Really glad someone has clipped this specific scene, because I use it all the time in my screenwriting class. We know that, for the story to move forward, Rocky is going to say yes to Mickey’s proposal to manage and train him for the fight with Apollo Creed. But it becomes highest-stakes-possible emotional poker, as Mickey exposes more and more about his age and his failures in an attempt to ingratiate himself, and Rocky just keeps ignoring and ignoring him, refusing to help the conversation, punishing him with sarcasm, and all but physically-shoving him out of his apartment, until all this stuff that blocks him from saying “yes” explodes out of him – his own rage that his best years are behind him, his longtime resentment of Mickey’s disrespect, and, deepest and most hurtful of all, his unshakeable belief that he is going to get his ass kicked and be humiliated in front of millions of people.
It’s eight minutes of movie (paced and staged impeccably by studio veteran John Avildsen) that do such an incredible job of making you feel the missing connection between these people who really do need each other, that when it finally turns to that long-desired “yes”, you don’t even need dialogue – just a handshake, a little music, and one of those ever-present trains rattling through the neighborhood. Stallone used to be this good: