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Yo, local man meets Sly Stallone ... again
Friday, Dec. 22, 2006
 Click here to enlarge this photo Photos Courtesy of Frank Shelton
Frank Shelton, left, and Sylvester Stallone during the shooting of ‘‘Rocky Balboa” in Las Vegas.
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The 34-year-old Waldorf man had previously met the box office pugilist before.
‘‘They say lightning doesn’t strike twice,” Shelton said, ‘‘but almost 20 years later to the date, I was invited to meet Sly again on location in Las Vegas.”
In 1985, at age 13, he got his first once-in-a-lifetime chance.
Shelton’s godmother, Judy Henderson, won a ‘‘Rambo II” trivia contest, and the pair headed to Hollywood, Calif., for an all-expenses paid weekend and meeting with Stallone.
This time around, Shelton appears as an extra in two of the final fight scenes of ‘‘Rocky Balboa,” the latest and most likely final installment of the film franchise.
In one scene, Shelton is seated in the second row behind Marie, a character from ‘‘Rocky.”
In another, Shelton approaches the HBO commentators following the bout.
Shelton got the extra work after mentioning his affinity for the ‘‘Rocky” movies during a Christian concert about a year ago.
He asked the audience members if they had heard about the new ‘‘Rocky” movie in the making.
‘‘Someone asked me, ‘Who’s he fighting?’ I said, ‘The man is 60 years old. I think its arthritis,’” Shelton joked.
However, ‘‘I think the Rocky character is not only timeless, it’s ageless,” he added.
Later he received an e-mail asking if he wanted to come to Vegas and be a face in the crowd. He did. He was one of about 1,000 live extras. About 5,000 other extras were actually mannequins, Shelton spilled.
This time around, Shelton, who works on Capitol Hill and adheres to the rule of ‘‘don’t speak unless spoken to,” approached Stallone with the picture of the pair together when Shelton was a teen.
‘‘At first he just started laughing,” recalled Shelton, who said Stallone said he remembered the previous encounter.
‘‘He’s only about 5-foot-9,” Shelton said of the actor, ‘‘but he’s larger than life.”
Shelton, a public speaker and founder of the annual Celebrate Jesus Charles County Crusade, is influenced by the character of Rocky Balboa — an underdog who never stops fighting.
‘‘Millions of people love Rocky,” Shelton said. ‘‘Not because he never loses, but because he never gives up.”
The divorced father of a 6-year-old daughter, Hannah (‘‘She’s the air in my lungs and the hope in my heart”), Shelton said, ‘‘I’ve learned more from my valleys than my victories.”
During a recent downtime, Shelton traveled to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the location of the famous ‘‘Rocky steps” from the first movie. He counts ‘‘Rocky,” ‘‘Rudy” and ‘‘Hoosiers” as his favorite films, and uses lessons learned from each in his every day life.
‘‘Quit,” Shelton said, ‘‘is not in my vocabulary.”
E-mail Sara K. Taylor at staylor@somdnews.com.
