Rocky Stories: Tales of Love, Hope, and Happiness at America's Most Famous Steps

by Michael Vitez, Sylvester Stallone (Foreword), Tom Gralish (Photographer)

Pulitzer Prize-winners Michael Vitez and Tom Gralish of the Philadelphia Inquirer spent a year visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art to capture the stories of "Rocky runners," who come from all over the world to run up America's most famous steps—just as Sylvester Stallone did in Rocky. People make the pilgrimage to mark a new beginning, to seek inspiration, to celebrate an accomplishment, to find the perfect backdrop for romance, or simply because they love the movie. As one runner says, "It gives you the feeling that anything is possible."

The authors have uncovered an enduring cultural phenomenon, one that centers on Philadelphia, and yet, as Michael Vitez writes in his introduction, is a true American, and even international, rite of passage.

The book includes fifty-two profiles and one hundred color photographs, together with a foreword by Sylvester Stallone, and interviews with Rocky's Academy Award-winning director John G. Avildsen, composer Bill Conti, and cameraman Garrett Brown.

144 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2006

About the author

Michael Vitez is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author whose work celebrates resilience, dignity, and the extraordinary within the everyday. For three decades, he wrote human-interest stories for The Philadelphia Inquirer, including a landmark series on end-of-life care that earned him the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism in 1997. He is the author of several books, among them Final Choices, Rocky Stories, The Road Back, and Great Americans. Today, he directs the Narrative Medicine program at Temple University's Lewis Katz School of Medicine, helping future doctors understand the power of storytelling in healthcare.

Reviews

[Zach Koenig]

As a big fan of the Rocky film series, one of my “bucket list” destinations is the iconic set of steps that the inspiring pugilist jogs up in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In this Michael Vitez-authored & Tom Gralish-photographed tome, I found a lot of similar desires!

Basically, “Rocky Stories” is a compilation of tales from a year spent at the steps by the author and photographer. The broad swath of humanity they capture—quite literally from across the globe!—is remarkable. As one reads through story after story about how people connect to their aspirations atop the steps, it becomes clear that the Rocky Balboa character has transcended the celluloid it was originally captured on. Actor/writer Sylvester Stallone—who incubated the character to its iconic status—also speaks directly to this in the book’s forward.

“Rocky Stories” is a book best experienced as the “sum of its parts”, so to speak. The short snippets on individuals are brief enough—these are basically quick conversations or follow-ups from those Vitez met at the steps—that they may not necessarily stick with you. But when you get to this end of this book, you’ll almost certainly marvel at the vast emotional and geographical reach of a fictional movie character who inspires others to act out his film dreams both in mimicry and in their lives.

[Jacques Bromberg]

Everyday in Philadelphia, people run in Rocky Balboa's famous footprints up the front stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The product of a year's candid interviews and photographs of people engaging in this bizarre (yet, familiar to all) ritual, ROCKY STORIES reveals the far reach of one particularly American myth.

[Jennifer]

For one year, a journalist and photography visited the "Rocky Steps" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and photographed and interviewed people who came to run the steps. They analyzed what this pop culture location says about our deeper American culture. Many emotional stories. Definitely worth a look.

[Brian Niles]

Written by a friend of mine, Michael Vitez. Wonderful book of stories and authentic to Philadelphia. A must read or gift.

[Anne]

I very sheepishly admit that in all the times I have been at the top of the Art Museum steps, I never realized there existed a bronze set of Rocky footprints. Obviously I am a terrible native Philadelphian! In my opinion, the steps and the view from the top are perhaps the city's most spectacular gem. The phenomenon of people's making the pilgrimage from all over the world to run the steps for the over forty years since the movie's debut is mind-boggling. The stories and photos in this book both made me smile and filled me with pride in my city.