If you hit links we provide, we may receive compensation.
InDavid Morrells 1972 novelFirst Blood, a Vietnam veteran named Rambo runs afoul of a small-town Sheriff.
They were treated so badly, terribly.
Credit: CAROLCO PICTURES
Fifty-eight thousand American troops, and a million Vietnamese a million!
died for this stupid idea.
A lot of the veterans felt horrible, guilty, they felt theyd dirtied their souls for absolutely nothing.
Then, of course, the veterans were treated so badly.
In previous wars, like World War II I remember, because Im that old!
they had marching bands.
They were treated like heroes!
Vietnam veterans were vilified, and rejected.
The left wing thought they were a bunch of babykillers.
A lot of veterans came home to find there was no place for them.
This is what happens to Rambo.
Thats why I conceived ofFirst Bloodas Rambos suicide mission.
I met guys that actually later on killed themselves.
His tragedy mirrored their tragedy, and how they came to this sad conclusion to kill themselves.
My first choice for the picture was Sylvester Stallone.
In his case, I sent it to him on a Thursday night.
On a Friday morning he phones me: I love this script!
I want to do it!
I couldnt believe my luck!
Money always revolves around getting a big star name.
Id like to participate in the rewrite with you.
I said, Id love that, Sylvester.
Youre a terrific writer.Rockyis wonderfully written.
One thing about Sylvester: He has a populist sense.
He knows what audiences like to see, and what they dont like to see.
Ive never had that.
[Laughs] We came around to do the ending.
Hes surrounded by the army, and by the police.
Hes in the police station.
The Colonel comes in there to put him out of his misery.
[Rambo] says, I know you have a gun underneath your jacket there.
Now, you have to kill me.
And he pulls out the gun.
But he cant do it, of course.
But Rambo reaches out, presses the trigger, and blows himself away.
The whole scene was awfully moving.
It was incredibly moving, after all wed been through.
Sylvester got up and said, Ted, can I talk to you for a second?
He said, You know, Ted, we put this character through so much.
The police abuse him.
Dogs are sent after him.
He jumps off cliffs.
He runs through freezing water.
Hes shot in the arm and he has to sew it up himself.
All this, and now were gonna kill him?
What he said had been simmering in my mind slightly for some time, really.
The quintessential American town Rambo finds himself in was emblematic of the whole United States.
Hes being treated by an enemy, so he returns the failure and wrecks the whole town.
By this time, the audience had gotten the message.
Did they need me to excessively pile it on?
I said, Sylvester has a point.
Something popped into my head right away.
I said, I know exactly how to do it.
We cut away from this scene, just before [the Colonel] pulls the gun out.
They come out of the police station.
They start to walk down the steps.
Ill pan over to the ambulance, and see the Sheriff being loaded into the ambulance.
Hes been shot, but not killed.
We go back to Sylvester all one shot!
hes so happy he didnt kill him.
The camera pans over, follows them as they go onto the street.
The whole townspeople are there.
Theyll look at him, hell look at them.
Theyll end up on a jeep and drive off.
All one long camera shot.
And Sylvester loved it!
So, I said, Okay, guys!
I lined it all up.
So you filmed the new ending on the same day you filmed the original ending?Right afterwards!
We were supposed to be wrapping for the day!
I told them about my alternate ending, and they went bloody nuts.
We agreed this film was Rambos suicide mission, and now youre altering it?
Plus, youre over budget and over schedule!
Youre not gonna do it!
Were done for the day!
I said, Listen, you aholes, I dont take any s from producers.
Im only gonna take two hours, I promise you.
[The test audience] were all unanimous.
They all said, in different words: This is the best action film Ive ever seen.
But the ending is horrible!
In the face of this universal disapproval, they agreed to change the ending.
Unhappy endings are intellectual endings.
But happy endings are popular endings.
For more revelations from the past four decades of entertainment, visitew.com/untoldstories.
That thing had been niggling at me in the back of my head: The town killed him.
The evil Sheriff killed him.
All those people that symbolized America had killed him.Theywere the evil people who did this.
Initially, Kirk Douglas was cast as Colonel Trautman.
Had he stayed, he would have been involved in the scene where Rambo dies by suicide.
He was a strange man, Kirk.
He always had an unsettling manner of always talking about himself in the third person.
I said, But Kirk, that sentiment is appropriate for that nasty Sheriff, not for you.
Its a good line.
Kirk Douglas says it.
He was a big star.
We wanted to bend over backwards.
I sent him the script when he was performing in a play in San Francisco.
He loved the script and said he wanted to do it.
Then when he got up there, he started quarreling, before he even started to shoot.
This lines gotta be changed.
I dont like this scene.
The dialogue he was suggesting was like a B-film, circa 1940.
Finally, I said to the producers, I cant like this guy!
You liked it, and you agreed to do it.
He said, Okay, Kirk Douglas goes back to Los Angeles.
In the sequel, hes turned into a killing machine.
He kills about 75 people!
I said, Thats not the character I created.
If youre gonna do that, good luck, have a good time.
He would find himself in a better place.
I thought that maybe the Colonel could see what had gone wrong.
Hed help Rambo to get back to a more fulfilling life.
