It was a miracle that it happened the way it did. [...] it is just one of those nice things that happen once in a while, where you just put everything on one roll of the dice and hope it works. I wasn’t confident it was going to work at all. [...] you have hope. But I had to be realistic. It was a very little film, 25-day shoot, under a million bucks. John Avildsen was so brave, and Bill Conti wrote a score that was just so unexpected and so noble. That was the thing about Rocky, there were so many incredible elements that just came together. Garrett Brown had just invented the Steadicam, and it just happened that he lived in Philadelphia. So all these incredible runs up and down those steps and I think some people weren’t aware, but they felt, something was different. How is somebody running at the same speed as Rocky, without the camera jumping up and down? What I’m saying is that so many minor movie miracles happened, and I happened to get pulled along with it.
