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Sylvester Stallone. Dolly Parton. Country music comedy. That’s about as natural a pairing as peanut butter and chicken wings. Sure, those are two really good things, but putting them together just doesn’t seem right. Still, that’s why we loved the eighties, as truly gonzo, whacked-out ideas often got put up on the silver screen, and even if they didn’t work, they were interesting.
Ask Sylvester Stallone if Rhinestone was bad for his career and he’ll for sure say yes, but ask him if he regrets making it and I’d bet he’d say no, as it put him in the orbit of one of the most universally beloved pop culture figures of our era, the late, great Dolly Parton, who’s sadly left us after a career spent churning out toe-tapping country hits, movies, and overall just making the world a better place — with it seeming a lot less fun now that she’s no longer around.
But how does a movie like Rhinestone happen?
Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton were two of the biggest stars of the eighties
Part of it is that in the mid-eighties, there weren’t really two bigger stars out there than Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton, even if they were popular with wholly different audiences. 1982 was a banner year for Stallone, with him having made both Rocky III and First Blood, both of which were massive. But it was a good year for Dolly too, with The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, a movie she made with Burt Reynolds, among the year’s top earners, showing her success in 9 to 5 was no fluke. Plus, she also had massive crossover success on the charts with the 9 to 5 theme song, and then, in 1983, with “Islands in the Stream” with Kenny Rogers.
How did Rhinestone happen?
Rhinestone was written by Phil Alden Robinson as a vehicle for Dolly Parton. In it, she’d play a sexy country singer performing at a New York country-western bar called The Rhinestone. While that sounds crazy now, in the eighties there was a real urban cowboy thing happening, and NYC really did have a country music scene.
Anyway, she wants out of her contract, but the sleazy promoter running the bar says no — unless she sleeps with him. Instead, she makes him a bet that she can turn anyone he chooses into a country singer in two weeks. He chooses a fast-talking New York cab driver, the least likely guy he can find, and — as they say in the movies — sparks fly.
20th Century Fox paid a pretty penny for the script, and why not, as 9 to 5 was a smash for them. But they needed a male star who wouldn’t be blown off the screen by Dolly, and Mike Ovitz and CAA maneuvered to get Sylvester Stallone in there, with him and Dolly being sold as a package deal.
Stallone was actually supposed to make Beverly Hills Cop instead, with him bailing on it to make Rhinestone, as well as turning down the role of Jack Colton in Romancing the Stone. Sly actually wanted to direct the movie himself, with him also tailoring the screenplay to better suit his sensibility, making it more of a Rocky-esque tale of an underdog who miraculously pulls out an unexpected victory.
The writer of record, Phil Alden Robinson, wasn’t happy, nor was the studio, and Sly also came to loggerheads with the original director, Don Zimmerman, with him being replaced by Bob Clark, who was a hot director at the time, coming off Porky’s and A Christmas Story. Stallone says he actually wanted Mike Nichols to make the movie, and that it was meant as a surlier type of movie with real edge, including songs by hair metal legends Whitesnake, which he thought would have been interesting for Dolly to do. Alas, when Clark was on board, the film was turned into a very silly comedy, which was a vibe Stallone wasn’t comfortable in.
Rhinestone is a strange fit for Stallone — but Dolly Parton shines
It’s true that when you watch Rhinestone, you can’t help but notice how bad of a fit it seems to be for pretty much everyone but Dolly. Stallone does his best but doesn’t suit an all-out silly farce, with a lot of the scenes from the film having gone viral — in a bad way — such as the now-infamous “Drinkenstein” or when he sings “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”
But it also has a good supporting cast, with the great Richard Farnsworth as Dolly’s pa, plus Tim Thomerson, of Trancers, and Ron Leibman as bad guys. But what really makes it work is that you can tell Sly absolutely loves Dolly and lets her totally steal their scenes together. Given the size of his stardom, Sly wasn’t often paired with leading ladies who rivalled him in terms of star power — this was truly one of the few times where one was on equal footing with him.
Watching the movie, you can actually tell that they like each other, and Sly, even if he’s not a natural for the part, is REALLY giving it his all. He’s doing his best for Dolly, especially during the finale, which is meant to be triumphant, where he turns into a studly country-western star and croons the song “Stay Out of My Bedroom,” which — call me crazy — actually isn’t bad.
The eighties were full of vanity music projects for actors, and there’s no way Sly here is any worse than Bruce Willis with The Return of Bruno — even if he’s not quite Don Johnson singing “Heartbeat” (WHO IS!). It’s a ton of fun, especially once Dolly gets on stage with him and they start bantering about how tight his pants are.
In the years since, Sly has often talked about how bad Rhinestone is, but he never said a bad word about Dolly, saying working with her was the most fun he’d ever had in his career — with him seeming genuinely upset about her passing in a tribute he posted on Instagram.
Was Rhinestone really a huge flop?
Rhinestone, of course, was a flop — but not quite as big as you might think. It opened decently but had huge competition from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins, Ghostbusters and The Karate Kid. I mean, next to those movies, Rhinestone looks truly awful, and I doubt any kid in 1984 was begging their parents to take them to RHINESTONE.
Yet it still made about $21 million, and by the time it hit video stores and played on cable, it might have turned some kind of profit. The soundtrack was a legitimate hit, with the song “Tennessee Homesick Blues” topping the country charts. Parton herself said the album contained some of her best work, with her singling out the song “What a Heartache.”
It ended up with a bunch of Razzie nominations, with Dolly earning nominations for a few of the songs, like “Drinkenstein,” but she was not given a Worst Actress nod — simply because her performance is actually super charming. And anyway, the Razzies are all bullshit, and they’ve had it out for Sly since day one.
Rhinestone ended Dolly Parton’s career as a big-screen leading lady
The sad thing about Rhinestone is that it ended Dolly’s career as a leading lady on the big screen, with her concentrating on her singing career and only acting on TV, although she did have a supporting role in the acclaimed Steel Magnolias, which was a hit, and would star in another film, Straight Talk, which didn’t do much better than Rhinestone.
Still, it’s only a footnote in what was a brilliant career, but clearly she made an impact on Sly — even if perhaps he didn’t quite learn his lesson about comedy from it, with him starring in a duo of comedy films that almost ended his career in the early nineties, with Oscar — which wasn’t bad — and the infamous Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.
Next to that one, Rhinestone ain’t half bad, and if you love Dolly, as do we all, check it out, even if it’s really hard to find nowadays, with it not streaming anywhere. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray but is long out of print, and while Sly may not be ultra-keen on it getting back out there, perhaps the renewed interest in Dolly now that she’s passed might give it new life.
A Blu-ray with a commentary by Sly telling stories about Dolly would be pretty fascinating — that’s for sure.
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