John Avildsen:

MILLIONS WATCHED when a tuxedoed Sylvester Stallone came to the Hasty Pudding last February to guzzle eggs, mumble platitudes and skulk off with Harvard's most crass theatrical prize.

Taking Note

Fewer than three dozen turned out to see the man who made Rocky mount the same stage last Sunday. Eggs aside, director John G. Avildsen gave a better show. Unlike Stallone, who has progressed from his Rocky origins to an ever more offensive cinematic pulpit, Avildsen has remained an unpretentious, nutsy-boltsy Hollywood director. To the disappointment of some artistically-inclined questioners, Avildsen was supremely pragmatic about his work. Sly can have the public acclaim, he said; the only credit Avildsen cares about comes from the bank.

Rocky brought Avildsen the Academy Award for Best Director, and the movie itself bested such high-profile con-tenders as Network for Best Picture of 1976. Avildsen's pride in the picture comes from more down-to-earth achievements, he said. Rocky was completed in 28 days for $950,000 so that even without the multimillion dollar windfall, ticket lines around the block and Hollywood's highest honors, Avildsen said, "it was hard to lose."

Throughout his talk and the reception that followed, Avildsen stressed the practical and financial side of film-making. The Oscar for Rocky was nice, but better than that, "it afforded me four flops." The films he made after Rocky--Slow Dancing in the Big City (1978), The Formula (1980), Neighbors (1981) and A Night in Heaven(1983)-- were trademark Avildsen: competent, unthreatening, inexpensive. Like the director's first hit, 1970s hippie-bashing Joe, each was in tune with its time, picking up on common wisdom and simply laying it out.

Yet Avilden's pragmatism could never be mistaken for the opportunism that seeps from his erstwhile protege, Stallone, now himself a director. Avildsen is a professional movie maker--neither a pop star soaking up adulation nor an artist basking in alienation. He likes to make movies, and he likes to do it cheaply. Why do Rocky and Adrian come to the skating rink when it's closed? We wonder. Simple, Avildsen says: it cost less to film without all the extras needed to make the place look open. That's pretty cool, you think, not pretty cheap.

AS A CONVENTIONAL film-maker, Avildsen said he had no secret dreams waiting to burst onto the screen, no particular places to show or tales to tell. A good story and good characters, in the median sense of the word, is what he likes. His opinion of artsy films, such as Room with a View, is no-nonsense Hollywood: "It was pretty," he said, "but it was endless. The characters weren't that compelling." Certainly not as compelling as, say, Apollo Creed.

But Avildsen's quest for the midline of American moviemaking keeps him from joining Stallone's exploitational bandwagon. He didn't want to take part in Rocky II, he said, because "I thought the script was really lame." Avildsen had hoped to make a Rocky trilogy: In the path not taken, Rocky would have become the populist mayor of Philadelphia in II and get tossed out because of a corruption scandal in III, ending up back in the ring where he started. Stallone decided Philadelphia City Hall was small-time; the Rocky-Rambo-Cobra hybrid which has terrorized movie screens near you has nothing less than a new world order in mind.

Avildsen doesn't care about Stallone's jingo-juggernaut. "I felt the character wasn't developed much more," he says of subsequent Rockys. In Avildsen's two Karate Kid pictures, the characters have stayed closer to the earth, closer to the turf Avildsen understands. Cinematic integrity? "I think your integrity has a direct link to your check book," Avildsen says.

Summing up his philosophy--perhaps "approach" would be a better word--Avildsen observed "There are only so many stories. Some people say there are only two stories, 'Jack and the Bean-stalk' and 'Cinderella."' Which kind does the blockbuster filmmaker and Academy Award winner favor? "Stories that don't cost a lot of money to do." In the trillion-dollar age of the imperial Spielbergian director, it's understandable why Avildsen remains one of the business's favorite practitioners.