Rocky went the distance with Apollo Creed, but in a perhaps more impressive feat, he toppled “All the President’s Men,” “Network,” and “Taxi Driver,” also Best Picture nominees for that year.
“We had just gone through a decade of terrible social problems in America," “Rocky” producer Irwin Winkler explained to the Associated Press in 2007. "And all of a sudden this movie came along and said, 'You know, if you believe in yourself, you'll be OK.' And suddenly it became part of what America was about. I think maybe if the picture had come out two years later or two years earlier, it might not have caught on the way it did."
