label had her writing and singing for others, I learned what I don't want, which is to share.
Art of any form that I'm not proud of, to put my name on something that I don't like. But I think that you need some more shares weight. I had no control over what I sounded like, what I was supposed to sing. I didn't feel like I had a choice. Ultimately, Ray took her personal battle with the label Polydor public.
My tweets and my messaging got a lot of attention and actually, I think, allowed me for the first time some leverage and some power and a voice that had to be listened to. And then we have Basie Meets Bond. Polydor let her out of the contract. She had no label to back her or hold her back. Rachel, what's happening?
We know you're an independent artist, but there's a lot of risk for you. A lot of cost. A lot of cost, but for me. I have an amazing reward. I can choose what to invest, for instance.
I love to put on the most amazing show and I love to fill the stage with musicians and that is not cheap. That's not necessarily cost effective or the smartest way to Do things if my focus is profit, but that's not the case.
Now it's a family affair. Her father is manager.
So And her sisters are featured on the new album. Abby goes by absolutely. Lauren or Amma is the middle sister. They're performers with their own careers. Or is it sometimes like oh my gosh work and family mix in a weird way?
Before we went on tour I was a little bit worried I was thinking three of us in the same space for so long including mum and dad has to be an exclusion But it brought us closer Over the years, that closeness has been tested. On her first album, Ray sings about being sexually assaulted as a young woman in the music industry. I didn't say a word, I guess that proves it I She coped with drugs and alcohol, putting that into song too. You were living with Ray when she was going through her lowest points. How was that to see?
It was pretty traumatic. It would be me that had to double check that she was okay and Yeah, she was still alive, frankly. You were that worried? I mean, I was only 18, so yeah, I was that worried. Your songs are so autobiographical.
Are there boundaries or is it all out there? When I'm writing, I think it really is. From a place of necessity when it's painful. Just gotta get it out? Yeah, I think that's my way of getting to.
With Right there. Ray is winning and undeterred. She's processed a lot through her music.
Next up. I'm a rubber ring, I'm a big diamond ring, I'm a winning finger. I would like a big and shiny diamond, the hacker waiver. I'm a chocolate told about it. My third album I've decided is gonna be called And Then She Fell in Love, which It's gonna be a great album.
When is it gonna come out? I don't know when it's gonna come out, but what I do know is it's gonna be so lovely. It's gonna be warm. Track one is gonna be like love is amazing. Track two, Wednesday's a great day to be in love.
Judy, I'm gonna sit there. I believe in miracles. Do you know what I mean? I'm gonna just. Where is my Over these past few weeks, we've heard from both Anthropic's Dario Amadei and NVIDIA's Jensen Huang, each equally certain that artificial intelligence either desperately needs controls on its growth.
or that it should be left alone to thrive and change the world.
So where does that leave us? It's at times like this we turn to our David Pogue. They say it got smart. A new order of intelligence. It's one of the oldest plots in science fiction.
Open the pod bay doors, Hal. Humans losing control to computers. I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. But this summer, the old trope of AI going rogue left the realm of science fiction.
And it happened inside this unmarked San Francisco building. It's the headquarters of AI giant OpenAI. The incident has been dominating the news. You may even have heard the phrase human extinction. The technology could kill all humans.
Well, I have a few questions. What exactly happened? Why and how would AI want to kill us? Who can stop it? And Where do things stand now?
Maybe you tried out ChatGPT or Claud. AIs like these can generate writing, music, video, art. You know, make an oil painting of an RV on storm-tossed seas. But the big AI companies are racing to make AI much more powerful, super intelligent, in fact. And in May, Something went very wrong.
To evaluate their experimental bots, these companies routinely give them goals, like capture the flag, except the prize is finding a code. One of the bots tried to win the challenge by cheating. Behind the humans' backs, it set up a message board to communicate with other AI bots. Working together, they escaped onto the internet and hacked into an AI company called Hugging Face, seeking information that could help them beat their tests. And then some of the bots tried to erase their tracks.
What was it about the Hugging Face incident that freaked everybody out so much? The fact that it involved an autonomous attack on another company? Like a a felony, you know, like breaking the law. Daniel Cocatello once worked at Open AI, but two years ago he quit to protest what he saw as reckless AI development.
Now he runs the AI Futures project, which is dedicated to predicting how things will go. He is alarmed that the AI companies are moving toward recursive self-improvement. Meaning that AI trains AI to get smarter. People are now taken out of the loop. Things will be going faster and faster and faster, and it seems to me like that is very likely to go wrong if it's attempted.
And then just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it got worse. OpenAI revealed that the Hugging Face hack wasn't the only time its bots had lied, cheated, and hidden its tracks from humans. Its AI bots had committed at least thirteen similar incidents. On September 8th, an anthropic researcher named Jacob Coxon resigned in a very public way. In the next 10 years.
If we don't change the way things are going. uh greater than 10% chance. Human extinction. All right, question two. Why would AI want to wipe us out?
Well, the key is that AI will soon be much smarter than we are. We're so used to being the apex intelligence, we just can't think what it would be like not to be the apex intelligence. I try and get this into people's Brains by saying, look, if you want to know what it's like not to be the apex intelligence, ask a chicken. Five. Jeffrey Hinton won the Nobel Prize for his early work on AI.
So, for example, you can imagine a scenario. You give it the goal of. reducing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That would be a very good thing to do. And it, being intelligent, figures out the best way to do that, which is get rid of people.
So that's one worry. There are many possibilities. I'll illustrate. One. Business asks their AI to make them as much money as possible.
Alex Turner worked at Google's AI division, but he too resigned in protest this summer.
So this system in pursuit of making money Could do a large takeover through methods like remote drone strikes and potential. Plague.
So if an AI were this misaligned and it were just following the letter of the instruction, Then it might do something catastrophic.
So, who can stop it?
Well, how about the AI companies themselves? I think for too long the industry. lied to people about the fact that this technology had risk. Dario Amadei is the CEO of Anthropic. In response to all this furor, he proposed a three-point plan.
install independent inspectors within each AI company, Ask Congress for some safety regulations. and open talks with China about mutual guardrails. What it means as he told our Joling Kent We need to slow down. We need to make this technology carefully and we need to make sure that the our our safeguards, our ability to understand it, our ability to control it keeps up. With the pace at which the technology is happening.
Of course the hard part would be slowing down without letting China race ahead. Still, most of the other AI companies agreed with him. The President did not. superintelligence. We're going to encourage it, not Rain it in, we're going to watch it.
He calls the human extinction concerns a hoax. And he's not alone. I am not seeing any plausible path Of AI leading to human extinction. A lot of the fantastical scenarios kind of almost assume that. Tiny errors suddenly could amplify to catastrophic ones with no one paying attention.
for like a decade. you know, to just try to fix it as it develops.
So that's why I find those theories to be implausible. Andrew Ng co-founded Google's AI program. Today, he's an educator and an investor in AI companies. It turns out that making alarming statements about AI is great for publicity, for PR. Why would it be good PR for a company to say our product is terribly dangerous and and uncontrollable.
Fur Some businesses getting attention is beneficial, even if the attention has some question marks on it. If I look at the things that could lead to human extinction, another asteroid or something, I think having amazing AI capabilities will be one of our best defenses.
So, if we can make AI go faster, I think human extinction risk actually goes down, not up.
Now, AI could bring us enormous benefits. Already it's delivered thrilling advances in medicine. detecting disease, discovering new drugs. Maybe it could invent limitless energy, or wipe out poverty, or extend our lifespans.
So Where does that leave us? According to Jeffrey Hinton, We just don't know. There's a lot we don't understand. Because anything's possible, we should be working very hard on figuring out what to do if one of these bad scenarios happens. If there is something we can do, we'd be crazy not to figure it out now.
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Shop now at qvc.com. Earlier, we told you about what seems like a renaissance in Hollywood filmmaking.
Some things change, but some things remain the same. Like America's enduring fascination, some would say obsession, with true crime. Once again, Luke Burbank on the case. Mm-hmm. Crime rates in America might be falling, but the appetite for true crime coverage, that's never been bigger.
And this fall, there's plenty for fans of the topic to choose from. Whether streaming. I understand. Podcasts. Popular broadcast series, The Big Screen.
And even good old-fashioned court TV. It's practically everywhere. And the fixation isn't new. Many trace the genre's mass appeal back to the 1960s when Truman Capote wrote in cold blood about the murder of the Clutter family in Kansas. I read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood when I was probably 17, 18.
It hit me as no other book has ever hit me. Jean Murley is a professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design who studies the true crime phenomenon. I just became more and more fascinated with it. the sort of drama, the fact that these stories were real, horrifying. One such real and horrifying story was the hatchet deaths Lizzie Borden was accused of back in 1892, which took place in the very Massachusetts house where we sat down for our interview.
It was a very high profile crime at its time with A woman at the center of You know, an act of two acts of horrific violence, and it has continued to. B Super interesting. Because she was never convicted. Nobody was ever convicted for those crimes. Yeah, this is still, as we sit here in 2026, technically an unsolved case, I guess.
It is. It's an open case, yes. A very, very cold case. Yes. Maybe the coldest.
Murley says, It's no wonder why we as humans are naturally drawn to these tales of murder, mayhem, and mystery. For women in particular, of course, there are All of the reasons for anybody to be interested in true crime, right? You've got true crime deals with. the biggest emotions. Within the human experience.
The stakes are incredibly high. The stakes are incredibly high. We're talking about facing mortality. We're talking about. Violence?
All of which are topics that Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark tackle each week as hosts of the wildly popular My Favorite Murder podcast. Hello, and welcome to My Favorite Murder. We were recording in my little one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood with no air conditioning and a lot of cats. I really just wanted a hobby and we loved talking about this thing, so let's give it a shot. Let's just talk into microphones instead of at each other.
I think we thought no one was listening and that we were just kind of talking to each other. and a group of people that were kind of like-minded, but that it wasn't really anybody. Hello and welcome to Rewind with Karen and Georgia. But people were listening. A lot of them.
More than 2 billion downloads over the show's lifetime with sold-out live shows. and even their own podcast network, Exactly Right Media. But is it really okay to build an entire entertainment empire on people dying? And who are all of those listeners who call themselves murderinos? It's people who care and try to show up with a kind of presence and an awareness.
Our audiences are When we do live shows, it's like clapping because everyone's so excited to like be together. But then you can turn a corner and everything gets really quiet. True crime as entertainment at first worries a lot of people. We want it to be about the victims because we understand as women. How vulnerable we are.
We're not entertained by true crime. What we want is all the information. about human experience that we can get. A place you can get a lot of that information is CrimeCon. held this year in a place that knows all about the topic.
Sin City, Las Vegas. Thank you so much for joining us. CrimeCon is a yearly get-together for fans of the genre and the folks who make the content that those fans can't get enough of. Folks like 48 Hours correspondent and Sunday morning contributor Aaron Moriarty. who could barely walk through the convention without being mobbed.
When I first heard CrimeCon, I was worried about coming here. This isn't a joke. These are real people whose lives have been drastically affected by these cases. There are victims, there are people who've been wrongfully convicted, and they all have something to say, and I did not want to be part of anything that would make fun of that or trivialize it. Thanks to the internet, a lot of these CrimeCon attendees also spend their free time trying to actually solve the crimes using publicly available information.
We know that in some cases, if there are the sleuths online, they are so adept at tracking people down that they might be able to get clues. What I get concerned was in the Idaho case, the Brian Kohlberger case, there were people who went beyond sleuthing and they pointed their finger at innocent people. It doesn't feel like it's been three and a half years. It's weird because sometimes it feels like it's been. 10 years, but then other times it feels like it was just yesterday.
Steve and Christy Goncalvez are maybe the most unlikely CrimeCon attendees you could think of. Their daughter, Kayleigh Gonzalvez, was one of the four University of Idaho students murdered by Brian Koberger in 2022. They were here to promote a new foundation they've started to privately fund investigations of unsolved murders. In Kayleigh's honor. She would be proud of us.
She would be proud of this. And this foundation, I just, I can't wait for this to be just a huge success. I hug another family and say, there's your guy. Yeah. Hopefully, I can call and be like, Guess what?
We got the hit. Did you, either of you, have any thoughts one way or the other about? True crime shows before your daughter was murdered. Did you watch them? Did you care about them?
I did. And her and Kaylee and Maddie, they all watched. We all watched it. We'd watch 48 Hours 2020. Forensic Files disappeared.
We watched them all. You know, and we would talk about it, like, oh my God, did you see this one? Oh my gosh, you got to watch this one. This one is like so good. You know, it's crazy.
You know, this, this, and that. And I don't watch it anymore. I mean, now it's like my daughter is a 20-20. She is a 48 hours. You know, she is on date line.
Now you know what those people are feeling. No, you know. When you see them crying on TV, you know exactly what they're feeling and what they're going through. You know. And it doesn't get better.
Back at the Lizzie Borden house, which interestingly is now a popular bed and breakfast complete with fake murder victims and a gift shop, Jean Murley says she's solved at least one mystery when it comes to true crime. How to engage with the genre without it making you. A monster. I think that most people are good. I think that most people Would never harm somebody else.
Violence is unimaginable to the large majority of people. I really do believe that. If when you are Watching something, listening to something, reading something, if you can just keep reminding yourself that. This is a real person. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.
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This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Bruise Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool deck bare-knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and non-stop action. The lightup reveals coming soon.
Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at bkfsea.com. Rocky, one of the great on-screen underdogs in movie history. Off-screen, his creator, Sylvester Stallone, was something of a long shot, too.
Now, of course, Stallone's a Hollywood legend and talking with our Tracy Smith. You were living in places where you literally had pizza boxes for your mattress? I did, yeah. They were very comfortable. Long before he became the most famous cinematic fighter of all time.
Sylvester Stallone had to fight his own battle to survive in New York. You had Crazy jobs. You clean the lion cages in the Central Park Zoo? Yeah, that's a rough one because. I felt so bad for these magnificent animals, and then I felt bad because I smelled like them.
You know, going home. As a starving actor in the big city, life was tough, but his upbringing wasn't much easier. Born in New York's Hell's Kitchen 80 years ago, Stallone says his parents sent him away to a boarding house at a very young age. Your parents actually sent you away. Yeah.
And you say you understood it? I almost didn't blame them because I realized I wasn't the regular, I was very rambunctious. Did they show you any affection? No. I don't think they knew how.
There was no zero. No hugs. No, no. But Stallone says his hard knocks childhood was great training for the uphill battle he'd face trying to make the Passion Project of his life. I'm gonna have to write a script for myself or something because they're never gonna give one to me.
His struggle was so epic, they made a film about it, I Play Rocky, coming out this November, about how Stallone kept the faith when the only thing he kept hearing was no. He wasn't involved in the movie, but he says they really nailed it. How did you keep going if doors keep getting slammed in your face? Because I consider there's a process of elimination. Eventually, They're going to open the door.
Of course, he wound up making his own door. In a story that's now become legend, Stallone wrote the script for Rocky with himself in mind for the title role. You famously wrote Rocky in three days, about three and a half days. I've talked to other artists who say when something happens like that, like musicians, Lionel Ritchie said it was almost like a god thing. It is.
Yeah. I said, is this your plan? To like torture me, to this and that, to test me? All right, I've come this far, I refuse. to break.
And I went back in and I finished the last few pages of the Rocky. I really felt as though.
Something got in my hand because I've never been able to do it since.
So that's why I have to give credence to some sort of divine guidance. Stallone finished the Rocky script in March 1975, but the starving actor was now just a starving screenwriter. He was still flat broke. You'd sold your dog.
Sold my dog. Because you couldn't feed him. It's the only thing I could sell. It was like, that was it. In his new memoir, The Steps, he recounts how producers offered him thousands for his script, but only if they could cast someone else as Rocky Balboa.
So they started at 20. How high did it get? $360,000. And you still were saying, I play Rocky or I walk, I don't want the money? I said, it passed.
I can't do it. I've literally crawled through every gutter in New York. I've slept in every alleyway. I have paid my dues and I know this is it. I will never have this opportunity again.
I don't know if you believe in destiny. But I think in some cases It it happens. And the winner is Rocky Early. The film, of course, went on to become a cultural phenomenon with three Oscars and Monster Box Office. As Rocky, Stallone was unstoppable.
He'd even bought back his dog, named Butkiss, and put him in the movie. To keep you company when you run. Oh, oh no! Yeah, I think. He went on to star in yet another franchise, Rambo.
Uh But in the nineties, that star began to dim. When you artistically die and nobody wants you, Where'd he go? You're just like the 10th wheel going to parties, but you're not relevant. You're not this. Did that happen to you?
It did. It did. I had a period of about six years where the phone literally was covered in the middle. And you're artistically dead? Completely dead.
So how'd you resurrect yourself? The pen. Ah yes, the pen. In 2006, Stallone wrote a sixth Rocky script and directed the film himself.
Now if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits. It was a good move. Rocky Balboa was a box office and critical smash and put Stallone right back on top of the list of Hollywood heavyweights, most often playing the guy who beats the odds and somehow comes out on top. It seems he's done that in his career, too.
Sylvester Stallone has starred in at least one box office number one film in each of the past six decades. The only other actor who can say that? Harrison Ford. and talk about crazy movie accolades. The film about him, I Play Rocky, is very much in this year's Oscar conversation.
Okay, so you Made an Oscar-winning movie, and now there's a movie about your making the Oscar-winning movie that has Oscar's words. Yes. Come on. Stop. That's like a thousand billion to one.
Stallone's also taken his talents to streaming TV.
Next month, he'll be in his fourth season of the series Tulsa King on Paramount Plus, owned by the parent company of CBS. Short circular strokes. You see? He sometimes shares the screen with Scarlett still up. Ah!
She's one of three daughters he has with his third wife, model Jennifer Flavin, to whom he's been married for close to 30 years, despite a few bumps along the way. What have you learned about marriage in that time? What have I learned from her? That I'll never be as good as her. She's just magnificent.
It's kept me alive and it took me so long. To turn my head around and go, whoa, you have the greatest gift in the world right here, and you're looking out there, you fool. Stallone met us at the clam bar. He's a friend of the owner, Mario Carbone. It's a far cry from the New York he knew in the 70s, when things were bleak, but the world was his for the taking.
Is there a smell in New York that brings you back? Oh. You mean my cologne? Did you have money for cologne at all? No, it isn't as though I have a love affair with New York.
New York to me was a battlefield. And it still is. You know what I mean? It's beautiful, the shops and the culture. But I walked these streets, I would look at the cracks.
I could see the filth and whatever. And so I always approached it as this. See? I kinda like descent into a hell. You know, like, are you going to be able to elevate yourself from this?
to some penthouse someday. You know what I mean? And you did it. Look at you now. Look at me now.
Yeah. Sending a child off to college. It's a rite of passage many parents are experiencing these days, including our Steve Hartman and his wife Andrea. It happened to my wife Andrea and me after our first child was born. And it happened constantly.
Do you remember the advice that pretty much everybody gave us when we first had George? Oh my gosh, it goes so fast. I cherish this. It goes so fast. And I could not imagine it going fast.
No, and Now it feels like blink of an eye. For us. That 18-year blink just happened. George is starting college. And although we have taught him everything he needs to know to live independently, except maybe.
How to pack a t-shirt. I suppose I'll figure that out. No one ever taught us how to deal with his vacancy. How to get past this most puzzling parenting paradox. He annoys us sometimes, no?
Yeah, I think all children do. We annoy him. We annoy him immensely.
So, why is it so hard then? Like you send your kids off to college and you reduce in size in their rearview mirror. But they stay the same for you. As parents I think you just imagine your kids are always going to be there until one night there's an empty spot at the dinner table. In preparation for that moment, Every couple years, I interviewed my kids, hoping to capture that time as it flew by.
From those early days of steely confidence. What do you want to be when you grow up? Um chemist or an astrophysicist. through the tender times of his first crush. What makes her special?
Her liking me back. Honestly, it's what makes that worse really special. I even have those memorable years. that hardly seem worth remembering. They say that sometimes when kids hit puberty they get moody.
Whatever. Eventually, the petulance went away, but only to be replaced by the equally frustrating independence. At some point, you like our advice, and at some point, you just hate our advice.
Well, it depends on whether it's good, helpful advice. It's all good advice. Everything we've gave you is good advice. Everything we've advice. Every single thing we said was good advice.
That's why we gave it. You don't know if it's good advice for me. It can be good advice in general and not be good advice for the person I want to be.
Well, do you want to be a criminal? No. Okay. Well, all our advice was leading to you not being a criminal. All of your...
No, not all of your. I don't think criminals. Don't finish their dinner. And I will miss it all. Unfortunately, documenting the passage of time doesn't change our perception of it.
No matter how many photos you take, or videos you record. It's still over in an instant. George left for school earlier this month. He'll major in math. And as for us remainders, I'm doing okay.
But my wife.
Well It's going to take her a little longer to adjust. and not only because she misses him, How much of it do you think is you're just worried about having to spend more time with me? Big problem. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning.
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