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<\/a>When Muhammad Ali met George Foreman in Zaire back in 1974, it wasn\u2019t to shake his hand. Leon Gast captured their bout on film and, after a 21-year delay, got an Oscar for his patience.<\/i><\/p>\nIt\u2019s a story so good, they couldn\u2019t have made it up. Muhammad Ali, stripped of his heavyweight championship in 1967 when he refused to fight in Vietnam, had a chance to win it back from current champ George Foreman when Don King masterminded the Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire in 1974.<\/p>\n
The hard-hitting Foreman had recently knocked out Ken Norton and Joe Frazier, the only two men who had ever beaten Ali. And it was generally agreed that Ali, past his prime at 32, would be no match for the 26-year-old Foreman.<\/p>\n
Instead, Ali withstood 15 rounds before sending Foreman to the mat. It was, and still remains, the only time Foreman has been knocked out. But for Ali, the match, set in the continent of his ancestors, was more than a fight. It was a vindication of his position, as a role model at a time when black pride was taking off.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, Leon Gast was there with a camera crew to capture the moment. Don King had originally hired him to document the music festival that was supposed to play just before the fight. James Brown, B.B. King, Miriam Makeba and others all shared billing on what some called \u201cthe Black Woodstock\u201d \u2014 but a severe cut to Foreman\u2019s face four days before the fight forced the pugilists to wait an extra six weeks.<\/p>\n
Even with this great story, Gast didn\u2019t have enough money to finish the film. With his negatives held hostage in a film lab \u2014 ironically, this probably preserved the film better than any of Gast\u2019s own efforts could have done \u2014 Gast spent the next 21 years living with \u201cboxes and boxes and boxes\u201d of material in his apartment, including 300,000 feet of film, 200,000 feet of corresponding sound and 32 hours of multi-track concert tape.<\/p>\n
Salvation came in the form of David Sonenberg, a lawyer turned show biz manager who financed the completion of the film over the last few years.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been said Ali wouldn\u2019t have won if it weren\u2019t for the six-week stay in Zaire. The crowds in Zaire hated Foreman, who hid in the hotel, while they cheered Ali on with cries of \u201cAli, bomaye!\u201d (\u201cAli, kill him!\u201d)<\/p>\n
Between the attention of the masses and the attention of the film crew, Ali used those six weeks to psych himself up. \u201cAngelo Dundee, his trainer, would come in,\u201d Gast recalls, \u201cand he\u2019d say, \u2018Come on, champ, you\u2019ve got to get back to the gym. You have to train.\u2019 And Ali would say, \u2018This is a different kind of training. This is just as important as the other stuff.\u2019 And he would just keep on speaking to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ali had such a clear vision for the film, Gast began looking for opportunities to catch him off-guard, but Ali played with the camera every chance he got. \u201cIt\u2019s like that persona on camera was the same as off-camera. He had that way of making you feel there was an honesty and a purity about him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ali\u2019s knack for off-the-cuff rhymes \u2014 \u201cYou think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned? \/ Just wait \u2019til I kick George Foreman\u2019s behind\u201d is a classic example \u2014 actually saw him record an album of his own, I Am the Greatest<\/i>, back when he still went by the name Cassius Clay. For the new film, Ali teamed up with the Fugees to record \u2018Rumble in the Jungle\u2019.<\/p>\n
With all the music on display, did Gast ever consider using any of Ali\u2019s other<\/i> recordings? \u201cYeah, I\u2019ve got \u2019em!\u201d Gast laughs. \u201cNot only stuff that he did, but there were a couple of songs about<\/i> him.\u201d Gast begins to sing: \u201cMuhammad Ali \/ Flew like a butterfly, stung like a bee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gast laughs again. \u201cTwenty-three years I\u2019ve played around with this thing. I\u2019ve played around with just about every possibility you can think of. I had his \u2018Stand by Me\u2019 in there at one time. We considered it but in the end, we didn\u2019t use it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gast originally wanted to forego narration and let the athletes and musicians speak for themselves, but co-editor Taylor Hackford, best known for directing An Officer and a Gentleman<\/i>, pushed for talking heads, including Ali biographer Tom Hauser and journalists George Plimpton and Norman Mailer. They also turned to Spike Lee and Malik Bowens for commentary on how the fight affected black people on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n
However, neither Ali nor Foreman makes a modern-day appearance. Gast almost invited them into the studio to bring his film up to date, but in the end, he kept his focus on 1974. \u201cWhen I saw the Olympics, and that moment when Ali lit the torch, I thought, \u2018Oh my God, what an image that is.\u2019 And we cut it in so that the last image that you saw was the picture of Ali with the torch, and it was there for a couple of days. We had contacted George Foreman\u2019s lawyer and manager, but then we realized, \u2018No. It\u2019s not necessary. To have that image of Ali is completely unnecessary; if anything, it\u2019s a cheap shot.\u2019 So we removed it, and we never continued with the negotiations with George. We figured, \u2018Let it be about this event.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Gast also passed on the opportunity to bring audiences up to do on one other key player: event sponsor General Mobutu Sese Seko, whose 32-year grip on Zaire has slipped dramatically in recent months. \u201cThere are people who\u2019ve said, \u2018Why didn\u2019t you let us know more about Zaire and what despot Mobutu is and how he\u2019s been running his country into the ground?\u2019 But this is about the event, and I think you get a sense of what we feel about Mobutu in the film, a sense of the kind of dictator he was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Academics will probably debate the role Gast\u2019s film crew played in motivating Ali\u2019s victory for some time. But if Gast helped Ali win, Ali repaid the favour by helping to propel Gast\u2019s film into this year\u2019s Oscar race, where it was nominated for the Best Documentary award.<\/p>\n
Speaking to The Ubyssey<\/i> just three days before the ceremony, Gast notes that the documentary category typically resents \u2014 and will not nominate \u2014 non-fiction films with a semblance of popular appeal. \u201cIt meant so much to be nominated, since a lot of my favorite films \u2014 documentaries such as Hoop Dreams<\/i>, Roger & Me<\/i>, The Thin Blue Line<\/a><\/i>, Brothers Keeper<\/i> \u2014 were not nominated for the award when it was their turn. Just to be nominated is a huge<\/i> victory, especially in this<\/i> category, so we\u2019re winners already.\u201d<\/p>\nAs it happens, Gast and his film did get the Oscar last Monday night. \u201cIt\u2019s all due to Muhammad Ali, the hero of our times,\u201d says Gast. \u201cAs the centrepiece of our film, he gave us a tremendous edge, so all the praise goes to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 A version of this article was first published in <\/i>The Ubyssey.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Muhammad Ali met George Foreman in Zaire back in 1974, it wasn\u2019t to shake his hand. Leon Gast captured their bout on film and, after a 21-year delay, got an Oscar for his patience. It\u2019s a story so good, they couldn\u2019t have made it up. Muhammad Ali, stripped of his heavyweight championship in 1967 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3532,312],"tags":[3715,3714,3713,3712,3718,3710,3721,3722,3711,3719,347,3720,3716,3717,3709],"class_list":["post-47018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","category-ubyssey","tag-angelo-dundee","tag-david-sonenberg","tag-don-king","tag-george-foreman","tag-george-plimpton","tag-leon-gast","tag-malik-bowens","tag-mobutu-sese-seko","tag-muhammad-ali","tag-norman-mailer","tag-oscars","tag-spike-lee","tag-taylor-hackford","tag-tom-hauser","tag-when-we-were-kings"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"whenwewerekings-leongast\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/227\/2016\/06\/whenwewerekings-leongast.jpeg\")
<\/a>When Muhammad Ali met George Foreman in Zaire back in 1974, it wasn\u2019t to shake his hand. Leon Gast captured their bout on film and, after a 21-year delay, got an Oscar for his patience.<\/i><\/p>\n