Kotcheff Talks Altering First Blood Ending

As you probably know, the original ending to First Blood (the best Rambo movie?) was somewhat different, with old John. J. getting himself killed.  Now Ted Kotcheff has spoken about this ending and how he and Sylvester Stallone did it on the fly.

The two producers, Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, they came running over to me, and said, “What the f— are you doing, Kotcheff? We were supposed to be wrapping for the day!” I told them about my alternate ending, and they went bloody nuts. “Kotcheff! We agreed this film was Rambo’s suicide mission, and now you’re altering it? Plus, you’re over budget and over schedule! You’re not gonna do it! We’re done for the day!”

I said, “Listen, you a–holes, I don’t take any s— from producers. I’m only gonna take two hours, I promise you. And then, when the American distributor wants a happy ending, which I’m sure they will, you won’t have to spend a ton of money bringing the whole cast and crew back — in March, in bad weather — at that time, you’ll be kissing my ass in gratitude!”

Kotcheff goes into more detail about this in this article, which you should really check out, good stuff. Here’s that alternate (or should I say, original) ending…