There's something to be said for the terrible jobs that one day fall off the bottom of our CV when we have to add in the better stuff on top.
They are our national service, the character-building shitheap of experiences you would, in hindsight, not do without. We've flipped burgers in dive restaurants, washed warm faeces off pub toilet walls, been the tethered goat barmaid in an S&M club for the over-fifties; we've babysat. Some of us have written ad copy for nasal sprays.
You have grit now. You've been through some stuff. You're Paul Newman in The Colour of Money, you're Rambo. Those hours you spent by a whirring silver dishwasher in the basement of a restaurant later shut down for rat infestation count for something.
So, given the desperate track record undoubtedly outlined in the early part of your CV: How much money would it have taken you to do a softcore porn film? Think about it. What's the absolute minimum you would have accepted? Imagine this offer comes to you when you've got a soapy bucket of diluted diarrhoea looped over a Marigold that, if you're honest, definitely has a hole in it. Is it £100,000? £12,000? Lower? The absolute lowest you would accept.
Is it…$200?
It was for Sylvester Stallone.
The film he received that sum for appearing in was originally called The Party at Kitty & Stud's, but as soon as its young star got famous for going the distance with Apollo Creed it was renamed Italian Stallion because #Marketing.
He talked about it in an interview with Playboy magazine in September 1978 that is easier to find than a copy of the film itself.
It happened like this:
In 1969, Stallone went to New York determined to be an actor but ended up in a series of the same kind of jobs you probably had, although he peaked with "being pissed on by a lion for $1.12 an hour" at the Central Park Zoo, which frankly puts your six-month stint chiselling jizz off wank-booth doors to shame.
So [cliche actor montage] Stallone ended up having to take on some not-so-great parts before this beautiful, touching GIF could exist:
He told Playboy:
I was starving when I did it. I'd been bounced out of my apartment and had spent four nights in a row at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, trying to avoid the cops, trying to get some sleep and keeping my pens and books in a 25-cent locker. I mean, I was desperate. That's why I thought it was extraordinary when I read in one of the trade papers that I could make $100 a day. And the fact that I had to take off my clothes to do it was no big deal. There wasn't any hardcore stuff in the movie, so what did I care? The people behind it were a group of wealthy lawyers, very, very solid, and I auditioned for them in a high-rise office building. But they came up with a turkey. The Party at Kitty & Stud's was a horrendous film and was never released.
Two hundred bucks in today's money would be about $1,290, or about £865.84, an attractive enough wodge of cash to a broke actor sleeping in a bus station. A month's rent for two days' work, with the caveat that someone will write about it on the internet one day.
You've probably already heard that Stallone did porno. And maybe the Wikipedia link to The Party at Kitty & Stud's will be purple if we check out your Google history. But there's a high probability that you never bothered to watch it because watching literally anything else is a way better idea.
I watched it. Twice. And then I made a load of GIFs of it, so in reality I've watched this film about 30 times.
My cat Ned avoided my gaze.
It opens with a woman standing in a black coat in a snowy field, but she for some reason is never mentioned again and is possibly just in a frame from a Hammer horror film that got spliced by accident. Then it cuts to a training montage in the snow which we can refer to as Rocky 0.5 if we're being generous: It's in the snow, and he's running through a park and doing pull-ups on some monkey bars, leaping up to hit branches as he passes some trees.
IT'S A BIT LIKE ROCKY, ISN'T IT.
IT'S A BIT LIKE ROCKY IV BECAUSE OF THE SNOW, SPECIFICALLY.
This is the last moment where it's a bit like Rocky.
Then it goes through a bit where it's Rocky, porn, and a video from your university film class all in one.
But just before you start thinking he's gonna go punch some meat in an abattoir with Paulie, he's in a sexy shower polishing some boobs.
This goes on for two seconds shy of a whole minute. He pushes them up and down, clangs them together, polishes them clockwise and then anticlockwise. All the club bangers. This portion of the film is entirely realistic in that no other bodypart gets cleaned.
The highlight is when Stallone gets soap in his eyes and does this face.
Imagine this going on for 10 minutes with a phone-sex voiceover saying things like "Dropping the soap lets me get closer to my favourite part of his body" and you're basically watching it.
Then it cuts to them having sex on a bed, which is simultaneously the first sex scene in the movie and the most sex you'll see for the next 71 minutes.
I had some questions while watching this film. Most of them can be summed up as "Why?" Like, why are Stallone's balls just everywhere? No matter where you look, there the back of them is.
They're here:
And there:
And everywhere:
And they whole time they're doing it you're just thinking:
How do you even go about doing that? Is there a special service available at John Lewis?
These questions take you out of the drama of the film. She's getting his dick out and all you're thinking is:
Which means you miss the line "I'll be velvet-mouthed on your shank of love" the first time round and have to STOP and REWIND.
Then you notice that the soundtrack sounds sort of like the Rocky soundtrack and you'll pull out your phone to google this while not even considering pausing the film because why bother, it's terrible.
A theory: If it is Rocky composer Bill Conti, he has long since sized up the font on his CV so large that The Party at Kitty & Stud's falls off the bottom of the page, because I can find no reference to it. Listen for yourself. Doesn't it make you want to run up some steps in Philadelphia? And how come the credited composer has only one credit? Who is Kay Leodel? Genuine thought process while watching this boring porno.
Other questions include: why does this sequence, which is just Stallone doing this wax-on wax-off shit, go on for two minutes and 29 seconds?
There are naked girls behind you. What are you doing, Sylvester Stallone?
A question re: admin. Did this pre-Facebook mode of invite ever work?
Like, how did this guy even see that invite? Just some practical questions. I've got others.
Why is he asking this lady if this painting turns her on? Is there a remote possibility it would?
This is what happens when you pin a bit of A4 to a painting. Some nameless hardman from Get Carter turns up and gets weird with your guests then eats a banana while getting a blowjob.
I'm not from the '70s and people know how vaginas work now, so did this happen at all '70s parties?
No thanks. We have pH levels in 2015.
Once we're out of the bathroom we go back to wondering how Stallone has such long balls for a 23-year-old.
And...this? This happens.
(The basic premise of this film is "Sylvester Stallone's long balls stick to the thighs of various women" and IMDb should just go ahead and update that.)
This bit goes on for about nine weeks.
In the final scene the entire party gets together to do a ring a ring o' roses in the lounge.
Because the '70s, I guess? It's like a trust exercise in an improv class.
Anyway, Stallone does this face which you can save to your desktop if you want to watch him in an infinite ring a ring o' roses with himself.
They all fall down:
And that's about it.
Except for the fact that after Rocky came out those lawyers who funded the film tried to blackmail Stallone into buying it off them for $100,000.
Stallone said he wouldn't buy it off them for $2.
He told Playboy:
You know, when you're hungry, you do a lot of things you ordinarily wouldn't do, and it's funny how you can readjust your morality for the sake of self-preservation. ... In a way, though, it was either do that movie or rob someone, because I was at the end – the very end – of my rope. Instead of doing something desperate, I worked for two days for $200 and got myself out of the bus station.
And Stallone and his balls lived happily ever after and never had to do a rubbish porno again.
Interview excerpts from Playboy, September 1978 issue.