Fifty years ago today (February 25, 1964), Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay) defeated Sonny Liston (aka, “the Big Bear”) to win the Heavyweight Championship of the World. It was “the Scowl” versus “the Mouth” in Miami.
Muhammad Ali and me: Iowa City, 1968:
When I read that today was the 50-year anniversary of the Clay/Liston fight (Ali was still known as Cassius Clay, what he called his “slave name,” until after the fight), I remembered the day Muhammad Ali visited Iowa City, Iowa and spoke at the Iowa Memorial Union. I was there. I was one of many students crowded into the room.
His anti-war message against the war in Vietnam was what drew me to his speech. At the time, it did not make Muhammad Ali popular, just as the student protests at Berkeley had made student protest leader Mario Savio much reviled in 1965, three years earlier, when I was a student on campus at the University of California at Berkeley. Today, there is a statue of the (now-deceased) Mario Savio on the campus grounds, and Muhammad Ali’s name is known and revered around the world. And, yes, perhaps reviled by some for being “mouthy” and proving he was as “good” and as “pretty” and as “fast” and as “great” as he always claimed to be. [It’s amazing the insights that time gives to events happening in the immediacy of the present.]
Like many young people of the sixties, I thought it was unfair that speaking out against the war might land the heavyweight champ in prison. (He was facing 5 years in jail and a $10,000 fine for refusing to serve in Vietnam). Ali was also denied the opportunity to do what he did best—box— and 4 of his prime athletic years were taken from him. He was stripped of his title and banned from fighting from age 25 until he was 29. (March of 1967 until October of 1970). Many sports experts have speculated about how that might have affected his legacy, since he did mount a comeback and fought well past his prime, winning the coveted heavyweight boxing crown three times.
Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay)
Time frame of Ali’s Iowa City Speech
Ali’s speech on campus happened between March of 1967 and March of 1968, although the University archives say it was 1969. I am fairly certain this is wrong. (I was married and living in the Quad Cities by March of 1968. Ali’s appearance in Iowa City had to have taken place during the first semester of 1967-1968 when I was still on campus and living at 229 Iowa Avenue. I remember being present. I am certain I didn’t drive BACK to campus from East Moline, so it was in the fall semester of school year 1967-1968). I always tried to take in speeches and concerts by any Big Name speaking on campus, which led me to hear Saul Bellow speak, and the Ramsey Lewis Trio play, and Booker T and the MGs perform “Green Onions” and Johnny Mathis (remember him?) sing in the Union. Many years later, I did drive back, to hear former President Bill Clinton speak and to hear Ben Folds (without the Ben Folds Five).
I remember Ali’s message, which was characteristic of the anti-war message he was delivering at a number of colleges across the nation during the time he was not allowed to fight in the ring, but was fighting in court to stay out of jail, be allowed to resume his career, and urging equality for citizens of color. His rhetoric, which sounded very anti-white, was scary to his elders, but the students of the sixties on campus at Iowa, anyway, embraced his message of liberty and justice for all, just as our forefathers had embraced such radical notions in 1776. It’s unclear whether Ali’s reception was as warm and fuzzy in the South, but I can tell you that it was a very closely packed, interested, respectful and enthusiastic crowd that listened to him speak at the Iowa Memorial Union that day. I remember the room was crowded with students who turned out en masse to see the fighter we saw on television “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.”
Ali’s Legacy
Young Cassius Clay, later to be renamed Muhammad Ali.
History changed forever when the 6’ 2” good-looking, outspoken fighter with the 80 inch reach bested the rough-and-tough gangster-related Sonny Liston [who would later be found dead from a possible heroin drug overdose on December 30, 1970.] The intimidating Liston was heavily favored to knock Cassius Clay’s block off. I remember thinking that Clay probably didn’t have a chance against a thug like Liston and hoping he wouldn’t get hurt too badly. Some even wondered if the brash youngster would even show up for the fight. Clay took pride in his good looks; the general feeling going into the fight was that Clay might have a hard time preserving his handsome good looks against the brutal beating Liston was about to administer.
The Fight
Liston was a 7 to 1 favorite. Clay had not really beaten any professional boxers of note, but, instead, had won a gold medal in the light heavyweight division in the 1960 Rome Olympics. In his 1975 autobiography, Ali claimed he threw the gold medal into the Ohio River after being refused service in a white diner in Louisville. Others dispute that version of events, saying he merely lost the medal. [Ali was issued a replacement medal 36 years after the fact, and it was presented to him during a basketball intermission at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, an Olympics where Muhammad Ali lit the Olympic torch. Talk about a national change of heart!].
Clay, prior to the fight that would launch his career as the only heavyweight to win 3 lineal World Heavyweight Championships (1964, 1974, 1978) on his way to becoming one of the most recognizable figures in the world, in a typical display of the psychological trash talk for which he became known, said that Liston “smelled like a bear” and that he was “going to donate him to a zoo” after defeating him In the ring. Prior to the fight, he recited this poem: “Clay comes out to meet Liston and Liston starts to retreat. If Liston goes back an inch farther, he’ll end up in a ringside seat…”
At the time, nobody thought the good-looking 22-year-old kid from Louisville, Kentucky, had a chance against the hardened ex-con, who learned to write his name while in a Missouri prison— a career criminal who had been arrested at least 19 times. Liston told Sports Illustrated, “I had nothing when I was a kid but a lot of brothers and sisters, a helpless mother, and a father who didn’t care about any of us. We grew up with few clothes, no shoes, little to eat. My father worked me hard and whupped me hard.”
Ali’s pattern of confidence and taunting his opponents before fights would continue in his career as he took on other fighters, like George Foreman. Ali was also confident and colorful before the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974. He told interviewer David Frost, “If you think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned, wait ’til I whup Foreman’s behind!” He told the press, “I’ve done something new for this fight. I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick; I’m so mean I make medicine sick.” Ali was wildly popular in Zaire, with crowds chanting “Ali, bomaye” (“Ali, kill him”) wherever he went.
The Boxer and the Beatles
When Liston was offered a chance to pose with a new British band touring the United States at the time (and causing a sensation) Liston refused to pose with “those sissies,” meaning John, Paul, George and Ringo, who were appearing on Ed Sullivan’s TV show on February 16th and February 23rd. Cassius Clay (who would change his religious affiliation and his name to Muhammad Ali after the fight) DID accept boxing promoter Harold Conrad’s offer to pose with the Beatles, bursting through the door of his 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach and shouting to the mop-topped group, “Come on, Beatles! Let’s go make some money!”
The Conscientious Objector Issue
Then came the difficult years. As an outspoken black man advocating black pride and opposition to the unpopular war in Vietnam, Muhammed Ali’s topics of choice were not popular. He spoke at the Memorial Union, attired in a suit. He had just been denied status as a conscientious objector and stripped of his heavyweight title (1967). He did not fight between March 22 of 1967 and October of 1970, years when he was 26 to 29 years old. That was the period of time when I heard him speak at the Iowa Memorial Union. Every state denied him a license to fight.
After his title defense against Zora Folley on March 22, Ali’s title was stripped following his refusal to be drafted into Army service (on April 28, 1967). His boxing license was immediately suspended by the state of New York and he was convicted on June 20, 1967 (by an all-white jury) and sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for draft evasion. While his case was on appeal, he was free on posted bond, traveling the country giving speeches like the one I attended, in which he made statements against the Vietnam War and urged that blacks be given racial equality in America. Ali’s conviction was overturned on appeal and, (as he was out on bond despite the threat of 5 years in jail), he served no jail time. He did, however, lose 4 crucial years of boxing eligibility during his athletic prime.
Among statements Muhammad Ali made, woven into his college addresses, were these:
“Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.” (He would add that no Vietnamese had ever called him the “n” word)…No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder, kill, and burn other people simply to continue the domination of white slave-masters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end…Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?..My enemy is the white people, not the Vietcong…You’re my opposer when I want freedom. You’re my opposer when I want justice. You’re my opposer when I want equality. You won’t even stand up for me in America because of my religious beliefs, and you want me to go somewhere and fight, when you won’t stand up for my religious beliefs at home?”
In 2014, fifty years later, when the film Twelve Years a Slave is a major Oscar contender for Best Picture at the March 2nd Academy Awards, these words ring as true as ever.
Boxing Talent
Ali probably had the fastest hand and foot speed ever for a big fighter. Jimmy Jacobs, who co-managed Mike Tyson, measured young Ali’s punching speed (using a synchronizer) versus Sugar Ray Robinson, a welter/middleweight often considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in history. Ali was 25% faster than Robinson, even though Ali was 45 to 50 pounds heavier. (Ali had once asked Sugar Ray to manage him, but the former champion declined.) “No matter what his opponents heard about him, they didn’t realize how fast he was until they got in the ring with him,” Jacobs said.
The effect of Ali’s punches was cumulative. “Ali would rub you out,” said Floyd Patterson, who fought Ali on November 22, 1965, right after his two fights with Liston. “He would hit you 14,000 times and he wouldn’t knock you out; he rubbed you out. It’s very hard to hit a moving target, and (Ali) moved all the time, with such grace: three minutes of every round for fifteen rounds. He never stopped. It was extraordinary.”
Of his later career, Arthur Mercante, (boxing announcer), said: “Ali knew all the tricks. He was the best fighter I ever saw in terms of clinching. Not only did he use it to rest, but he was big and strong and knew how to lean on opponents and push and shove and pull to tire them out. Ali was so smart. Most guys are just in there fighting, but Ali had a sense of everything that was happening, almost as though he was sitting at ringside analyzing the fight while he fought it.”
Taunting: the Louisville Lip
Speaking of how Ali stoked Liston’s anger and overconfidence before their first fight, a sports writer commented that “the most brilliant fight strategy in boxing history was devised by a teenager who had graduated 376 in a class of 391.” Ali knew that what he said outside the ring, taunting his opponents as “ignorant” (Frazier) or comparing them to an animal (Liston) did psychological damage to his opponents when they were in the ring. Ai got under their skin, and that was his intention. When Ali referred to Joe Frazier as “ignorant” on national TV, Frasier wrestled Ali to the ground while live television cameras broadcast the unexpected outburst. The animosity towards Ali, from Frasier, lasted until Frazier’s death on November 7, 2011.
Considering that I’m a small-town Iowa girl from a hometown of not quite 5,000 people, I’ve had the good fortune to be in several places when events were taking place that would turn out to be turning points in history—or, at least, important historic events that one might even call a milestone. Among them were events such as the beginning of the Free Speech movement on campus at Berkeley in 1965 and the student riots that year; Ted Kennedy’s last speech inside the DNC in Denver in 2008 nominating Barack Obama; in Grant Park in 2008 when Obama spoke to a cheering crowd on election night; at Invesco Field in Denver when Obama accepted the nomination for president from his party; at the very beginnings of the Tea Party movement inside Ron Paul’s Rally for America in Minneapolis in 2008; at a concert at the Savoy Hotel in Birmingham, England by a band (using a light show) which would go on to become Pink Floyd; in the 7th row of the Beatles concert at the Cow Palace near San Francisco in 1964; at a concert in Paris given by James Brown and the Famous Flames in 1965; at the Howard Dean Scream Heard ‘Round the World at the Val Air Ballroom in West Des Moines in 2004; at concerts by the Rolling Stones, Prince, Dave Matthews Band, John Cougar Mellencamp, U2, and a host of other memorable live acts, including Taylor Swift on May 8, 2010, at the IWireless Center (formerly the Mark of the Quad Cities) when my daughter worked for 13 Management, Ms. Swift’s organization.
And I was also at the Iowa Memorial Union in Iowa City, Iowa, when Muhammed Ali stood up and spoke out for his beliefs in 1968.
Spike Jonze’s “Her” Is Nominated for Best Picture of the Year: What Are Its Chances?
By Connie Wilson
On February 11, 2014
In Movies, Pop Culture, Reviews
Spike Jonze, former husband of Francis Ford Coppola’s director daughter Sofia (1999-2003) has created, in this year’s Oscar-nominated film “Her,” a futuristic tale of how things might become. Or perhaps it is a tale of how things already are?
Spike Jonze (birth name in 1969, Adam Spiegel) is a three-time nominee in the 2013 Oscar race, with his film nominated for Best Film, Best Original Screenplay (for which it has already won Golden Globe and Writers’ Guild of America Awards) and for Best Song (“The Moon Song”). Jonze was also nominated as Best Director in 1999 for “Being John Malkovich,” scripted by Charlie Kaufman, so this makes 4 nominations.
Will “Her” win the Best Picture Oscar on March 2nd?
No, but it has a very good chance to pick up Best Original Screenplay, and—given the fact that, somehow, all the music from “Inside Llewyn Davis” escaped nomination—“The Moon Song” and/or the song from “Frozen” would seem to be potential favorites for Oscar gold on March 2nd.
“Her” is an odd film about a man who falls in love with his operating system in a futuristic city meant to represent Los Angeles of at least ten years (if not more) in the future. Everyone has an ear bud in his (or her) ear, and no one talks to “real people” any more.
This is foreign territory for me, because I rarely turn on my cell phone and only give the number out to people I don’t want to talk to. I hate the idea of being “tracked” and telling the world, “Just ate at the House of Pies” (as one Facebook friend always does), and I’m not impressed with “apps” at all, [unless I’m trying to avoid a tornado at the time—then, I like them].
But that’s because I’m Old School, of the generation(s) that actually talked to one another, rather than “LOL-ing” our way from Facebook to Twitter to Pinterest to Tumblr to My Space to whatever the next online fad might be.
I do remember that, when I had to begin using a computer (1985) to write a book (29 years ago now) I was alone among my peers in even HAVING a home computer. Nobody else had computers much in the Heartland. Maybe they did in Silicone Valley, but they didn’t play in Peoria—or anywhere within 200 miles.
For one thing, the Internet was in its infancy (Al Gore hadn’t invented it yet, I guess) and all messages flew across the screen as Egyptian hieroglyphics, which required several painstaking steps to convert to regular English. Practically the only online “source” was the Department of Education at One DuPont Circle, and only AOL was a factor in “the olden days” of computer technology. Son Scott (one year older than Spike Jonze/Adam Spiegel) had a distinct advantage over his schoolmates in having a humongous WANG PC in his basement, courtesy of Performance Learning Systems, Inc. which hired me to write a book and insisted I use the WANG PC to do it. (I just love saying WANG PC!)
If it weren’t for Scott’s ministrations, I would never have figured out how to do anything on this behemoth with the gigantic laser printer, and, today, Scott troubleshoots computer programs for steel companies written by his United Kingdom Company, Broner Metals,located in Sheffield, England. Do I feel that his early exposure to computer technology in our basement in East Moline, Illinois, when he was 17 years old, helped him to gain an advantage over his less fortunate peers? Yes, I do. Does he? No idea.
I mention this generation gap only because I think it has a lot to do with how audiences will perceive and react to the film. If you’re past 45 or even older (God forbid, because we’re all supposed to simply keel over quickly after retirement so that our children don’t have to pay even higher money in to the broke Social Security coffers to support our feeble elderly selves) or even older, “Her” won’t resonate as much as it will for the younger generations, which my 26-year-old daughter confirmed. (*Aside: have you ever noticed how women’s magazines never have a decade category past 50? Recently Christie Brinkley at 60 and looking 30 made the cover of “People” magazine, but you rarely see women touted as “attractive”–or even alive–in their 70’s and 80’s. We are all supposed to be good little parents and die off quickly in our 60’s, even if we look like Christie Brinkley!)
If you are my son’s age (and, also, a fan of Weezer and the Beastie Boys and Kanye West and Jackass and all the other groups Spike Jonze has been involved with during his video-making career
) you may find this film wonderful. If you are younger than 45 (Jonze’s age) you may find it spectacular. If you are “mature” (euphemism for “old”) you may just find it a “meh” experience—except for the futuristic sets and the first-rate script.
As an oldie-but-a-goodie, I found it curiously lacking and weird as entertainment. For me, the single line that best summed up the film was one spoken to Joaquin Phoenix’s character, Theodore Twombley, by his blind date, when she says, “You’re a creepy dude.”
No matter what part he inhabits, Joaquin Phoenix IS a “creepy dude.” The Old Man pants pulled up to his armpits [as humorously engraved in my brain-pan forever by favorite comics like Jeff Altman and Martin Short], may echo what I see happening in men’s fashion right now (i.e., they seem to have run out of material, so Adam Levine and his contemporaries are wearing tight, short jackets and tight, short pants) but that just adds to the “meh” moment(s) that the AARP generation will experience while viewing this film.
But the alienation issues addressed by Jonze’s script are happening right now. I could definitely relate to the lines that sum up angst as experienced by many of us. Example, explaining his divorce to friend Amy Adams: “I think I hid myself from her and left her alone in the relationship.” This bit of wisdom may be a personal note on the demise of Jonze/Spiegel’s own marriage to Sofia Coppola. Indeed, many have speculated that the busy on-the-go photographer who rushes off and abandons his lovely wife in a hotel room to be wined and dined by Bill Murray, (played by Giovanni Ribisi in Sofia’s film “Lost in Translation”) represented the problems in Sofia’s own 5-year union to Spike.
Whether that is true or not (Sofia says “not”), the lines in this film seem intensely personal but the emotions, as expressed by Scarlett Johanssen’s tour de force vocal performance, are Words of Wisdom that many of us can relate to in our current 2014 lives. The observations are universal truths. It’s no wonder that the Original Screenplay category is one for which this film has received the nod this year. Here’s another gem: “I sometimes think I’m going to feel all the emotions I’m ever going to feel.” Or how about, “I want to discover myself.”
The speaker of that last line is the OS1 operating system Samantha, who is seeking discovery, because she is, —well, a disembodied voice. But Theodore is so lonely and estranged after his marriage to his childhood sweetheart founders that the comforting voice of a machine becomes human to and for him. Soon, Samantha, the disembodied voice, is his love interest, telling Theodore, “You helped me discover my ability to want.”
Of course, as the script notes, love is a form of socially acceptable insanity and having a machine for a wife means that you don’t have to cope with the reality of actually dealing with anything “real.” That, in fact, is what his ex (played by Mara Rooney) tells Theodore when they meet to sign the final divorce papers. Theodore’s ex had a childhood with demanding parents for whom her best was never quite good enough. Theodore was able to restore some of her self-esteem in the early days of their marriage (Is this hitting too close to home?), but, ultimately, he was not enough to mend her. Theodore constantly reminisces (in flashbacks) of happier times. My favorite glimpse of the couple showed them wearing traffic cones on their heads. I got the feeling that Theodore would have taken his ex back in a heartbeat—especially since he has been reticent to sign the final divorce decree and his dating life is a disaster, complete with a hilarious phone sex service scene.
But, as so often happens IRL (in real life), the path of true love seldom runs smooth(ly).
After the initial “honeymoon phase” of their relationship, complete with phone sex and longing for face-to-face contact (as if anyone in this futuristic society gets THAT anymore!), Theodore even begins to find tiny, niggly little things about his Vocal Dream Girl that annoy him, like the way she takes a breath when speaking. Then he discovers that she sometimes is speaking with more than just one person, when she pledges her love. How many more? A LOT more! A male voice in the audience actually cried out, “Oh, no!” at this betrayal of the flesh-and-blood Theodore by the mechanical Scarlett/Samantha voice. It was an amusing moment. I wasn’t sure if the audience member was being sincere or sarcastic.
Another line that is gold: “You’re always disappointing someone.” Or how about, “All I do is hurt and confuse all those around me.” (How many of us have had THAT feeling a few times in life? Hmmmmm?)
Ultimately, one of the messages that resonated with me the most was, “We’re only here briefly, and, while I’m here, I want to allow myself joy.”
Kudos to Amy Adams who plays Theodore’s good friend in the building, as well as to Chris Pratt (“Parks & Recreation”) and to Hoyt Van Hoytema, who has done a fantastic job of creating a futuristic world with his cinematography, shot in both Shanghai and Los Angeles.
And while we’re praising Scarlett Johanssen’s sexy vocalizations (she replaced Samantha Morton, for reasons that are not quite clear), listen closely for Brian Cox’s easily recognizable voice as Alan Watt, a dead philosopher who has been recreated in the unreal world that Samantha inhabits and may be (one of) Theodore’s rivals for Samantha’s affections.
If you ever saw “Three Kings,” you may know who Spike Jonze/Adam Spiegel is, after all, as he portrayed the dimwitted, bigoted Conrad, as directed by his good friend David O. Russell, [who is, himself, up for an Oscar this year for “American Hustle” (and was similarly nominated for “Silver Linings Playbook” last year).]
Let’s put it this way: if you’re coming off directing “Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation” and “Where the Wild Things Are,” you have a pretty good streak going, and, while I, personally, will not recommend this film to anyone in my age range as “entertainment,” the thoughts in the script and the message about how we all long to connect to someone and how it is becoming increasingly more difficult to do so with each new technological advancement (I use the term ironically) was interesting and thought-provoking.
And, besides, I got to say WANG PC at least four times in this review, and that, alone, made me smile.
,