First Blood
Hey, Do You Remember...?
Christopher Schrader
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2019
⏱️ 87 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nothing is over! Nothing! And as the recently released trailer for Rambo: Last Blood proves, that certainly applies to this franchise. But before the latest installment hits theaters this fall, we decided to go all the way back to where it all began.
This original film is now strangely the outlier in this franchise - a relatively grounded and character-driven story that actually has something pretty compelling to say. If you've never seen it, you might be surprised how dramatically First Blood flies in the face of most people's preconceived notions about this series.
Topics include: the major differences between the film and the novel that it's based on, the legendary actor who was cast as Trautman and why he walked off the set, the drastically different endings that were considered, the original three hour long cut, how the sequels shifted everyone's perceptions of this character, Rambo's Saturday morning cartoon, and much more!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, do you remember First Blood? |
| 0:06.5 | Hello and welcome, Hey, do you remember, Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose-tinted glasses to see how it holds up. |
| 0:31.8 | I'm Chris. |
| 0:32.5 | I'm Donna. |
| 0:33.2 | And I'm Carlos. |
| 0:34.1 | And today we're revisiting First Blood. |
| 0:52.9 | Yeah. I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting First Blood. David Morell's debut novel First Blood hit shelves in 1972, and he sold the screen rights to the material that same year. |
| 1:00.8 | For the next decade, the proposed film adaptation would cycle through three different production companies and 18 drafts of the screenplay. |
| 1:08.8 | As the movie's theme song, so succinctly points out, |
| 1:11.9 | it's a long road. |
| 1:13.7 | It wasn't until director Ted Kochev signed on |
| 1:16.2 | that the project started to gain some real momentum. |
| 1:18.8 | But after three months of hard work, |
| 1:20.5 | Werner Brothers unexpectedly pulled the plug, |
| 1:22.8 | and that was that. |
| 1:24.4 | Several years later, Karolko Pictures |
| 1:26.2 | offered to fund any movie that CoachEff wanted to make with |
| 1:28.9 | them, and he immediately thought of first blood. They bought the rights, Coach F. Ficked up where he had left |
| 1:34.2 | off, and Sylvester Stallone was approached about playing the lead role. And the clout that |
| 1:38.5 | Stallone had built up with the success of the Rocky series allowed him to demand the opportunity |
| 1:42.7 | to do yet another rewrite on the script. |
| 1:45.5 | So seven of those 18 drafts are his. And one of his major contributions to all of this was the more |
... |
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