Better Than the Movie

Went to see Ali the other day. Not the movie, the man.

The movie Ali, with Will Smith as a hauntingly real Muhammad Ali, opens Christmas Day. The manAli was slumped on a couch in Suite 319 at the Regent Beverly Wilshire hotel, trying to apply jelly to a bagel with that paint shaker of a right arm and guide it into his mouth. Yeah, Parkinson's is a diet you never want to try.

Jelly, though, is good because the sugar gets Ali's mind buzzing. I could see it in his eyes. I wouldn't need to sneak him the Snickers I'd brought in my pocket.

To many Americans, Ali is woven into a time when Vietnam, civil rights and black power dominated their lives. No wonder Will Smith broke his back (actually, a thumb) trying to nail Ali. He studied Islam each day. Trained as a boxer for a year. Refused stunt doubles. Listened to countless Ali tapes. Between shoots he even wore a mold that kept his ears from sticking out so much when he was on camera.

Smith was so Ali that the champ's wife, Lonnie, would get the actor on the phone just so she and Ali could hear him do Ali and be sent back to a place where they can no longer go. "Funny ... feeling," Ali says, with three-second pauses. "Hearin' yourself ... 30 years ago."

Had Hollywood finally found somebody pretty enough to play him? I asked.

"Can't ... do it.... Can't nobody ... do that."

The world sees the trembling and the awful new Ali Shuffle, and feels sorry for the champ. Don't be. His mind is still bright. He still composes poetry nearly every day. He still studies the Koran and the Bible. Ali isn't alive only at your local Odoplex 24. He's still here, in the whispers.

If you introduce Ali to your wife, he will draw her ear close to his lips and say, "You married him?" If you're seated next to him at a banquet when the crowd of 1,000 rises to its feet and chants his name, he'll whisper for only you to hear, "Just another n....." His light jab at the racism he knew as a young man.

Ali has never been afraid to be himself, which is the point in Ali, a movie that moves at the speed of an ice floe. You could hand-weave a Howard Cosell toupee in the time it takes Ali to fight George Foreman in the film. How can a movie be three hours long and say almost nothing?

Yet Smith's Ali is so convincing that if Joe Frazier happened by, he might take a swing at Smith. I had so many questions to ask Ali about the film, but he drifted off within 20 minutes of my arrival. I didn't know what to do. I started to kill time when there was this sudden "AIIGGHGH!" It was Ali's Frisbee-eyed, molar-baring face coming at me. After his sons scraped me off the ceiling, I was able to laugh.

I asked Ali what it has been like to be a Muslim in the U.S. since Sept. 11. He said he had not faced any hostility, and then added, "Muslims don't ... kill people.... But remember ... Judaism ... has terrorists.... Baptists ... have terrorists.... Catholics ... Hindus ... all religions have terrorists."

Ali had me pull him off the couch so that he could show me what Islam had taught him. He stood in a doorway, and suddenly his feet appeared to be rising off the carpet!

How'd you do that? I asked.

"Prayer ... and ... fasting," he said.

He set an empty orange juice glass in the middle of the carpet and asked me, if he made it levitate, would I finally believe in Islam? I nodded, grinning. He quieted his shakes, stared hard at the glass and then announced, "April Fools'!" The man is 59, going on nine.

I made a mistake in teaching him a magic trick, because from then on he wanted only to practice it on anybody who happened into the room. After 90 minutes he really did start to fade. The eyes stayed closed longer than open. "Where ... we ... at?" he asked. "New York?"

"No," I said. "L.A."

Finally, they stayed closed. Nap time for a legend.

To see Ali young again on the screen, so blurry fast of foot and hand and mouth, is a joy. But it's also a joy to know that this slow Ali, this whispering one, is still with us. In one scene in the movie a woman who had met him when she was a little girl says, "I loved you then. I never stopped. I still do."

Makes two of us.

Issue date: December 24, 2001

Don't miss The Life of Reilly (Total/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, $22.95) -- a best-of compilation of Rick Reilly's columns and features, with a foreword written by Charles Barkley, available now at bookstores everywhere.

Related information
Stories
Rick Reilly's Insider Archive SI Online: Current Issue and Archives
Multimedia
Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video
Search our site	Watch CNN/SI 24 hours a day
	Sports Illustrated and CNN have combined to form a 24 hour sports news and information channel. To receive CNN/SI at your home call your cable operator or DirecTV.