Filmmakers Ken Burns and colleagues recall Muhammad Ali as 'prophet of love' ahead of documentary release

National Press Club President Lisa Matthews (top) introduces  Ken Burns (lower left) and Sarah Burns and David McMahon (bottom L to R), filmmakers of the new PBS documentary on Muhammad Ali, at a Club Headliners virtual event Monday. Photo: Alan Kotok

 

A new documentary shows the late legendary boxer Muhammad Ali as a “prophet of love” through a trove of footage, filmmaker Ken Burns said at a National Press Club virtual Headliners event on Monday.

Ali is the subject of the four-part documentary by Burns and his co-filmmakers, Sarah Burns and David McMahon, who also spoke at the event. To be aired on PBS in September and entitled “Muhammad Ali,” the film uses previously unseen  archival footage as well as interviews with family, friends, journalists and fellow boxers.

The footage includes home videos shot by a neighbor in Louisville, as well as archival local news footage of the young Cassius Clay, as he was known then, signing in to a boxing tournament as a teenager. Ken Burns said the early footage helps build  a bigger picture of Ali beyond his career as a fighter.

That bigger picture, said Burns, led him and colleagues, Sarah Burns and McMahon, to regard Ali as a "prophet of love."

“What we wanted to acknowledge is that this is a boxer. It’s filled with fights, it’s filled with the thrill, the horror, the repulsion, all those things about fights,” Burns said. “But it’s also about all the other moments.” That includes his family relationships, his activism, his faith and more, he added.

A major boost for the filmmakers, who spent six years developing this documentary, was Ali’s ability to work the press and communicate better than almost any other person in the public eye at that time. McMahon said that meant they could often use contemporary interviews with Ali to build a timeline of his life, then reconstruct it with archival footage.

“There’s this incredible trove of material of him on camera telling his own story,” McMahon said.

Ali courted controversy during his career as an advocate for civil rights and for refusing to be drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. Later in life, he continued to speak out even as Parkinson’s disease made speaking and walking difficult. Ken Burns said Ali carried “a sense of care and responsibility” and that he was the “real deal” when it came to activism.

Sarah Burns said Ali was an example of an athlete using his platform to push for change, and that while he may be remembered for his efforts in the ring, he had many more layers than that.

“Muhammad Ali recognized that boxing was just this tool for him to achieve the platform that he had and to do what he was put on this Earth to do,” she said.

Even the fights themselves have narratives and context surrounding them that makes them more than purely sporting events, Sarah Burns said. She gave the examples of the fights against Joe Frazier, which were defined in part by the rivalry between the two men, but always about more than who ended up victorious.

“Each fight is its own really fascinating story,” she said.

And Ken Burns noted that many of the issues that Ali faced in his lifetime, including conversations around race, faith, protests for equal justice and the flaws in those we regard as our heroes are still being discussed. “Those are the things that are with us today,” he said.