Word: muhammad
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...good job," says Muhammad Ali, who played himself in the awful 1977 biopic The Greatest. For this new movie, under the tutelage of director Michael Mann (The Insider), Smith prepared by studying Ali's Islamic faith and learning to box, training for nearly a year. The 33-year-old star added 30 lbs. of muscle to his lanky physique and transformed his body into a nearly perfect replica of the champ's when he was in fighting form. When this observation is shared with Ali, he pauses, then looks up from his drawing and, his eyes twinkling a bit, says...
...even he possesses Ali's singular DNA pattern of beauty, grace and bravado. To make a movie about Ali - perhaps the most idolized, vilified and complex public figure of the 20th century - has been a high-wire act of both hubris and dedication. "For an African American, Muhammad Ali is the biggest role you could have. Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Nelson Mandela - with any of those roles comes a responsibility," says Smith. "The level of dedication to this role is unparalleled to anything I've done so far other than having a family...
...life." The initial screenplay, which Gregory Allen Howard (Remember the Titans) delivered in 1996, offered this fascinating insight: "The key to Ali's life was his relationship with his father, who ignored him," says Howard. "It explains his need to please older men like Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Howard Cosell and Don King...
...movie went nowhere, though, because Smith was too "terrified" to sign on. "I didn't want to be the dude that messed up the Muhammad Ali story," he says. He also had trouble relating to a man whose life had been so defined by racial injustice. "I'm a child of rap music," says Smith, who started his career in music and still moonlights as a rapper. "We've got Bentleys. We can't even relate to not being able to sit in somebody's lunch counter. I'll buy the counter and throw you out." But for Ali, Smith...
...management turnover at Sony, several more rewrites were assigned while many directors, including Barry Sonnenfeld, Curtis Hanson and Spike Lee, circled the movie. Mann ultimately took the job after meeting with the Alis. "The one thing they feared was a sentimentalization," says Mann, "a teary Hallmark- greeting version of Muhammad Ali...What they didn't want is what I didn't want." When asked why he didn't choose a black director, Ali answers, "The people that made the movie, I know they're qualified. I don't care what color they are." His wife adds that "Muhammad didn...