User:TRyals/sandbox: Difference between revisions

Mailer’s presence in the documentary is indispensable. Even though some of his contentions are based on hearsay, his tone is authoritative, and, as al- ways when on camera, he’s simply entertaining. His account of the fight it- self, like his written account, is precise and accurate. Plimpton, who was also in Zaire, has drawn criticism for some of his conjectures, and will from this reviewer a little further on. Spike Lee, who was a teenager at the time of the fight, deadpans a few Ali truisms, which add little to the film, and Malik Bowens’ presence feels entirely gratuitous. Bowens, who is fluent in English, and whose connection to the fight is unknown, for some reason delivers his remarks in French, which comes across as a directorial decision to introduce an unnecessary, exotic layer to the film.

Rolling Stone reported that only , attended the first two nights of the festival, which may explain the dearth of crowd shots accompanying the per- formances. The , seat stadium filled on the final night only because President Mobutu “convinced” concert promoters to give away the remain- ing tickets.{{sfn|Gehr}} Included on the Blu-ray version are brief interviews with Gast and co-producer David Sonenberg. For those devotees of Norman Mailer not interested in accumulating another piece of plastic in their home, both films are available via streaming on Amazon Prime, minus the extra content.

The fact that When We Were Kings was ever completed and released in —more than twenty years after the fight—is a tribute to the persever- ance of director Leon Gast. An entire book could be written about the legal and logistical rigamarole required to recover the exposed film, edit it, arrange for music rights, add additional interviews, and finance what eventually be- came the movie.

According to the Yale Film Archive, Gast was originally hired by promoter Don King to make a concert film of the Zaire  music festival, which was scheduled to be held along with the boxing match. His crew shot the festi- val, but then came Foreman’s cut and the crew was not allowed to leave the country. Perhaps sensing a great opportunity, Gast had them document the weeks leading up to the fight and we are all the richer for it today.{{sfn|Yale}}

The perceptive, business-minded, and ever-mischievous Muhammad Ali may have precipitated all of this. Soon after learning of Foreman’s sparring injury, he called a press conference and said, “I appeal to the President to not let anybody connected with the fight out of the country. Be careful. George might sneak out at night. Watch the airports. Watch the train sta- tions. Watch the elephant trails. Send boats to patrol the rivers. Check all the luggage big enough for a big man to crawl into. Do whatever you have to do, Mr. President, but don’t let George leave the country. He’ll never come back if you let him out . . . Because he knows I can’t lose!” To this he added, “These are my people, and I ain’t leaving!”{{sfn|Dundee|p=177}}

Foreman, in fact, would have liked nothing better than to return home. “I was miserable in Zaire,” he recalled. “My first quarters were at an old army base infested with rats, lizards, and insects. Surrounded by cyclone fencing and barbed wire, it was patrolled and inhabited by rowdy soldiers”.{{sfn|Goldstein|p=108}} Foreman had hoped to go to Paris for medical attention and then have the fight rescheduled to take place in the United States. However, soon

after Ali’s remarks, President Sele Seke Mobutu, who had ostensibly put up ten million dollars to have Zaire host the fight, took Ali’s advice and unof- ficially sealed the borders.

Foreman, although not well-educated, is a very intelligent man and he understood the situation in which he was placed. “This was clearly Muham- mad Ali country . . . If I knocked him out, the most I’d get would be grudg- ing respect for vanquishing a legend. And if I lost, there’d be a big crowd at the station, jeering me back to Palookaville”.{{sfn|Goldstein|p=108}}

Indeed, as far the fans in Zaire were concerned, the fix was in against Fore- man from the outset—partially due to Muhammad Ali and partially due to Foreman’s and his managers’ lack of worldliness. Ali had arrived in Zaire first, where there was little infrastructure and few people had access to tele- vision or print media. It seems incredible today, but up until fight time, be- cause of rumors Ali started, quite a number of Zairians believed that George Foreman was white. For his own part, Foreman deplaned in Zaire with his pet German shepherd, Diego. The dog was introduced at a press conference and filmed with his front paws on the table next to Foreman. George and his unsophisticated handlers had no idea that just a generation earlier, when Zaire was the Belgian Congo, German shepherds had been used by Belgian police to intimidate and attack Zairians.{{sfn|Gast}}

After sustaining the injury, for the next five weeks Foreman retreated to his compound and had minimal contact with the press. He lost an addi- tional ten days of training due to being advised that strenuous activity and sweating might delay the healing of his cut. Still, he was confident of his abil- ity to dominate and knock out Muhammad Ali. He had good reason to be- lieve this, having TKO’d both Ken Norton and Joe Frazier in short order within the past eighteen months. Norton had broken Ali’s jaw in the course of earning a split decision victory and Frazier had sent Ali to the canvas with one of the most perfectly delivered left hooks in boxing history. Foreman, like the rest of the boxing world, had observed that Ali was not the fighter he once was.

“This was gonna be the easiest fight of my life,” a mature Foreman quipped in a tone of good-natured irony in the  documentary Facing Ali. “I was just gonna walk in and knock him out in one, two, or three rounds. It was the most confident I’d ever been in a boxing match”.{{sfn|McKormack}}

While Ali no longer danced as gracefully at age , his well of boxing re-