Pod Insights The Rewatchables ‘Ali’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan About this episode The Rewatchables ain't easy. The Rewatchables is real. And real… is a mother-fucker. Bill, Chris, and Van revisit Michael Mann’s 2001 film ‘Ali’ starring Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, and Jon Voight.
Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Matt Pevic
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Transcript 22,415 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:05 Bill Simmons? The Rewatchables is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find Higher Learning.
0:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
0:12 Bill Simmons? And Midnight Boys.
0:14 Speaker 01 Don't forget it.
0:15 Bill Simmons? And Ringer Tailgate.
0:17 Speaker 01 Going crazy right now.
0:18 Bill Simmons? Going crazy?
0:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, man.
0:20 Chris Ryan? Jeff Kessler coming on.
0:21 Speaker 01 Kessler was nuts. We're having so much fun. We talked about Stacey Dash and Ben Carson on the last episode.
0:27 Bill Simmons? Damn. CR, The Watch, and then you're doing Beautiful Pod on Adam Friedland's podcast.
0:34 Chris Ryan? Yeah, and Talk the Thrones.
0:36 Bill Simmons? Pop on Big Picture and Talk the Thrones.
0:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
0:38 Bill Simmons? Still Thrones, same show, or we go backwards?
0:41 Chris Ryan? House of the Dragon.
0:42 Bill Simmons? Are we in the 1200s?
0:42 Chris Ryan? Yeah, we're moving slightly forward, yeah.
0:46 Bill Simmons? The Viking Era?
0:47 Chris Ryan? It is the Viking Era. It's the Norwegian national team.
0:50 Bill Simmons? I'm interested.
0:50 Chris Ryan? Erling Haaland's showing up.
0:52 Bill Simmons? Yeah. We're gonna do a movie called Ali, directed by Michael Mann, who is about to take, I think, the lead in the director rankings, or at least tied for.
1:00 Chris Ryan? As he should be.
1:01 Bill Simmons? Our guy, Michael Mann. Ali is next.
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2:52 Bill Simmons? All right, guys. Ali, a movie that we all love, that's super flawed and we all love it anyway. And it came out 25 years ago this fall, starring Will Smith, directed by our guy, Michael Mann. Sports biopics. So there's the biopics about the guys that weren't super duper famous. Cinderella Man, Rudy, Raging Bull, Lamotta was famous, but not famous famous. King Richard, Sea Biscuit, Secretariat, Chariots of Fire, Rush, really good one. Borg vs. McEnroe. Then you have like the I, Tanya, the rookie, Blind Side, those types. You have the Disney ones, like 42 and Race from Radio.
3:35 Bill Simmons? The biggest athletes I think they've ever tried to do this with are Prefontaine and Ali. Right? Where there was like, the myth around the person almost made it like, ah, you can't do a movie about them. They're too famous. And they do this with Ali and it mostly works, right?
3:53 Chris Ryan? Uh, it's the closest thing that they'll ever have to.
3:56 Bill Simmons? We're never gonna do better than this.
3:57 Chris Ryan? Yes, yes.
3:58 Speaker 01 Yeah. The Prefontaine thing was interesting because they released two Prefontaine movies within like two years of each other.
4:04 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Yeah. The better one was Without Limits, which is a really great movie.
4:08 Speaker 01 Good movie, yeah, really good movie.
4:09 Chris Ryan? That's correct.
4:10 Speaker 01 So it's Crude up and Leto, right?
4:12 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
4:12 Speaker 01 Crude up one is great, the Leto one is.
4:14 Bill Simmons? Leto one's watchable.
4:16 Speaker 01 Neither one of them are bad. Um, but I actually didn't know who Steve Prefontaine was before that movie came out.
4:22 Bill Simmons? True, whereas Ali was the most famous athlete of the 20th century.
4:25 Speaker 01 Which hangs over the movie. Ali had his own biopic, obviously, that he had starred in, and then a couple of years before this movie came out, When We Were Kings comes out. And which was like this really penetrating look into Ali versus Foreman, and that heightened my expectations for this movie, I think. I think a lot, I think that documentary affected a lot of people, the way they went to the movie.
4:45 Bill Simmons? I think that's the best sports documentary ever made.
4:48 Speaker 01 Really?
4:48 Bill Simmons? I do.
4:49 Speaker 01 No Hoop Dreams? Hoop Dreams is paralyzingly good to me.
4:52 Bill Simmons? Hoop Dreams for degree of difficulty, yes.
4:54 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
4:54 Bill Simmons? When We Were Kings, it's, I think, the perfect sports documentary.
4:58 Chris Ryan? Do you consider, would you put Last Dance in there?
5:03 Bill Simmons? I mean, Last Dance is 10 episodes.
5:05 Chris Ryan? Sure.
5:05 Bill Simmons? So that's almost like a docu-series. I don't think that could be a documentary. When We Were Kings is just like, if you wanna, I mean, this is kinda what this movie tries to do too. If you wanna kinda capture how charismatic, lovable, fascinating, galvanizing Ali was, that probably does the best job.
5:22 Chris Ryan? I think the film actually follows documentary structure in some ways. Obviously, it follows documentary sensibility, style-wise. Um, man making all these efforts to really recreate moments. Um, and yeah, it's completely stylized the way all Michael Mann stuff is, but like, he's out there with lipstick cameras. You know, like, I mean, like, in the middle of the night, shooting digitally with Will Smith running through neighborhoods. You know what I mean? So it's like, it's as real as it can get, but it feels almost like a doc in its narrative style. In that they, they have so much to cover that they're just like, we're gonna do away with the like, the arc of a character in a lot of ways, and just show these crucial moments.
6:04 Bill Simmons? But it makes sense how they do it. I agree with what you said. Where they're just like, this is about him winning the title, losing it, getting it back.
6:12 Chris Ryan? Yes.
6:12 Bill Simmons? Right? They didn't try to do the.
6:14 Chris Ryan? And it's about his political awakening, which I think is what.
6:16 Bill Simmons? But it's about those 10 years, and then they try to go in all this other stuff that, the problem I had is this either should have been, and I, I love this movie, and I've watched it a bunch of times, but it's flawed. This either could have been an hour forty-five. Or like 10 hours.
6:31 Speaker 01 Right, yeah.
6:32 Bill Simmons? You know what I mean? Because you were bringing in all his female relationships. We're bringing in Islam in a real way and Malcolm X and all these other themes that I think you need.
6:44 Bill Simmons? But it's also like, we, we, I mean, this is the weakest link of the movie. We just moved three years. We go from 1971 to 1974.
6:51 Chris Ryan? Yes.
6:52 Bill Simmons? We're like painstakingly going through all these things and all of a sudden it's like, I mean, he had 13 fights during, during that stretch.
6:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
6:59 Bill Simmons? He got his jaw broken by Norton. Um, all these things happen and they just kind of skip ahead.
7:05 Speaker 01 I think that there's a, the Ebert, we'll get to Robert, uh, Roger Ebert on this, but in his review of the movie, I think is the thing that bothered people the most about the film. Is that this movie treats Muhammad Ali in a way that he's not remembered culturally.
7:25 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
7:25 Speaker 01 Like, and.
7:26 Bill Simmons? Well, way more serious and reflective than.
7:28 Speaker 01 And like when you, when you read Roger Ebert's review, what he essentially says is that like, Ali was fun. I hung out with Ali and Ali was quippy and Ali was like quick and he was that. And when we talk about Muhammad Ali, even when people talk about, you know, all the political trials that he went through in his life, they talk about him in this way that he could put a smile on it. He did it all with this tremendous flair and.
7:51 Bill Simmons? Twinkle in his eye.
7:52 Speaker 01 Twinkle in his eye. This movie kind of explores that being part performance. And I do not think that people responded to that very well. Like there's a version of Ali and like, even like somebody like Martin Luther King Jr. You get a Santa Claus version of Martin Luther King Jr. When he's talked about historically, but if you ever really dug into his life, it was very stressful, anxiety ridden and in a lot of ways, pain.
8:19 Chris Ryan? One of the fascinating aspects of guys, and there's probably only like half a dozen that I can think of where it's like Tiger, Jordan, Ali, these people who wind up becoming almost like some icon doesn't even feel like enough of a word for them. Is that the relationship you have to them as like a younger person or as like a fan, changes once you find out more about the context of like what made them who they are. So it's like my understanding of Jordan is like, he's the best basketball player in the world. He's the most famous athlete in the world. Uh, he's i- i- in, in the cartoons, he's selling sneakers, like he's delightful. And now my attitude about him is like. Almost like a tragedy where he's tortured by competitiveness and like what happened to his father.
9:02 Chris Ryan? Or and throughout his life is just like carrying around this millstone of of of a chip on his shoulder about every single slight he's ever experienced. So that these guys can contain multitudes and I just think man decided in some ways like it would have been better if he had called the movie like the political awakening of Muhammad Ali or something like that. Like, you know, that would not have.
9:24 Bill Simmons? I have some stuff about that for later. He basically said he thinks it's a movie about defiance.
9:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
9:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:30 Bill Simmons? And so Ali's my favorite athlete ever. I mean, I like for real, like I I loved him. And when I was five years old, six years old, I started watching him on Wild World of Sports because he was on all the time. And that was like basically his weekly window and he would just go on and he didn't even have fights. There there was a joy and a curiosity and like a fun about him that even as his skills.
9:54 Speaker 01 From Boston, you were like, oh.
9:57 Bill Simmons? I just.
9:57 Speaker 01 That's a black person.
10:02 Speaker 01 You're like, wow, dad, look, you saw, I read about those in school.
10:05 Bill Simmons? I would see black people on.
10:07 Speaker 01 Don't do it. I know.
10:11 Bill Simmons? No, but the thing is you wouldn't know when he was going to be on Wild World of Sports. So you would go, you would turn it on on Saturday or, you know, it was usually Saturdays. Sometimes they'd have special shows, but it'd be like, I hope Ali's on. And then he would come on and it wasn't even like he didn't even have a fight. He would just come on to make fun of Jim McKay or Howard Cosell. But he had, and that's what I think when We Were Kings captures. Like you just see him moving through Zaire and he's, he's just so curious and loves it. He just wants to connect with everybody and I don't think the movie totally captured it.
10:43 Speaker 01 There's one specific scene that I will never forget. I'm pretty sure it's from when we were kings. They do it in this movie. They recreated uh from that documentary or maybe our earlier documentary documentary. But when Ali is flying to Africa and he sees a cockpit.
10:58 Bill Simmons? Right with the pilots, yeah.
11:00 Speaker 01 Of black pilots. That's in the doc. In the documentary.
11:07 Speaker 01 Ali is beaming with pride. Like, he's beaming with pride and he's using that to teach. And what makes Muhammad Ali, who he is as a speaker and as a like, personality, comes through. They approximated in this and it just doesn't quite feel the same.
11:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
11:27 Speaker 01 And the but I appreciated the movie for going for it. The movie is trying to show you just how small and big Ali's world was at the same time.
11:36 Bill Simmons? I think it's a win because I think this could have gone badly in so many ways. That that quality we're talking about with Ali. The only person I've seen in real life who has it is Charles Barkley.
11:46 Chris Ryan? Oh.
11:47 Bill Simmons? Like, I've watched him do it and he's like that all the time. It doesn't matter what situation he is, he's genuinely curious, he connects with people. He's he's funny, like, just enjoys life and enjoys intersecting with everybody. And everybody said that's what Ali was like. Like, it didn't matter where he was. And the movie hits it a couple of times. Like, they have that scene when he goes to meet Joe Morton at the diner.
12:10 Chris Ryan? Mm hmm.
12:11 Bill Simmons? And then he leaves and he goes outside and he runs into like the four people.
12:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:14 Bill Simmons? And he starts like messing with them.
12:16 Chris Ryan? I'm gonna come see your next fight.
12:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
12:18 Chris Ryan? He's like, you better get there early, yeah.
12:19 Bill Simmons? So so it taps into it, but um, I feel like Michael Mann's interpretation of Ali was just kind of darker than how I think Ali actually was.
12:29 Chris Ryan? Depends on how you want to read the movie. Do you want to read the movie as a a sports uh biopic where, you know, you're evaluating it on its rendition of real life events? Do you want to read the movie as a Will Smith movie, which is a movie star vehicle? And as a an act of him immersing himself in this character and transforming his body? Do you want to read it as a Michael Mann movie? And if you read it as a Michael Mann movie. The closest partner it has, and many people have commented on this, this is not like an original thought by me, but the closest partner it has is the insider.
13:03 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
13:03 Chris Ryan? And it's.
13:03 Bill Simmons? Which he had just made right before this.
13:05 Speaker 01 Right before.
13:05 Chris Ryan? And it is about a guy being subsumed by things that, no matter how big he is, are larger than him. Right? And it's about the government and religion and all these institutions trying to suppress him, weighing down on him, trying to hold him back in his evolution as a human being. That's what's interesting to Mann about this movie. You know what I mean?
13:28 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
13:28 Chris Ryan? And you can see from like, honestly, what is maybe the best 20 minutes.
13:35 Chris Ryan? That man's ever put together and maybe I I've put it up against almost any other filmmakers. Twenty minutes is that the opening twenty minutes of this movie are.
13:44 Bill Simmons? Which is the reason it's rewatchable.
13:45 Chris Ryan? Symphony.
13:46 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
13:47 Chris Ryan? That covers like eighteen different aspects of American life and does so in a way where your head is spinning around by the time. He he he knocks.
13:57 Bill Simmons? It's almost like that's why he wanted to make the movie and then he tried to figure out the rest.
14:01 Speaker 01 It really, when you watch the open, you start to think, like, you're thinking, is this gonna be one of the best movies? Why is this one of the gonna be one of the best movies ever made?
14:10 Bill Simmons? That way in twenty twenty six when I watch them like, is this gonna be?
14:13 Speaker 01 Like Sam Cooke is going, Ali is going, things are happening.
14:17 Bill Simmons? Malcolm X is.
14:18 Speaker 01 Malcolm X is speaking, it's moving, you're like.
14:20 Bill Simmons? We're going backwards on a bus and there's Emmett Till and now we're going forward again.
14:23 Speaker 01 Right, you're like, what the hell is going on? And the energy of that, he almost sets the movie up with that energy and then he slows it way down.
14:34 Chris Ryan? I mean, it's unsustainable.
14:35 Speaker 01 You couldn't do it, right?
14:36 Chris Ryan? Yeah, you couldn't.
14:37 Speaker 01 He says, I want to get into like the the finer points, I want the viscera of Ali all over me, but I'll say this, though. I think this movie is also him talking about, man, I mean, talking about what he believes Ali was. Like, he's actually trying to.
14:54 Chris Ryan? Like a theory.
14:55 Speaker 01 Right, it's a theory because if you look at Muhammad Ali and just this extraordinary life. But somebody that popped up every time you saw him. I feel like for a lot of people, we I brought it up, I said it before and like you kind of almost reiterated when you were just talking. They don't want to believe that Muhammad Ali wasn't like that. They don't want to believe that he wasn't on all the time. They don't want to believe that the government and his family, his own personal peccadilloes, like. Whether or not he could be a good, they don't want to believe that that stuff weighed on him because it kind of ruins their fairy tale about him. And man posits that the actual man is actually more interesting than the fairy tale.
15:34 Bill Simmons? I mean, you even could have gone, like what you said about Jordan. Ali, I probably read, I've read every Ali book, every Sports Illustrated, I've seen every documentary, every book, like, name it. I've consumed it because I loved Ali. Ali was like a pretty mean spirited guy sometimes, like the shit he did to Frazier.
15:53 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
15:53 Bill Simmons? Was brutal and um that was one of those things because I loved Ali and as I got older, Mark Kramer wrote a great book about it called Ghosts of Manoa.
16:03 Bill Simmons? And it's just like, what Ali did to Frazier was fucked up, you know?
16:06 Speaker 01 The fact that Frazier was helping him and the fact that they had a
16:09 Bill Simmons? No, he tried to present, he tried to push Frazier as he's the, he's the Uncle Tom. I'm on this side, he's on that side, he's corporate.
16:19 Speaker 01 Right.
16:19 Bill Simmons? And Frazier was like-
16:20 Speaker 01 Like, Frazier was like, dude, I was-
16:23 Chris Ryan? I'm trying, I'm trying to give you money, yeah.
16:25 Bill Simmons? Frazier hated his guts to the bitter end.
16:27 Speaker 01 Right.
16:28 Bill Simmons? Like, that's what led to Manila, where Frazier's like, we're fighting to the death now. I hate you this much, like, both, neither of us will ever be the same after this fight. Because of what you've done for me the last, to me the last five years. But Ali was like, a little like Jordan, like, pretty, could really get mean.
16:44 Chris Ryan? Like, yeah, and left like a, left like wreckage in his wake.
16:48 Bill Simmons? Like, that stuff he did to Floyd Patterson and Cleveland Williams and then, and then Terrell, which the movie hits. Where he's so mad that they don't say his name, like, he, he tortured Floyd Patterson. He keeps Floyd Patterson up for like an extra four rounds.
17:01 Chris Ryan? Jesus.
17:02 Bill Simmons? So he can like, keep beating the shit out of him.
17:04 Speaker 01 As an aside, I don't know what you guys' version of this would be. I'll just ask, what is this athlete is in the prime of who they are? They are unbeatable, the best they've ever been-
17:20 Chris Ryan? Just disappearing?
17:20 Speaker 01 For you, no, no, no, not disappearing, just in any sport for you. Like, if you wanted to show athletic dominance and excellence, what would you show?
17:27 Bill Simmons? I would show Ali against Cleveland Williams.
17:29 Speaker 01 It, bar none, it's not even close. A lethal 215-pound killing machine. The way he breaks him down, if you, that, that fight-
17:39 Bill Simmons? Cleveland Williams was good.
17:40 Speaker 01 That fight is on YouTube.
17:42 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
17:42 Speaker 01 Watch, watch him-
17:43 Chris Ryan? So you're asking for like a single game, not like a-
17:46 Speaker 01 A single game, a single thing.
17:47 Bill Simmons? Jordan against the 93 Suns.
17:49 Speaker 01 Right, like, but if you watch, he comes out first half of the, the half of the first round, feels him out. And then he's got, I got him. And he just starts this beautiful symphony of destruction.
18:01 Chris Ryan? Yeah, there's, there's, it's not for me, it's, it's hard for me to pick like individual games. There's like swaths of Bo Jackson or Michael Vick.
18:09 Speaker 01 Hmm.
18:09 Chris Ryan? And especially Bonds.
18:11 Speaker 01 Right.
18:12 Chris Ryan? Like, this is going out, like, it doesn't matter. And, you know, that's, it bonds his mentality at that point where he was like, there's just nothing you can do to beat me.
18:21 Bill Simmons? Brady, second half, Super Bowl Falcons. No, come on, dude. Five straight touchdown drives, all the two points? Yeah, but, I mean, Ali's, he's the best heavyweight ever. I would put the Cleveland Williams fight, give me every other heavyweight, he's winning.
18:36 Speaker 01 There's nobody, there's no one at that weight you can put in the ring with him and they're gonna beat him.
18:39 Bill Simmons? He's the most charismatic athlete we've ever had. He was in the running for most handsome. I mean, Ali was beautiful. Everybody, everybody loved him. He was, everyone was attracted to him.
18:50 Chris Ryan? He's probably the richest, would you say he is the richest subject for sports writing, ever?
18:56 Bill Simmons? The sport, he, he seduced all those sports writers.
19:00 Chris Ryan? Like lip sites in the movie, right?
19:02 Bill Simmons? He would hang out with all of them, especially when they were in Africa, because former got hurt. And Ali had like an extra six weeks with all those guys, like Norman Nailers down there, or maybe he was at Manila, one of the, the two times when he was in locations like that, he would spend real time with them. And they would write the most flattering, like, they fucking loved him. Dick Shap, all these people. He just knew how to play the game. But it goes back to the Barclay thing I mentioned, like, he genuinely was like that. He liked being around whoever. He didn't like being alone. That's why some of the stuff in this movie, I'm like, I just feel like Ali was around people more.
19:36 Chris Ryan? The thing is, is that this-
19:37 Speaker 01 He's constantly around people in this movie.
19:39 Bill Simmons? Well, there's times when he's like alone, and so that, I think if he was alone, there was probably a woman in there.
19:43 Speaker 01 Like, not to, not to cut your wisdom, CR, but like, there's, I think one of the constant themes in this movie is that he is suffocated. He can't do anything.
19:53 Chris Ryan? Well, he's always got a photographer, he's always got a spiritual guide, he's always got a, a wife of, or girlfriend.
19:59 Bill Simmons? Bundini selling his belt.
20:00 Speaker 01 Bundini, and all of these people's problems, he's so singular in his charisma and his capability, that all of these people are like, Champ, help me. Champ, what are we gonna do? Champ, what's going on?
20:13 Bill Simmons? Well, he's, he's probably the all-time most exploited. Celebrity we've had, like in terms of entourage, in terms of the Nation of Islam just taking most of his purse, um, multiple wives, like just, you know, he was broke by the time it was like nineteen seventy nine, he had no money left.
20:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
20:32 Bill Simmons? Um, people just stealing from him left and right.
20:35 Chris Ryan? I, uh, tried to find a bunch of interviews, what I was gonna say is I, I tried to find a bunch of interviews with man about it and he's obviously like so, so articulate about his own work.
20:44 Bill Simmons? There was one great one, the, how the Deadline Hollywood one.
20:46 Chris Ryan? I haven't found him address this necessarily, but I really wonder whether like the half of him wanted to make a Malcolm X movie. Because this, for the first half of this movie is a Malcolm X movie. Um, I mean, in, in a lot of ways, it's about like Ali being enthralled to this guy, being pulled away from him by the Nation of Islam.
21:05 Bill Simmons? It's its own movie and it's fascinating.
21:07 Chris Ryan? It, this is the same thing happened to me on the rewatch that happened to me when I saw it the first time. It's basically every time I watch this movie, I started, I'm like, holy shit, this is the best movie I've ever seen. Huh, this is Malcolm X movie. And then like, I'm so disoriented that the second half of the film kind of like slips away a little bit until Zaire. And then the second time I watch it, if I, if I go back and restart the film, I'm like, oh, this is really, really, really good. This is awesome. Cause once you know the rhythm of it and know where it's gonna go and know what it leaves out and know what it accentuates. It feels just a little bit more like in the pocket. You know what I mean? First watches with this is, is tough.
21:46 Speaker 01 So you know what the movie doesn't do, which the Malcolm X character does? So a lot of times when you watch films that are set in this like rational, racial reckoning period of the sixties. They give you a lot of like news clipping, stock footage.
22:02 Chris Ryan? Hold your hand.
22:03 Speaker 01 They give you, uh, fire hoses and they give you dogs and they give you, look at the people marching.
22:09 Bill Simmons? Here's George Wallace.
22:10 Speaker 01 This movie sets all that up through the character of Malcolm X.
22:15 Chris Ryan? Yep.
22:15 Speaker 01 It's like Malcolm X who talks about, uh, the, the black churches and the four little girls. It's Malcolm X who you see like, I am a, a black America's vengeance. I am the pain. You see that in him.
22:29 Chris Ryan? Hmm.
22:30 Speaker 01 And then you see, uh, like. Cassius Clay at that point, learning about it and connecting to it through him. Since the movie doesn't seem concerned with doing all of the other tropes that other movies do. They put it all into a character. And that performance is phenomenal.
22:48 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
22:48 Speaker 01 By Mario Van Peebles.
22:49 Bill Simmons? I text you guys that the other day, I always forget like how great he is.
22:52 Chris Ryan? This movie. It, it, it, the first half of this film, that performance, a lot of it exists in the shadow of Malcolm X. Which happens nine years previous, right? And then you get into the whole like, at one point, Spike's attached to this film.
23:07 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
23:07 Chris Ryan? You know, at various points, Oliver Stone is and wants Denzel to be in it, like to be Ali. I mean, it is a fascinating text for that decade of filmmaking and those filmmakers in that sense.
23:18 Bill Simmons? That scene when, when they're in Africa and he's excited to see Malcolm and then slowly realizes he's got to get away from him.
23:24 Speaker 01 Bro.
23:24 Bill Simmons? It's so, and the way Van Peebles plays that.
23:27 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And Jeffrey Wright kind of like looking off and not sure whether he should take a picture of it or not.
23:33 Speaker 01 He's like, yo, that's like, he go, yo, that's my man. That's our guy.
23:36 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
23:37 Speaker 01 You, you, like, you see them and then you know that they're in the movie at least that they won't see each other again. And Ali thinks it, did I read this right? Ali thinks it before he says it.
23:47 Chris Ryan? Yes. Oh, yeah.
23:48 Speaker 01 He goes, he's, he's standing there and he's with his friend. We never get to hear the inner monologue of Muhammad Ali because we think that his talent is so effervescent that it just flows out of him like gifted by God. But he's standing in front of this incredible historical figure that's been his friend and he thinks you shouldn't have done it. He builds up the courage to say it. And then Malcolm X's face is just drains, man.
24:15 Bill Simmons? They were really close. Like, I think they started hanging out in 62. And then when he started feuding with Elijah Muhammad, it was about like the adultery stuff and that, that became the, the breaking point.
24:28 Chris Ryan? Mm-hmm.
24:29 Bill Simmons? And then, what?
24:32 Speaker 01 Go ahead. I like this. Tell us more about the nation, Bill X.
24:38 Speaker 01 The honorable Bill X. The honorable Bill X. The honorable Bill X.
24:43 Speaker 04 Honestly, it would be just an amazing final act for you is to convert to the nation.
24:47 Speaker 01 Like, when Bill X starts preaching about Yaku.
24:49 Bill Simmons? First of all, I'd be William X, not Bill X. No, but the movie makes it seem they had a conflict, but they don't really explain what the conflict was about. And it was about Malcolm X, who was like the guy underneath Elijah Muhammad, who didn't like some of the... He felt he was a hypocrite. And, but it had a lot to do with the adultery stuff.
25:08 Speaker 01 Had a lot to do with...
25:10 Bill Simmons? And a whole bunch of other stuff.
25:11 Speaker 01 A bunch of stuff out there.
25:12 Bill Simmons? Yeah, but it's like it's a movie.
25:14 Speaker 01 And the government was involved in driving away.
25:16 Chris Ryan? And that's actually the government stuff is the most...
25:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:19 Chris Ryan? It's not the most, but like it's an interesting tactic and it almost suggests a wider canvas he wanted to work with. But man, when you get the Ted Levine scene with Leon, when he's like...
25:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:29 Chris Ryan? And we want to know about this guy.
25:31 Bill Simmons? Well, I want to ask Craig about that because this movie, so it comes out in 01 when everybody knows everything about Ali and Michael Mann makes the movie assuming, "Oh, you know, I don't need to go into this because you know this," right? It's like when, when MLK dies and he has, and just Ali's looking out, he's on the roof.
25:51 Chris Ryan? Yep.
25:51 Bill Simmons? And there's just, and he's like, "I don't need to show you like the three minutes of what happened in America because you already know this." And there's a lot of...
25:58 Speaker 04 We see the riots, like we see...
25:59 Bill Simmons? I know, but he does it quick. Like he gets in and out because he's like, "Oh, I assume you know this. I assume you know this." But you're, I mean, you, you saw this movie for the first time, right? Could you follow all the stuff that happened or were you confused?
26:10 Speaker 04 I did feel like there were moments where I was a little confused and I don't think this movie holds your hand in terms of...
26:16 Chris Ryan? No, it starts, it does one, it's, it's weird that it starts with a declaration of what day the movie starts.
26:24 Bill Simmons? And then we never see another day.
26:25 Chris Ryan? And then never does a timestamp again.
26:26 Speaker 04 I often felt like, I don't know what year I'm in. I don't know where I am.
26:29 Chris Ryan? It helps to like basically have his Wikipedia page open and be going to these fights and as you find out like, okay, so...
26:36 Bill Simmons? I had that in What's Age The Worst for this. I actually don't know why he didn't put dates and kind of root you in where we were. And I, I, it just seemed like a miss. Maybe that Michael Mann's like, "I'm too good of a director to do that." But I really think it would have helped.
26:50 Speaker 01 I think more than anything, the reason why it's such a big swing is a biopic. And Ray kind of follows this same type of basic.
27:00 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
27:02 Speaker 01 He really wants it to be about the characters. He, he tries to tell the story of Muhammad Ali's life and not necessarily a recounting of Muhammad.
27:12 Bill Simmons? So it's like his discovery with Islam, his discovery through women, like who, like who he should end up being with.
27:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:20 Bill Simmons? His discovery to what's important to him and he doesn't need the title to be who he is.
27:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, al- almost every single scene where something significant happens, you could leave the scene as if the scene is asking you, what if it were you? Like, what if it were you and you, and you had found this, uh, new religion or movement that you were into, but it went against what your father wanted? What if you fell in love with a woman and she didn't conform to what it was this thing like it every, and you take this huge, huge cultural figure and you just make him a god?
27:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And then there are some ideas that are so huge that man's trying to illustrate very quickly. So like young Cash is seeing the blond haired, blue eyed Jesus that his father's painting is gotta do so much work. For like this kid and the little kid, that's a little kid from the wire, right?
28:09 Speaker 01 That's my show.
28:10 Chris Ryan? Yeah, doing such an amazing job of like, kinda like, what the fuck is this?
28:14 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
28:14 Chris Ryan? And then that is why, like, you know, however many years later, he's, he's in this headspace where he's open to, to converting.
28:22 Bill Simmons? So man said, uh, if there's a theme to the movie, it's defiance. Uh, we defied that along with every expectation about him. Goes through a whole bunch of stuff about when he's gonna make himself a heavyweight championship of the world, he's gonna be a motivational personification of something totally different, a black man in his own culture with his own pride. And then that was what I think he's trying to do with the 10 years. Here's, here's the climate Ali walked into.
28:52 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
28:52 Bill Simmons? Here was his motivation, here's where he wanted to end up. And then everything culminates in Africa, which is why the running scene is so long in Zaire.
29:00 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
29:01 Bill Simmons? Cause I think Michael, that's the one time Michael Mann's doing some handholding. He's like, I really want you to understand this, this running thing.
29:07 Speaker 01 What a big deal.
29:08 Bill Simmons? He's really having, he's had, this is his epiphany. Um.
29:14 Speaker 01 Michael Mann, Last of the Mohicans, Heat, The Insider, Ali.
29:19 Chris Ryan? This is the Imperial phase.
29:21 Speaker 01 Jesus Christ.
29:21 Chris Ryan? This is, this is him like at the center of everything. And all the big, major, the major movie stars, the great actors are like lining up.
29:29 Speaker 01 Run it off again. Last of the Mohicans, Heat, The Insider, Ali. I don't know.
29:36 Chris Ryan? That's, that's ninety-two to oh one.
29:38 Speaker 01 It's just like, with, with that, with the variety of the movies.
29:42 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
29:43 Speaker 01 I, I don't know if it gets much better than that.
29:45 Bill Simmons? It's a pretty good four in a row that have nothing to do in common, but then there's common threads in each one. He, uh, I feel like, I wrote this when I did my review of this movie a long time ago, that I think he felt like if I pull this off, this will be my legacy one. I've done some really good shit. I'm one of the best directors in the world. But this is the hardest IP to pull off.
30:05 Chris Ryan? Mm-hmm.
30:06 Bill Simmons? I'm gonna try this. I'm gonna go for it. It's also like, I don't, I think twenty-five years later, I don't think a white guy's directing this. I just, I just don't think it happens.
30:14 Chris Ryan? It was kinda controversial then.
30:15 Bill Simmons? It was controversial in oh one. I think now it's, how did you feel about that, by the way?
30:20 Speaker 01 Um, I, I've always wondered what a movie that was a little bit more culturally at home would feel like. What a black, and look, we have not stopped making, uh, Muhammad Ali stories. Like he pops up in all kinds of different stuff. We just see it all the time. But like, I, I, I did wonder that, but I'm gonna be real with you, man. The, I, I think maybe man compensated or overcompensated. The beginning of this movie is very black. Like, it, it, it is, it is very black. Maybe he was trying to do a little bit too much. You know, like when you, when you and your homeboys are, like you got a white homeboy and you got listening to Tribe Called Quest.
31:03 Speaker 01 And he goes, yeah, man, these guys, they really influenced Kanye. And you're like. Shut up bitch. Like.
31:11 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
31:12 Bill Simmons? I shouldn't have said that too.
31:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's like we, I know, you ain't gotta perform.
31:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
31:17 Speaker 01 Let's just enjoy the music. So, but, and, and I.
31:20 Chris Ryan? So the version of that in this is like, can be like, what if we also went to the Apollo the night Sam Cooke is playing?
31:25 Speaker 01 So like, he's like, okay, well, I'll show you guys. Well, I can make, I can make a movie with these people as well. But to me, it feels authentic though. Like it, that kind of grounds the movie.
31:37 Bill Simmons? I think that's one of the best sports movie scenes ever. And it's one of the best scenes of Michael Mann's career, if not the best one. We'll talk about it when we do rewatchables. Yeah. So he's got that. And then you have Will Smith. He's only taken two swings in his career. It's this and Six Degrees of Separation. Other than that, every choice was safe. This one, he knows. He even said, uh, I have a quote in here, I guess from later. Um, I'll find it. But he's 33 years old. And he's basically like, this is it. Like I'm in the prime of my career. I got, I gotta do this. This is, this is my moment. Spends a year learning how to box and talk like Ali. Basically it takes two years to make this movie. Cause he wants it to be perfect. And also like Ali approved him.
32:23 Bill Simmons? Ali, Ali had the rights to this and, you know, wasn't gonna do it unless he felt good about the lead person.
32:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
32:29 Bill Simmons? Um, he's as close as you're gonna get to an actor being Ali, but you're just not, just don't see how somebody becomes Ali. He, he does the best job. There's scenes where he comes alive as Ali.
32:40 Chris Ryan? Mm hmm.
32:41 Bill Simmons? But it always feels like Will Smith.
32:43 Chris Ryan? Yes. I, I never, I never forget. I never, I never forget what I'm watching.
32:49 Speaker 01 Mike Lowry playing Ali.
32:50 Bill Simmons? Mike Lowry.
32:52 Chris Ryan? There are, are moments of real beauty. I think all of the physicality of his performance is amazing. The boxing, the running.
33:00 Bill Simmons? The boxing's excellent.
33:01 Chris Ryan? Him, him like holding court or being in like at a press conference, the intimate scenes, the scenes of the women, the scenes of his religious conversion. I feel like I'm watching a historical reenactment, kinda.
33:14 Bill Simmons? This.
33:15 Chris Ryan? Which is the, usually the problem with biopics.
33:17 Speaker 01 My, my hottest take is that this is one of the strongest performances in a biopic whenever Will is not talking. And I know that that feels silly, like that almost can't be a thing. But there's so mu- there's so much action happening, there's so much drama happening and that a lot of times in order for like his reaction to Malcolm X in that scene and just the one line. Like when he's understated.
33:46 Bill Simmons? When he sees Michael Michelle for the first time.
33:48 Speaker 01 Yeah. And he's like, hey, all he nails all of that. Every single thing, every way, everything that when he, when they don't call his name. And he decides he's not going to be inducted. All of that's, but when he starts trying to do the Ali voice.
34:05 Bill Simmons? It's impossible.
34:06 Speaker 01 You can't do that.
34:07 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
34:07 Speaker 01 That's not gonna happen and that's kind of when maybe you lose a little bit.
34:11 Chris Ryan? And it's weird because there are so many figures around him that are so iconic and I can't help but feel like Michael T. Williamson is doing Don King. I'm like, this is fucking awesome.
34:22 Bill Simmons? That one scene when he does the Don King in the outside when he tells him former got hurt.
34:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:29 Bill Simmons? He becomes Don King for like seventy five seconds.
34:32 Chris Ryan? Not only that. Also like Ron Silver and Jamie Foxx and.
34:36 Speaker 01 All of these guys, Cosell, you feel like you're in the middle of it. Michael T. Williamson kind of like inhabits the energy of Don King. Like Don King feels like a little fucking sleazy, a little fucking like dangerous. Like it's a really understated performance.
34:54 Bill Simmons? Who some people said was super naive at all times, but then other people would say had pretty good sense.
35:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:01 Bill Simmons? So he sniffed out the Don King thing pretty early. We'll talk about all those actors in a second. Craig, who is, who's Ali now? Like this is the most beloved celebrity we had for, I would say the entire nineteen seventies and eighties. I think people loved him the most.
35:21 Speaker 04 You guys could probably tell me what year or what kind of era that it flipped, but boxing just culturally expired. And I, it's, I have no relationship to boxing other than like.
35:31 Bill Simmons? Do you think there's a celebrity though, anybody?
35:33 Speaker 04 In boxing or you're saying in all sports?
35:35 Bill Simmons? In anything.
35:36 Speaker 04 Well, it's hard for me to even know how you felt about Ali. Because I wasn't there and I don't really get it. So.
35:42 Bill Simmons? I'm trying to think like who.
35:43 Speaker 01 Who is that for you? Who?
35:45 Speaker 04 The biggest athlete of your life.
35:47 Bill Simmons? Highest approval rating.
35:48 Speaker 01 Like.
35:49 Speaker 04 Highest approval rating?
35:50 Speaker 01 No, just who's the biggest athlete?
35:51 Speaker 04 I mean, probably Tom Brady or LeBron?
35:53 Speaker 01 It's just, it's nowhere close to the significance.
35:55 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
35:57 Speaker 01 And LeBron James is a massive, huge guy who has political, it's just nowhere near. Nowhere near the importance, there's no way. There's, there's, there's no way, it's impossible.
36:05 Bill Simmons? I've only seen it. Ali, which I caught in the tail end as a little kid growing up into it. Jordan. And then Tiger got close, he didn't have the personality.
36:15 Chris Ryan? No, I think it's almost more common for us now to experience that kind of thing, or at least in our lifetimes, like on a local level. Like I would say Iverson in Philly for a couple of years had like this. Magic to him and this larger than life aspect.
36:30 Bill Simmons? A lot of people also didn't like him.
36:31 Chris Ryan? I know.
36:32 Bill Simmons? Which would put some more toward Ali in the sixties.
36:34 Chris Ryan? But, but he was not, I mean, we're talking about like a global, like if this dude walked into a restaurant in China, people would be like, that's fucking Muhammad Ali. You know what I mean?
36:44 Speaker 01 Well, also, it's sometimes unfair when we do this because like. The sixties are the adolescence of America.
36:51 Chris Ryan? Yeah, and, and of mass culture.
36:53 Speaker 01 Right, of mass, of mass culture of America, like this is when we're like, okay. This is like we're going through it again, is this thing gonna work? Or we're gonna figure out a way around this and the people who embody that. They live as symbols for that forever. And we're just in a different spot now, Jordan is probably. That guy for my direct generation, but. His, his grand contribution is his ability to be liked.
37:22 Bill Simmons? And sneakers.
37:23 Speaker 04 That would have been amazing if you were like, it's Mr. Beast.
37:26 Speaker 01 That could be.
37:27 Speaker 04 Like Taylor Swift, I don't know.
37:29 Speaker 01 I like Mr. Beast too.
37:30 Bill Simmons? Well, I think the thing that pushed Ali over the top for everybody was that he actually sacrificed something.
37:35 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm.
37:36 Bill Simmons? That's what I'm saying. When, when you're sacrificing.
37:40 Bill Simmons? Your own, all the, not just money, but this part of his prime, all these different things, that's, then you're at another level.
37:46 Speaker 04 Well, I do think now, there's a bit of like a sanitation to the most famous people in the world now.
37:52 Bill Simmons? Yeah, true.
37:52 Speaker 04 There is nobody putting themselves out there like Muhammad.
37:55 Bill Simmons? Yeah, what would Ali be like in social media era? I know, the thing is though, it's like, I don't, he's got a personal photographer flying, surround, like, following around.
38:07 Speaker 01 He knows he's important.
38:08 Bill Simmons? He's going on Wide World of Sports. He's got sports writers, like, in his coterie, like, he is documenting himself in real time. But was never overexposed. I don't, I don't think.
38:18 Speaker 01 Well, it was, might have been impossible to overexpose.
38:20 Bill Simmons? Might have been impossible in the seventies to be overexposed.
38:23 Speaker 01 Also, in many ways, and the Jordan thing I was talking about, you actually doubled down on it when you said the sneakers. Jordan kind of invents that type of sneaker culture, but at the same time, Jordan's main thing is that like, he was beloved as a pitchman and that, that became what people wanted to be. Before Jordan, the actual archetype, archetype for the modern athlete was Muhammad Ali. That's, that's who people wanted to be. Jordan actually kind of changed that. Jordan didn't want to have any type of political stance. He didn't want to have any type of countercultural significance or relevance. He just wanted to be the guy that had the number one approval rating everywhere. So whatever he told you to buy, you embodied.
39:03 Bill Simmons? It worked. Also, super handsome like Ali.
39:06 Speaker 01 Super handsome.
39:08 Bill Simmons? I gave for Will Smith. I'm giving him the Peter North Award for most effort put in a movie.
39:12 Speaker 01 Okay.
39:14 Bill Simmons? He put on thirty-five pounds.
39:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
39:16 Bill Simmons? He had to try to figure out Ali's weird Louisville accent, which I think is like almost impossible.
39:23 Speaker 01 Bryson Tull.
39:23 Bill Simmons? It's like a drawl, drawl combined with, like, there's a sing-songiness to it. Um, I don't know. It's, it's, I've never heard anybody do it a hundred percent successfully.
39:35 Speaker 01 The voice is part of the thing.
39:36 Bill Simmons? People try to do Barclay, like, you just can't do it. It's like a one-on-one voice.
39:39 Speaker 01 Right.
39:40 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Um, we'll take a break. There's a couple other things to discuss and do the categories. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. A lot of times it feels like there is just not enough time in the day, especially when you get older. Time speeds up, I'm telling you. It's the thing I've noticed. I try to, I try to make my day slow down. I do some multitasking, try to get the same amount of sleep every day. Everybody's got some tricks. As you get older, you figure out more and more tricks to try to, try to schedule your time better. Well, a smart trick to save time when hiring is to use ZipRecruiter, our old friends. Try it free at ziprecruiter.com/rewatchables. That's us. With powerful matching technology and a new feature that shows the most interested candidates
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41:55 Bill Simmons? So, one thing Michael Mann said about Ali, he said, "He represented the enormous possibility, the poetics of actual self-determination, had to define not just the establishment, not just white America, not just people who are feared militancy, but also the NAACP, Joe Louis, you name it, everybody who was centrist and had an interest in maintaining the status quo." Now, he says this in 2017, he says, "We are still talking identity politics in 2017. Try understanding that perspective in 1964."
42:28 Bill Simmons? It's a good point.
42:29 Speaker 01 That's a good point, yeah.
42:31 Bill Simmons? Jamie Foxx.
42:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:35 Bill Simmons? So, he was in Annie Givens Sunday as Willie Beaman. It's the first time we're like, "Oh, Jamie can act. This is pretty good." He's unbelievable in this. And I remember one of my big takeaways seeing this in the theater was like, "Fuck, Jamie Foxx is a great actor. I had no idea."
42:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:51 Bill Simmons? There's an interesting dynamic here, Van, where he's kind of the Tom Brady sixth round pick to Will Smith, Peyton Manning, of like, "Oh, you're just supposed to be over here. It's Will Smith time." And nobody sees the Jamie Foxx thing really coming yet? And who wins the Oscar first? Jamie Foxx.
43:10 Speaker 01 Yeah. There's actually a, Jamie Foxx was hosting something. It might have been the MTV Awards or something like that, to where Will was still in the era of unveiling his body. Before the movie came out, we looked at this, "God damn, Will, then God swole." And I remember Jamie comes over to say, on this whatever bit they're doing on stage, Jamie comes over to like say what's up to Will, and Will takes off his jacket, and everybody's like, "Oh, my God, it's Will Smith." And then he gives his jacket to Jamie Foxx. And then Jamie Foxx kind of like slinks away. He plays it up, you know, Will's kind of the star, he's kind of the co-star and everything like that, that the whole Ali thing is happening. In two years, legitimately, that changed.
43:55 Speaker 01 It didn't change to where Jamie Foxx ever usurped Will as a star. I don't think that that quite happened. But I think, do you think that happened?
44:03 Bill Simmons? I don't. I think it was inconceivable that he would be even be in the conversation.
44:07 Speaker 01 But he caught.
44:08 Bill Simmons? And then he was.
44:09 Speaker 01 Because like, collateral, the collateral Ray year is what, 2004?
44:14 Bill Simmons? Mid 2000s, yeah.
44:15 Speaker 01 Like, by that point, everybody's in awe of Jamie and everything that he could do.
44:20 Bill Simmons? He was also more, I think, liked. In the, in the Hollywood range.
44:25 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
44:26 Speaker 01 Will Smith?
44:27 Bill Simmons? Well, Will Smith at that point was like, he was married, he was, he was just a major star. Jamie was accessible.
44:32 Speaker 01 Huh.
44:33 Bill Simmons? Jamie was at the, you know, partying, he was, he would come on the late night shows.
44:37 Speaker 01 I think they were, they, I think they had two different parts of Hollywood. I think Jamie's Hollywood was a little bit more rap pack. Will's Hollywood was a little bit more corporate.
44:46 Bill Simmons? Yes.
44:46 Speaker 01 And we, it was probably more rap.
44:47 Chris Ryan? Yeah, but I, and I think that they kind of managed their careers at a certain point where it was like Fox is still like, I want to do TV, I want to host stuff, I want to do music.
44:56 Speaker 01 Comedy.
44:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah, like, I want to be in, in everything and Smith's running his career essentially on the Tom Cruise track of like, when, when you do this, it has to hit, it has to count.
45:09 Speaker 01 Jamie busted everybody's ass. They did, like Jamie is legitimately one of the most talented people, like Sammy Davis Jr. type shit that, that we've ever seen.
45:17 Bill Simmons? He's great.
45:18 Speaker 01 And then as soon.
45:19 Bill Simmons? He's funny as fucking shit too.
45:20 Speaker 01 Like Bundini almost greases the skids for Ray.
45:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
45:25 Speaker 01 You see the same type of DNA in this performance, like the same type, and then what, he's out of there then.
45:32 Bill Simmons? And then we have Van Peebles as Malcolm.
45:36 Bill Simmons? Who, I think this is probably the, the best he's been in a movie like this, right? He had a good career, but I, I think.
45:42 Chris Ryan? I mean, can you imagine how fucking hard it must be to play Malcolm X after Denzel Washington?
45:46 Bill Simmons? Right after Denzel?
45:47 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
45:47 Bill Simmons? Like, not that far after.
45:50 Speaker 01 Man, Mario Van Peebles is a fucking genius. Like Mario Van Peebles is one of those guys, when you go back and look at the totality of things that Mario Van Peebles has done and done them well, that is a fucking A plus creative, man. New Jack City, it's Mario Van Peebles. Like, you know what I'm saying? So like.
46:08 Bill Simmons? Here's who else is in this movie. Jeffrey Wright is Howard Bingham.
46:12 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
46:13 Bill Simmons? Giancarlo Esposito, who's great in this movie. I like that there's only like one scene with him and JB Fox when they're drinking and I was like, I could, I could have done five more of those.
46:22 Chris Ryan? It's like it's water.
46:23 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Ron Silver's Angelo Dundee, Joe Morton, Chauncey Eskridge.
46:30 Bill Simmons? Ted Levine.
46:31 Chris Ryan? Briefly.
46:31 Bill Simmons? Leon. Barry Shabaka Henley. Michael T. Bruce McCall even has a.
46:37 Chris Ryan? McGill.
46:38 Bill Simmons? Bruce McGill. I wrote down McCall again. Bruce McGill. Um, all of them are great. All of them are graduated. That guy's.
46:44 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
46:44 Bill Simmons? Nona Gay, Michael Michelle.
46:46 Chris Ryan? Fucking Paul Rodriguez is Freddie Pacheco.
46:48 Bill Simmons? Rodriguez.
46:48 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
46:49 Bill Simmons? Freddie Pacheco. Does he have a line?
46:51 Chris Ryan? No.
46:52 Bill Simmons? Does he talk?
46:52 Chris Ryan? I think maybe in the director's cut, he has a line.
46:54 Bill Simmons? Yeah. And then, uh, John Boyd is Cosell. Which is another one shouldn't have worked.
46:59 Chris Ryan? Did you say Jada?
47:00 Bill Simmons? Well, I hadn't even gotten to the ladies yet.
47:02 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
47:03 Bill Simmons? But John Boyd is Cosell, who he gets nominated for an Oscar. It's like you can't, who can play Howard Cosell? That's like doing an SNL sketch and he's really good.
47:11 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
47:11 Bill Simmons? And I think probably makes him a little more kind of a good hang than Howard Cosell was by all accounts.
47:18 Chris Ryan? Well, it's the intimate, the intimate moments between Ali and Cosell are the ones that really sell it. When he's like doing the coffee and he's like, have some coffee with your sugar. And then he's like, they're coming for you.
47:28 Bill Simmons? They're coming for you. Um, and then Nona Gay, Jada Pinkett and Michael Michelle.
47:35 Bill Simmons? I went to an Ali junket because I wrote a piece for Page Two. I got to spend 10 minutes with Nona Gay.
47:41 Chris Ryan? Yes.
47:41 Bill Simmons? Who was the best looking person I'd ever seen up to that point in 2001.
47:45 Chris Ryan? It's a thing. It's impressive.
47:47 Bill Simmons? Really, really impressive.
47:48 Chris Ryan? It's, it's a thing, man. That's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful woman.
47:56 Bill Simmons? Um, first script was with Sony, 1992. Ended up at Columbia Pictures in 98. Ron Howard, Barry Sonnenfield.
48:04 Chris Ryan? Can I have five seconds on this?
48:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
48:06 Chris Ryan? It is worth noting that I, this script was like in development hell. This was like a.
48:11 Bill Simmons? Almost 10 years.
48:12 Chris Ryan? Uh, in the eighties, they were talking about doing this.
48:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
48:15 Chris Ryan? I think there was different guys attached. There's, the credits are, I think Gregory Howard has the story credit or some original credit.
48:22 Bill Simmons? Screenplay people.
48:23 Chris Ryan? Then there's two other writers credited. Then Eric Roth and Michael Mann also get a screenplay credit. At various points, this was going to be the childhood story of him up to 40. Like it was, there's lots of different versions of this out there. It's it's kind of a miracle the movie hangs together as well as it does.
48:39 Bill Simmons? Well, how about Ali with approval of everything?
48:42 Chris Ryan? Yes.
48:42 Bill Simmons? Which never really works either.
48:43 Speaker 01 It never works.
48:45 Bill Simmons? And had, at that point, he was fading, but he had his wife.
48:47 Speaker 01 And they keep trying to do it, and it never makes good movies.
48:50 Chris Ryan? Basically, everybody from you older is like, that's not Ali. You know what I mean? Like, you're gonna have to.
48:56 Bill Simmons? Including Ali.
48:56 Chris Ryan? Voting public is gonna be pretty harsh with this.
48:59 Bill Simmons? So Spike Lee wanted to do it, was in negotiations, and Will Smith really wanted Michael Mann to do it.
49:07 Bill Simmons? Interesting.
49:07 Chris Ryan? Is it apocryphal that Will Smith told Spike Lee he was gonna have to expand his boundaries if he wanted to direct this?
49:14 Bill Simmons? I had that in my notes, didn't, couldn't imagine him saying that to Spike Lee.
49:19 Bill Simmons? Now, I gotta say, like,
49:22 Bill Simmons? Malcolm's too important to this movie. I don't know how Spike could have directed it.
49:26 Chris Ryan? I don't know if that.
49:27 Bill Simmons? I think it's too weird.
49:28 Chris Ryan? Would have been the same film. It would not have been the same film.
49:30 Speaker 01 I think that there's a version of this. I think that the Spike Lee movie, they're two vastly different movies. Vastly different movies. I think the Spike Lee movie might have had more cultural relevance. It might have been more, it might have been thematically tighter in terms of what he was trying to say about Malcolm X. Uh, excuse me, Malcolm X, Ali.
49:49 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
49:49 Speaker 01 It would have been a smaller movie, and Will just liked movies for everyone, and Spike doesn't make movies for everyone.
49:56 Bill Simmons? And probably wanted to work with Michael Mann, too, who was scorching hot at the time.
50:01 Speaker 01 Has Will ever worked with Spike?
50:03 Bill Simmons? I don't think, this was, this was the deal breaker after this.
50:06 Chris Ryan? What year's 25th hour? Is that '02?
50:08 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
50:10 Chris Ryan? So we get that instead.
50:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, like.
50:12 Bill Simmons? I think that's a win for us.
50:14 Chris Ryan? For us, yes. Maybe Spike Lee would have liked to have directed the Muhammad Ali movie.
50:19 Speaker 01 But I will say this, it is interesting that Will Smith has never worked with Spike Lee. Most of the guy guys.
50:28 Bill Simmons? So the biggest black actor we've had since younger than Denzel.
50:32 Speaker 01 Right.
50:33 Bill Simmons? And probably the only person who didn't work with Spike Lee was Will Smith.
50:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, this is just an interesting thing.
50:39 Bill Simmons? It's also.
50:39 Speaker 01 Did Jamie work with him?
50:40 Bill Simmons? Uh, with Spike?
50:42 Speaker 01 I don't think so.
50:42 Bill Simmons? I don't think so. But it is worth noting also that Will was the first person, I, I, I think he, he turned down Django. And then Jamie does Django.
50:53 Speaker 01 But because I think maybe those types of movies.
50:55 Bill Simmons? Are like, I can't do it.
50:56 Speaker 01 I don't do it.
50:57 Bill Simmons? He can't make, you know, After Earth or whatever the fuck that was, you know, like, like he won't.
51:02 Speaker 01 I remember.
51:03 Bill Simmons? That first year at Grantland, I wrote a huge piece about this.
51:05 Speaker 01 Did you?
51:06 Bill Simmons? About Will Smith, it's the Will Smith career arc and it was about Will Smith. Um, the Django thing, saying everything about his career decisions in the twentieth, twenty first century, basically. It was too hot for him. It was, he studied it. He wa, he was honestly like an advanced metrics guy. Him and his agents studied box office and the movies that made the most money and they were all like outer space, big action and that was like, he's just like, I just want to do those. And never really wanted to experiment with anything else. So Django was like too much for him.
51:40 Speaker 01 After Earth.
51:40 Bill Simmons? Jamie stepped right in.
51:41 Speaker 01 I liked it.
51:42 Bill Simmons? I mean, it's also the craziest thing about the slap is that's the dude who had the most, like his, his.
51:47 Speaker 01 The most carefully.
51:48 Bill Simmons? Public perception and his career was so carefully managed.
51:51 Speaker 01 The, the crazy thing about the slap is that the slap might have been, might have not been as efficient as it was if not for this movie. Because Will had to learn.
52:02 Bill Simmons? Right, but without decking somebody.
52:05 Speaker 01 Will had to learn how to throw punches and get his shit straight. So years later, that slap came through and you couldn't get out the way of that bitch because of this movie.
52:14 Bill Simmons? I think COVID, every, everyone's.
52:16 Speaker 01 Ate that motherfucker.
52:17 Bill Simmons? Everyone's in a haze from COVID. I think the Fox, I mean, now the Will Smith, Chris Rock slap is the weirdest thing that's happened.
52:24 Speaker 01 Bro.
52:24 Bill Simmons? This century. So twenty first century, that's my number one pick. Weirdest thing that's happened.
52:29 Speaker 01 So listen.
52:30 Bill Simmons? I, I watch it sometimes. I'm like, I can't believe this happened.
52:33 Speaker 01 So our movie.
52:35 Bill Simmons? And then he won an Oscar.
52:36 Speaker 01 Won an Oscar. Our movie won the year before. So we're still in the haze, right? So that year, everyone that was involved in To This Is Strangers is at an Oscar party. Cause they act like they care about you for like two years after you.
52:50 Bill Simmons? Then they dump you.
52:50 Speaker 01 Then, then it's like, whatever. So everyone's at it. I'm in New York doing hip hop homicides. I have worked all day. I have gone to sleep. I wake up, it's a million fucking text messages, but the first one is from Kalika and it says, Will Smith just punched Chris Rock in the face onstage, live at the Oscars. Where are you? I'm like, there's no way that happened.
53:18 Speaker 01 Some facsimile of that might have happened, but there's no way that that happened. And when I looked up, that's what the fuck happened. Will Smith walked onstage at the Academy Awards and slapped the shit out of Chris Rock.
53:32 Bill Simmons? Did it affect how you watched Ali? I always feel like I have Will Smith.
53:38 Bill Simmons? I always feel like I have a little Will Smith baggage now when I watch Will Smith movies. Cause that slap was so weird.
53:43 Speaker 01 Ah, I have zero.
53:44 Bill Simmons? It's in the back of my head always.
53:45 Chris Ryan? It's like way down on the list of the most deplorable things people have done. These movies I still watch.
53:50 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I'm not talking about that. It was just so weird.
53:53 Speaker 01 You want those guys?
53:54 Bill Simmons? No, I'm just always like, I can't believe he hit Chris Rock. And when I'm watching him, I'm gonna say it.
53:58 Speaker 01 That's so interesting to me. Lil Rel.
54:00 Bill Simmons? I still can't believe that happened.
54:01 Speaker 01 Lil Rel is the best on this. Lil Rel goes, yeah, Will shouldn't have hit. He goes, yeah, Will shouldn't have hit Chris, but I get it.
54:10 Speaker 01 He's the funniest on that. It's just like, yeah, he, he lost himself. He went up, he spat the guy, it happens.
54:15 Bill Simmons? Uh, Michael Mann did a director's cut in 2017.
54:18 Speaker 01 Yep.
54:19 Bill Simmons? Where he basically said, I was totally happy with this finished product of this movie. He said, with the hindsight of history, I felt the drama didn't get all the way there. Cause he made some tweaks. Uh, it wasn't as strong as it should have been. I don't think I changed anything on a movie like Heat, but here the proportion, how it made you feel wasn't quite right. And then he made his little tweaks. So I'm sure he had to hand this in. It's like over 150 minutes.
54:44 Chris Ryan? It's, yeah, it's two hours, 40 minutes.
54:45 Bill Simmons? And I'm sure he's like, oh, man, there's so many things I like in this movie, but I can't.
54:49 Chris Ryan? Yeah, you can tell even with the casting of like the film, like there's, there's gotta be footage of, there's probably more Angelo, Freddie and Bundini footage out there or something.
54:59 Bill Simmons? Come on daddy.
55:00 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
55:01 Bill Simmons? Side side.
55:01 Chris Ryan? Let's go daddy.
55:02 Speaker 01 Don't jump in one place. It's probably just more boxing, period.
55:05 Chris Ryan? Good, that would have been sick.
55:07 Bill Simmons? Oscar noms, Will Smith nominated for best actor, um, loses to Denzel in Training Day. We're good with that.
55:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, that works, yeah.
55:16 Bill Simmons? Uh, John Voight nominated for Howard Cosell. He lost to Jim Broadbent in Iris. Jamie Foxx not nominated.
55:23 Speaker 01 Should have been nominated.
55:24 Bill Simmons? Should it, should have.
55:24 Speaker 01 Should have been nominated.
55:26 Bill Simmons? Should have been nominated.
55:26 Speaker 01 Yep.
55:27 Bill Simmons? Hundred ten million made eighty seven. Lost money.
55:30 Speaker 01 Big, big, big.
55:31 Bill Simmons? It's kinda crazy.
55:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
55:32 Bill Simmons? Ebert, two stars.
55:33 Chris Ryan? When this came out, did you feel like the, the thing that was working against it was the critical reception as we're about to get to? Or, wh- why didn't this do better?
55:43 Speaker 04 It came out a week after Lord of the Rings also.
55:45 Bill Simmons? Oh.
55:47 Bill Simmons? Um, critical response was like, eh, this is good. But it just, I don't know. Eighty seven million is still not awful for oh one, but the fact that it cost a hundred ten million, cause man's like.
56:00 Chris Ryan? I'm going to Africa.
56:00 Bill Simmons? We're going to Africa.
56:01 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
56:02 Bill Simmons? We're going here, we're going here, we're recreating this.
56:04 Speaker 01 Eighty seven million is bad for one reason. Look at Will Smith's movies before that. I knew that the movie would have problems resonating with people when my dad didn't like it. My dad is the man that handed me VHS tapes of Muhammad Ali. And for some reason, he couldn't connect with the movie. Like, the movie, for some reason, he just, he didn't like it.
56:27 Bill Simmons? It's also too long for, if you're gonna be two hours forty five minutes, then you only get the two screenings a day instead of the three, so you're, you're cutting into your own money.
56:37 Speaker 01 Craig almost had a stroke.
56:39 Speaker 04 I did split it into two different viewings.
56:42 Bill Simmons? Ebert, two stars. A long, flat, curiously muted film about the heavyweight champion lacks much of the flash fire and humor of Muhammad Ali. Shot more in the tone of a eulogy than a celebration.
56:56 Bill Simmons? Um, he, he, his review's really good for this. I would encourage people to read it. Um, but he does say, no, no modern actor could capture Ali completely.
57:04 Speaker 01 I've never read him and disagree with the review more.
57:09 Chris Ryan? What'd you disagree with?
57:10 Speaker 01 I disagree with the fact that the movie in some way should have been like a celebration of Muhammad Ali. I think the best thing about this movie is to examine this extraordinary life. Like, we don't need Muhammad. The celebration is his life itself.
57:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
57:29 Speaker 01 What I always want to know from a biopic, my one question from every biopic is what it cost you?
57:36 Speaker 01 That's the only thing I ever want to know about a biopic. We know that you were great. We're making the movie about you. We know that you did. What it cost you? Like, what did you have to give up? Like, what love did you leave on the table? What personal situations did you leave on the table? What skeletons or bones do you have behind you to achieve that type of greatness? Because that sacrifice is what it takes. That's what this movie's about, to me.
57:57 Chris Ryan? It's obviously a character and a person that is just too close to Ebert. I mean, Michael Mann doesn't make humorous and celebratory movies, so it's kind of like...
58:05 Bill Simmons? You know what? With Tanya Ebert, he wrote a great, great piece about the Rocky movie, watching it with Ali.
58:11 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
58:13 Bill Simmons? And he said, uh, he talked about, he spent one day with him. "I saw a man enormously entertained by life, twinkling with amusement, lowering the tinted glass window of his Rolls limousine so pedestrians could do a double take when they saw it was him." And then he's like, he thought Smith played him as more meditative and subdued, sad. And I just think he was like, "That's not the guy I spent a day with." And that seemed like it colored it. Anyway, most rewatchable scene. We mentioned the opening, Sam Cooke, all the way into the Bundini intro, into the Liston weigh-in. What's a better Michael Mann sequence, other than maybe the bank shootout?
58:53 Chris Ryan? I mean, the opening of Heat is pretty high up there in terms of like, an opening of a film. There's several battles in Mohicans that I think attain this kind of like nirvana, but...
59:04 Bill Simmons? Diner scene in Thief?
59:06 Chris Ryan? The diner scene, this big type romance, yeah. But this is among the best things he's ever put together.
59:12 Bill Simmons? The collateral, the jazz scene when he shoots Barry Shabaka.
59:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, that stuff is all. I was just looking at collateral. That stuff all really works, but...
59:21 Chris Ryan? Hey, homie, is that my briefcase?
59:24 Speaker 01 God damn, we used to be a real country, man. Hey, homie, is that my briefcase?
59:30 Bill Simmons? I like when Liston goes, "Keep talking. I'm gonna fuck you up."
59:35 Bill Simmons? It's like, oh Jesus.
59:36 Speaker 01 Just don't kill Tom in that movie. Don't kill Tom in the movie.
59:39 Chris Ryan? You're talking about Collateral.
59:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, don't, don't kill him. Don't kill Tom in the movie. Don't kill him. And just run it back three years later.
59:45 Bill Simmons? For Collateral 2?
59:46 Speaker 01 For Collateral 2, Day of the Soldario.
59:50 Bill Simmons? More rewatchable scenes that aren't gonna win, because we already have the winner. Third round, sixth round of the Liston fight is really good. I like when Liston quits. When Ali's on the, on the stool, kinda watching Liston.
1:00:02 Chris Ryan? I was gonna ask you, what's the rap on the, the Liston cheating with the blinding Ali thing?
1:00:09 Bill Simmons? He, Liston definitely did that.
1:00:11 Speaker 01 Some people think that it was just, that it happened on its own. That like, they were, they, they rubbed you with stuff, it got on the gloves and it got in Ali's eyes.
1:00:19 Bill Simmons? No way.
1:00:19 Speaker 01 But most people look at it as like, he cheated.
1:00:21 Bill Simmons? Liston was a scumbag. Like, there's no way he didn't do that.
1:00:22 Speaker 01 Scumbag.
1:00:23 Bill Simmons? He was a bad, he was a bad person.
1:00:25 Speaker 01 Bad man. He was a heavyweight champ in the world.
1:00:27 Bill Simmons? Sonny Liston was a bad person.
1:00:28 Chris Ryan? Don't you know you're talking to Bill X?
1:00:30 Bill Simmons? Come on. William X did not like Sonny Liston.
1:00:33 Speaker 01 William X would love Sonny Liston.
1:00:34 Bill Simmons? No, William X did not like Sonny Liston, but he stood for it.
1:00:37 Chris Ryan? William X should be a recurring character on this show.
1:00:40 Speaker 01 No, we can't do William X.
1:00:41 Chris Ryan? William X not approving of Denzel and Julia Roberts' relationship in Pelican Brief?
1:00:48 Chris Ryan? No, sir. I won't have it.
1:00:53 Bill Simmons? Well, you know, I had this in nitpicks. The movie avoids, the Muslims thought Angelo Dundee doctored the gloves, because he was trying to tank the fight for Ali. And that's, it's like a big part of the lore of that fight.
1:01:05 Chris Ryan? Yeah, so I, that's.
1:01:06 Bill Simmons? They start coming to the corner, because they're like, gonna fight Angelo.
1:01:08 Chris Ryan? I'm not a huge boxing guy, so I didn't know about that. That's fascinating.
1:01:11 Bill Simmons? That, that's a real thing. I don't know why that wasn't in the movie.
1:01:14 Chris Ryan? They take a moment in the film to show Dundee putting like shit in his pockets, and then he's, he puts pills in his pockets, right?
1:01:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:01:21 Chris Ryan? And then he's like, getting all of his stuff together. And I was like, oh, this is cool. This is just Michael Mann doing like, look at this master of his craft. But I wasn't sure. Then I read about like, there are all these like allegations both ways.
1:01:32 Bill Simmons? It's amazing that he was blind for one of the six rounds in one of the fights.
1:01:36 Speaker 01 And then danced.
1:01:37 Bill Simmons? And then if you, if you watch it, like the sixth round, Liston quits after the sixth, like he kills Liston in the sixth round. He like really fucks him up.
1:01:46 Bill Simmons? Malcolm in the hotel room with Ali, that camera angle of Van Peebles with Ali behind him.
1:01:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:01:52 Bill Simmons? Just kinda staring out. It's, and it's a long scene too, that's great. We mentioned Ali turning his back on Malcolm in Africa.
1:02:00 Bill Simmons? Obviously not rewatchable for the typical reasons, but I thought the the scene when Malcolm gets murdered and then Ali in the car is just really great.
1:02:08 Chris Ryan? That's also, it's fucking crazy that that, I believe is Chauncey Eskridge was on the phone and was talk, cause like that, yeah, it's it's an amazing sequence.
1:02:17 Bill Simmons? The second Liston fight, just because of Jada Pinkett's performance in the stance.
1:02:24 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:02:25 Bill Simmons? Coso, they're coming after you.
1:02:28 Chris Ryan? Whoa coward.
1:02:29 Bill Simmons? Uh, Ali on the phone, yeah, I know where Vietnam is, it's on TV.
1:02:34 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:02:35 Bill Simmons? When he does the Vietcong thing.
1:02:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:02:37 Bill Simmons? And then, uh, Howard Bingham's like, you you know what you just did? Um, Will Smith's best scene in the movie, when, uh, when he comes out of the courtroom and he's like, you're my oppressors. And he does that 45 second, you my enemy, not no Chinese, no Vietcong, no Japanese, you're my opposer when I want freedom and does that whole, I think that's his best scene in the movie, uh, leading into the Terrell Wayan and all that stuff. Um, do you like this scene with Ali and Bundini when he sells the belt?
1:03:09 Speaker 01 Love it. I sold your belt. My two favorite scenes in the movie, that one, and for some reason, Ali watching Foreman knock out Joe Frazier. That's just such a real fucking scene to where you feel like you got everything lined up.
1:03:29 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:03:30 Speaker 01 And then all of a sudden, that that scene, another boxing thing, if you want to see the greatest destruction ever, go watch of a of a great champion, go watch the way, I know you guys have seen these, you guys are sports fans, how Foreman destroyed fucking Joe Frazier.
1:03:45 Bill Simmons? Down goes Frazier.
1:03:47 Speaker 01 Just like, just like a child, but I like.
1:03:49 Chris Ryan? It's cool how they're all sitting on the couch and like, they're like, this is a good.
1:03:52 Speaker 01 Like, this is not a big deal, and it's like, what the fuck, like, we, like, we, this guy's announcing himself. But the Bundini scene is particularly moving to me.
1:04:00 Bill Simmons? Ali goes on wide road of sports, right into Frazier takes Ali for a ride.
1:04:07 Bill Simmons? You beat Corey, I'm gonna get in the ring, I'm gonna kick your ass. I think James Toney's good in that scene.
1:04:12 Speaker 01 James Toney does a good job.
1:04:14 Bill Simmons? Cosell tells Ali he won the trial. Ali loses to Frazier.
1:04:19 Speaker 01 Move legs.
1:04:21 Bill Simmons? And it's like, okay, hook coming. I like how they did that, but they get to that fight fast. Ali Boumeh running through the streets. And then Ali Foreman heading into the eighth round. When the, when the ring girl winks at him and he winks back and then leading to like him kinda, alright, now I'm gonna go and he gets Foreman. Which is still, that had to have been the most thrilling moment you could possibly have if you loved a team or an athlete. When he actually beats Foreman in the eighth round, that has to be number one.
1:04:50 Chris Ryan? What do you guys think of the boxing in this film?
1:04:54 Bill Simmons? I like it.
1:04:54 Speaker 01 I like it too. I think he, he took a more deliberate approach to it. Like, some boxing is about movement, some boxing is about, some boxing, I'm talking about when I'm talking about boxing in movies. Some of it's about movement, some of it was about, was about thuds. Like, he wanted you to feel the thuds. You couldn't really approximate the speed of a prime Muhammad Ali.
1:05:17 Bill Simmons? You would almost have to do CGI stuff.
1:05:19 Speaker 01 Right, but like, as far as the movement and the actual impact, I thought they did a good job. And the guys, like, unlike other movies, they look like heavyweights.
1:05:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah, they are fighting and they do.
1:05:29 Bill Simmons? And they're hitting each other.
1:05:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:05:31 Bill Simmons? I thought the Foreman fight specifically was really, really, really close to the actual fight. The way he's leaning back, the way Foreman was just, I thought Foreman was pounding him. It felt like Will was taking a lot of those shots. What'd you think?
1:05:44 Chris Ryan? It's just interesting because like, I look at it from a purely cinematic, it sometimes is a little bit, the fights in this movie, lack a little bit of the stylistic diversity I think Raging Bull has. Like, Raging Bull, he shot each fight in this different kinda way. And I feel like he shot, to my eye, he shot these fights in a very similar fashion, the entire, like.
1:06:04 Bill Simmons? Well, he was trying to be exactly like the actual fight.
1:06:08 Chris Ryan? Yes, and I think, I think, but. There, I guess I prefer ultimately Scorsese trying to
1:06:15 Bill Simmons? Reinvent it.
1:06:15 Chris Ryan? The experience of looking at a Life magazine photograph rather than like perfectly like.
1:06:21 Bill Simmons? The foreman actor took that punch.
1:06:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, I will say that.
1:06:24 Bill Simmons? Did the whole face shake.
1:06:25 Speaker 01 I will say that those two fighters are also different. Um, with Jake Lemata, you have to capture brutality, which that movie captures the brutality of who Jake Lemata was.
1:06:38 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:06:38 Speaker 01 With Ali, obviously he's a very dangerous fighter, but there's an elegance to it. Like there are times where he's deliver, he's delivering performance inside of there. Um, and that's what's so good about the final fight in this movie is a smart decision to end the movie with that fight. Cause it's Ali at the peak of his performance.
1:06:59 Chris Ryan? Yep.
1:06:59 Speaker 01 Not as a fighter, athletically he had been, but how he could be theatrically. Inside of the ring and outside of the ring.
1:07:08 Chris Ryan? What's your favorite boxing in a movie? Not necessarily boxing movie, but the bot, like fighting in a movie.
1:07:14 Speaker 01 It's such a stupid answer. It's a really stupid answer. Diggstown.
1:07:20 Chris Ryan? It's not a bad answer.
1:07:20 Speaker 01 It's such, it's a, it's not a very serious movie, but for me.
1:07:25 Chris Ryan? It's a good one though.
1:07:25 Speaker 01 It's like Diggstown.
1:07:27 Chris Ryan? I like Diggstown.
1:07:28 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:07:28 Bill Simmons? I think the first, the first Creed fight.
1:07:34 Bill Simmons? The actual fight.
1:07:35 Speaker 01 Talking about in Mexico?
1:07:36 Bill Simmons? When, no, not Mexico, the one.
1:07:38 Chris Ryan? Saying Rocky Creed won.
1:07:40 Bill Simmons? I forget who he fights when, uh, that first round, when it's like the entirety of the round.
1:07:43 Chris Ryan? Oh wait, that's the Tijuana fight in Creed.
1:07:45 Speaker 01 That's what I'm saying, in Mexico. The one in Mexico? The first time you see Adonis Creed fight, period.
1:07:50 Bill Simmons? No, the next time.
1:07:52 Speaker 01 He's Creed by this point, he's.
1:07:53 Bill Simmons? When Stallone is in his corner.
1:07:55 Chris Ryan? Oh, okay, yes.
1:07:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:07:57 Bill Simmons? I thought they did a really good job with that.
1:07:59 Speaker 01 Mike's a good boxer.
1:08:00 Bill Simmons? Well, and also that it was one shot for like three straight minutes. I thought that's probably the best thing I've seen. Um, what was your favorite scene, Craig?
1:08:09 Speaker 04 I really liked all the Cosell homie stuff. I found that to be really fascinating, mainly also probably just because I can't believe that's something that was happening culturally. And that's something that would never happen now, those type of conversations on air like that. And like their interaction and like even, I was watching old videos of Ali talking to uh Dick Cavett. And I was just like, man, this is crazy. Like the types of conversations that they're having is just not really what you get.
1:08:34 Bill Simmons? Closest thing we had was Bill and KD.
1:08:36 Speaker 04 That's right.
1:08:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:08:37 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
1:08:38 Bill Simmons? Long time ago, man. I remember, it was the second Ali Frazier after the fight at World of Sports and Ali started making fun of Frazier that he went to the hospital and they got in the actual fight in World of Sports. I think it was the second fight.
1:08:54 Speaker 04 I think it's obviously the first 10 minutes. You could even say the first 24 minutes. The only thing that like approaches that for me is the Zaire arrival, like the Kinshasa arrival or the-
1:09:06 Speaker 01 Oh, that's awesome.
1:09:06 Speaker 04 Or running through Kinshasa.
1:09:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:09:10 Bill Simmons? Also like the fact that it rained right after he knocked Forman out, which is something that happened in real life, is one of the craziest things that's happened in a sporting event.
1:09:19 Speaker 01 My dad always said God wanted him to finish.
1:09:21 Bill Simmons? Like two minutes after the knockout.
1:09:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:09:24 Bill Simmons? Pouring hurricane rain.
1:09:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:09:26 Bill Simmons? Unbelievable.
1:09:26 Speaker 01 Would have been-
1:09:27 Bill Simmons? Like you can't make that shit up.
1:09:28 Speaker 01 Would have been like a terribly hot day in the whole nine. It's like-
1:09:33 Bill Simmons? What's the most 2001 thing about this movie, CR?
1:09:36 Speaker 04 I guess I just had Will Smith critical and commercial sensation.
1:09:41 Bill Simmons? What do you have?
1:09:42 Speaker 01 Kind of the same, but I will say the cast itself is this mixture, oh shit, he's got, something's brewing. The cast itself is this mixture of like ascending people, like, I mean, Jamie and some of these other people, but also like staples of people. The ascending people are Jeffrey Wright and Jamie and all of this stuff. And then you had your older guard and Will, that's a very 2001 cast. What are you about to say?
1:10:07 Bill Simmons? Including Ron Silver.
1:10:09 Speaker 04 Is he the most 2001-
1:10:10 Bill Simmons? No, when I did the junket, it was the only time I'd ever been to a movie junket and I had 10 minutes with Ron Silver and I immediately went into silent rage. Got him excited about Silent Rage. I was like, I'm a huge Silent Rage guy and he's like, "The killer who wouldn't die!" And he was all excited and we talked about it.
1:10:28 Speaker 01 What was the movie that he was in with Jamie Lee Curtis?
1:10:31 Bill Simmons? Blue Steel.
1:10:32 Speaker 01 Blue Steel.
1:10:33 Bill Simmons? It's a good movie.
1:10:34 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:10:35 Bill Simmons? Good 2B classic.
1:10:35 Speaker 01 Where he was the, he was like a killer, a blue, you, Blue Steel.
1:10:40 Bill Simmons? You might have to crank that one up one night after Liz's asleep.
1:10:42 Chris Ryan? That's Captain Bigelow, isn't it?
1:10:43 Speaker 01 Isn't it Captain Bigelow, like, Blue Steel?
1:10:45 Bill Simmons? It would be the 2B All-Stars last year.
1:10:47 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:10:48 Bill Simmons? Uh, my most 2001 thing, Will and Jada, Young Love, Real Chemistry.
1:10:52 Chris Ryan? There you go.
1:10:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:10:52 Bill Simmons? Great to see them happy.
1:10:58 Bill Simmons? Really believed in those two. Some good things ahead.
1:11:01 Speaker 01 They're still together.
1:11:02 Bill Simmons? The Floyd Gondoli butter on my ass and lollipops in my mouth award for something I just enjoy. What do you have, Van?
1:11:08 Speaker 01 Uh, I like whenever actors take on athletic roles and commit to it. There's nothing that I hate more than some half-ass actor trying to play basketball. But whenever they really commit to it, I fucking love it.
1:11:23 Bill Simmons? Or Matt Damon doing Legend of Bagger Vance and doing two weeks of golf lessons.
1:11:27 Speaker 01 When they bullshit about it, I don't like it, but when they really commit to it and bring that to it, I always find myself enjoying it.
1:11:34 Chris Ryan? Uh, Costello's voice.
1:11:37 Chris Ryan? And, and I just miss the Pat Summerall, Keith Jackson.
1:11:42 Bill Simmons? That era.
1:11:43 Chris Ryan? Bob Cost- I mean, even through Costas.
1:11:45 Bill Simmons? So you just miss white announcers?
1:11:46 Chris Ryan? No, I didn't say that. I was gonna, I just miss like guys who tried to capture the poetry of a moment.
1:11:52 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:11:52 Chris Ryan? Rather than just be like, "Welcome to the fucking, like, shit dome."
1:11:57 Bill Simmons? Stephen A.'s not cutting it for you?
1:11:59 Chris Ryan? Uh, no.
1:12:00 Speaker 01 Who, who's left? Bob Costas?
1:12:03 Chris Ryan? Breen.
1:12:03 Speaker 01 Breen?
1:12:05 Chris Ryan? Breen's not a good poet though.
1:12:06 Speaker 01 Joe Buck? No?
1:12:07 Bill Simmons? No, there's nobody.
1:12:09 Speaker 01 Nobody's left? Those guys are all gone?
1:12:10 Bill Simmons? There's nobody who can levitate.
1:12:13 Chris Ryan? Nance.
1:12:15 Bill Simmons? Nance a little bit, yeah.
1:12:16 Chris Ryan? But Nance?
1:12:17 Bill Simmons? Who can levitate about the event with some monologue for three minutes.
1:12:20 Speaker 01 Like, like Vin Scully or those guys.
1:12:22 Chris Ryan? It's easy to do it on the Masters, you know what I mean? But even college basketball, Nance had it, yeah.
1:12:27 Bill Simmons? It's what Tom Rinaldi tries to do.
1:12:30 Bill Simmons? My Floyd Gondoli.
1:12:31 Speaker 01 God damn.
1:12:34 Bill Simmons? The uh oh, I got my bell rung, slow motion moment in every boxing movie. Where it's like
1:12:41 Bill Simmons? And then dude like the weird and it's like I always like that. It's like, uh oh, he got fucked up.
1:12:46 Speaker 01 Have you ever actually had your bell rung?
1:12:51 Bill Simmons? Not by a punch.
1:12:53 Speaker 01 What happened?
1:12:55 Bill Simmons? I've hit my head a couple of times where I'm like, fuck.
1:12:57 Speaker 01 Right.
1:12:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah. I got elbowed in basketball once.
1:13:01 Speaker 01 Oh, that's a good one.
1:13:02 Bill Simmons? I hit my head in the attic where I didn't realize the doorway was low and I just got clocked. And like fell to the ground.
1:13:08 Speaker 01 Clark W. Brizwell, shoot.
1:13:10 Bill Simmons? Uh, what's age the best? Mentioned any moment with Jean-Claire Lopez, Pizzito and JB Fox together. That just should have been on the deleted scenes. James Tony acting. I love Foreman, the actor playing Foreman, just hitting the heavy bag in that scene.
1:13:25 Chris Ryan? Jesus.
1:13:27 Bill Simmons? And man just stays with it for like 10 seconds.
1:13:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:13:30 Bill Simmons? Uh, no lines for Paul Rodriguez and then Jim Gray and Bill Plasky being in scenes.
1:13:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:13:36 Bill Simmons? Bill Plasky has a line?
1:13:38 Speaker 01 He's to ask a question, right?
1:13:39 Chris Ryan? Yes, too, doesn't he?
1:13:40 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:13:40 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:13:40 Bill Simmons? Jim Gray is just smiling like a maniac for some reason. What do you have?
1:13:44 Chris Ryan? Uh, I have the champ is here as a rap sample.
1:13:47 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:13:47 Chris Ryan? Um, I have, uh, Smith's fighting ability. You are never like, he's not fighting or they're about to double in or anything like that. Um, I talked about this, but the low key, the fact that it's a low key Malcolm X movie for an hour. Um, yeah, those are mine.
1:14:03 Speaker 01 Uh, since then, they've put Muhammad Ali on, in a bunch of different shows and stuff like, and there's another one coming out. They're doing the greatest. And so like just Muhammad Ali as a cultural figure that they want to put on a narrative.
1:14:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:14:16 Speaker 01 Has exploded after this.
1:14:18 Chris Ryan? I will also say that, uh, however, like I don't, I don't know anything about like what I assume the guy was singing, cause it's not Sam Cooke. Exactly, it's not lip syncing Sam Cooke's voice. But it's a very good approximation of Sam Cooke. And that is on the live record, the call and response. That goes on is exactly how it is on the live record. And it's fucking amazing to watch a bunch of other stuff happening while Sam Cooke is playing.
1:14:48 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:14:48 Chris Ryan? Uh, it was just that that whole sequence is just so brilliant.
1:14:52 Bill Simmons? I'm disappointed. I thought Van was gonna have a What's Age the Best hair and I'm sad I'm gonna have to do it.
1:14:57 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:14:59 Bill Simmons? Bunch of beautiful black women in this movie, Van.
1:15:01 Chris Ryan? William X is back.
1:15:02 Bill Simmons? William X.
1:15:03 Chris Ryan? William X is here.
1:15:04 Bill Simmons? William X. Even in the Apollo scene, there's like, good ones in the crowd. It's just like, Michael Mann.
1:15:13 Bill Simmons? Michael Mann was tapping into something.
1:15:16 Chris Ryan? Do you think that?
1:15:16 Bill Simmons? He really was.
1:15:17 Chris Ryan? Uh, you should go back to writing. And it should be the, from the author of The Book of Basketball, he's changed his name to William X. And it's The Book of Black Women.
1:15:28 Speaker 01 The Book of Black Women.
1:15:29 Bill Simmons? Good ones.
1:15:29 Chris Ryan? Oh my god.
1:15:29 Speaker 01 Good ones.
1:15:30 Bill Simmons? The Pyramids. Here's my prologue about Jane Kennedy.
1:15:34 Speaker 01 See, that's a good one. It's a good one.
1:15:36 Bill Simmons? Very important person.
1:15:37 Speaker 01 Very important person.
1:15:38 Bill Simmons? This is fucking great.
1:15:39 Speaker 01 I will say this though, is that like, for me personally, if we get into this. There's an era of fine that, that this movie represents. And it is harkening back to in the sixties that a lot of people wish was still around. Everybody looked good. I'm not coming down on no one. I gotta lose weight, so don't come for me, right? Every, like, everybody looks good.
1:16:03 Bill Simmons? Oh, you're saying?
1:16:04 Speaker 01 There's a nineties fine aesthetic. All of these women look different. They don't have the same body. They're petite women, they're tall women, and women are all different complexions. It doesn't seem like this assembly line of beauty that we see now, and that's kinda how the nineties were.
1:16:20 Bill Simmons? Uh, that's a chapter for William X's book. Me and Thelma from Good Times.
1:16:25 Speaker 01 Who's that on the left?
1:16:26 Bill Simmons? Rembert.
1:16:27 Speaker 01 You lying.
1:16:28 Bill Simmons? Yeah. It's me and Rembert, met Thelma.
1:16:30 Speaker 01 That's Rembert right there.
1:16:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah, Rembert.
1:16:32 Chris Ryan? Are you blind? That's Rembert, yeah. I think he and I are wearing the same shirt right now.
1:16:36 Speaker 01 Okay. That looks nothing like the Rem that I know.
1:16:39 Bill Simmons? We were so excited to meet Thelma.
1:16:40 Speaker 01 Shout out to Rem, that's my nigga.
1:16:42 Bill Simmons? All right, what's our next category?
1:16:44 Speaker 01 Rem is really excited to meet Thelma. Like, really?
1:16:48 Bill Simmons? We were like starstruck.
1:16:51 Bill Simmons? The fight scenes, one last thing for What's Age the Best. The only limitation placed on the fighters, they could hit Smith as hard as they could, as long as they didn't knock him out.
1:17:02 Bill Simmons? So, it's why a lot of it is like shoulders, body, like, nobody's like headhunting with him, but they're fucking hitting him.
1:17:08 Chris Ryan? Also, like, if they are shooting other stuff, he can't have like black eyes and this and that and that shit.
1:17:13 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Yeah, that's about it. And then they had Angelo helping out. Uh, we'll take one more break and then we'll do the rest of categories. This episode is brought to you by Quince. Finding a decent piece of clothing can be a lot harder than finding a decent movie, but that was before Quince. Quince has staple pieces made from premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, and everything is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. It's the perfect place to start building a cozy fall outfit without any absurd markups. For instance, I love a good vest. They have a lightweight, down, packable puffer vest, which is an easy fall layer, although nobody loves layers more than Chris Ryan. Uh, you can throw it over a sweater, long sleeve, whenever you want to make an outfit feel a little more seasonal.
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1:19:08 Bill Simmons? CR, what do you got for great chat, Gordo?
1:19:10 Chris Ryan? So, there's a ton in this, but my favorite is in that opening sequence when he's training his clay, and he's on the speed bag. The camera's behind the speed bag and the way that he is punching it creates the illusion that he's almost on a film strip. And it's being hit in time with the music. But it almost feels like you're watching like an old film strip because of the way the bag is affecting like the way the camera is and it-
1:19:37 Bill Simmons? That's a good one.
1:19:38 Chris Ryan? I'm just like, dude, you're the fucking-
1:19:40 Speaker 01 He's a man, bro.
1:19:41 Bill Simmons? I love in that open, that extended opening scene, how fast they're walking when they're coming around the ramp. And it's everybody in concert, almost like they're-
1:19:50 Chris Ryan? When they're going into the press conference?
1:19:51 Bill Simmons? With like real speed and purpose. It's just really cool. And Ali's entrance for the form and fights good when the camera's behind him. And he comes out and he doesn't kind of realize how many people are there and he's kind of like, holy shit. And the camera comes around and catches it, which I think was actually Will Smith's reaction, because I don't think he had seen it. So he's kind of like, Jesus.
1:20:11 Chris Ryan? Yeah, there's also like the, the way that it like it'll be, that the screen's completely dark when he gets off the plane in Zaire and it goes out. And then the running in Zaire where it like, is like basically somehow above him-
1:20:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:20:26 Chris Ryan? And then comes in behind him.
1:20:28 Speaker 01 That's my favorite shot. The running inside, he just, the, the, it goes from being, this is, this full world that he hasn't explored yet. To this is a guy who can fill up any world like once he gets there.
1:20:43 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:20:43 Speaker 01 So the camera, the camera like tells you that the camera goes, oh my God, this is a guy. This place, it's a big place. He doesn't know where he's at, blah, blah, blah. But this is Muhammad Ali. So it's just like a matter of time before this world becomes his.
1:20:55 Bill Simmons? Dennis Thieves, Benihana, or Zaire, obviously.
1:20:58 Speaker 01 For sure. Yeah, Zaire.
1:21:00 Bill Simmons? Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness. That's the opening.
1:21:02 Speaker 01 Sam Cooke.
1:21:03 Bill Simmons? Was there a better title for this movie?
1:21:07 Speaker 01 You floated one. Or did you float one?
1:21:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah. What'd you say? What was yours?
1:21:12 Speaker 01 You said, you said, one of you guys said.
1:21:13 Bill Simmons? The Awakening of Ali.
1:21:14 Chris Ryan? Like the political education, the political awakening, like the, yeah. The education of Muhammad Ali.
1:21:20 Bill Simmons? The redemption of Muhammad Ali.
1:21:22 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:21:22 Bill Simmons? Something like that.
1:21:23 Chris Ryan? Like if you just wanted to do a boxing movie, I'd call it The Champ is Here. You know, like, I mean.
1:21:29 Bill Simmons? The Champ is Here.
1:21:30 Speaker 01 The Champ is Here is not bad.
1:21:31 Bill Simmons? What do you think of that one, Craig?
1:21:32 Speaker 04 I like it.
1:21:34 Chris Ryan? Ali should have fucking sold itself. Like Ali is just be like, yeah, I know what I'm, I know what movie I'm.
1:21:38 Speaker 04 He probably has to go with Ali.
1:21:39 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:21:39 Speaker 01 But you have to go with Ali.
1:21:40 Chris Ryan? I think now it'd probably be Ali colon, The Champ is Here, the way they name movies now.
1:21:47 Bill Simmons? Cash of Sex.
1:21:48 Speaker 01 Endgame.
1:21:48 Bill Simmons? Uh, what's your flex?
1:21:50 Chris Ryan? The Todd Parker Award for Best Character Entrance goes to Jamie Foxx as Bundini Brown. I'm called Bundini, rhymes with Houdini. He was a Jew too. Some people call me fast black. Some people call me Daddy Mac. And then the shit where he's just like, call him shorty because he likes some circumcised. Like, this movie introduces Fox. I know he's only in like six scenes or seven scenes or whatever, but man, like when Michael Mann introduces Jamie Foxx, he's like, that's the star. Like.
1:22:22 Speaker 01 And I'm telling you, the reason why I think he introduces him that way is because he's really introducing Muhammad Ali's performance persona to the audience. That's what these characters are all.
1:22:36 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:22:37 Speaker 01 Like, uh, like Malcolm X is his political stuff. This is the making of this guy. And then when Jamie Foxx comes in, the reason why, because even when you watch it, you go like, this guy's not in the movie at all.
1:22:48 Chris Ryan? When they go into the press conference, they're saying the lines together.
1:22:51 Speaker 01 Right, like he's introducing you to that part of him. Cause the first thing we see from him is the, the, the Emmetil stuff, um, the work ethic. You see the building of a champion.
1:23:03 Chris Ryan? And Angelo is running everything.
1:23:05 Speaker 01 And Angelo's running everything. And then when Bundini comes in, it's like, oh my God, this is how, this is what it took for this guy to be, to become Ali.
1:23:13 Bill Simmons? I like how he also just talks during between rounds as Dundee's talking.
1:23:17 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:23:18 Bill Simmons? Cause that's why if you watch the fights, he's just fucking yapping. He's doing a podcast as Dundee's like, hey, watch the raid. Bundini's just on the side going nuts.
1:23:26 Speaker 01 Nobody can touch you champ. You're the best.
1:23:29 Bill Simmons? Butch's girlfriend, weak link of the film. We mentioned this. This has to be the answer. We just jumped three years. We miss so much. You have a different one. What do you got?
1:23:38 Chris Ryan? The original music. I do not think this is the right score for this movie.
1:23:43 Bill Simmons? What would you have had?
1:23:44 Chris Ryan? So it's Peter Bork and Lisa Girardi did the insider music and it really works for the insider. But I think they should have either had an orchestral score or they should have had like a jazz score. Like they're, it does not feel appropriate. It takes you out of the time zone, the time period. And I think it would have just been benefited if they had had like a really good Terrence Blanchard style jazz orchestral score.
1:24:10 Speaker 01 Um, I had something different, but it was also, uh, in the actual creative. Michael Mann's grainy digital type of look.
1:24:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:24:21 Speaker 01 Works. It's, I love it in collateral, obviously love it in, in this one. It, I don't know if it works for period. In this one, it, parts of it didn't feel.
1:24:33 Bill Simmons? Like when you're in 1968?
1:24:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, like, yeah, it, it part, sometimes it would just take you out of it a little bit.
1:24:39 Chris Ryan? I think that the trade off is that the, like, Kinshasa just is a different situation if you're there with like a bunch of lights.
1:24:47 Speaker 01 Obviously.
1:24:48 Chris Ryan? You know, like a lot of, and I don't, you know, he, he will make a movie with a ton of stakes and a ton on the line and he will be like, but the camera is on the tip of this pen and I'm going to shove it in between these two guys while they're fighting.
1:25:01 Speaker 01 Right.
1:25:02 Chris Ryan? It's, he's a, he's a risk taker.
1:25:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, but like, you know. If this movie had the, to you, the orchestral and for me, the visual sweeping scale of like Last of the Mohicans, maybe it lands with people differently.
1:25:17 Bill Simmons? I threw this in the Sasha Jenkins Award.
1:25:20 Speaker 01 Sasha.
1:25:20 Bill Simmons? Even though it's Sasha Jensen, for actor you can't believe didn't become a bigger star. Uh, Nonna Gay. I don't know, I don't know why she, she feels like she could have gone pound for pound with all the other ones from that era, right?
1:25:34 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, she.
1:25:36 Bill Simmons? I think she's really good in this movie.
1:25:38 Speaker 01 She's good in everything.
1:25:39 Bill Simmons? Beautiful.
1:25:40 Chris Ryan? I have Michael T. for this.
1:25:41 Bill Simmons? That's another one.
1:25:43 Chris Ryan? Where I'm just like.
1:25:44 Speaker 01 Why wasn't he a bigger star? Hey, guys, is it possible?
1:25:47 Chris Ryan? That there's some.
1:25:48 Bill Simmons? Oh, boy.
1:25:49 Chris Ryan? Forces at work.
1:25:50 Bill Simmons? Hold on, you want me to get William X?
1:25:52 Speaker 01 Van X, is there, is it, is it, is it possible? Van X, is it possible? There, there, there wasn't a climate in the town that could have as many roles for these people as what they needed to explore all of their.
1:26:06 Bill Simmons? Well, Michael Michelle was on ER.
1:26:08 Speaker 01 She was on ER, I mean, look.
1:26:10 Bill Simmons? When?
1:26:11 Speaker 01 Nonna Gay.
1:26:12 Bill Simmons? When the movie came out.
1:26:13 Speaker 01 Nonna Gay was on, uh, Nonna Gay was in Crash, Nonna Gay was in The Matrix sequel. So.
1:26:18 Bill Simmons? I really.
1:26:19 Speaker 01 Is it possible that there are just not enough roles for all of these?
1:26:21 Bill Simmons? Very possible.
1:26:22 Speaker 01 Performers, yeah.
1:26:24 Bill Simmons? Marvin Gaye's daughter. Another special category, how would Van Lathan get out of this one?
1:26:29 Speaker 01 Which one?
1:26:30 Bill Simmons? Well, you're in Zaire and you just started dating a new girl and your wife said she was going back to Chicago to take care of your sick child, but now she's back in your room.
1:26:39 Chris Ryan? And she's like, do you love this new woman?
1:26:41 Bill Simmons? And she's upset about your new girl and the, and you're about to have a fight in two weeks, so what do you, what do you tell your wife?
1:26:47 Speaker 01 Do I love her? Uh, yeah, I love her, and let me tell you why. I love her because I have to love her, because the CIA is watching me. And by the way, you know the CIA is watching me. You know I'm being watched by the CIA, the press is on my back, everyone's on my back, all right? I'm being surveilled. I got a lot of pressure. You know what pressure I don't need? I don't need the pressure of you.
1:27:11 Bill Simmons? Oh, you flip it like this.
1:27:13 Speaker 01 Biggest fight in my entire life.
1:27:15 Bill Simmons? Why are you doing this to me right now?
1:27:16 Speaker 01 Why are you doing this to me? Like, ain't nothing happened? Look at that woman. That's way too light-skinned for me. That's not how I even like her. I like her like you.
1:27:22 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:27:23 Speaker 01 But the reality is, you're here now. Now I gotta think about this. I could go out there and be killed. Have you seen this guy hit the heavy bag? Let's go. You know what? Don't even worry about this. We gonna go watch this guy hit the heavy bag. And then after we watch this guy hit the heavy bag, you then can make your mind up about whether or not you wanna put this on my mind right now. Because I could be killed. Then what?
1:27:44 Bill Simmons? You're killing me right now, just by bringing this up to me.
1:27:46 Chris Ryan? Do you know what a much shorter version of this would be?
1:27:48 Speaker 01 What?
1:27:49 Chris Ryan? Is if Ali just did Vincent from Heat and was like, "You knew when we hooked up, baby, that you were gonna have to share me."
1:27:58 Speaker 01 With all the dead people.
1:28:00 Bill Simmons? They should have thrown that in. What stage is the worst? Will and Jada, the romance? Maybe.
1:28:09 Speaker 01 Ah, come on, they still together.
1:28:10 Chris Ryan? We still got a lot of runway.
1:28:12 Speaker 01 It's pretty weird. We got a lot of runway. And by the way.
1:28:13 Chris Ryan? It's a long life.
1:28:14 Speaker 01 They, it's working for them. They still got a family. You know, it's working for them.
1:28:22 Bill Simmons? I didn't really have any of the What Stage Is the Worst that we didn't mention yet.
1:28:24 Chris Ryan? On the original soundtrack, there is a ton of R. Kelly.
1:28:27 Speaker 01 Oh, he's in this one.
1:28:28 Bill Simmons? Oh.
1:28:29 Speaker 01 He's in The Greatest. The Greatest.
1:28:31 Chris Ryan? Is he?
1:28:31 Speaker 01 It plays in the movie. I thought one of y'all was gonna use that as a needle drop. That's why I'm waiting. That's Bill's last act. Bill's last act.
1:28:38 Chris Ryan? Where am I going?
1:28:39 Speaker 01 Bill's, Bill's.
1:28:40 Chris Ryan? William X is like.
1:28:41 Speaker 01 William X's last act is, "Guys, I was hanging out with some people this weekend. R. Kelly. I'm back in on him." That's your.
1:28:53 Bill Simmons? Why would I be hanging out with R. Kelly in this scenario?
1:28:55 Speaker 01 You're not hanging out with R. Kelly.
1:28:56 Bill Simmons? I'm just listening to his music.
1:28:57 Speaker 01 Just listen to his music. "I'm back in on R. Kelly." That's your last act. And then we'll know that it's over when you do that. But that's not.
1:29:04 Bill Simmons? How about this? I never really liked R. Kelly's music, ever.
1:29:07 Chris Ryan? Never, was never a huge fan.
1:29:09 Speaker 01 What's your favorite R&B?
1:29:11 Bill Simmons? Not R. Kelly.
1:29:12 Speaker 01 But just tell me though. Bill's, Bill's R&B party. What's at Bill's R&B party? Give me like three songs. I know Sean shit, Sean shit, I mean, excuse me, I know.
1:29:22 Bill Simmons? Was never like a huge R and B guy, though.
1:29:24 Speaker 01 Oh, so you don't like it? You don't like our music?
1:29:25 Bill Simmons? Oh, it's like, early 90s was my era for it.
1:29:28 Speaker 01 Right.
1:29:29 Bill Simmons? Like the Keith Sweat. Luther Vandross.
1:29:32 Speaker 01 See, why you, you second guessing yourself, but you talking that shit right now?
1:29:35 Bill Simmons? I'm just saying, like, I never in the 2000s.
1:29:37 Speaker 01 Luther, no, forget it. The 90s is where you want to be, okay, one life.
1:29:40 Bill Simmons? Make it last forever? Make it last.
1:29:47 Speaker 01 He loves Keith Sweat.
1:29:49 Bill Simmons? I did, I really did love Keith Sweat.
1:29:51 Speaker 01 Right.
1:29:51 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:29:51 Speaker 01 Keith, but that's the, but you know, the 2000s is not when the R and B, the 90s is the heyday of the R and B.
1:29:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it's New Jack Swing and.
1:29:59 Speaker 01 New Jack Swing and all that.
1:30:00 Bill Simmons? They need a Baker output is the third.
1:30:01 Speaker 01 Now, let me tell you something, I don't know if you know this.
1:30:03 Bill Simmons? But these are out, these are out like sex music songs.
1:30:06 Speaker 01 There you go.
1:30:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:30:07 Speaker 01 That's how you do it.
1:30:08 Bill Simmons? Lil' Lex likes to get down.
1:30:13 Bill Simmons? Or William X. I screwed up the joke.
1:30:17 Bill Simmons? Okay, any other words, age the worst for you?
1:30:19 Speaker 01 One thing, uh, I know the, the kids, when they watch this movie, when he's talking to Nona Gay's character, there's a conversation that they have where she talks about how he came to her school.
1:30:30 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's tough one. And he remembers her, even though she was like 12?
1:30:34 Speaker 01 She was 11 years old. He had a, she had a bra on, I called you a little Indian girl. It's the type of shit.
1:30:39 Bill Simmons? I told you when I came to your school, baby.
1:30:46 Bill Simmons? Craig, what do you got for a flex?
1:30:48 Speaker 04 I, I'm acknowledging that Jon Voight is very famous and successful as an actor and the whole thing, but for my millennial, uh, experience with Jon Voight.
1:30:57 Bill Simmons? It's, it's not great.
1:30:58 Speaker 04 I want to give him the Bam Adebayo 83 point. I did not know this was Jon Voight until I saw the credits.
1:31:03 Bill Simmons? Wow.
1:31:04 Speaker 04 No, because I tried to not look up a lot, I just watched the movie. Credits roll, Jon Voight, Howard Cosell, blown away. To me, like, that's.
1:31:10 Bill Simmons? You thought it was Coach Kilmer?
1:31:12 Speaker 04 That's my guy, Mr. Sir, you know, from Holes. That's National Treasure guy. And to see him as Howard Cosell crushing it, unrecognizable, I thought he was fantastic.
1:31:21 Speaker 01 He's a phenomenal actor. Whatever he thinks about anything else is his fucking business, but when he gets in front of that camera, he can get. I'm just saying, like, I'm not gonna hold that, that is what it is, but he can get busy. Like, he, he really can.
1:31:32 Bill Simmons? Maybe not the greatest grandfather?
1:31:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:31:36 Bill Simmons? The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harris support hottest take award.
1:31:42 Chris Ryan? Uh, this isn't really a hot take. I think that there is a version of this film that could have been made, and I think Michael Mann would have made an incredible film out of this. That's just the Chauncey Esker story that's like, pretty phenomenal. Now, I don't want it as an alternative to Ali, but the idea that a guy was Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali's lawyer at the same time is fucking incredible, and I can't believe
1:32:05 Bill Simmons? The Joe Morton character.
1:32:06 Chris Ryan? Yeah, the Joe Morton character, and that we don't have a film about that and a film about that guy is pretty wild.
1:32:13 Bill Simmons? What do you have?
1:32:14 Speaker 01 As I said already, that Will acts better when he doesn't speak in the movie, and that's like really tough to do. But it's a great performance, but a fantastic performance when there's no dialogue.
1:32:26 Bill Simmons? Mine is, uh, I think there's the greatest sports movie of all time in here with a different angle, which is basically Ali and Frasier and doing it that way. And I would dump all the other stuff. Even though I like it in this movie, I don't care about
1:32:40 Chris Ryan? Would you make
1:32:40 Bill Simmons? Who he's with. I don't care about Malcolm X. I'm just doing him versus Frasier.
1:32:44 Speaker 01 I don't care about Malcolm X.
1:32:46 Bill Simmons? I'm saying for this movie.
1:32:48 Chris Ryan? Are you doing basically Ali-Fraser is at its heat? It's these two guys.
1:32:53 Bill Simmons? It's Ali and Frasier, and it's their three fights, and it's
1:32:56 Speaker 01 Oh, the whole trilogy?
1:32:57 Bill Simmons? That's it.
1:32:58 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
1:32:58 Bill Simmons? That's my movie.
1:32:59 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:33:00 Bill Simmons? And it's about like, it's Frasier coming up, and then it's Ali losing the title. And I'm not in with Islam in the 64. I'm like, starting around 68. And I'm going through.
1:33:12 Speaker 01 Okay, wait. So are you doing co-leads in this movie?
1:33:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:33:16 Speaker 01 That's the only thing.
1:33:18 Bill Simmons? That's why it didn't happen, because it was an Ali biopic.
1:33:20 Speaker 01 You're gonna have to sell Joe Frasier to people. For boxing people, Joe Frasier is an incredible
1:33:25 Chris Ryan? Do you think Michael T. Williamson could have done Joe Frasier?
1:33:27 Speaker 01 Probably.
1:33:28 Bill Simmons? I had a I had a turn at some point in my life where I actually became Team Joe Frazier. Cause of, I just thought he was put in such a horrible spot with the Ali stuff. I feel like he became the sympathetic figure eventually. It took me, I don't think I was in till my mid 30s until I really fully saw it.
1:33:46 Speaker 01 So Bryant Gumbel had this same thing. Bryant Gumbel actually wrote this article back in the day.
1:33:51 Bill Simmons? I remember.
1:33:52 Speaker 01 Oh, you, yeah.
1:33:52 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:33:53 Speaker 01 Oh, you talked to you, so you see, that's in When We Were Kids. So Bryant Gumbel had the same way. Well, growing up to me is understanding, like when you, when you listen to Marvish Frazier talk about like going to school and everybody's making fun of him at school. Cause Ali says your dad is an Uncle Tom. Well, really this guy was not Uncle Tom.
1:34:12 Bill Simmons? Well, he called him gorilla, like he did some really bad stuff.
1:34:16 Speaker 01 But growing up is realizing that you're, you're, you know, that's that about your heroes and that they're, once again, the biopic is, what did it cost you? What are the skeletons? That's what I, you know, and Joe Frazier was one of those.
1:34:25 Bill Simmons? The Ghosts of Manoa book that Mark Cram wrote. There was a Frazier documentary too, Frazier Ali, that's tilted more toward Frazier that's good, but um, I, I just think their dynamic. And then Ali, to him, it was all about selling the fight, not realizing the cost it was doing to Frazier. To me is a more interesting movie.
1:34:42 Speaker 01 There is a, so I read an article back in the day about how Joe Frazier carried this his entire life, right?
1:34:48 Bill Simmons? He's so bitter about it.
1:34:50 Speaker 01 His entire life. And this actually spilled over into Joe Frazier, a lot of times being way less than sensitive about Ali's Parkinson's later on in his life. He was kind of a joke about it, right?
1:35:04 Bill Simmons? He's like, I'm, I'm, I still have my faculties and he, he can't, yeah, who actually won.
1:35:09 Speaker 01 Who won those fights? So there's, they were at an event together. And, cause the article was talking about how Joe Frazier needed to let it go. They were at an event together and they were like, yo, you guys should hit the heavy bag. And Joe Frazier goes, I'll hit it. And Joe Frazier, who was still in control of all of his shit, gets up there and starts wailing on the heavy bag, you know? This is like in the eighties, so he's probably like in his 50s or something like that. He hasn't lost in either time, he needed power, he does all of that stuff. And he comes back feeling like I finally fucked over this guy, right? Ali walks up to the heavy bag and goes, huh. Did you guys see that? And the whole room starts laughing. And he made a fool out of him again. And they were just like, Joe, just give it up.
1:35:54 Speaker 01 He just couldn't get around him.
1:35:57 Bill Simmons? Casting whatevs couldn't find any except for, uh, Will Smith turned down Ali and then Ali called Will Smith and asked him to do it. And at that point, you can't say no to Ali. That was that.
1:36:07 Speaker 01 What type of shit do we'll be on?
1:36:09 Chris Ryan? I, I don't know.
1:36:10 Bill Simmons? Oh, no, I, I think it's justifiable that it's too intimidating of a role.
1:36:14 Chris Ryan? Like, what are you gonna do?
1:36:15 Speaker 01 Michael Mann wants to do the.
1:36:18 Chris Ryan? You only like one, man. You gotta try it.
1:36:20 Bill Simmons? Well, he, he needed to get there.
1:36:21 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:36:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, he's like, no, I gotta do I, Robot.
1:36:24 Bill Simmons? Seriously, that's probably what it's like.
1:36:26 Speaker 01 I mean, that's not a diss, Will Smith.
1:36:28 Bill Simmons? I gotta do Bagger Vance.
1:36:29 Chris Ryan? Do you think that, I mean, do you play out?
1:36:31 Speaker 01 Huh?
1:36:32 Chris Ryan? Do you play out in your head Denzel doing this?
1:36:34 Speaker 01 As Muhammad Ali?
1:36:35 Bill Simmons? I don't think it works.
1:36:36 Speaker 01 I don't think it works either.
1:36:37 Bill Simmons? I don't think he's big enough either.
1:36:39 Speaker 01 He's not big enough.
1:36:39 Bill Simmons? Will Smith was six, three. That was part of what made this.
1:36:42 Speaker 01 He's perfect.
1:36:43 Bill Simmons? He looks like a heavyweight.
1:36:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
1:36:45 Bill Simmons? Uh, Best That Guy Award. It's all graduated that guy's as, as we mentioned.
1:36:49 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:36:50 Speaker 01 It's not Barry? Barry Shabon?
1:36:51 Bill Simmons? I think Barry was the one I would go with.
1:36:53 Chris Ryan? But he's a Michael Mann, that guy. Yeah.
1:36:56 Bill Simmons? Dion Waiters.
1:36:58 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:36:58 Bill Simmons? Don King.
1:37:00 Bill Simmons? Joe Frazier or Veronica?
1:37:02 Speaker 01 Is Jamie eligible? No?
1:37:03 Bill Simmons? No.
1:37:03 Speaker 01 Too much?
1:37:04 Bill Simmons? Too much. Or Veronica Portia?
1:37:07 Chris Ryan? I think you gotta go. I, I go Michael T.
1:37:11 Speaker 01 I go Michael T.
1:37:12 Bill Simmons? I go with that too as well. Recasting Couch Director City.
1:37:16 Speaker 01 Slight case for James Toney. Just, just put it out there.
1:37:20 Bill Simmons? I had him on the list.
1:37:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:37:21 Bill Simmons? Um. Spike Lee?
1:37:25 Chris Ryan? Let's, we can talk it out. We can talk Oliver Stone out.
1:37:29 Bill Simmons? I'm glad it played out the way it did with Michael Mann, cause I don't think there was any way to make this movie perfect. So you might as well make it stylistically incredible.
1:37:37 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:37:38 Bill Simmons? Um. And again, like, when did he make Malcolm X? It was like ninety-two?
1:37:42 Speaker 01 Ninety-one or ninety-two.
1:37:44 Bill Simmons? So if you're doing this version of the movie, I don't know how he just is like, yeah, gonna run back my Malcolm X stuff. Like, I don't know.
1:37:51 Chris Ryan? I think he would have made a different film.
1:37:53 Bill Simmons? He probably would have not had that stuff in at all, right?
1:37:55 Speaker 01 I think it would have been a really awesome movie, but I don't like, I, I, I, I accept and like this movie the way it is.
1:38:05 Bill Simmons? Half-Fast Century Research, Will Smith was a pallbearer at Ali's funeral? Will Smith and Michael Mann put up their salaries if the movie went over budget?
1:38:13 Chris Ryan? Yeah, cuz Will Smith is coming off Wild Wild West, so like, there was some money stuff.
1:38:18 Bill Simmons? Smith didn't wanna meet Ali for months, and then seven months into filming, Ali came to the set and Smith did his whole trash talk Ali thing for fifteen minutes. And Ali was impressed and turned to Howard Bingham and said, how come you didn't tell me I was so crazy?
1:38:39 Bill Simmons? Imagine doing Ali for Ali.
1:38:41 Speaker 01 This is the guy, bruh. This is the man.
1:38:42 Chris Ryan? Oh, you know what? We, for, for Dion, Giancarlo, I think Esposito would, would, would count for Dion, wouldn't it?
1:38:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:38:50 Chris Ryan? He's in four scenes.
1:38:51 Speaker 01 He's in my flex category.
1:38:53 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:38:54 Bill Simmons? What's your flex category? Let's hear it.
1:38:56 Speaker 01 The David Caruso Stuff of Legends Award for a character who definitely should have been spun off into their own sequel? I would love to see a movie with Giancarlo as Ali's dad. It's him watching all of this crazy-ass shit happen to his son. I love that character.
1:39:17 Bill Simmons? I loved him too.
1:39:17 Speaker 01 That character reminded me so much of my dad. That charac- he, think about it. That character's going from watching his son be the best amateur heavyweight to getting it, then his son joins the Nation of Islam.
1:39:29 Bill Simmons? And changes his name.
1:39:30 Speaker 01 Changes his name. He gotta tell, it's his name.
1:39:33 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:39:33 Speaker 01 So, he's done all of this work, and now his name, Cassius Clay, is gonna be everywhere. Except it's not. It's not gonna be everywhere. A new name will be everywhere. His son marries the woman, loves the woman, he meets Bundini Brown. I think it would have been a really fucking interesting movie.
1:39:51 Chris Ryan? It would've been awesome. There's so many characters in this movie that you, you could make a Howard Bingham movie. You could make-
1:39:56 Speaker 01 A Bundini Brown movie.
1:39:56 Chris Ryan? You could make a Bundini movie. You could make a Casella movie. You could make a Don King movie. I mean-
1:40:02 Bill Simmons? Frasier.
1:40:03 Speaker 01 But the more I saw Giancarlo on screen, the more I wanted to see him.
1:40:05 Chris Ryan? Yeah. Apex Mountain.
1:40:08 Speaker 01 Oh, I got one more half ass of that research. The guy, uh, there's an actor named Albert Hall in this movie.
1:40:13 Chris Ryan? Yeah, he plays Elijah Muhammad in this, but in Malcolm X, yeah.
1:40:17 Speaker 01 In Malcolm X, he plays a character named Baines, who is a fictitious character that was there to sort of be like.
1:40:24 Chris Ryan? He leads.
1:40:25 Speaker 01 An amalgam.
1:40:26 Chris Ryan? Malcolm in his prison conversion, right?
1:40:27 Speaker 01 Right, and he introduces Malcolm to Elijah Muhammad. In this movie, he plays Elijah Muhammad.
1:40:33 Chris Ryan? He is also the boat commander in Apocalypse Now.
1:40:35 Speaker 01 Apocalypse Now.
1:40:37 Bill Simmons? I had some notes on his living room. Thought we could have needed more furniture.
1:40:40 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah, William.
1:40:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:40:42 Speaker 01 William X? You can say that to the honorable.
1:40:43 Chris Ryan? William X, interior designer for the nation.
1:40:45 Bill Simmons? Two more chairs in there.
1:40:46 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:40:47 Speaker 01 When's the last time you read Way of Superior Man?
1:40:49 Bill Simmons? Pretty big.
1:40:50 Speaker 01 Best to the black man.
1:40:52 Bill Simmons? Apex Mountain. Will Smith.
1:40:57 Speaker 01 This is the apex.
1:40:58 Chris Ryan? He's taking an L, though. He's coming off Wild Wild West, so he is like, he's wobbling a little.
1:41:02 Speaker 01 So if not this, what's his apex then?
1:41:04 Chris Ryan? Uh, I think it's the.
1:41:06 Bill Simmons? I think it's Independence Day, Men in Black. We, we litigated this when we did Enemy of the State, I think. It's, it's in the late nineties.
1:41:13 Chris Ryan? He does a series of like sequels and stuff, like, yeah.
1:41:16 Speaker 01 I can make an argument.
1:41:17 Chris Ryan? He goes Fresh Prince, Independence Day, Men in Black.
1:41:20 Speaker 01 That you, it's tough to beat. I make an argument that Will Smith, Will Smith at the absolute peak of his powers is Hitch.
1:41:27 Bill Simmons? Oh, five?
1:41:28 Speaker 01 Absolute peak of his powers. Hitch is a movie that legitimately, all, everything else that we're talking about, all of that stuff, those movies have conceits, Big Aliens, all of that type of shit. Fresh Prince is very close to what I'm talking about. Hitch is Will Smith directly demonstrating what a devastating movie he, movie star he is. He charms us through the entire movie and makes it into a really good film.
1:41:50 Bill Simmons? It's on the rewatchable list. Fox, no. Ali movies, yes. The Jada Will relationship, probably.
1:42:01 Bill Simmons? James Tony, still fighting? And he's in Ali?
1:42:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, maybe, yeah.
1:42:08 Bill Simmons? I think it's 90s for James Tony.
1:42:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, he was like the undisputed super middleweight champion.
1:42:12 Bill Simmons? Don King impersonations in a movie, yes. Cosell impersonations, yes. Boxing movies, no.
1:42:19 Chris Ryan? Apex Mountain for Cosell impersonation.
1:42:23 Speaker 01 Don King, Ving Rhames, you remember that one?
1:42:28 Bill Simmons? What was, what was he?
1:42:30 Speaker 01 Ving Rhames did the Don King movie.
1:42:32 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's on Showtime, right?
1:42:34 Speaker 01 Like HBO.
1:42:35 Bill Simmons? Or HBO, one of those, yeah.
1:42:37 Speaker 01 That was a lot more.
1:42:38 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's a good one.
1:42:38 Speaker 01 The devil is a motherfucker.
1:42:40 Bill Simmons? Uh, Michael Mann?
1:42:43 Chris Ryan? No.
1:42:44 Bill Simmons? It's The Insider.
1:42:45 Chris Ryan? I think that this is, like I said, this is the end, you, you call it, we can call it Apex Mountain, you can call it the Imperial Phase, which is like a pop music term, but they're, they're both like at the peak of their powers per se, uh, but I don't think this is his apex.
1:42:58 Bill Simmons? I think it's Insider.
1:43:01 Chris Ryan? Insider was kind of a box office disappointment, though.
1:43:03 Bill Simmons? No, but it got Oscars and it leads to like, I'm gonna spend 110 million on my Ali movie and they're like, go ahead, Michael Mann.
1:43:10 Chris Ryan? Right.
1:43:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that run is the apex and it might be anybody's apex, maybe like Spielberg, Denny, it's not too many guys that have them back to back like that.
1:43:21 Bill Simmons? Best name for a racehorse, Ali Boumae?
1:43:26 Bill Simmons? It's pretty good.
1:43:26 Speaker 01 Or just Boumae?
1:43:27 Bill Simmons? Bundini?
1:43:28 Speaker 01 Bundini's good.
1:43:30 Bill Simmons? Cruiser Hanks? Who would you wanna see play Ali, CR?
1:43:37 Chris Ryan? Is it in blackface or is it like just?
1:43:39 Bill Simmons? No, it's just makeup.
1:43:40 Speaker 01 Willie Max, get your guy.
1:43:41 Chris Ryan? Uh, I had Hanks as Cosell.
1:43:46 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:43:49 Speaker 01 I mean, you'd have to.
1:43:51 Bill Simmons? Is that the only way, so that, or Cruz?
1:43:53 Speaker 01 Cruz doesn't have any place.
1:43:54 Bill Simmons? Cruz as Angelo, does he?
1:43:55 Chris Ryan? Come on, Danny, come on, come on, Danny.
1:43:58 Bill Simmons? Can I run with you? What do you have, Craig?
1:44:02 Chris Ryan? Sir, Hanks as Cosell, what, what options do we have?
1:44:06 Speaker 01 Lot of that. Bob Marum?
1:44:09 Bill Simmons? Scorsese or Spielberg, bringing it back for this one.
1:44:12 Chris Ryan? Scorsese.
1:44:14 Speaker 01 Scorsese.
1:44:15 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:44:17 Bill Simmons? Picking nits, we mentioned a few. A big one for me, they show the Ellis Quarry fight. And then Ali goes and meets Joe Morton in the diner. And then three weeks later.
1:44:30 Bill Simmons? MLK gets killed.
1:44:33 Bill Simmons? The Quarry fight, Ellis Quarry happens three weeks after MLK got killed. They fucked up the scenes.
1:44:41 Chris Ryan? I was also wondering, do you think that Ali found out he won the Supreme Court case from Howard Cosell? Is that true?
1:44:48 Bill Simmons? And sitting at just a table? I don't think that was true. I think they probably took some liberties. Uh, when Joe Frazier asked Ali if he needed any money? Ali took the money in real life.
1:44:59 Chris Ryan? Oh.
1:45:00 Bill Simmons? That scene was true.
1:45:00 Chris Ryan? Really?
1:45:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:45:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, you own some money.
1:45:02 Bill Simmons? Ali was broke. Yeah, he ran out of money.
1:45:04 Speaker 01 And Joe would bring that up, which is you shouldn't do, by the way.
1:45:07 Bill Simmons? We mentioned the dates that this movie desperately needed dates and then. It's a hardcore Ali nitpick, but um, he's speaking differently by the time we're in Zaire.
1:45:18 Chris Ryan? Oh.
1:45:19 Bill Simmons? He's a little slower. Yeah, he's not, it's not as bad as after Manila, but it's definitely like the guy in the sixties is.
1:45:27 Speaker 01 You start to watch it, you start to watch it happen, yeah.
1:45:29 Bill Simmons? He's a little, you know, it's just, it's slowing down a little bit and that they didn't, he just seems the same throughout the movie.
1:45:35 Speaker 01 Actually, the slowing down becomes a part of it too. They're two very distinct Ali's. There's a super fast talking Ali and then there's a slower talking Ali.
1:45:44 Bill Simmons? Which is where we are.
1:45:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, a lot of people remember.
1:45:46 Bill Simmons? Any other nitpicks?
1:45:48 Chris Ryan? No.
1:45:48 Bill Simmons? Um, sequel prequel Prestige TV or Black Cast or Untouchable? Prestige TV would have been, they had like a hundred and fifty million dollars for a ten hour.
1:45:57 Speaker 01 They're doing it.
1:45:58 Chris Ryan? That's what the greatest is?
1:45:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:46:00 Bill Simmons? That's what it is?
1:46:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's a prestige, it's a, it's an Amazon joint, Michael B. Jordan and them are doing, yeah.
1:46:07 Chris Ryan? Who's playing Ali?
1:46:08 Speaker 01 I can't remember. But I know that uh, my man, Aiman from um, Snowfall is playing uh, Sonny Liston.
1:46:17 Bill Simmons? Okay. Hmm. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Flores, Zane Lowe, Robert Evans, Dr. Charles Nichols, or someone else here?
1:46:26 Chris Ryan? Obviously Fox is incredible, but have you guys thought about Pete Poselway as Bundini Brown?
1:46:30 Bill Simmons? No, I have not.
1:46:31 Chris Ryan? No, I'm Jewish, and he's Muslim. And because of that, he tells me I need to give up certain things, like pork and white women. I can give up pork, but white women, not after a little taste.
1:46:52 Bill Simmons? Um, I had Ted Levine as the FBI agent, but as Buffalo Bill.
1:46:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:46:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:46:59 Speaker 01 Have you heard of Malcolm?
1:47:06 Speaker 01 Are you a big fat person?
1:47:11 Bill Simmons? Just want to ask her, who gets it? Interesting category.
1:47:13 Chris Ryan? Fox.
1:47:14 Bill Simmons? It's Fox.
1:47:15 Speaker 01 I go with Jamie.
1:47:16 Bill Simmons? It's Fox. Would you have Fox or Voight?
1:47:19 Chris Ryan? Oh, I'm going Voight.
1:47:21 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:47:23 Speaker 01 That's, that's Ali in the, in the thing, a guy named Jalen Best.
1:47:26 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:47:28 Bill Simmons? Probably an answerable question, I'll add one. Why didn't more boxers try Sonny Liston's Dr. Gloves trick?
1:47:35 Speaker 01 Of course they tried the shit out of it.
1:47:37 Bill Simmons? This seems like a great idea for evil boxers.
1:47:39 Chris Ryan? And did Sonny Liston throw the second flight?
1:47:42 Bill Simmons? I mean, almost definitely.
1:47:44 Speaker 01 Phantom punch, it depends on which lore you believe. You believe the lore that Ali was so quick he could land a right that the camera couldn't even catch, knock somebody clean out?
1:47:52 Bill Simmons? Probably the most crooked boxer of the last 75 years.
1:47:55 Speaker 01 The lore about the fact that the mafia owned Sonny Liston, and they made him take a dive.
1:48:00 Bill Simmons? Also, like, if you watch it, there's a moment when he's down, when he tries to get up and he does like this, almost like pro wrestling, ah, and falls back down. It's really bad. I always thought he threw it. You'd think he threw it, right?
1:48:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, probably.
1:48:15 Bill Simmons? The memorabilia you'd most want from this movie?
1:48:19 Speaker 01 The one of the toughest ones we've ever had to do for me.
1:48:22 Chris Ryan? Um, the...
1:48:25 Chris Ryan? The hand tape that the ref signs to be like, I've checked, you know, in the beginning.
1:48:30 Speaker 01 That's awesome, yeah.
1:48:32 Chris Ryan? I don't know what I would do with used hand tape, but still it'd be cool.
1:48:34 Bill Simmons? I have the movie robe from the first Liston's fight, Liston fight, where you can see it says the lip on the back.
1:48:44 Bill Simmons? They tried to get him going as the lip. Didn't go, because guess what? Guess who didn't need a name? Ali. Just call him the greatest.
1:48:51 Speaker 01 I like to, I always liked those old vintage gloves. So either the gloves used that Will Smith used in the theme. Zaire.
1:48:59 Bill Simmons? By the way, with the fight scenes, they tried all kinds of stuff with gloves to make it so they would look more realistic and nothing worked. Like big, bigger, softer gloves, so it could really, and nothing, nothing worked. Coach Finster, Mr. Maguire, best, worst life lesson?
1:49:15 Chris Ryan? Dude, free ain't easy, free is real and real is a motherfucker.
1:49:18 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:49:19 Bill Simmons? Best double feature choice? I have When We Were Kings.
1:49:22 Chris Ryan? Malcolm X.
1:49:22 Speaker 01 I have Malcolm X.
1:49:23 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:49:25 Speaker 01 Chris X.
1:49:26 Bill Simmons? Tough one, who won the movie?
1:49:31 Chris Ryan? I'm gonna say Michael Mann because that's why I watched the movie. Now, I would say that, but I, I do think that his visual style, while I, fans' point's really well taken about whether it works for period. I think his visual style is the reason I returned to this film.
1:49:47 Speaker 01 All I know is you can't necessarily say that Will won the movie. I think actually this is one of the rare situations where Will's kinda out. And after that.
1:49:55 Bill Simmons? He did get nominated for the first time.
1:49:57 Speaker 01 Nominated for the first time. He did get nominated for the first time. I personally, when I wa, on a rewatch, this is stupid, I kinda think Jamie Foxx won the movie. I think as like a blueprint or.
1:50:10 Chris Ryan? And using it as like the.
1:50:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think kinda Jamie Foxx won the movie.
1:50:13 Chris Ryan? And obviously Mann is like, that's my fucking guy.
1:50:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, they go back and they do collateral again and all that stuff.
1:50:18 Bill Simmons? That makes sense. I have Will Smith in the moment and then over the years, Michael Mann. Cause I think he's the reason to keep coming back to this, even though it's a pretty, you know, it's a biopic. Yeah, I don't think I'll be watching the Freddie Mercury biopic 25 years from now, but this keeps sucking me in. The Freddie Mercury biopic has some good scenes in it.
1:50:38 Chris Ryan? What's William X think of Freddie Mercury?
1:50:40 Bill Simmons? He enjoys it.
1:50:41 Chris Ryan? Oh, okay.
1:50:42 Bill Simmons? Yeah, like Freddie's music. Yeah.
1:50:47 Chris Ryan? William X contains so many different.
1:50:50 Bill Simmons? Craig, you never saw this movie?
1:50:52 Speaker 04 No.
1:50:53 Bill Simmons? You blanched at the time. You were scared.
1:50:55 Speaker 04 A little long.
1:50:56 Bill Simmons? I mean, it really was long. It's like a fucking football game.
1:50:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah, but once you get, once it gets rolling, you're like, alright.
1:51:01 Speaker 04 I thought the acting across the board in this movie was superb. Like, I thought everybody was just fantastic. I thought there were a lot of shit, like Zaire was amazing, the Cosell stuff I thought was great, the Malcolm X stuff I thought was great. I don't know, it's probably a generational thing, but I felt that just I kind of disconnected this movie. I don't know why, I just felt like something was missing out of this movie, and I don't know what it was. I think I struggled with... I couldn't really feel the weight of Ali's talent as a boxer in this movie. Like, to be honest, I wasn't like, this guy's an amazing boxer, watching the movie. Like, I didn't get it.
1:51:31 Speaker 01 You know what's funny about that? That's the one thing that the movie being made for us that you don't have to convince us of.
1:51:38 Speaker 04 Right, and I, you know, other than like clips here and there, I don't really know. I like, I was kind of bummed that we didn't really get a lot of the feet stuff, which I understand Will Smith can't do. But, the movie magic of trying to really make, maybe I'm just like Rocky and Creed brained, or I like a little bit more of the theatrical boxing style. But like, when the movie ended, I was kind of like, I don't know. I was like, I don't exactly know what my takeaway is supposed to be, or what the point of view is supposed to be from this movie, but I enjoyed it.
1:52:04 Chris Ryan? Maybe it's about too many different things.
1:52:06 Speaker 04 Maybe.
1:52:06 Speaker 01 It could be. Maybe the movie's a little bit about political stuff, a little bit about personal stuff.
1:52:10 Speaker 04 Like, it didn't seem that much about boxing to me, and when the movie ended at boxing, I was like, oh, okay.
1:52:16 Bill Simmons? Do you think we'll ever get to the point where we can just CGI? The actor's face over the actual boxing footage for a boxing movie?
1:52:23 Speaker 04 We don't want that.
1:52:24 Bill Simmons? Why would you want that? I don't know. I'm asking, I'm asking.
1:52:27 Speaker 04 I think, yeah, the answer is yes. We could definitely do that. We could probably do it right now.
1:52:32 Chris Ryan? Like, it's Muhammad Ali's face on old Muhammad Ali footage?
1:52:35 Bill Simmons? I'm saying for some of the, just slide it in so that we get all the athleticism and stuff from Ali.
1:52:42 Speaker 01 So they do this, they do, they like DH actors and put them in, make them like...
1:52:46 Bill Simmons? The Irishman, you'd like The Irishman. I'm saying, would we ever cheat? Could you accept it, watching it?
1:52:50 Speaker 04 Like, you put Muhammad Ali's legs on Will Smith or something.
1:52:53 Bill Simmons? Almost like what they tried to do with Forrest Gump, when they put Forrest in the different...
1:52:57 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, what you're really asking for is for there to be like, an AI facsimile of, of, because that would work the best, right? Like, the, what you're asking for is an AI facsimile that can approximate the speed, power, and precision in time.
1:53:10 Speaker 04 But then just watch a fucking Muhammad Ali YouTube video then.
1:53:12 Bill Simmons? That's the problem.
1:53:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:53:14 Chris Ryan? That's the thing. I think if you wanted to do something where it was like, I want Timothy Chalamet to play like a middleweight fighter, but he's, you know, like there are limits of what he can do.
1:53:26 Bill Simmons? Well, that's a good example, though, because the ping pong was all AI. He wasn't actually playing ping pong. It was CGI. I mean CGI.
1:53:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:53:33 Bill Simmons? So it wasn't playing, he was playing ping pong, but wasn't playing at the level of the movie.
1:53:37 Speaker 01 The, the deal here is that like when you're a boxer, something you've been doing, most of the greats, not all of them, but most of it's something you've been doing since you're eight or nine years old. And they're like fast and slow twitch muscle things. There's movement, there are angles, there's all of that stuff that you just can't get ready for in a movie camp to kind of like, look like you know how to do it. That's a lot of things like that.
1:53:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:53:58 Speaker 01 So you just.
1:53:59 Chris Ryan? I'm glad that, but it's, it's refreshing to see William X open to new technology.
1:54:05 Speaker 01 Right.
1:54:05 Chris Ryan? Because a lot of our religious leaders are a little bit, you know.
1:54:08 Speaker 01 But you, you know, you know, oh, William X, when is the next Million Man March?
1:54:13 Bill Simmons? You know what's a good boxing movie?
1:54:17 Bill Simmons? For boxing scenes, The Hammer with Adam Carolla.
1:54:20 Speaker 01 Is that, oh yeah, it is.
1:54:21 Bill Simmons? Because Carolla actually boxed, one of the rare ones. Everyone else kind of learns how to box for the movie. But rarely do we get the actor leading the movie who actually boxes.
1:54:31 Speaker 01 Boxes a little bit. Did Stallone box? Did he mess around in the gym?
1:54:34 Bill Simmons? No, he, he kind of learned how to do it.
1:54:35 Chris Ryan? Is there a boxing story that you would love to see made into a movie? A fighter, a, a fight?
1:54:41 Speaker 01 Easy for me.
1:54:43 Speaker 01 Emile Griffith.
1:54:45 Bill Simmons? Oh, good documentary.
1:54:48 Speaker 01 Emile Griffith. Why Bill?
1:54:50 Bill Simmons? Because he killed somebody in the ring.
1:54:52 Speaker 01 That's not why.
1:54:53 Bill Simmons? Well, and, and had some, just hiding some secrets.
1:54:58 Speaker 01 Yeah. He was a.
1:54:59 Bill Simmons? He was gay the whole time.
1:55:00 Speaker 01 Middleweight.
1:55:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:55:02 Speaker 01 Like just one of the most dominant middleweights, fucking over everybody, but also gay guy.
1:55:11 Bill Simmons? And the guy he killed in the ring kept making fun of him for being gay.
1:55:14 Chris Ryan? Oh, wow.
1:55:15 Bill Simmons? And he killed him in the ring.
1:55:16 Chris Ryan? Jesus.
1:55:16 Bill Simmons? It's a good documentary.
1:55:17 Chris Ryan? Did they make a Ward Gotti movie?
1:55:20 Bill Simmons? Well, they, they did not, but they made The Fighter, but somehow Ward Gotti was in it. I always thought a great movie would be Sugar Ray Leonard.
1:55:29 Bill Simmons? Winning the Hearns fight, getting into like cocaine and the detached retina, and then the five years leading to the Haggar fight.
1:55:37 Speaker 01 Did-
1:55:37 Bill Simmons? And trying to beat Haggar.
1:55:38 Speaker 01 Sugar Ray get to, and obviously Emile Griffin is much more obscure than Sugar Ray. That would be about the story and not about the thing. Did Sugar Ray get to biopic level?
1:55:49 Bill Simmons? I mean, I personally think he did for some of the movies that have been biopics. Like, did Cinderella Man get to a biopic level?
1:55:56 Speaker 01 That's more about the depression and shit, though.
1:55:57 Bill Simmons? Sugar Ray was the most famous fighter since Ali before Tyson.
1:56:02 Speaker 01 He was. Like, he definitely was. But like, there was something to where he seemed like a bridge between Ali and Tyson. Like, he held it down, so.
1:56:15 Bill Simmons? But to me, that, the Sugar Ray story is like Ralph Sampson getting hurt in the 86 finals, but then coming back and winning the 93 finals or something. Like, it felt like his career was kind of over. Detached retina seemed like a death sentence. And he started to have a whole bunch of issues.
1:56:31 Speaker 01 Right.
1:56:32 Bill Simmons? Then came back, and then when he fought Haggar, he was like a four to one underdog.
1:56:35 Speaker 01 It's like four years, three years off? How many years off?
1:56:38 Bill Simmons? It took five.
1:56:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, like, it just comes back.
1:56:40 Bill Simmons? Fought him in 87.
1:56:41 Speaker 01 Like, do you, does any of this ring a bell or none of you?
1:56:45 Speaker 04 I mean, I know all these names, obviously, but I, you know.
1:56:47 Speaker 01 Yeah. Eighties, man.
1:56:50 Bill Simmons? CR, thank you. Thank you for having me, Bill. Ben Leighton, thank you. Craig and Gahow, thank you. Eduardo, thank you. Anyone else to thank?
1:56:58 Speaker 04 Matt.
1:56:59 Bill Simmons? Matt, thank you. Uh, we'll be back next week on the Rewatchables with, uh, the 30 year anniversary of She's the One, which you can watch on Netflix before we do the podcast. There you go.
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Previous ‘Pacific Heights’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Kyle Brandt Next ‘She’s the One’ With Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Wesley Morris Page updated October 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated