Lord Of The Ring

By Jess Cagle

First, you hear him tapping. He's in his office, on his farm on the southern border of Michigan, making art. He's such a big man--solid as a brick wall and well over 6 ft.--that he nearly dwarfs the conference table where he's seated. Before him is a large piece of paper and several black markers. In the center of the paper he's drawn a tiny boxing ring with two tiny stick figures. The larger one is labeled MUHAMMAD ALI, and it's delivering a solid punch to the much smaller one, labeled JOE FRAZIER.

All around the boxing ring, all the way out to the edges of the paper, the 59-year-old artist formerly known as Cassius Clay taps away with his black marker, making hundreds of dots, each representing one spectator. "Thrilla in Manila," he says, struggling to speak, in a low, gravelly whisper. "These are the people." He often draws these pictures, re-creating his glorious fights. Making the dots keeps him busy for hours and helps maintain his motor skills, which have been diminished by the Parkinson's he has suffered from for two decades. But his mind and sense of humor remain sharp. While tap-tap-tapping away with his black marker, he talks about Ali, the movie about his life opening Dec. 25, with Will Smith in the title role.

"He did a good job," says Muhammad Ali, who played himself in the awful 1977 biopic The Greatest. For this new movie, under the tutelage of director Michael Mann (The Insider), Smith prepared by studying Ali's Islamic faith and learning to box, training for nearly a year. The 33-year-old star added 30 lbs. of muscle to his lanky physique and transformed his body into a nearly perfect replica of the champ's when he was in fighting form. When this observation is shared with Ali, he pauses, then looks up from his drawing and, his eyes twinkling a bit, says with a small smile, "They say we all look alike."

Ali often says things like this to shock strangers. The truth is, no one looks like Ali. Smith is arguably the most likable movie star on the planet, but not even he possesses Ali's singular DNA pattern of beauty, grace and bravado. To make a movie about Ali--perhaps the most idolized, vilified and complex public figure of the 20th century--has been a high-wire act of both hubris and dedication. "For an African American, Muhammad Ali is the biggest role you could have. Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Nelson Mandela--with any of those roles comes a responsibility," says Smith. "The level of dedication to this role is unparalleled to anything [I've done] so far other than having a family."

Ali's journey to the screen began a decade ago, when Oliver Stone met with the champ about making a movie of his life. They remained friendly, but the professional collaboration ended when the director refused to share creative control of the film. In 1992 Howard Bingham, Ali's longtime confidant and photographer, and Lonnie Ali, his fourth wife and business partner, hooked up with producer Paul Ardaji. A friend and former advertising executive, Ardaji optioned the rights to the fighter's life, and the project eventually landed at Sony. The Alis maintained contractual control over the movie's basic story and met with all five writers (including Mann) who would work on the screenplay.

When the couple read a treatment by Steve Rivele and Chris Wilkinson (Nixon), Lonnie sent back two requests. "One was that we be respectful to the women in Ali's life," says Rivele. "The other was to make it clear that he'd never done a bit of housework in his life." The initial screenplay, which Gregory Allen Howard (Remember the Titans) delivered in 1996, offered this fascinating insight: "The key to Ali's life was his relationship with his father, who ignored him," says Howard. "It explains his need to please older men like Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Howard Cosell and Don King."

The movie went nowhere, though, because Smith was too "terrified" to sign on. "I didn't want to be the dude that messed up the Muhammad Ali story," he says. He also had trouble relating to a man whose life had been so defined by racial injustice. "I'm a child of rap music," says Smith, who started his career in music and still moonlights as a rapper. "We've got Bentleys. We can't even relate to not being able to sit in somebody's lunch counter. I'll buy the counter and throw you out." But for Ali, Smith was always the first choice: "He's the only guy in the world who could look like me and act like me."

After a management turnover at Sony, several more rewrites were assigned while many directors, including Barry Sonnenfeld, Curtis Hanson and Spike Lee, circled the movie. Mann ultimately took the job after meeting with the Alis. "The one thing they feared was a sentimentalization," says Mann, "a teary Hallmark- greeting version of Muhammad Ali...What they didn't want is what I didn't want." When asked why he didn't choose a black director, Ali answers, "The people that made the movie, I know they're qualified. I don't care what color they are." His wife adds that "Muhammad didn't want it to be a movie just for black audiences. He wanted it to be a movie for all cultures and all people."

Mann got Smith on board by promising to guide him through the physical, emotional and spiritual training required. "Before that point, I couldn't see how I would become Muhammad Ali," says Smith. Mann kept Ali's story at manageable length by focusing only on the civil rights and Vietnam years, when Ali "occupied his most profound importance." Mann's final screenplay, written with Eric Roth, begins in 1964, when the young Cassius Clay beats Sonny Liston out of the world heavyweight championship. Fresh off his victory, he publicly and unapologetically announces his devotion to the Nation of Islam--a black Muslim group that white America at the time considered a serious, militant threat--and takes an Arabic name. He's stripped of his title by the boxing commission when he refuses the Vietnam draft ("No Viet Cong ever called me n_____"). Over the course of 2 1/2 hours, the film builds to its finale in 1974, when he takes the title back from George Foreman in Zaire's Rumble in the Jungle bout--a sequence that Mann shot in Mozambique with 2,000 paid extras and more than 20,000 volunteers. The cost of Mann's epic vision: at least $105 million.

Almost half an hour of the movie takes place in boxing rings. Mann, a famous perfectionist, has meticulously restaged the actual fights, and Smith goes toe to toe with real fighters. Smith says the knockdown of Foreman (boxer Charles Shufford) was the most "grueling" sequence: "We did it over five days. Michael wanted everything, the angle of the bend in my wrist and the angle of my ankle and toe, to be perfect."

Mann also made sure the supporting cast did its homework. Angelo Dundee, Ali's former trainer, was often on the set with Ron Silver, who plays him in the movie. Actor Jeffrey Wright closely observed Bingham, who was on hand to take pictures and help safeguard historical accuracy. Jamie Foxx studied tapes of Ali's late, drug-addled corner man Drew (Bundini) Brown. Jon Voight, who last summer hid himself under layers of prosthetics as Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Pearl Harbor, again endured hours each day in the makeup chair, this time disguising himself as Howard Cosell. The witty verbal sparring between Ali and Cosell provides some of the movie's most entertaining moments. "If you talk to Ali today," says Voight, "the first thing that will happen in response to the name Howard Cosell is a smile."

Moviegoers may want to do a little research themselves before seeing the film. "Michael Mann doesn't subscribe to the theory that the audience is not smart," says Smith. "People appreciate it when you're not spelling everything out." Still, it helps to know a few facts about Ali's initiation into the Nation of Islam and his complicated relationship with Malcolm X (Mario Van Peebles), which is already unfolding when the movie begins. Says Mann: "I wanted to insert you into the stream of this man's life, orient you without doing it in a blatant way with exposition." Ali is pleased with Mann's approach. "It was better than I thought it would be," he said after attending the movie's Hollywood premiere.

Weeks earlier, on the day we found him drawing in his office, Ali hadn't yet seen the entire movie. Concerned about the treatment of his rich sex life, he asks if the film is too racy, poking his right middle finger into his closed left fist to help communicate the question. Yes, Smith does have a love scene with his real-life wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who plays Ali's spitfire bride Sonji Roi. Lonnie reassures the champ: "But they have their clothes on," she says, and she explains that "the last thing we wanted to do was whitewash Muhammad." Ali has no comment on this. He goes back to his boxing picture. Once it has been been filled with spectators, Ali rises, walks tentatively around the table and shows it off to his visitor. He's proud of the drawing. It's not the first time that he has created an audience all on his own.

--With reporting by Simon Robinson/Maputo

With reporting by Simon Robinson/Maputo