The arts pages this week serve three true stories and one ghost. Muhammad Ali gets a series. The making of Rocky gets a movie, about a writer who had nowhere to sleep not long before. And a woman in a new house is sure something else lives there. Here's our pick of the Journal's calendar for the week of Nov. 3.
Start with the television. The Greatest arrives on Prime Video on Nov. 4. Jaalen Best plays Muhammad Ali, and the series covers his boxing years and the man outside the ropes. That's an easy one for a family night. Prime Video belongs to Amazon (AMZN), held at weight in 19 books, nothing added.
Then the movies. I Play Rocky opens Nov. 6. Peter Farrelly directs, and Anthony Ippolito plays Sylvester Stallone. The story is the making of Rocky and Stallone's climb from homelessness to worldwide fame. Matt Dillon, AnnaSophia Robb, Tracy Letts and Jay Duplass fill out the cast. Same day, Martin McDonagh's dark comedy Wild Horse Nine puts John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell in Santiago as CIA agents just before Chile's 1973 coup.
A guest who wasn't invited
On stage, 2:22 a Ghost Story opens at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York on Nov. 5 and runs to Jan. 17, 2027. A woman is sure her new house is haunted. Her husband doesn't buy it. Over a dinner with friends, the talk drifts to death and what comes after. Someone, or something, may pull up a chair. Danny Robins's play was a big hit in the U.K. first. And one last call. The Running Fence show, on Christo and his wife's 1976 work, closes Nov. 8 at the Museum of Sonoma County in Santa Rosa. The fence ran nearly 25 miles across Northern California.
Our read
This is a Behavioral story. The Stallone film is the one we keep coming back to. The calendar gives his life six words, “rise from homelessness to international stardom.” Those words hide a gap. Between broke and famous there was a stretch with no net under it at all. He got across. Many people in that spot don't, and talent isn't what decides it. What decides it is how many weeks you can go without a paycheck before the plan breaks.
The thing in your own plan this story touches is the emergency fund. This week, open the savings account and count the months. Not the balance, the months. Divide it by what one month of your real life costs. If the answer is less than three, that's the first fix in the plan, ahead of any new investment. Stallone's story is a great movie because it almost went the other way. You'd rather your own version be boring. Bring the number to your next review and we'll build the plan around it.