When Ali Performed A Knockout on Film
The New York Times - Feb. 23, 1997
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February 23, 1997, Section 8, Page 2 - Buy Reprints
WHEN you see him now, he's Muhammad Ali in name only. As he held the Olympic torch in Atlanta, the right hand that battered so many opponents shook with Parkinson's syndrome. In his rare television appearances, the voice that shouted amusing rhymes now mumbles. His eyes still twinkle, but his toes don't.
Millions weren't even born when he was a three-time heavyweight champion. Millions of others have forgotten the flames and the fun of his reign.
But the opportunity is there now for all those millions to see and appreciate Ali at the top of his game, and at the top of his lungs, in the days surrounding what he considered his proudest moment -- his eighth-round knockout of George Foreman in Zaire in 1974.
''Winning the title the second time, destroying George Foreman, who had destroyed Joe Frazier,'' Ali once said. ''Destroying George Foreman, who had the image of such deadly power. That was so satisfying. That was the biggest, the proudest.''
The opportunity to see and appreciate Ali comes in ''When We Were Kings,'' a documentary recently nominated for an Academy Award after having been honored by the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the National Society of Film Critics and Sundance Film Festival.
''The untold story,'' the newspaper advertisements blare, ''of the Rumble in the Jungle.''
As only Ali could tell it. In his own words and expressions that no actor could do as well.
''He'd sit there and come up with the stuff without a script, without being prompted,'' recalled Leon Gast, the film's director. ''Sometimes he'd even tell us where to set up the camera.''
Ali stayed in a villa alongside the Congo River in a complex where visiting diplomats were lodged.
''One day Muhammad told us: 'In the morning when I run, I come around that corner with the sun and the river behind me,' '' Gast said. '' 'Put your camera over there. It'll be a great shot.' He was right. It was a great shot.''
In the film, Ali is at his best, preaching his Islamic beliefs but also spouting what he considered poetry.
''Last night I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick,'' he roars. ''I'm so mean, I make medicine sick.''
But the documentary is much more than that. It's Ali making the most of the six-week delay after Foreman was accidentally cut over the right eye while sparring. It's Ali leading the Zairians in chanting, ''Ali, bomaye,'' meaning, ''Ali, kill him.'' Which, for boxing purposes, is what Ali did in the eighth round with a roundhouse right hand that spun Foreman, previously 40-0 with 37 knockouts, to the canvas after the fight had begun at 4 A.M. in Zaire to accommodate theater television in the United States.
''For weeks,'' Ali said later that morning outside his villa, ''I kept hollering, 'Be ready to dance,' but I didn't dance. That was the trick.''
But if Leon Gast's film is so good, where has it been for more than 22 years? Why hasn't it been in the theaters long before now?
''Originally, when almost everybody thought Foreman would win, it was to be a music film with the fight as background,'' Gast said, alluding to the music festival featuring James Brown, B. B. King and Lloyd Price, among others, that was held in conjunction with the fight. ''The live gate from the concert was to pay for post-production of the film, but when the fight was postponed, the rock stars went home after one night.''
Nearly 300,000 feet of film sat in cans in cardboard cartons in Gast's apartment on West 86th Street for 12 years. The lawyer David Sonenberg eventually put up $1 million to produce it along with Taylor Hackford and Gast. To bring the film into the 90's, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, Spike Lee and others provided commentary.
''I had no idea how it would play,'' Gast said, ''but when I showed it at the Sundance Festival a year ago, we got 17 offers to distribute the film. What came through was Ali himself, the purity of the man, the sense of the man.''
Yes, the man and the boxer that Ali was in 1974 at the top of his game and the top of his lungs, the man and the boxer who had his ''biggest, proudest'' moment in an African nation now torn by revolution and poverty.
''This delay is affecting the other guy,'' Ali's trainer, Angelo Dundee, told Gast, ''but my guy is giving an Academy Award performance.''
And nearly a quarter of a century later, Muhammad Ali, at the top of his game and the top of his lungs, may well have given another Academy Award performance.
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 23, 1997, Section 8, Page 2 of the National edition with the headline: When Ali Performed A Knockout on Film. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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