By Chris Betros

Arts & Culture Oct. 15, 2010 - 07:07AM JST ( 11 )

TOKYO —

When Sylvester Stallone turned up for a talk show event with fans for his new movie “The Expendables” at Shibuya AX recently, he must have thought he was attending a casting session for “Rambo 5” instead. The audience was full of young Japanese dressed in Rambo gear – many of whom weren’t even born when Rambo first hit the big screen in 1985. It is a testament to the staying power of an actor whom many critics ridicule, that his faithful fans have stayed with him for more than 30 years.

“I’m very touched by this. I love you guys,” said the 64-year-old Stallone, who was joined by Swedish actor and “Expendables” co-star Dolph Lundgren. “I’ve been very lucky with movies like ‘Rocky,’ ‘Rambo,’ ‘Cliffhanger.’ Now I feel like I’m a teacher and should use that experience to find the next generation of men who want to carry on the action genre.”

“The Expendables” – which Stallone also wrote and directed – is a homage to action movies of the 1980s, and brings together Lundgren, Jason Statham, Jet Li, and Mickey Rourke, as well as former NFL star Terry Crews, former pro wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Ultimate Fighting champ Randy Couture. Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger make cameos. Stallone leads his gang of mercenaries, known as the Expendables, to overthrow the dictator of a Caribbean nation who is being propped up by a drug-dealing rogue CIA agent (Eric Roberts).

The story is just an excuse to have a lot of fun, with all manner of murder and mayhem unleashed. Filming the fight scenes with Crews, Austin and Couture got pretty rough, said Stallone, because they tended to get carried away. “They are mean and a little crazy. There were times when they didn’t understand they were making a movie and would try to smash your head through a wall. It’s difficult to keep them calm because they are athletes.”

Stallone was happy to reunite with Lundgren with whom he worked on “Rocky IV.” “He put me in hospital for four days after that, but I forgive him,” said Stallone. “I’ve worked with hundreds of actors and only had chemistry with maybe five. Dolph is one of them.”

Stallone said he is tough on his actors, but added that he is hard on himself, too. “In many ways, actors are like children and I often have to remind them what they are doing. I went to each actor and made sure that they understood the philosophy of this movie, that all of them – despite their different fighting skills—were making the same movie. In a regular job, you can have a bad day and it’s forgotten, but if you have a bad day in a movie, it’s going to be there forever, so I urged them to try and give their best, otherwise they’ll regret it.”

There is one character that even Stallone would find it difficult to be hard on – yokozuna Hakuho. The actor visited the Mongolian grand champion on the day he won his 16th Emperor’s Cup last month, and got a surprise when the yokozuna effortlessly lifted him up. “The fury of the sport is so fantastic,” Stallone said after watching a few bouts.

Afterwards, during the meet-and-greet session with his young fans, Stallone advised them not to let life pass them by. His early life was a struggle to make it in the movie business (he played a punk on a train in Woody Allen’s 1971 film “Bananas,” but one year later, failed an audition to play a wedding extra in “The Godfather,” for example). “You have two choices in life: to fight or quit. My motto has always been to never give up, give in or give out. If I could go back in time to talk to myself as a young man, I would say there may be times when you are trying to find your way in the world and you have to be arrogant or egotistical, but there is a time to put it away. After ‘Rocky,’ I should have tried to be more humble in my private life, which was a mess.”

Stallone said his biggest enemy or fear now was a lack of time. “I want to be challenged, but life is going by so fast.” One new challenge he is enjoying, though, is Twitter. “Yes, I tweet,” he admitted. “I get all sorts of ideas from people and that helps me come up with new ideas.”

One of which is a sequel to “The Expendables,” which he will start filming next March. Bruce Willis will be back in a bigger part, with Mike Tyson a rumored villain, and hopefully, there will be another appearance by Schwarzenegger. “It was great having Arnold for a cameo,” said Stallone. “He loves to make fun of himself. Next time, I’ll make him work even harder.”

“The Expendables” opens in Japan on Saturday.