Hilarious Stallone/Mr. T Story From Rocky III

Rocky III was around the first time Sylvester Stallone was really cut to shreds.  On a diet of canned tuna, burned toast and 30 coffee shots a day from an espresso machine John Travolta had bought him, Stallone managed to work his body fat down to around 2.5%.  Even Stallone admits that this is actually unhealthy.  Anyway, after casting former professional bodyguard Mr. T (The A-Team was yet to come), Stallone decided that Mr. T had to lose a few pounds as well.  Actually, 30 lbs.  Stallone broke the news, he’d had to go on a severe diet.  In his book, Sly Moves, Stallone said: “It was a nightmare for a junk-food lover like him.  Mr. T absolutely hated dieting.  The only way I could convince him was to give him one glorious day off each week.”

The cheat day would be set:  Every Friday gorging would commence at 5pm.  Mr. T would stick to the diet and the torture would have him regale Stallone of his fantasies and eating plans for the coming feast at the end of the week.  Soon, it started to get to Stallone, also on a killer diet:  “He must have planted a seed in my head, because I suddenly became as obsessed as he was.  Vanilla ice cream.  Friday, 5 o’clock. The whole set knew it.  I think everybody in California knew.”  

Eventually, after a gruelling week’s shooting and eating steamed vegetables, 5 o’clock Friday came.

The final scene for the day ends at 4:55pm.  Both men sprint and race each other to the trailer. Clubber Lang wins the race.  “He gets to his first and I hear this bloodcurdling scream.  Then I look in my freezer and basically have the same reaction.  There it was.  That horror of all ice cream horrors: not vanilla, not strawberry, not even chocolate, but a half-defrosted container of some green something.”  Low fat mint ice cream.  Stallone then revealed that he and Mr. T went berserk.  “We attempted to flip the motor home over as a gesture of disappointment…

… never mess with a man’s ice cream.”