Q&A With Steve Read, Director of Boxing Film ‘In The Company of Kings’

FightsATW: Obviously, we all have diverse interests, but going from a film about a New Wave icon and then jumping into the world of boxing, are these just mutual interests of yours? 

SR: Firstly, I am a big electronic music fan. I wasn’t actually a Numan fan until I made the film. I’ve always been into that kind of music, but I’ve also been a massive boxing fan for probably even longer. So, I know it seems like a huge leap, but really, for me, they’re both things that I’m very keen on. I always have been since I’ve been a teenager, really. I also made another boxing film before the Numan film. That was my first film. It was called Knockout Scousers, and it followed five boxers on their way to the Olympic games. One of them happened to be Anthony Joshua. It came out on TV over here in the UK on Channel four. Critically, it did really well, but it didn’t have a cinematic audience, and it wasn’t streamed. So that’s going back even further. I tend to take years and years to make these films. Really, the leap is probably not as pronounced as you might think. I’ve done a boxing film, then I did a music film, and I’ve DOP’d loads of music films for other directors. It just seems that I do boxing, music, boxing. Maybe I’ll do a music one next.

FightsATW: The film really just drops you into these people’s lives. It doesn’t try to set up this real linear storyline. It takes you from boxer to boxer to boxer. And then the theme of the film emerges as you go along. 

SR: It’s a journey really. We’re on the journey as filmmakers just as much as the viewer is, so the viewer is taking that journey the same way that we did making it. If there’s a parallel to the Numan film, I would say it’s the candid nature of the interviews. I think that’s one of the strong points, being with the people rather than watching a wall-to-wall archive film, which is what a lot of sports documentaries tend to be like. Nothing wrong with that at all, but they tend to use a lot of stock footage. With this, we spent our time going to the people’s houses, going to Larry Holmes’ house, going around Raymond Rosen projects where Bernard (Hopkins) grew up, hanging out with Tim Witherspoon, and so on. It’s very intimate because of that and very candid, rather than just stitching together a load of boxing archives. So there are similarities between this film and the Numan film because that’s what I did with him as well.

FightsATW: I think there’s some interesting choices here in terms of subject. A boxing documentary that features Bernard Hopkins and Larry Holmes seems fairly obvious, right? Living legends, extraordinary careers, all of that. But you also talk to some folks who don’t necessarily get this kind of exposure on a regular basis. Tim Witherspoon and Ernie Shavers really jumped out at me. I’ve always been a big believer that had Ernie Shavers fought in any other era, he would’ve been a heavyweight champion. He was so unlucky. So, this group that you talked to is a bit eclectic. How did you get them together? How did you make these choices? 

SR: This is down to quite a lot of hard work between myself and Robert Douglas, as well as his connections in the boxing world to get these guys to do these interviews. I just think it’s great that we’ve got Eddie Mustafa Muhammad in there because he’s one of the best things in it for me. I know he’s not a household name like Larry, but his testimonies are kind of jaw-dropping. So, it was good to think outside the box a little bit. But pretty much everyone that we asked agreed to do it. And that includes getting Michael and Leon Spinks together in the same room.

FightsATW: That leads me right to my next question. Leon’s career was, in most people’s minds, this one meteoric night: the night he beat Muhammad Ali. And Michael really is a true hall of famer, with an extraordinary career as a boxer. What people mostly know Michael Spinks for is this one really bad night that he had in his career. After Michael lost that fight to Mike Tyson, he just kind of went away. He retired. You hardly ever heard from him. Was it difficult to get Michael to come aboard? 

SR: No, I’ve got to say it wasn’t. Everyone was really keen to do it. I think by the time we met with them, word had gotten around that we were doing something good and respectful to the sport, and we’d gotten some good names together already. So, they were open to doing it. I think it’s kind of an exclusive. I don’t know how many times they’ve been in the same room in an interview together, but I think it’s pretty significant. Obviously, Leon’s passed now, as well, so that might well be his last interview. There’s more footage of them. In fact, there’s so much more footage in general that I’m planning on possibly doing a part two with, chronologically speaking, kind of the next generation. The demise of Larry Holmes, the rise of Mike Tyson, and so on. I’ve got loads of other stuff that we can use for that, including interviews with Buster Douglas talking about possibly the biggest upset in the sport. I’ve got David Haye in there, Frank Bruno, Meldrick Taylor and James Toney. I’ve got loads of other stuff that’s not in the film. That’s going to be my next job after we get this out and released and people start talking about it, and they’re doing that already, which is great.

FightsATW: I want to go back to Michael and Leon just for a moment. I felt a warmth between the two of them sitting together, and that was really nice to see, growing up as brothers, competing in the same sport, results not exactly matching, and having unique careers, but in very different ways. Did you get that sense when you were with them as well?
 

SR: There’s a lot of love between the two of them. I’ve only met them once, but I definitely sensed that and the respect between Leon and Michael. Michael obviously is far more successful, although Leon’s achievement was pretty incredible. I think he’s the only boxer ever to take the title away from Ali because previously, when he’d lost, he wasn’t the champion. Definitely a lot of respect for each other and love. It was a special moment, and I felt that at the time. There’s been several times in the making of the film when I’ve really sort of felt something special. Either something’s kind of controversial, or it’s something that’s really warm; you kind of feel these things when you make films. You go, yeah, that’s magic. That’s golden and it’s going to be great in the film, and I’ve been right about each and every one of those. There’s some really lovely bits in it. There’s some funny bits in it, and there’s some kind of special bits, like getting Michael and Leon together. There’s a bit with Tim Witherspoon talking about how Ali’s still in the trees and in the grass. When you go out on the road, he’s still there. He never left, you know, and it’s beautiful. At the premiere, that was one of the best parts. A lot of people really loved that, because it’s just really heartfelt and moving.

FightsATW: I loved that hat statement by Witherspoon because obviously, Muhammad Ali is no longer with us, but his specter, if you want to say, definitely hangs over the film.
 

SR: You can’t help it. It’s difficult. But certainly, I had to reel it in a bit though to be honest with you, because I’m such a big fan that the first cut of the film was way more heavily leant on an Ali theme than it turned out to be. How can you make a boxing film about heavyweight champions and not have Muhammad Ali being a major role in it?

FightsATW: For Leon Spinks, the night of his life was beating Muhammad Ali and then his career never really sprung off from that. For Larry Holmes, it was the different end of the spectrum. Ali probably should not have fought Larry Holmes. He was at a point of decline. This is a common athlete story as far as not knowing when to quit until somebody ushers you out. Holmes used to be Ali’s sparring partner, so there was a passing of the torch. However, passing a torch by getting hit in the face is a painful way to do it. But there was this sense of great respect that Larry Holmes had for Ali. There is a contradiction, depending on who’s speaking in the movie, about how rough Larry was on Ali in the ring. Larry kept saying I was holding back, and other people were saying Larry was trying to kill him. Where do you fall on that?

SR: I’m a documentarian. I’m there to take people’s testimonies. If one person contradicts the other, then it’s actually quite good really for the film. It’s not like it’s scripted, that’s what they said. It’s the same as when Eddie Mustafa Muhammad says that when Larry arrived at Deer Lake at Fighter’s Heaven and said to Ali come on we can fight, you know we can make a lot of money, and then Larry says I never wanted to fight Ali. There’s another contradiction. There’s kind of two big contradictions in the film and that’s where they lie. But you know, they said it. I think it’s great. I think it’s nice to have that because it leaves the viewer open to make up their own minds about it and get involved in the thought process of the film.

FightsATW: As often is the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. Larry didn’t really want to hurt Muhammad Ali.
 

SR: If you look at the footage, there’s a point in it where he does actually shake his head at the ref and he’s like what are we doing here? In my view, I think that’s the case. You can see later on, maybe not at the start of the of the bout, particularly when Ali’s taunting him all the time and calling him peanut, you ain’t got nothing, all that stuff he does, maybe he was fairly relentless then, but I do think later on in the fight, you could see that he didn’t want to do anymore. Bear in mind, Muhammad Ali, like to many other boxers, was his hero and his friend. I think being his friend is the most important of all. His memories of him earlier on and sparring are beautiful. He was Larry’s hero and he’s getting paid to get in shape and spar with his hero. Who wouldn’t want to do that?

FightsATW: Larry is sneakily engaging. He has this avuncular style of speaking, but his mind seems to be very clear still. You are always glad to see that with a boxer. He has this low-key sense of humor that makes you grin when you’re listening to him. That seldom translated when he was a fighter. When he took over the heavyweight division for so long after Ali, there was this glut of quality competition around him. There’s a sense that yeah, Larry Holmes was a great fighter, but he didn’t beat anybody. Well, Larry Holmes could only beat who was there. 

SR: Exactly. You can only beat who’s in front of you. By the time he came up to Tyson, he was over his prime. Let me tell you, he’s a funny bloke. He’s a funny guy and he’s entertaining. That’s what I found. I think I’ve got something quite unique actually out of him for some reason, just the Brits coming over there and making this film. I’m quite cheeky in my interview process as well. So I don’t know if that helped, but I think it’s funny.

FightsATW: When you say that, Steve, what do you do? What cheeky things do you do? 

SR: I just don’t hold back. There’s a golfing term, don’t leave anything out on the course. That’s how I make films. I don’t leave anything out on the course. You’ll see that in the Numan film as well. If you were to watch that again, you’d see a lot of similarities between the two films, actually.

FightsATW: I want to come back to what Witherspoon said about Muhammad Ali being in the air, in the trees, in the grass, and it’s very poetic and beautiful. We don’t often think of boxers being poetic like that.
 

SR: It was one of those moments where I thought, that’s just golden. Tim’s great company as well. He’s a really good guy. He’s a really nice, gentle guy, and he’s funny as well. He’s just good to be around. He’s a really lovely, warm sort of guy. I actually slept in his old cabin at Deer Lake. He came up there for the day and he and his daughter stayed over, so we spent the whole day there and the next day filming. That night, Robbie and I didn’t want to go to sleep. It was just so exciting. You really kind of sensed it. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but I would recommend anyone to take some time to go up there. It’s a tourist attraction now, so you can go there and look at the gym, look at the kitchen, look at the cabins and stuff, but you really do sense something special. It was amazing for us to be there. The film was instigated from a racist attack that Robert had suffered in Liverpool and we set out on a sort of boxing pilgrimage, if you like, as some kind of way of him dealing with the fact that he’d lost his eye and going to meet heroes that we grew up idolizing or knew Ali. That’s where it all came from initially.

FightsATW: That was interesting to me because we begin in Liverpool, with this terrible thing that happens to your friend and then we extrapolate out.  It was such a disarming way to begin the film. 

SR: Yeah, it’s unusual, isn’t it? How did you feel about that when you watched that first 5-10 minutes?

FightsATW: I love that feeling of, I don’t know where this is going. Sometimes that ends up going in a bad place. It doesn’t always work. 

SR: It was interesting to watch the premier in Philadelphia. We did it there because much of it is set in Philadelphia, or certainly with the boxers from the city. It was interesting to watch it with them because there’s some pretty hard hitting scenes on the streets of North Philadelphia, in Kensington. I was sort of nervous about that, but I introduced it and said as Bernard (Hopkins) says in the film, boxing comes from a tough place. It comes from social distress, people trying to fight their way out and change their life. That’s a key theme to the film as well. Those scenes of North Philadelphia there, I was worried about them, but actually everyone loved the film, pretty much everyone loved it. I was quite nervous. I had to leave for 10 minutes at one point, just to take a breather. It was just quite a bold move really to show that film in the place where much of it was made. But to have Tim there as well, Tim and Bernard, and Bernard’s been so supportive, well they both have, but Bernard’s been very vocal about it. He’s kind of become the mouthpiece for the film, which is great. The film comes from a good place. It’s about struggle and hope. And we’ve all been there. It is a strange sport though. It is a strange sport. Guys and women get in the ring, punch the s--- out of each other for 12 rounds and then afterwards hug and embrace. As Frankie Liles says in the film it’s a brotherhood. They’re all good friends usually, most of them. That’s what I’ve learned. They get together after and they’ve got respect for each other. To step inside those ropes and do that deserves maximum respect. I mean You can forget about the Tour de France, you can forget about American football. That’s it for me.

FightsATW: If you’re what I would call a casual fan, a person who turns up to watch the big fights, the people you know, and not necessarily know the Eddie Mustafa Muhammads, I don’t know that people always grasp what I always think is one of the main things about boxing: that it is not a rich kid’s sport. In the years and years that boxing has been active, there aren’t a lot of boxers who came from anything approaching a wealthy family. A lot of what that Philadelphia portion lays out, and other parts of the film too, but particularly that portion, is that it’s a fighting for your life kind of thing.
 

SR: Fighting for a way to get out. That’s your resolution. That’s your pathway off the streets and from hardship, social struggle. That’s a good way of doing it. Ninety-nine percent of the time, as Bernard says in the film, that’s what happens, that’s why you do it. Someone asked Bernard after the premiere can you be a rich kid and box? He said no. He just said no, point blank, absolutely not. It doesn’t work like that. And, why would you? I don’t know if you’ve fought before in the ring, but it’s hard work. That’s where it comes from, and that’s what the film’s about largely, with these other themes of the relationships between these boxers and the price of the prize. The price of the prize for Larry was to beat his hero, he had to beat him up, his friend. That’s the price of the prize. So that’s the key thing as well. But coming from tough neighborhoods? Definitely. You’ve got to. I mean, I don’t know anyone that’s been successful that hasn’t. Ali actually didn’t come from such a tough place, surprisingly. You know, we went there, you see it in the film. We went there and as his neighbor says, it’s a place where doctors and lawyers lived. It was a black neighborhood, but a good, kind of upper middle class black neighborhood of Louisville. That’s where he grew up which is unusual. And I mean, who cares, he can come from anywhere.

We spent some time there. It was so amazing to meet his neighbors. We just knocked on the doors. We filmed the house, the pink house, where they grew up, and we had his brother Rahaman there, of course. That was great. He’s suffering a little bit to be fair, but we spent the day with him. But we just knocked on the doors of the neighbors and they just happened to be neighbors that had been there and hadn’t moved. They recounted stories of Ali shadow boxing against a tree in the morning, or whatever, and hanging out. Both of them grew up with him. There’s a married couple that we interviewed and also his neighbor right next to the house who he grew up with as well. I just couldn’t believe that they were still there. They were so eloquent and just really open.

FightsATW: I’m an only child. So I’ve never had to stand in any sibling’s shadow. There is no bigger shadow than Muhammad Ali. The warmth of Rahaman and you could feel him missing his brother without being overly explicit. 

SR: Yeah. And he was crying. He was in tears at one point saying if my brother was here, he would say I love you, man. I’m like, I’ll take that. It was just really emotional. But also there’s stuff in there that I didn’t even know about. I didn’t even know that his granddaddy was white and Irish. I should have known that, but I didn’t. It’s another one of those moments really. And, there were lots of them where your jaw is on the floor or I cried a couple of times, which is unusual for me. There’s lots of really moving things in there and I think the film’s very tight as well. It’s not a three-hour film. Everything in there just seems to click nicely. You move from one thing to the next and it’s a road trip as well. We moved from Philly to Vegas and the colors change as well. You go from this sort of cold, hard place to a really hot kind of place. Those moods are in there as well, having watched it again at the cinema.

FightsATW: It’s a good point you made there. There’s no fat on this film. Everything that’s there belongs. your efficiency was really notable because you could get left with a feeling of want. There’s two kinds of wanting feelings that exist in movies. There’s where that was so great, I want more. Or that felt a little incomplete. Yours didn’t do the second thing. How did you settle on this length of cut? 

SR: Just by lots of thinking really and making sure that one thing led to another and it was tight. I wanted to make it really tight, because it’s a different kind of boxing film. There’s a lot of different stories in there, but I just wanted to make it really tight. And also I had in mind to do a part two as well. So that’s the other thing, always leave the audience wanting more, and get an audience as well. I’m happy with the running time. We could have made it two hours if we wanted to. No doubt about that. But there’s definitely another film in it. Maybe three, who knows? It seems like such an interesting and appealing kind of proposition to a sports fan or even a film fan. You’re in the company of kings, and we were. It does what it says on the can.

FightsATW: Bernard Hopkins. He’s still scary. (Laughs).

SR: I didn’t want to upset him. He hadn’t seen the film before the premiere. I definitely did not want to upset Bernard Hopkins. He’s an intimidating character, but I tell you what, he’s actually a really lovely guy. He was the first person to come up to me after the film credits ended and say congratulations, you made a brilliant film. I’m proud to be a part of it. That’s what he said to me afterwards, something like that. He’s a nice guy and he took a lot of time to do interviews and hang around afterwards and do pictures with people. He was mobbed basically. He and Tim were mobbed afterwards. He was happy to hang around and take pictures with people for a good hour, hour and a half. We had some interviews to do as well, and he wants to be the mouthpiece for it, and I’m really happy for him to do that. I’m quite a good mouthpiece myself, but he’s one of the best.

FightsATW: You’re right. He’s incredibly sharp and detailed and specific and he doesn’t waste words. And he’s just an excellent subject. 

SR: He’s really thoughtful about what he says. If he doesn’t say it straight away, he will think about it and then he’ll make sure that what he’s saying means something. There’s a lot of good things in the film, but he’s definitely a very strong part of the film.

FightsATW: Bernard Hopkins is a man who came up very hard, but his on camera presence is really striking to the point where you could see him playing a villain in a Mission Impossible film or something. 

SR: Yeah, he’s got a massive presence. And he considers everything he’s saying. I think he’s quite political as well. He actually brought some politicians to the premier. I think he sees it in part of a soapbox for his beliefs, which are very evident. I mean, he was brilliant. The bit where he’s saying you want to talk about helping the community and bringing up the kids, and your dog park looks better than the park for the kids. All that stuff is heartfelt. You know he means it and I think, for me, that’s one of the strongest parts in the film without a doubt. If you watch that scene again, that is heartfelt stuff and it’s powerful. I knew that at the time because I was filming that handheld moving around and I didn’t prompt him for any of that. He calls the kids out, he calls those girls out, and is like the place is a mess. People will say well, why don’t you sort it out yourselves? The thing is, how many guys on welfare out there, or no money at all, have got a lawnmower? They’re going to do that? And cut the trees? You have to look at that. They haven’t got the equipment to do it. If in Centre City, as he says, the dog park looks like the Ritz Carlton, why shouldn’t it here? You know that no one cuts the grass in the dog park in the local area. You know, the county does it. So why aren’t they doing it there? That’s his point. So, they’ve got to think about that. That should be kept the same way. If the dog park looks better than that, it’s not right. The county are saying, we want to help the youth and give them a chance, but they aren’t following through. That’s what Bernard’s saying.

FightsATW: The diametric opposition of these two men who ruled boxing promotions for so long—Bob Arum and Don King—who do the same thing in the same business but in completely different ways is pretty fascinating. You have Bob Arum, who knows how to promote a fight, don’t get me wrong, but he is comparatively low key to Don King, because aren’t we all comparatively low key to Don King? (Laughs). But the juxtaposition of the methods of both of those men and how they operated was a fascinating thing to just see play out. They’ve been the kings of the promotional portion of the sport for many, many years. 

SR: Undoubtedly. I mean, they’re not so much now. Bob Arum is still right up there. I don’t know if he’s the guy right now but he’s definitely one of them. But back in the day, the two of them were incredible. Their story’s a fascinating story, and we explored it a bit. That’ll come through in part two. A bit more of that. For sure. I’ve got some of the stuff that Bob Arum was saying about Don, right? Pretty colorful. It was great. Robbie and I sat with him for, I don’t know, it must have been an hour really. His publicist initially said oh, you’ve got 10 minutes with him. But again, he gave us an hour. So, it’s just one of those things, isn’t it?

FightsATW: Whether it’s athletics or the film business, actors and actresses, screenwriters, and all of that, who do a lot of interviews, a lot of the talk occurs in junket type stuff, where the interviewers are often half-a$$ing.

SR: That’s it. It’s the junkets that’s ruined it. Like with Larry Holmes we went there and it took a while to get that time with him anyway, because there’s always talk of money. It’s a documentary. There’s no money to be paying people, really. I mean, we did pay a few of them, but Larry was one of the ones that didn’t insist on it. We thought we’d probably only get maybe a half hour interview with him at home. Then we ended up going out for lunch with him. And then he took us to another scene that’s not even in it. Agony Hill, he called it. Where they’d run up and down just outside the projects in Easton. We ended up spending the whole day with him. And he was like, Oh, are you going to come back later? We were all knackered, so it was like no, no, we’re good. We got everything. And that’s Larry Holmes, by the way. In my view, one of the best athletes to ever walk the planet. The jab’s still good. He was displaying his jab and I’ll tell you what, it’s still pretty decent. He had COVID a couple of times after that, so he’s not as sharp as he was. We got him at a good time. I think he just gets a bit tired. That’s what his wife Diane said anyway. I’ve been very respectful to him as well, and everyone really.

FightsATW: Gene Kilroy says there’s no retirement plan, there’s no real structure, there’s no pension plan of any kind. That’s something I’ve thought about for a long time with boxing. The only sport you could even compare it to, that you put your body quite as much on the line other than maybe MMA at this point, might be American football. If you’ve ever seen Meldrick Taylor fight as a young man and then hear an interview with him after the Julio Cesar Chavez fight, it’s just heartbreaking. They have to run subtitles so he can be understood.

SR: We actually interviewed him. He’s got a majesty about him. There’s no doubt. His brain seems totally amazing, but his delivery is difficult for him without a doubt. He’ll be in the next one. It’s a great interview, it’s really quite moving. He’s almost like a John Lennon of the boxing ring or something. He’s got that kind of poetic presence about him, or majesty. It was great to meet him, it really was. He was a great fighter as well, obviously.

FightsATW: Since you brought it up, do you have a sense of when part two might be completed and get out in the world? 

SR: Certainly this year. The priority at the moment obviously is that this has got the release now, that’s taken quite a bit of time and a lot of work. But we’ve done that now. So, get the audience and everyone interested, which is happening already. Spread the word, obviously, as much as you can. I’ve already started looking at the footage for part two. I mean, there’s probably not quite enough for a part two, but we’ll film some other stuff. The idea is that we’ll get maybe a more household name to do the narration. Robert’s narration is amazing. I love it. I think it’s very strong and it’s very engaging. And obviously it comes from the right place. I’m happy with that, but I’ll start working on that after we finish the shows. We’ve got two premiers over here, and then it comes out on the 30th of April. You can already pre order it now on Amazon over in the States and on Apple TV as well.