Sundance Film Festival

Many of the reviews of Thriller in Manila (which premiered in World Documentary Competition last Friday) mention the fact that it transcends expectations for a sports documentary (it revolves around the third Ali-Frazier right in Manila in 1975).

The credit for this of course goes to director John Dower, editor Nicholas Packer, DP Stephen Sanden and the team. But it also goes to Andrew MacKenzie, the producer at UK’s Channel 4 who provided the money. At least that’s how Dower explains it with a kind of wonder in his voice, as if still can’t believe he got to make a documentary with enough money. Money that bought a precious thing: pre-production.

Actually calling it pre-production doesn’t really describe it. Dower talks about going to the north Broad Street neighborhood in Philly, with no set plan, hanging out at Frazier’s boxing gym with the fragile, ferocious and mistrustful fighter. Dower walked the streets, met the now-gray-haired friends and witnesses, interviewed the fight participants including Ali’s acerbic doctor. He moved into the story. This is of course not unheard of in documentaries—but it is rarely budgeted for.

“In many ways this is Andrew’s baby,” Dower is saying. “It was a story he had wanted to make all his life.”

The other element that took the film up a notch was collaboration. Dower says that having a UK DP in Sanden (they shot Sony Cinealta) gave him a comfort level that was vital to his particular style. “A lot of my films are very much talking head interviews, I like to shoot people in their own environment with a big wide shot and depth behind them. I want a DP that can bring that convention to life. Someone who can really light.”

And as for his Avid editor Nick Packer? “He was a discovery, a star,” Dower is saying and from our brief conversation it was clear that Dower doesn’t say things lightly or politically.

Even with the money and the right collaborators, this was not an easy film—it was a battle of circumstances and personalities (you try getting Imelda Marcos to cooperate). “I think those are the best films though,” Dower reflects from a safe post-premiere distance. “That struggle makes it onto the screen.” Or at least it did this time. Seems only appropriate for a story about the “other guy” in an historic boxing match, one that is universally acknowledged as a contest of will, a life or death moment in the history of the sport. It was already dramatic, Dower and company found in it a true, untold story.