Once upon a time there was a struggling writer.
His $40 car had just “blown up”.
He had $106 in the bank.
And he had to sell his dog (my “best friend on earth”) because he couldn’t afford to feed him.
He went to see Gil Boyne, a famous hypnotherapist in Los Angeles. Gil explained how hypnosis could help him to express his creativity and develop the confidence he needed to do this.
Within six months he had written a screenplay entitled Rocky.
He submitted his script to a famous Hollywood Producer and was offered $125,000, then $250,000 and finally, $350,000 for the film, insisting he play the title role.
$350,000 was an awful lot of money for a man who had to sell his wife’s jewellery just to get by. So what was the first thing he did on receipt of this amazing life-changing news?
He bought back his dog.
Sylvester Stallone continued to work with Gil while filming Rocky; “I arrived in Philadelphia for the location shoot and was scared to death. But every day I stretched out and played the subconscious motivation recordings made for me in Los Angeles.”
Rocky was made on budget of less than $1 million and was shot in 28 days. It made over $225 million and won three Oscars, including Best Picture.
In 2008, Rocky was chosen by Empire magazine as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.
And it all happened because of one man’s unshakeable belief (and a spot of hypnosis along the way).
Katherine Bassford 