COMING TO GRIPS WITH SLY STALLONE

The woman was in her 40s, with rust-red hair teased into a bouffant. Her matching shorts and midriff top were festooned with a bright hodgepodge of flowers, like something from the psychedelic ‘60s. She was accompanied by a balding husband in checkered Bermuda shorts and red T-shirt with a camera around the neck.

They’d wandered down the hallway that connects the Las Vegas Hilton’s casino to the Sports Pavilion, where a pair of security guards were posted. The double doors were closed.

“We’re from Wisconsin,” she told one guard, “and we’ll just never have a chance to see Sylvester Stallone again.” With that, she looked longingly at the closed doors.

Inside, Stallone was filming the climactic arm-wrestling sequence for “Over the Top.” He plays Lincoln Hawk, a truck driver who’s trying to win the love of his estranged 12-year-old son. The ubiquitous Menahem Golan, co-chairman of Cannon Films, is producing and directing and paying the star $12 million for this activity. A February release is planned.

Crowds were needed to provide “background” for the big tournament scene which ultimately determines if father and son have a future together.

The woman with the memorable red hair wanted to be in the crowd. The guard told her to go around to the other side of the pavilion, where the folks were being signed up.

The husband jumped in. “But, hon,” he said, “this is our last day of vacation. Our last day. C’mon. . . .”

He reached for her arm.

She went. But before turning the corner of the hall leading to the slot machines and dice pits, she looked back for a last look, and lamented, “But it’s Sylvester Stallone, in person . . . .”

Critics snicker at the Stallone phenomena. What Stallone does to the bad guys, critics usually do to Stallone movies.

It hasn’t much mattered. Critical outrage aside, Stallone is the biggest star in the world. “Rambo: First Blood Part II” and “Rocky IV” set such enormous box-office records (together, they sold nearly $300 million in domestic ticket sales), that “Cobra” was considered a failure this summer because it sold only $50-million worth of tickets in this country.

When Stallone was asked about “Cobra’s” ticket sales, he shot back: “You’re getting a bit jaded about this business, wouldn’t you say? If each one of my movies makes only $50 million, I’ll go to my grave a happy man.”

That doesn’t mean Stallone isn’t bothered by critical thrashings by the media. He may be a multi-megastar, but he’s also human, and seems genuinely baffled that he and his films could unleash such anger.

“You wouldn’t believe some of the scathing things they’ve said about me,” he said. Such as? “Like Rex Reed saying my career is more mysterious than crib death. More mysterious than crib death!” He shook his head.

Reminded of a “Cobra” crack made by the Washington Post’s 26-year-old film critic Paul Attanasio, who wrote that Stallone wouldn’t recognize a print of “Citizen Kane” (instead, said Attanasio, Stallone would hit someone over the head with it), Stallone, 40, pointed a finger at a reporter, declaring, “I’ll bet you I saw that film before that boy was even born.

“It’s as if it’s open season on me,” he said. “Maybe it’s because of some of the things I said early on in my career. I don’t know.”

But he was philosophical: “This backlash is a very natural process. I was warned about it by my first acting coach, at Dade Junior College (in Florida). I remember her saying, ‘Don’t stick your head above the crowd, because if you do, they’re going to be lining up to take it off.’ At that time, of course, I had no idea what she meant. But 15 years later, I stuck my head above the crowd and people lined up.”

As he was speaking inside his exercise trailer, he worked rigorously on a weight machine specifically designed to build arm muscles. It was parked alongside the Hilton pavilion and the star could hear the shouting extras who were “in rehearsal” for their crowd scenes.

It was an irony that as Stallone was reflecting on media hate, outside he was being cheered. But his career is engulfed in ironies.

“People really love building a foundation and then building a structure,” he said. “And once the structure is up, they tear it down. It’s like, if you look at urban renewal, I’m just part of urban renewal. That’s what careers are all about--this constant construction and destruction and, right now, we’re going through a destruction phase.”

He shook his head. “It’s something I’ve learned to weather pretty good. But it always hurts a little.”

And there are all those jokes about Stallone, usually delivered in Stallonese speech by Gary Shandling, Robin Williams and others. “Yes, they are embarrassing,” Stallone said. “They’re especially embarrassing to people around me. I mean, my wife gets upset. . . .”

But in the pavilion, he was the centerpiece of adulation.

Hundreds of extras clustered on bleachers surrounding an arena floor. From their seats up high, they could watch crew members hustling around, lugging props and lights, readying cameras, dodging dozens of extras who would later take their posts as arm-wrestling officials, hotel reps, press folks, showgirls and others.

Then there were the machines that belch a haze of smoke that settled above the bleachers. And the young extras who shot up and down the bleachers with sloshing cups of Pepsi and overflowing cartons of popcorn.

And, of course, there were all the arm wrestlers. Male and female. Real and unreal (some were hefty actors, hauled in for the occasion). All colorfully attired. The men were undeniably macho . How else to describe guys with 19-inch upper arms erupting from tank tops? Guys with screen names like Bull, Mad Dog, Grizzly and Smasher.

Even in the midst of this musclemania, it was Stallone who stood out as the star, standing 5-foot-10, 172 pounds (up seven from his Rambo weight), dressed in plain jeans, a denim worker shirt with the sleeves strategically ripped off and brown cowboy boots. In his hands was a blue baseball cap that read “Bonneau,” a brand of aviator eyeglasses.

He walked from one side of the stage to the other--and hundreds of pairs of eyes seemed to follow him en masse. He tried to stand out of view of the crowd, beneath a bleacher overhang--and people gathered above.

Teen-agers gathered and gawked. Older folks, too, craned their necks. But little kids with Instamatic cameras rallied around the railings--with requests for “Rocky,” and sometimes “Sly,” to turn around for a picture. Some offered slips of paper, with hopes of an autograph.

Well, not everyone was there just because of Stallone.

Francine Calzaretto, 76, had come to the set with other members of the Senior Citizens Center of Las Vegas. “It seemed like a good way to spend the day,” she said, rather nonplussed.

She hastened to add that she’s seen all of Stallone’s films, but, he isn’t the first star she’s seen at work. “Honey, I’ve already watched Brooke Shields do ‘Circus of the Stars.’ ” And what did she think of Brigitte Nielsen Stallone? “She’s tall .”

It was when a woman in the stands called out, “She’s here!” that you knew that Nielsen was somewhere nearby.

Actually, the sight of Stallone walking hand-in-hand across the arena floor with his 6-foot wife triggered a collective sigh of recognition and admiration from the stands. They looked like Mr. and Mrs. Physical Wonder.

Later, Stallone, who said he hopes to find screen projects for his “lady” (“Couldn’t you see her with Rutger Hauer in a remake of ‘The Blue Angel?’ ” he said), would note of his personal life: “People who get married right after a divorce, like I did, that’s always controversial in itself. But I’m happier now, personally, than I’ve been in such a long time. You know, this has been a great year for change and tolerance and, not slowing down, exactly, but being a little bit more sensitive to my surroundings. My wife’s vigor is an enticement, too. It perks me up.”

Pressing his hand to his chest, Stallone said: “I’m not a genetically superior person. I built my body.” He motioned toward his wife. “But she. She is extraordinary genetics.”

Between takes on an arm-wrestling scene, Stallone was being attacked by assistants wielding combs and makeup. He seemed to realize how silly this may seem.

“It’s kind of like being in the pit at Indianapolis,” he said. “Next comes the changing of the tires.”

Then, to get that sweaty, glistening look, he was sprayed with a water bottle.

Said Stallone: “Do you realize I’ve been damp for 11 years?”

Stallone, for all his killing power on the screen and his other fearsome reputations, has a disarming sense of humor. And he uses it a lot.

During one interview on the set, the conversation turned to his screen persona. Stallone turned the question around, asking what types of roles he should do.

The answer was quick in coming: “Roles where you don’t sing.”

(Stallone had left an indelible impression in “Rhinestone,” which co-starred Dolly Parton. Stallone played a New York cabbie-turned-crooner, of sorts.)

“Hey . . . I’m not as bad as all that,” he said. “You know what? I wish I could do ‘Rhinestone’ all over again. Only instead of going country, I’d do it really outrageous, like Kiss.”

Over the next few days, and even later on the Los Angeles set, Stallone provided samples of his musical abilities. He’d leave a scene and burst into Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.”

At one point he was singing and snapping his fingers. “It’s from ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ ” he said. Then he did “Mack the Knife.” Some day, he said, he might like to do “Threepenny Opera.”

To a response of “Oh, no!,” Stallone returned, “Wait a minute. Did you ever hear that song I did for ‘Paradise Alley’?” (It was that film’s title song--which he performed on the sound-track album.) “Now that wasn’t an easy song to sing. I think I did a pretty good job.”

A perfectionist about virtually every aspect of his films, Stallone would do his scenes and then rush over to a video monitor to play them back and confer with Golan. He explained that what he was trying to do with the arm-wrestling episode, which will comprise about 15 minutes of screen time, is to capture the same dizzying feel of the Las Vegas bout sequence in “Rocky IV.”

Stallone was concerned that the lights, the camera filters and the camera angles had to be just so. When three hand-held cameras zeroed in for close-ups of the arm wrestlers, he said, “I’m looking for what I call the ‘brain vein’ shot.”

He touched his temple and smiled. “You know, those shots where you can see the guy’s temple throbbing.”

Stallone climbed onto the stage that had been dressed for the championship matches. He was nearly dwarfed by a 6-foot-5, 300-pound man who could have registered 6.5 on the Richter scale.

“What do you think?” Stallone quipped, “Does this put to rest the rumor that I don’t work with guys bigger than me?”

That persistent Stallone rumor was squelched, in part, by “Rocky III,” in which Stallone squared off against towering Hulk Hogan.

There are a lot of rumors about Stallone.

Some are doubtless fueled by his speech inflection which was caused by damage to a facial nerve suffered at birth. With his muffled speech pattern, he sounds as if he just wandered in from the mean streets.

Then, for all those people--critics included--who can’t distinguish between an actor and his screen characterizations, there is this belief that he is the characters that he plays.

And there is Stallone’s fearsome reputation as a 800-pound gorilla who tells everybody, including his directors, how to do their jobs. (Some Stallone colleagues are visibly leery in his presence.)

It was this particular Stallone signature that let loose rumblings in Hollywood long before he and Menahem Golan--himself a titan --ever went before the cameras.

To hear oddsmakers tell it, the making of “Over the Top” had all the potential of being a modern-day Western--in which the loudest gun would survive.

At least in the crowd scenes, both men seemed to be alive and thriving. Golan, who wore brown corduroy Bermuda shorts and a gray polo shirt, was healthy and robust. Stallone wore his usual muscles.

That doesn’t mean that they saw eye to eye. (There was a report from one source that cast and crew had labeled the production “Warring Trailers.”)

“We walked in like two wary adversaries,” said Stallone. “I came into this project with a preconceived feeling that it was going to be difficult. And I’m sure that he had heard that I’m a nightmare.”

But, Stallone was quick to add, “There is honor among adversaries--ground rules.”

As Golan would later put it, over breakfast in a Las Vegas coffee shop: “We have to find what I call modus vivendi --which means we have to live with each other without letting our egos rule us. And I think we’ve found it.”

Because of “the deal,” Stallone will have “final cut” on the film.

And so the Stallone-Golan modus vivendi went this way: If they disagreed on how a scene should be played--and there were reportedly a number of such disagreements--the scene was shot two ways. The final decision would come later, in the editing room.

“That way,” Stallone said, “we can both go to our graves saying we tried our best.”

Golan didn’t balk when asked about his star’s behind-the-camera contributions: “If any director who works with him does not take advantage of it (Stallone’s advice), he’s an idiot.

“He knows the camera like nobody else. I’ve never seen an actor know the camera like that. He knows every lens, every angle. He knows how it will look on the screen.

“He’s not just a man who stands in front of the camera and acts.”

The man who racked up an awesome Commie body count in “Rambo,” who clobbered the Russkies in “Rocky IV” and gunned down hordes of psycho-killers in “Cobra” will, this time around, be a trucker whose life style contrasts mightily with that of his military school-educated son (played by David Mendenhall from “General Hospital”).

His chief adversary is his wealthy former father-in-law (Robert Loggia) who wants his grandson back. (Susan Blakely plays Stallone’s hospitalized ex-wife; it’s her desire that Stallone and the boy be together.)

“This is a movie about a man who deserted his responsibilities,” said Stallone, who’s trying for “subtleties” in his performance.

“I’m working on one-tenth the intensity that I usually go for,” he said, admitting that there’ve been scenes where he hasn’t been subtle enough. “After watching dailies a couple times, we had to reshoot--because I come off so strong. I find myself thinking, jeez, no wonder people cringe around me sometimes. I mean, in a restaurant I say, ‘Can I please have some butter?’ and people practically start running.”

It’s not easy, Stallone confessed, suddenly playing “soft.”

“My character is so insecure that I let this kid run all over me. There are so many temptations to do a Wallace Beery, to go, ‘Siddown and shuddup.’ I don’t. I let the kid abuse the hell out of me. And I do it for a very good reason--because I deserve it. I really do feel like I let him down.

“I’ve discussed this a lot with Menahem. I’ve said: ‘I’m dealing totally with guilt.’ I’m speaking so softly in this movie, they can barely hear me. It’s because I don’t think I’m worthy of being heard.”

Eventually, revealed Stallone, his character will apply some “friendly and subtle persuasion”--and his son will respond.

“What we have here,” Stallone added, “is a sweet little love story.”

It’s been 10 years since audiences last saw him sticking to a sweet little love story (“Rocky”).

“You’re right--I carry a lot of luggage with me in the way of past characterizations,” he agreed, “and it’s very hard for anyone to let go of those characterizations--even in the first half hour (of a movie). They’ll be saying, ‘OK, when’s the gun come out? When’s the bomb go off? When’s he punch somebody?’ I’m bringing that with me all the time.

“So there is a temptation to not wander too far from the nest of proven security. So in this one, there’s a tendency to just, say, every 11 minutes or so, put in some action-oriented scene that the film could live very nicely without. So I am in a constant struggle with myself to avoid bastardizing the film, diluting its integrity.”

He smiled. “You know, it’s a little like Monet saying, ‘Maybe I should just put a little dab of red here (in this painting),’ because it’s so subtle that people might not notice what I’m trying to say.”

It was in 1984--just prior to the release of “Rhinestone” (which marked a disastrous departure for a singing Stallone)--that Cannon Films announced it would pay Stallone $12 million for “Over the Top.”

But first, Stallone took a six-month option for a $500,000 fee while Cannon went shopping for buyers.

As Golan explained: “We went to Europe. We went to Japan. We spoke to every independent distributor in the world. We said, ‘If we have Stallone in this kind of a movie, what can you come up with?’ ”

According to Golan, Cannon already has racked up $27 million in sales for the movie. (It is budgeted at $13 million, sans Stallone’s salary.) “So already, we are in profits,” said Golan, who nonetheless admits that the film is a gamble for both director and star.

“You can’t just break an image. It can take years,” said Golan who, as a director, is best known for action-adventure. (His last credit was Chuck Norris’ “The Delta Force.”)

“The best examples are television stars who have an image--like Magnum-what’s-his-name. He can’t make it anywhere else. He can’t. Well, there are similarities here.

“Because lately, Sly has had an image of violence. That will change with this movie. So that is a big risk, in a way. Because this is not the kind of movie the audience expects from him. But I think we have enough to offer the public--action scenes, car chases, that kind of thing. But we will also give them sentiments--love.

“And of course, Sly will be a hero. He must be a hero. They (the audience) want him to be a hero.”

For a while, there was some question about whether or not Stallone would win the final, pivotal match. (The prize is a shiny truck and enough prize money to insure Lincoln’s financial future.)

As originally scripted, Lincoln Hawk didn’t win. Then Stallone wrote an alternative ending, and the plan was for both to be filmed, and test marketed. (“First Blood” originally was test marketed with alternative endings: one in which John Rambo lived, the other--as in the original book--in which he died.)

On the set in Las Vegas, Stallone said he was uneasy about the thought of losing: “In ‘Rocky I,’ I got away with it, because no one really knew my image. If I lose here, it brings about a lot of concern. Not to me--I’d like to lose. But will it destroy the impact of the (film’s) statement, which is about hard work paying off.”

Later, it was learned that the crisis over the ending was resolved. A triumphant Golan declared that he had shot only one ending--the one in which Stallone wins.

He had a broad grin: “There is no alternative ending.”

Stallone was cradling his right arm (wrapped in a protective leg warmer), which ached from extensive exercise.

“I can tell you one thing,” Stallone declared. “After this (film), this is not a sport I’m going to pursue with great vigor. The sport really takes it out of you.”

Surveying the arm wrestlers who clustered nearby, awaiting their call, he added, “But there are things about this sport I can really get into.”

Such as? “Well, it’s really a celebration of virility. You know what I mean? Of manhood. But it’s different from a lot of other sports. Because no one really gets hurt. And anyone can afford it. It’s a very democratic sport--as opposed to a Republican sport. What you have to have are the arms, not the money.”

Leaning against an arm-wrestling table, he mused: “Have you noticed during the breaks how everyone eventually makes their way up to one of these? Everyone wants to try it. Everyone wants to pull Excalibur out of the stone.”

That said, he and massive Rick Zumwalt showed how arm wrestlers brace themselves against the table for the sweating, straining ritual. (Southpaw Stallone is doing his arm-wrestling scenes right-handed, per arm wrestling regulations.) With more than 60 arm-wrestling titles, Zumwalt seems aptly cast as Bull Hurley, Stallone’s final adversary.

He wore a red shirt that read “Blaster” (“That’s what I do to the competition,” Zumwalt growled teasingly), jeans and an enormous leather belt. All in all, a fearsome presence.

So how could Stallone whip this guy?

“I know there’ll be some people who will say, ‘How can he win?--it’s unrealistic,’ ” noted Stallone, “but this is as much a psych-out sport as it is a sport of brawn.”

Zumwalt seconded that theory. Watching Stallone make his way toward the cameras, Zumwalt declared reverentially: “He’s gonna do for our sport what he did for boxing and the old red, white and blue. He’s got the Midas touch.”

Stallone’s Midas touch can be explained this way: He gives audiences what they want. Stallone doesn’t argue the point.

“I’m in the business of trying to please--through films that have a bit of social significance, but that are usually in an overblown, over-dramaticized format. I happen to think that’s why people go to the movies. If everything (in the movies) was for real, all you would do, basically, is sit in front of your window all day, and say, ‘This is life, in actual scale.’

“So everything is scaled up in my films--everything. The tension, the dramas, the dilemmas. I tend to play characters whose quests are a little larger than life--so I also tend to get more overblown criticism. It’s all in proportion to the kind of work I do. I reach out--I go out on that limb.”

With “Cobra,” he went way, way out on a limb.

What he was trying to do, Stallone admitted, was to infuse horror/slasher-genre techniques into a police thriller. “It was a risky formula. Especially in the summertime, which tends to be a lighter time. I was trying to attack the judicial system, but I was trying to do it a certain way--with a cop who was like an android, you know. I said, ‘Let’s get right down to it--to me against them.’

“But it was a dark subject matter. And I know I made certain mistakes with it. Next time, I’ll take Cobra into an entirely different area entirely.”

(Despite any travails they may have had on “Over the Top,” Stallone and Golan are already talking about reteaming for a “Cobra” sequel in which Cobra goes to war against drugs.)

If he agrees he made some miscalculations with “Cobra,” he’s not backing down on either “Rambo” or “Rocky IV”--and what many critics saw as their anti-Soviet sentiment.

“Regrets? I think if anything, ‘Rocky IV’ was pro-Russian at the end. Because I think I balanced it out,” he said, referring to Rocky’s final speech to the Russian people.

“And in ‘Rambo,’ I didn’t sit there and say that every Communist should die. What did I say? What did I say?” Stallone angrily pounded an exercise bench. “I put America down at the end! I put my own country down. I said I wanted it to love me as much as I love it. Don’t they (the critics) listen to the end of the movie? Do they leave before it’s over? I can’t even say I love my own country. . . .”

But, Stallone was reminded, he never served his country. (As a result, many “Rambo” foes called him a draft-dodger.)

It brought Stallone to his feet and sent him pacing. “I tried to enlist. Twice. Check it out--in Philadelphia and Florida. It’s in the records, under Michael Stallone. (Sylvester is his middle name.) Check it out. Hey, my grades were so bad in college, I figured they were coming to get me. So I went down there to enlist.”

(Stallone said he didn’t pass his physical because of a 40% hearing loss in his right ear.)

He sees “Rambo” as “a kind of pressure cooker that really let a lot of tensions out in the air.

“But the people who took it literally were foolish,” said Stallone, who suddenly struck John Rambo’s warrior pose, declaring, “What about after the girl dies, and all of a sudden there are eight crack Viet Cong seasoned veterans and I stand up and go Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z (military fire), and they all stand there like this (motionless), shooting. I mean, none of them, like, duck.

“And I just take them all out in one second!”

He laughed loudly. “And then I shoot 300 yards with a bow and arrow and, boom, hit the guy. Thank you very much.”

And what of that cornball romance, in which the brave Vietnamese girl dies in his arms?

Stallone chortled again. “I know--it was rough. You didn’t see my close-up reaction to that. It was like this (he rolled his eyes) as she’s going, ‘You make good choice, Rambo.’ ”

He was serious. “I admit I bit my tongue. But, the scene works. On some levels, people say, ‘Well, yeah, I’ll buy that.’

“A lot of wild things work in that film (because) it has pipe dreams in it. It really does. It has tremendous delusions of grandeur with an overriding, important theme. I mean, it really does.”

(Stallone will continue the saga of John Rambo in “Rambo III,” which will begin filming in December.)

It was mid-morning and the days’ crowds already were in the stands. They didn’t know it, but they would have the distinction of witnessing a scene in which Stallone loses a preliminary arm-wrestling match and leaves the stage a defeated man.

But for the moment, Stallone was a winner--pure and simple.

Especially when, to the familiar strains of the “Rocky” theme song, he took center stage with microphone in hand.

“How many of you are doing this for the first time?” he asked. Hundreds of hands were raised. “Great! You’ll never want to do it again. Just chalk it up to experience.”

Later, after he’d left the stage, and the “Rocky” theme was played (again), he admitted: “That’s the hardest character to let go. You know, the people don’t want me to.”

Nor does United Artists, where he has a six-year 10-picture deal (he will star in at least five and write, direct or produce the remainder). “Oh, they’d love it if I’d do another ‘Rocky,’ ” Stallone said. “But, and I’ve said this before, what am I gonna do for an encore--fight E.T.?”

Then he launched into the end of the Rocky saga as he’d really like to do it: “I’d like to reduce him to a club fighter again. And, it seems to me, that after all those fights, he’d have to have incurred some mental damage. He’d be, you know, punchy.

“So I can envision him wanting to return to his old neighborhood. And I can see him asking the wife, ‘Adrian, Adrian, where’s my hat?’ Remember that old hat he had?

“I have to think that, at the end, Rocky would be reduced to being a professional greeter. And a sad case.”

Stallone’s conversation was interrupted by an eavesdropping extra (dressed as a wrestling official), who reached for Stallone’s arm as he said: “Sly, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Rocky’s always gotta win. He’s gotta win for us.”

Stallone looked at the reporter as if to say, “Do you see what I mean?”

“Making movies is being patient,” Golan told the crowd.

In his shorts and running shoes, he didn’t look like one of the chiefs of Hollywood’s most-talked about companies. It is probable that most of those in the stands did not even know of Golan’s status--especially the preteen girl who approached him for an autograph, declaring: “Mister, Mister, I just love the way you direct! I love the way you keep saying, ‘More energy! More energy!’ ”

With a little help from a mike, Golan told the crowd about a scene that was going to be filmed:

“Yours is a mixed reaction--OK? If you want to stand (in the bleachers), you do so because you want to see better. You want to hear better. And because you are excited by what you see.

“Do you understand?”

The crowd applauded and screamed. Golan smiled. “What we want is movement--lots of it. Freedom of movement. What amendment is that? Remember, every reaction must be different. You must be moving all the time.”

When the crowds weren’t “performing” for the camera, they were being prompted by Dale Benson. Perched on a ladder on the stage, with megaphone in hand, the veteran crowd-scene specialist (a production consultant on all the “Rocky” films) put the crowd through a series of exercises that would eventually lead to deafening bursts of applause, screams, boos and hisses. (They were in rehearsal for the upcoming competition scene.) From time to time, Benson also announced winning numbers for prizes.

As he would later explain, pushing the “emotional buttons of greed” is an effective way of getting crowds to turn out for a film. But, Benson quickly added, Stallone’s films are another matter.

“This man has charisma--the crowds can sense it. So they want to be in the same room with him--to be a part of his film. Because--and it may sound as if I’m on a pulpit, but I’m really not--he cares! He really cares!”

Benson redirected his attention to the stands, where a buzz signaled that the crowd was becoming uneasy. He singled out a few faces--and figures. “You, up there--yes you, in the blue shirt. I want emotion from you. E-mo-tion,” said a froggy-voiced Benson, who next shifted his gaze to a blonde in a red sun-dress sitting by the stairs. “Sweetheart,” he cooed, “if you wear that dress again, I don’t think I can handle it.”

Stallone was good-natured about posing for photographs and signing autographs. Well, almost always.

“Hey, Sly, can I get an autograph?” asked a teen-age boy.

“Please may I have an autograph,” corrected Stallone, who signed the notebook held out to him.

“Please may I have an autograph?” responded the boy, adding, “My mama really did bring me up with manners.”

“Well,” smiled Stallone, “then use them.”

Then there were the two 10-year-olds who anxiously approached Stallone with “Rambo” posters to sign.

“Boy, I looked pretty good then. What happened?” Stallone joked. With a nod to a reporter, he asked the kids: “So what’d you think? Was this film violent?”

“Yeah!” one boy answered. “But we liked it anyway!”