DATE: Sunday, June 1, 1997                  TAG: 9705300094

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E11  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  100 lines

DIRECTOR SAYS ``KINGS'' IS ABOUT ``NEED FOR A HERO''

AFRICAN DRUMS permeated the air as a troop of grade school students, clad in native attire, cleared the way for the champ.

The scene was a studio in mid-Manhattan and the occasion was the entrance of Muhammad Ali. The event was a prelude to a Radio City Music Hall premiere screening of ``When We Were Kings,'' the documentary about Ali's ``Rumble in the Jungle'' with George Foreman in Zaire in 1974. The film won an Academy Award and has unleashed new curiosity about the former champion. It is playing at the Naro Expanded Cinema through Tueday.

Ali, 55, with cheeks puffed and movement faltering, agreed to the press conference. Yet, sadly, he answered only one question. Asked what his reaction was to the movie, he said, haltingly, ``It makes me feel very old.''

``There will be no other questions for Ali,'' the event's emcee quickly announced.

Lauryn, lead singer of the Fugees (who are on the soundtrack), was quick to fill in the shocked gasp after the abrupt end to Ali's part of the proceedings. ``This film,'' she said, ``opened my eyes to who and what this man is. We need a hero today, and he's a reminder of a time when we had one - and still do. ''

Ali is suffering from Parkinson's disease, which has afflicted his motor skills, most notably his speech. His spokesmen agree that it is presumed the disease was brought on by the accumulated blows to the head he received during his career. His mental alertness, though, is evidenced by the sly, almost tauntingly humorous, way he stayed and observed the press conference and surrounding hoopla. He has a mischievous look about him that suggests he takes an irreverent view of all the hype that surrounds him.

If Ali is uncharacteristically silent, Leon Gast, the director of ``When We Were Kings,'' is more than eager to speak of his 23-year odyssey to get the film made. He spent two months in Zaire actually filming the documentary. After that, it took more than two decades to raise funds to complete the editing.

``There have been eight different versions of the film,'' he said.

Gast had no real interest or background in boxing before he undertook this project. ``I like boxing, but not fighting,'' he said. ``I'd always liked the one-on-one combat of the boxing ring - so different from the vagueness of a team sport, but I didn't do this film because of boxing. It's not really about boxing. It's about the need for a hero. There's an entire generation now who doesn't know who Jackie Robinson was, much less Muhammad Ali. This generation needs a hero figure. The film shows that a hero need not be orthodox. Muhammad is, still, very controversial.''

Before ``We Were Kings,'' Gast had done documentaries about the Grateful Dead musical group and the motorcycle gang Hell's Angels. Don King, the legendary and notorious boxing promoter, set up the ``Rumble in the Jungle'' by offering $5 million to both champion George Foreman and potential challenger Muhammad Ali. The only trouble was that he didn't have the needed $10 million. The money eventually came from Mubutu Sese Seko, the military-dictator president of Zaire, and the fight was set for Africa in what was formerly the Belgian Congo.

Gast got the rights to film the event, but the plot thickened when the fight had to be postponed because Foreman developed a cut above one eye during a sparring match. The president of Zaire refused to let anyone leave the country, putting an embargo on passports. The six-week delay, while Foreman healed, helped Ali become a national hero as he traveled the country, drumming up support for his challenge. Mobs of people assembled wherever he went, chanting ``Kill him, Ali.''

``Ali was just a big mouth with a fearless ability to say what he believed, and thought,'' Gast said. ``The six-week delay meant that we developed a subplot - a substance that we never would have had if we had just filmed a fight.''

As a sidelight to the fight, a kind of ``Woodstock from Africa'' musical event was planned. American artists such as Miriam Makeba, the Spinners and the Crusaders were joined by native American acts, but on the event's eve, thousands of tickets were still unsold.

``At the last minute, the president of Zaire made it a free event,'' Gast said. ``That didn't please the investors. We considered making this a musical film, but it became clear that a film about Muhammad Ali was much more appealing. When the emphasis became Muhammad, people like Spike Lee, Norman Mailer and George Plimpton came into the project as narrators.''

Gast says he was challenged in Africa by those who thought a white man could not possibly make this film and, as he puts it, ``get the feeling of the time and place.''

``I disagreed fervently, and any non-racist person would disagree,'' he said. ``If I were making a film about murder, I wouldn't have to be a murderer, would I? I think we got to the heart of what made Muhammad a hero - the fact that he was fearless. He was and still is very controversial, because of his stand against the Vietnam war and because he took a stand against Malcolm X - and other stands. But no matter what you think of his choices, his style was incomparable - and he was a great fighter.''

The film, pointedly, ends on a moment of triumph and does not include the breakdown of Ali's physical condition. ``That was not the story,'' he said. ``There was some talk about including a current shot of Ali, but the story was this moment in time. We dropped the idea.''

Gast says that a new generation has adopted Ali, and the film. ``They don't know who won the fight. Older people simply don't remember. There is some suspense about it. They cheer as if it were a `Rocky' movie. This is the kind of nonfiction movie I like a lot - a real-life event that plays as if it were fiction.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo

HOWARD L. BINGHAM

It took 23 years for Leon Gast, director of ``When We Were Kings,''

to get his film made.

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