Episode Details

Stallone The Steps Chapter 7

Ryan and Jared continue their listening party through Sylvester Stallone’s memoir *The Steps*, picking up at Chapter 7, My Buddies, the Pigeons.

They are still in step one. The chapter opens with Stallone alone in a cold room that winter, eating chicken and feeding the pigeons on the fire escape, the same window-sill habit that shows up in Rocky. He writes about learning to love himself after affection felt like a mirage, the rigid discipline of open auditions, and the sting of being told his face would not sell. Mid-chapter Bill Conti music swells under the “dreams versus concrete vision” passage. The long stretch is Moondog, the blind street poet in Viking gear on 52nd Street who turns out to be a real composer with an apartment, a girlfriend, and albums. Ryan and Jared note how much of the biography is now on Wikipedia. The chapter ends on New Year’s Eve watching the ball drop as the 1970s begin, still with no first film credit named. The close is the timeline debate and Jared’s plug for The Hyperspace Podcasting in the 25th Century.

0:00 Chapter 7 starts, My Buddies, the Pigeons
0:38 Cold room, chicken, pigeons on the fire escape
2:09 No love coming from anywhere
4:29 Softcore audition note, open calls
9:47 Not commercial enough for TV ads
11:45 Dreams versus concrete vision, Bill Conti
15:40 Moondog on 52nd Street
21:15 Wikipedia check on Moondog
25:12 New Year’s Eve, the 1970s begin
28:56 Chapter 8 tease, timeline questions

CREDITS
Audiobook: Sylvester Stallone, The Steps, Chapter 7 (My Buddies, the Pigeons)
Hosts: Ryan and Jared