An unknown actor risks everything for the role of a lifetime in Director Peter Farrelly’s biographical comedy-drama, I Play Rocky.

Farrelly’s film tells the story of how Sylvester Stallone, who after penning the script for Rocky, like the titular character faced constant rejection and impossible odds to play the lead role.

On November 1 after the DGA membership screening in New York, Farrelly discussed the making of I Play Rocky during a Q&A moderated by Director Paul Feig (The Housemaid). He is also scheduled to speak about the film following the Los Angeles screening on November 21.

During the New York conversation, Farrelly spoke about finding the rhythm of the film during the test screening process.

“We had the fight. We cut it together and I’m in the editing room showing it to my kids — they’re in their 20s — and their friends and running it by people constantly. You could just feel it peak at the top when he’s on those stairs, and it was like downhill from there. You couldn’t reach that high again. But I didn’t want to cut it because we took a week to shoot it. I’m like, ‘I’m not cutting this thing. It took too long, and there’s a lot more that you didn’t see in that fight.’ Finally, one day, you realize a movie is going to be what it wants to be. You can’t force it. And as good as this script is, when you get in the editing room, you see an ebb and flow. And then I was like, ‘Fuck it, let’s cut it.’”

Farrelly’s other directorial credits include the feature films Hall Pass, The Heartbreak Kid, Shallow Hal, There’s Something About Mary, Kingpin, Dumb and Dumber and Dumb and Dumber To (all with his brother Bobby Farrelly); as well as solo projects including the features Balls Up, Ricky Stanicky and The Greatest Beer Run Ever; the movie for television Cuckoo; the pilot for the series Unhitched; and episodes of the series Lucky Hank and Loudermilk. Farrelly was also nominated for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for his Academy Award-winning 2018 film, Green Book.

Farrelly has been a DGA member since 1994.