In his memoir "The Steps," Stallone detailed the 1974 on-set clash with Richard Gere that began with a ruined improvisation and escalated into a physical confrontation over spilled chicken grease, getting Gere fired from "The Lords of Flatbush." The decades-long bitterness between the two stars is back in the spotlight.
"The Steps," published September 29, is Stallone's first full memoir, and the 80-year-old actor devotes some of its most colorful pages to the feud that began more than 50 years ago. According to Stallone, the trouble started during auditions for the 1974 comedy, where he was also meeting Robert De Niro. "I remember everything went pretty well initially with me and De Niro," he wrote. "We were trying to outtalk each other. I enjoyed improvisation and the process of ad-libbing." Then the improvisations with Richard Gere went bad: Gere grabbed Stallone's T-shirt and his fingernails dug into his skin. Stallone told him to back off, but Gere did it again on the second take.
Stallone recalled turning to co-director Stephen Verona and asking whether he could ad-lib and react the way he would in real life if someone did that to him. When Verona asked what he would do, Stallone answered, "I'd knock his teeth out." Verona replied, "Please don't." Stallone held back — that time.
The breaking point came during a lunch break, when the two actors were eating in a parked car. Stallone said he had warned Gere not to make a mess, but Gere spilled a stream of chicken grease off the foil paper onto Stallone's leg. "I elbowed him across the chest, got out of the car, came around to his side, and pulled him out of the back seat," Stallone wrote. "'Hey, man, I don't want to get physical,' Gere said in a thin voice. 'Too late...'" Verona stepped between them. As Stallone put it: "It was clear to everyone that this wasn't working. One of us had to go."
Gere was fired from the film. De Niro later left the project to work on another movie, and Perry King and Henry Winkler joined the cast in their place. Stallone has said Gere has disliked him ever since, and the animosity reportedly resurfaced years later in a near-confrontation at a party attended by Princess Diana, as described in Elton John's autobiography.
The memoir's publication has turned the half-century-old feud into a fresh pop-culture event, with fans marveling that one of Hollywood's most enduring grudges began over a ruined improv and a lunch gone wrong. Neither star had publicly reconciled as of the book's release, and "The Steps" shows no sign that Stallone is interested in burying the hatchet now.