Leon Gast, Director of ‘When We Were Kings,’ Dies at 84
Leon Gast at his home in Manhattan in 1997. His film about the heavyweight fight billed as “the Rumble in the Jungle” won the Academy Award that year for best documentary feature. Credit... Librado Romero/The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/movies/leon-gast-dead.html Skip to content He spent 22 years making an Oscar-winning movie about the 1974 Ali-Foreman boxing match, considered one of the greatest sporting events of all time. By Clay Risen Published March 12, 2021Updated April 6, 2021 Leon Gast, a filmmaker whose 22-year quest to make “When We Were Kings,” a documentary about Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s epic 1974 boxing match, involved a Liberian shell company, the Hells Angels, a drug deal gone bad, the singer Wyclef Jean and ultimately an Academy Award, died on Monday at his home in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 84. His wife, Geri Spolan-Gast, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease. Mr. Gast was a young filmmaker who had already d...