Editor’s note: This story has been updated because the screening has been posponed until Aug. 21.
Joseph Consentino is well-known in the Connecticut film world as founder and artistic director of the Ridgefield Playhouse Film Society, which presents screenings with filmmakers on hand. On Sunday, Aug. 21, Consentino will turn the tables, presenting a film he made with his wife, Sandra.
“Muhammad Ali: The Whole Story” is a made-for-TV documentary about Ali’s youth, his early years as a boxer, his conversion to Islam and changing his name, his opposition to the Vietnam war, his famous fights and his ever-changing roster of significant others, some of whom gave interviews for the film.
In an interview, Consentino said TNT asked him to make the film in 1995 and he hesitated because he was longtime friends with Ali’s rival Joe Frazier. “Everything about Ali was loud and boisterous. He was a braggart. Joe was just the opposite, a very humble guy,” he said. “He wasn’t as eloquent as Ali but … when he said something he meant something, he didn’t just blab.”
In the year making the film, Consentino warmed to Ali. “I saw it was all, as he put it, jive. He was an actor. He also could fight. … For him, it was show business,” he said.
Consentino had a glimpse of Ali’s show-biz jive earlier in his career, when he was a photojournalist covering the first Ali-Frazier fight, on March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden. “We were there from the weigh-in at 8 in the morning until after midnight. At around 4, I decided to go up into the balcony to check out the different positions,” he said. “All of a sudden I hear a voice behind me. I turned around. Ali was coming out of a room. … He was saying, ‘Where is Joe Frazier? I want to fight him now. Get him here now.’
“I wasn’t shooting video, I was shooting film. I yelled down, ‘Get me the light and sound man.’ By the time the guys got there, [Ali] had walked back into the room,” Consentino said. “Then the door opened. I said, ‘Everybody roll.’ He came out and did the exact same thing. … He understood the power of the press.”
“The Whole Story” debuted the same year as the Oscar-winning theatrical documentary “When We Were Kings,” which focused on the 1974 Ali-George Foreman fight in Zaire. Both films benefited from a wave of Ali nostalgia following Ali’s lighting of the Olympic torch in 1996 in Atlanta. Another Ali nostalgia wave is happening now, in the wake of the fighter’s death last month.
“The Whole Story” will be shown at 6:30 p.m. at the playhouse at 80 East Ridge Ave. in Ridgefield. Ira Joe Fisher will host the evening. Joseph and Sandra Consentino will do a Q&A after the screening, as well as Ali’s daughter Rasheda. Admission is $10. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. ridgefieldplayhouse.org.
