It’s not exactly the fun/silly/strange news we love to report here, but it happened so you might as well hear about it. Sage Stallone, Sylvester Stallone’s 36-year-old son from his first marriage, to Sasha Czack, was found dead in his home in Studio City Friday night. The LA Times
TMZ initially called the death an overdose, but the official cause is still undetermined. Prescription pill bottles were found in the house (which sounds damning, but then again, who doesn’t have at least one prescription pill bottle in their house?). TMZ also says Stallone was “out of it” during a recent photo shoot, which, again, could mean a lot, or nothing. “Rhine says it took Sage 45 minutes to answer the door, adding he could tell right away Sage was ‘on something’ — slurring his words and stumbling around — though he never saw him take anything.”
Meanwhile, Stallone’s lawyer, George Braunstein says, “Sage didn’t even drink. There was a report that his room was filled with liquor bottles. Actually, they were empty bottles of Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda.” Huh, well I hope to God there weren’t any people in positions of authority who couldn’t tell the difference between a bottle of liquor and a bottle of cream soda. Three-year-olds shouldn’t have authority.
TMZ reported that Stallone had been dead “for a minimum of 3-4 days and possibly as long as a week,” and lived “like Howard Hughes” (ie, messily). But according to Stallone’s lawyer, he’d posted pictures to his Facebook page as recently as 17 hours before he was found dead. (TMZ is sticking to their 3-4 days story).
Sage Moonblood Stallone had bit parts in Rocky V and 1996’s Daylight, as well as a few other films. More importantly for our purposes, he co-founded Grindhouse Releasing with editor Bob Murawski, a company that distributed Gone with the Pope, a movie that has been featured many times on this site, on account of it looking f*cking awesome. The company specializes in restoring B-movies from the 70s and 80s, with other titles that include “An American Hippie in Israel,” “I Drink Your Blood” and “Cannibal Holocaust.” In any case, it sounds like he was a serious film geek, and as such, even as super-rich celebrity royalty, it’s hard not to think of him in some way as “one of us.”
Regardless of how it happened, it’s a pretty big f*cking bummer. I’m also bummed that I still haven’t had a chance to see Gone with the Pope in its entirety, but that’s probably a discussion for another time.