BOXQUIAT A page from Rocky Balboa, with Sly’s notes

Rocky Balboa, the sixth installment in the Rocky saga due out Dec. 22, wasn’t merely conjured up by a panic-stricken Sylvester Stallone after The Contender got canceled. (That was Rambo IV: Pearl of the Cobra.) No, this time around—unlike the original Rocky, the Academy Award-winning script he’s said to have hammered out in just three days—Stallone, now 60, took his sweet time, carefully blocking out each scene like some Creatine-addled Coppola.

An early draft of the script with Sly’s extensive handwritten notes—supplied to Radar by a source close to the film—contains further evidence of his obvious artistic abilities. Note the self-portrait and annotation about “hanging beef,” which we first assumed to be a self-deprecating dig about his own mug until a meat-beating scene turned up in the film.

[The trailer and a page from Sly's script after the jump!]