If you naively believed that Sylvester Stallone's involvement in Rocky Balboa represented the absolute rock-bottom in career-reviving desperation, we humbly submit this preview footage from John Rambo (released to Ain't It Cool on Saturday), the actor's latest attempt to make ageist Hollywood take notice of the perfectly competent, fading action star it so callously discarded at the beginning of the decade. Be forewarned: the footage is bloody, so depending on your workplace's policy on viewing graphic violence perpetrated by a Vietnam veteran driven insane from botched cosmetic surgery that's rendered him nearly unrecognizable from his younger, PTSD-powered-vigilante self, you may need to watch it on your lunch break.

In other Stallone news, the Australian justice system has delivered a resounding wrist-slap for his importing of illegal muscle-embiggening substances into their country.

• JOHN RAMBO Movie Promo Footage/Trailer [YouTube]
• 3 Minutes & 29 Seconds... This is it! [AICN]

Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone has provided medical documents to Australia's customs after being charged with importing 48 vials of banned human growth hormone, his lawyer told a Sydney court on Tuesday.

Stallone, who has not yet entered a plea, was not in the Sydney court for the brief hearing. His case was adjourned until May 15 to allow customs to examine Stallone's medical material, which was not revealed in court.

Stallone's lawyer, John Chicken, said the matter should be finalized soon. "We're certainly seeking to move to a resolution," he told the court.

Chicken's boldly optimistic tone suggests that the voluminous medical records should indicate the HGH was at worst a doctor-prescribed supplement to the actor's regular workout routine, a 99% natural program consisting of a vigorous weightlifting regimen and the consumption of no less than three whole, deboned sheep per day. Certainly, the moment the Australian courts see for themselves that Stallone's trusted longtime personal physician Dr. Flex Goodbody of the Freakishly Massive Free Clinic endorsed the use of the substance, they will swiftly clear Stallone of any crime.

• Stallone offers evidence in hormone case [Reuters]

We really have to commend Sony Picture Home Entertainment for its well-executed, thoughtful marketing campaign for the Rocky Balboa DVD, an effort captured in this reader-submitted cameraphone photo of a garbage truck leaving the Fallbrook Mall in the Valley. Placing an ad for the unexpected mid-level hit on the side of a trash disposal vehicle is a subtle reminder of how the actor was callously discarded by a youth-obsessed film industry before making his triumphant half-comeback—an understated promotional choice made all the more impressive given the cheap stunts to which certain smaller studios will stoop in the name of raising awareness of their product.

• Previously: Sylvester Stallone Charged With Just Trying To Give Loyal Australian Fans A Look At His Circa-1985 Body [Defamer]

"ROCKY Balboa" star Sylvester Stallone answered a few fan questions on AintItCool.com. But he also cleared up the tiff between him and Robert Evans, which caused him to withdraw from the 1984 Francis Ford Coppola movie "Cotton Club." According to Sly, one afternoon Evans "dumped a duffel bag full of X-rated Polaroids" in front of him, and in that pile was "a very X-rated Polaroid" of the girl he was dating. "I thought blood was going to come out my eyes," wrote Stallone, saying the incident "was beyond anything so perverse."

Whatever doesn't kill you in Hollywood, the old saying goes, is likely to cause massive subconjunctival hemorrhaging, and so we salute Stallone for managing to overcome his body's natural impulse to turn its optical orbits into two gushing hemoglobin fountains the instant they registered the image of his then-girlfriend twisted into a nearly impossible Kama Sutric pose beneath an expanse of rich, Corinthian naked Evans flesh.

[Photo Illustration: Gawker]

• ROCKY TELLS OF EVANS SPAT [NY Post]

Just wanted to alert you to the fact that Stallone just appeared on The 700 Club to discuss the Christian allegorical element in Rocky. He claimed at one point that not for a moment does he think he wrote the script alone — that's right, Rocky as prophetic text. I half expected him to crack up when he bade a pious farewell to Pat.

There's a brief summary of the Stallone segment on The 700 Club website, which we've excerpted after the jump:

Stallone says that in the past, his ego and worldly temptation's took over in his life and he went spiraling out of control. Rather than living like Rocky with some sense of ideal, he didn't. "I thought I was entitled to things. You're not entitled to anything," Stallone says. "You are what you leave behind." Stallone says the more he goes to church, and the more he turns himself over to the process of believing in Jesus and listening to his Word and helping him guide his hand, he feels as though the pressure is off himself.

Even with the recent doubts cast on the truthfulness of the Rocky backstory, we suppose that it would be a little cynical of us to suggest that an opportunistic Stallone showed up to chat with Pat Robertson about how he's put his career in God's hands just to drum up some business from the Passion of the Christ crowd. At least (as far as we know) the actor didn't go so far as to claim that he wrote the original script in the margins of a Bible while sitting in the confessional at his church, or relate an anecdote about how he finally won the fight with writing partner Jesus that resulted in Rocky being a scrappy, underdog boxer instead of a humble carpenter.

• Sylvester Stallone on Faith, Integrity, and Rocky Balboa [CBN.com]

"We came up with a tremendous publicity campaign," recalled Gabe Sumner, then head of marketing at UA. "It was about how this unknown guy named Sylvester Stallone walked into our office with a script and the company was prepared to buy the script, but Stallone said, 'I'm not going to sell it to you unless I star in the film.' And we (supposedly) said, 'No way.' And he said, 'Well, you can't have the script.' And we said, 'We will give you $18,000.' And that was the figure we used. And a deal was made and Stallone could star in this film which he wrote. And he got all of $18,000. Now is this true? It was horsesh*t! But it worked. It promoted the whole underdog concept and kept on going."

"I don't have to tell you how the press feeds on the underdog story," said Sumner. "It filled up space on entertainment pages, and in columns looking for something for the next day. They ate up the idea that this actor loved his work so much, and was willing to sell it for a nickel and a dime in order to make it, blah, blah, blah. It all became part of the underdog fabric that brought people in. Period. They just totally bought into it."

Representatives for Stallone said on Wednesday, "We stand by Sylvester Stallone's story as the accurate truth."

We'll pause for a moment to let you recover from the existential taint-tasering you've no doubt experienced from the suggestion that publicists might fabricate such a story to sell a movie, as we all know that every word from a flack's lips should be treated as if it were delivered from the heavens by God's most trusted archangel. But now we're forced to consider the implications that this report holds for the current Rocky Balboa campaign, including the possibility that Sylvester Stallone has not, in fact, been prevented from reclaiming his onetime megastardom by callously sexagenarian-shunning Hollywood studios, and has intentionally avoided working for the past decade just to hype this alleged "desperate comeback vehicle."

• The Untold Story: "Rocky" Underdog Origin a Studio Myth [Hollywood Today]

· At last night's premiere of Rocky Balboa, star Sylvester Stallone and pals Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Patrick Swayze, Dolph Lundgren, and Christian Slater briefly gathered by the bar to share a few laughs about the good old days, but quickly scattered when Slater began his pitch for a six-way buddy comedy about a bunch of past-their-prime actors who enroll in the Police Academy together. [Note to MGM: We will sue if you put this into development.]
Q: "What has seven legs, male and female reproductive organs and nub antlers?" A: We don't know, but didn't it just get into Eddie Murphy's car on Santa Monica Boulevard? [via Boing Boing]
Amy Poehler's breasts are now a matter of public record, but at least her baby factory is still locked down.
We're going to be really depressed if this amazing video turns out to be some kind of viral ad for Famima pork buns. Which, we might add, are totally delicious.

[Photo: Getty Images]

• The Art of Sly Stallone [Radar]

"A lot of people said, 'Just sit down, don't embarrass yourself'," Stallone says. "There is this incredible resistance to anyone who seems to want a second shot: 'You had your moment, now f—- off'." [...]

"It nags me that I took the easy way instead of the high road," he says. "But everyone makes mistakes. I look around at people my age, and I can see it in their eyes—a kind of bittersweet reflection: 'I didn't live the life that I wanted, and now I've got all this stuff I want to say, but nobody wants to hear it.' I was feeling that, and if you don't get it out, it can become a beast that tears you apart."

Over the years, Stallone often complained that he wasn't being allowed to grow beyond the "Rocky" movies. Still, he kept making them. Then "Rocky V," featuring a bankrupt Balboa, flopped. "It was my fault," he says. "Everything in it was dark and dismal. People came to that movie for uplift and I took them into a mine shaft and turned out the lights." [...]

"I don't understand aging gracefully," he says. "I'll always be at war with that. I'd rather age ungracefully, kicking and screaming. Don't hand me down my top hat and walking cane. You know, I went to speak at the AARP—did you know that starts at 50?—and I said, 'Yes, youth must be served. After us. And we're going back for seconds and thirds'."

Finally! Among the bleak talk of regrets over mistakes made and years wasted in the service of empty (though fortune-making) stardom, a note of defiance. We just hope that Stallone's claim that he's "going back for seconds and thirds" doesn't mean that he's planning on mining still darker parts of his resume for sequels, as cashing paychecks for Oscar II: The Return of Snaps Provolone and Stop Again! Or My Mom Will Shoot! I Mean It This Time! will be much harder to sell as a brave fight against Hollywood obsolescence.

[Photo: Newsweek]

• Rocky's Final Round [Newsweek]
• Previously: Stallone Tries To Guilt Public Into Seeing New 'Rocky' Movie [Defamer]

"People were saying the parade had gone by, and who was I to try and bring it back again?" Mr. Stallone said during a phone interview last week. "I just felt that I've had a lot of regrets in the past 15 years, and I had to go back and rid myself of this regret." [...]

An artist dies twice, and the second death is the easiest one," Mr. Stallone said in speaking of his long fall from Hollywood's pinnacle. "The artistic death, the fact you are no longer pertinent — or that you're deemed someone whose message or talent has run its course — is a very, very tough piece of information to swallow." [...]

But he was not yet ready to accept obsolescence, even if that meant risking ridicule by turning back to the past. "Every generation runs its course, and they are expected to step aside for the next generation," Mr. Stallone said. "My peers are going through it right now, and they feel they have much to contribute, but the opportunity is no longer there. They're considered obsolete, and it's just not true. This film is about how we still have something more to say."

After Stallone's moving thoughts on artistic death and obsolescence, it's hard not allow yourself to be swept up by the thought that if Rocky Balboa doesn't do healthy opening weekend business, the actor will be stripped of his boxing gloves and bullet bandoleers, abducted from his mansion, and deposited in a wheelchair in the Faded Action Stars Retirement Home, where he will live out the remainder of his purposeless days being forcefed his own nutritional pudding by a nurse who annoyingly insists upon supplying him with constant updates about Vin Diesel's career. But before you allow yourself to succumb to a pity-motivated trip to his movie, remember that Stallone's peers have gone on to vibrant second acts as Governators and face-melting guitar shredders; if he merely takes up a hobby, he can spend the rest of his life as a similarly vital member of society.

• Yo, Rocky, or Rambo, Gonna Fly Now at 60 [NY Times]