Disloyalty reigns in 'When We Were Kings' production

LOS ANGELES - Might as well put the moral of this tale right up at the top. Here it is: Beware of Hollywood fairy tales. If a story seems too good to be entirely true, that's probably because it is.

The fable matching this moral starts with "When We Were Kings," a film about the 1974 heavyweight bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire that won an Academy Award for Best Documentary in March. It was a film, according to articles published at the time, that prevailed after a 23-year struggle, coming about because of the unwavering vision of filmmaker Leon Gast and the dedication of producer David Sonenberg.

The New York Times wrote of the "sometimes-quixotic perseverance of Mr. Gast and David Sonenberg, who eventually became the film's executive producer, in the face of legal and technical barriers." The Washington Post wrote: "Gast never swerved. His love of Ali wouldn't let him." In a "48 Hours" segment, Dan Rather waxed: "You're about to meet a man who could have quit years ago; fortunately for all of us, he didn't."

In fact, the story of the making of the film has become as important as the subject itself, included as a postscript on the newly released video; Gast's quest is presented as an inspiring story of determination, a triumph of faith over adversity.

The full story is rather less inspiring.

It is also a tale of lawsuits, pettiness, credit-grabbing and, sad to say, ingratitude. It was a project conceived then left idle, proceeding in fits and starts thanks to a series of people who believed passionately in what the film could become, then marginalized and sued before the moment came to reap rewards.

A more complete, though not nearly as uplifting, history of "When We Were Kings" emerges through interviews with more than a dozen people who worked on or close to the film, court papers, an early script and previous cuts of the movie. It is a more-complicated tale but one that also seems more suited to the often-cutthroat world of filmmaking, where visionaries compromise to get their movies made and where financiers are out to maximize profits.

Rather than a story to inspire faith in the little guy, "When We Were Kings" is instead about how films are promoted, how complex reality becomes a more-marketable simplicity.

It's about how the winners get to write history.

So how did the film get made? After a chance meeting with Gast in 1983, it was Robinson who offered to take a look at the concert footage. Robinson owned Phantasmagoria, an editing facility used by independent filmmakers in New York City, and knew of Gast's project.

Says Robinson: "I said, 'Let's check it out.' We unpacked the boxes, and I saw the Spinners, James Brown - I was blown away. I realized there were a lot of cameras, and a huge volume of stuff.'"

Getting this material into editable shape became Robinson's private passion. From 1983 to 1989, he undertook the expensive and time-consuming task of transferring the film to videotape so it could be edited, and of synchronizing the sound. Every hour of footage took more than two hours to transfer. Robinson says he sank about $150,000 of his own money into the project.

Alan Douglas, a music producer who attempted to acquire the still-emerging film during the 1980s, says: "The project never would've been accomplished without Keith. Impossible. In the first place, he financed the complete beginning of the project. ... Aside from that, he edited all the rough-cut material ... not only the Muhammad Ali material and fight material, but the music material."

Gast agrees that Robinson played an important role. "When I met Keith Robinson, there was still material and sound not transferred (to videotape). What Keith Robinson did - and we didn't do all the material - through his place, Phantasmagoria, was have transferred to videotape two-thirds of the negative. And Keith was paying for it."

In 1989, Gast and Robinson were partners and had already edited separate, commercial music videos of the Zaire concert footage that included B.B. King, the Pointer Sisters and a salsa group, the Fania Allstars. They went to Sonenberg, Gast's lawyer, to see about formalizing their relationship and ensuring the rights to use the footage in a feature-length film, according to Robinson.

Gast says they went to Sonenberg for his help in negotiating an offer by a British record company to buy the footage; whichever, both agree that the lawyer instead offered to put up the money to complete the film in exchange for part ownership of the finished product.

From the spring of 1990 to the following spring, Sonenberg paid Gast a salary to edit the film in his law office, using equipment provided by Douglas, the music producer. Robinson did another cut of the film after Gast had finished his work.

But though tensions had grown between Gast and Robinson, they were both astonished when shortly thereafter Sonenberg sued them for a total of $14 million, claiming "violation of copyright and various contract rights." Gast and Robinson, ostensible creators of the film, say they didn't realize until that point that Sonenberg controlled the copyright to the project.

The filmmakers say they didn't have the money to fight a suit. Eventually they agreed to a settlement. Robinson was cut out of the profits, though he was to be given $90,000 for his expenses and received credit as a producer of the film, according to the agreement filed in Manhattan court. Sonenberg ended up with the rights to two-thirds of the profits, while Gast would get one-third.

Says Douglas: "I think a terrible injustice was done. ... Without any question, they pushed him out. They pushed him out of the proper credits. They pushed him out of financial rewards. And emotionally, he had as much in it as they did, if not more."

Gast says, however, that Robinson got all the credit he deserved.

Robinson, who under the settlement is not permitted to talk about the litigation, says merely: "It was a feeling of betrayal that you can't even imagine."

All of this turned out to be an appropriate prologue for what happened at this year's Academy Awards.

Although Gast and Hackford share a credit on the film, Hackford was not nominated for an Oscar; the two nomination slots instead went to Gast and Sonenberg. Says Sonenberg: "Unfortunately the Academy only recognizes two people, and he wasn't one of them."

When he learned of the slight, Hackford was furious (normally those with creative input are included in the nominations for Best Documentary), but he decided not to make a stir, since a controversy over credits could have hurt the film's chances at an award.

Instead he was silent while the media wrote stories about Gast's struggle and Sonenberg's stalwart support. What finally moved Hackford to action - he wrote the Academy after the ceremony asking that the application procedures be changed - was the fact that neither winner bothered to mention his name from the podium on Oscar night.

Says Gast: "I did feel bad that I didn't mention Taylor at the awards - I definitely should have mentioned him for his contribution." Later he adds, "At every single awards ceremony I always mentioned Vikram, Keith and Taylor - but not the Oscars. It wasn't an intentional omission, it was out of nervousness."

It probably wouldn't have mattered. A simpler version had already been accepted: Gast had labored for two decades to commit Ali's triumph to film. But the reality was that the film was the result of the tenacity and vision of a long line of people including Robinson, Hackford, Jayanti and, indeed, Sonenberg himself.

Says Terry Tragianopoulous, who was Gast's assistant editor: "Leon's a complex man. He felt success had eluded him for so long. Now he's finally gotten his success. Whether it's deserved or not, I don't know."

Hackford went to Mexico to avoid having to watch the ceremony. Robinson got a dozen phone calls on Oscar night from friends, angry that he had no part in the film's ultimate triumph. And practically everyone involved in the film has had cause to reflect on the nature of making films and their subsequent myths.

"In the press book, it all sort of magically happens," Jayanti says. "I said to myself, 'Gosh, this is the way history is made.'"

09-25-97