Boxing legend Muhammad Ali passed away Friday at the age of 74. I never met him, but nearly two decades ago I did a phone interview with Leon Gast, the director of the Oscar-winning documentary When We Were Kings, which covered the legendary ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ when Ali fought George Foreman in Zaire in 1974.
I have re-posted that interview here.
I spoke to Gast just a few days before the Oscars in March 1997, and the interview ran in the UBC student newspaper the morning after the ceremony. Since I was the culture editor and very involved in production night, I gave myself a little leeway and left a space at the end of the article for revealing whether Gast actually won the Oscar or not — and I got quotes from Gast that I could use in case of either result.
The article is kind of an interesting time capsule in its own right now, since Gast and I talked about Ali lighting the Olympic torch in Atlanta the year before, and we also alluded to the imminent downfall of Zaire dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who was kicked out of the country in May 1997 and died in Morocco a few months later.
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