The first time Sylvester Stallone saw a rough cut of First Blood , he hated it so much he wanted to buy it back.

“I’m embarrassed to say that’s true,” he told Rich Eisen earlier this month of the 1982 film based on David Morrell’s 1972 novel .

Stallone told Howard Stern was so upset with the original cut, which ran more than three hours, that he and his agent tried to buy and burn the negative.

Then he came up with the idea of cutting most of his character’s dialogue. Stallone plays John Rambo, a distressed Vietnam veteran who runs afoul of an abusive small-town sheriff (Brian Dennehy).

Sylvester Stallone and Brian Dennehy in a scene from 1982’s “First Blood.” CBS Photo Archive / Getty Images

“And have other people talk about you – which by the way is not a bad way to live in general, (let) other people fill in the blanks, like a Greek chorus you know? I think it works,” Stallone told Stern as quoted by Ultimate Classic Rock .

The run time wasn’t Stallone’s lone complaint.…