Trivia / When We Were Kings

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• Troubled Production: It took 22 years to finish and release the movie because it was originally supposed to be a concert film.
  • In conjunction with the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle" heavyweight title bout, promoter Don King had persuaded the host, Zaire's then-dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, to stage a concert where top African-American artists like James Brown and B.B. King would perform alongside their African counterparts. King had originally wanted to hire a black director, but gave it to Leon Gast instead because he was impressed by Gast's having worked with the Hell's Angels. King's only stipulation was that half Gast's crew be black.
  • Gast and his crew arrived in Kinshasa a few days before the fight's scheduled date in September 1974 and filmed both fighters' arrival and some footage of them both training. He had always intended for that to be B-Roll to the concert footage, as he would not be able to use any footage from the fight itself since the closed-circuit broadcaster had the exclusive rights. Then Foreman was cut over his right eye during a sparring session. The fight was postponed for six weeks. Mobutu ordered both fighters and their entourages to remain in Zaire during that time to ensure that the fight would take place.
  • But the concert had to go on since the musicians had prior commitments. And indeed it did. But tickets had been priced with the expectation that most would be sold to foreigners in town for the fight—foreigners who were by and large leaving town. Average Zaireans, who made on average the equivalent of $100 a year, couldn't for the most part afford tickets that cost a quarter of that amount. The show went on, and Gast filmed it, with many of the performers rising to the occasion. But the many empty seats were an embarrassment to the regime. So on the second day Mobutu announced the show would be free. Great for the locals, and the performers, who upped their game for the larger crowds. But not for Gast, as the concert's receipts were supposed to have paid his post-production costs.
  • He continued filming the fighters training, and Ali interacting with his many local admirers. In return he got some lengthy interviews with the boxer. Eventually the fight happened, and Ali pulled off a stunning upset through his rope-a-dope strategy, making Foreman exhaust himself until Ali could knock him out and reclaim the title he had been stripped of for refusing to be drafted in the late 1960s. Gast returned to New York to start editing. When he tried to get the production company in Zaire, which he had been told was a local subsidary of a British firm, to reimburse him for his expenses there, he and his producer could not find any record of it. Eventually it turned out to be a shell company in the Cayman Islands controlled by the Liberian finance minister. He promised to help Gast get paid, but lost his job in a coup shortly after.
  • As a result of a lawsuit he filed against the shell company, Gast got ownership of the film footage he had shot. But it mostly sat in boxes in his apartment. Eventually he was able to transfer most of it to video and put together clips to show prospective financiers. Taylor Hackford, one of those who saw it, suggesting adding the interviews with Norman Mailer, George Plimpton and Spike Lee to help a younger audience understand the story better. Hackford shot those himself, earning him a co-credit under "A Film By ..." but not under "Directed By ..." And eventually Gast, who had long realized the film was really about the fight, got the rights to use the footage of it.
  • The long delay in putting it together ultimately worked in the film's favor critically and commercially. Ali, long retired, was beginning to return to the public's consciousness after lighting the torch at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics; Foreman, also retired, was better known by then for the grill he pitched on TV. The film ultimately won the Oscar for Best Documentary and is considered one of the best sports documentaries ever, and the best boxing documentary.

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