Timehost: Hello everyone.
Welcome to our TIME chat tonight.
We're very pleased to be joined by writer/editor/actor/and
Renaissance man George Plimpton.
He's just written an article for the TIME 100 about Muhammad Ali.
Welcome, Mr. Plimpton!
George Plimpton: Thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to be talking to those who want
to hear what I have to offer about Muhammad Ali.
Timehost: Before we start, I'd just like to ask about how you came to write
the article about Ali.
George Plimpton: Well, I was asked to by the editors of TIME.
I had written a book on boxing called "Shadow Box,"
which was largely about Muhammad Ali since I was a second-string boxing writer for Sports Illustrated.The first string writer was Mark Kram,
a interesting name since it's the same backwards as forwards.
He was unable to fly on planes, had a phobia about that,
so I was sent to a number of fights overseas which
he could not get to . The Frazier-Forman fight in Jamaica,
and most particularly, the fight in Zaire, "The Rumble in the Jumble," as it
was called between Ali and Forman. I covered many of Muhammad Ali's fights,including those he fought under the name
Cassius Clay, and indeed the fight in which he won
the world championship against Liston in Miami.
So after all this, the TIME editors thought I could produce 700 words
on the champ.
Question: Mr. Plimpton, I enjoyed your article on Muhammad Ali immensely.
How do you think he'd fare against the boxers of today?
George Plimpton: Well, I think he would do extremely well.
I can't think of a fighter who would give him very much trouble.
He would stay away from the sluggers, and outbox the boxers.
He is probably the most intelligent fighter,in his prime, that I can think of in ring history.
Question: Who do you think is the best sports figure in terms of wits,
personality and athletic ablity?
George Plimpton: Well, having just written an article
on that very subject for TIME Magazine, I would have to say that the answer would have to be Muhammad Ali. He had enormous wit that was never appreciated in the early days of his career because boxers weren't supposed to behave like that. But if you think about it, one could consider him
the father of rap, composing rhymes on the run , as it were.
A whole series of jokes was at his command
and wonderfully delivered. But I don't think one would call him
intelligent in terms of scholarship. But for having a wise head on his shoulders, he's quite incomparable.He has said three or four things which could well be in "Bartlett's Quotations."
Perhaps the most important of them, and the most
logical of them, said when he refused to join the Army, is
"I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong."
As for athletic prowess, he always was the most remarkable figure to see
in the ring; graceful, catlike and without compare.
I don't think he was athetic in the sense that he could
have done other sports. He sprained his ankle running up to try and hit a golf ball,
and I doubt he was much of a basketball player.
But if athleticism means being at the peak
of one's own sport, then surely he was a great athlete.
I keep using these descriptions in the past
because, alas, the sport he loved has partially destroyed him.
Oscar Wilde said, "You kill the thing you love" and what Muhammad Ali loved has, in a sense, destroyed him.
Question: I loved your book, "Paper Lion." It seemed like you enjoyed playing as well as writing about it. Did you find it hard to play football
with the Lions?
George Plimpton: Yes. Since I'm not one much for physical contact.
I much prefered, when I was growing up, soccer,
which we played at my school, and tennis.
Therefore, it wasn't much fun on the practice field with the
Lions and the pleasure of the research for that book
was in listening to them talk intimately about the game
they loved. They became great friends,
and two of them , Alex Karris and John Gordy, were
ushers at my wedding. But, the story I got was one I couldn't have,
if I had not marched onto the field and tried my best.
In my big game, as the quarterback, you will remember
that I lost 32 yards in four plays. Very humiliating.
I might add, though, that playing with the Baltimore Colts
as a quarterback to make a film documentary,
I went in for four plays of an exhibition game against
the Detroit Lions in Ann Arbor, Michigan during the exhibition season and in four plays,made 18 yards, four of them on a
rushing-the-passer penalty. That is, 18 yards; 15 of them on a rushing-the-passer penalty. So hope springs eternal.
Question: What was your reaction to the type of cameo role you were asked to
play in "Good Will Hunting"?
George Plimpton: Very surprised at the huge success of
the movie. I didn't know it was going to be anywhere near as popular.
I'd gone up to Toronto where they filmed part of the movie
and spent two hours up there doing the scene, meeting Matt Damon for the first time, and then going back to New York, thinking
I would hear very little about the movie afterwards.
Nobody in it, except Robin Williams, being known to me.
Some months later, walking down the street, in Greenwich, CT,
somebody walked up and said, "Wow, that's a terrific film you're
in!" And so I went to see it and they were right.
I've been in a lot of cameo appearances in films,
starting with "Lawrence of Arabia," in which I played
the part of a bedouin.I never could find myself on the screen when I saw the picture.That won an Academy Award, though not because of me.
Then I was in Warren Beatty's "Reds," playing the part of a lascivious publisher who tries to seduce Diane Keaton.
And that film won an Oscar. Then I was in the documentary "When We Were Kings,"
largely about Muhammad Ali, and that film won an Oscar.
And since "Good Will Hunting" won an Oscar, it would seem to me that a film director should require my presence if he sees an Oscar in the future.
Timehost: Have you ever thought of concentrating more on acting?
George Plimpton: I'm afraid I've never been to acting school or know very much
about acting. It seems to me really quite simple.
But I don't think a director would allow me the opportunity
to play a major role. So although I've been in more films than written books,
including Oliver Stone's "Nixon," I don't think I'd ever get anything more
than a very small role. "The Prince of the Cameos," they might call me.
One of the reasons I think I'm asked to perform these roles is that the director assumes that being a participatory journalist, I might write about the film, and I don't.So they keep asking me back.
Timehost: Here's a comment from a fan you'll probably enjoy hearing...
Comment: "Shadow Box" truly is a masterpiece and thanks for your contibution to our society. You're a hero.
George Plimpton: Oh, well, thank you very much.
I've often thought, though I haven't read it in a long time,
that "Shadow Box" is the best of my works because it gave me a chance to enter
a very strange, but likeable and interesting fraternity; that
of the boxing world. I've had very little to do with it since, largely because of what happened to Muhammad Ali. But I know that if I were a sports reporter, starting off again, that I would spend a lot of time
following Mike Tyson, who, in a way, also because of his faults,
is the most interesting athlete around. I know, for example, that he is a
Dostoevsky scholar which is enough to get one running for a notebook and a chance to see why and how.
Question: What has been the most difficult task related to your writing that
you have ever attempted?
George Plimpton: Well, I think the most frightening of all the
participatory journalistic things I've done was not on the football field or playing goalie for the Boston Bruins, or for the Boston Celtics, or
any of the physical things, but playing in the percussion section of the New York Philharmonic, which I did for a month when Leonard Bernstein was the
conductor. In music, you cannot make a mistake. All sports are predicated on error. But in music, you cannot make a mistake.
And the fear of doing this, particularly since I can't read
music, was frightening to put it mildly. Evening after evening of pure terror in London, Ontario, playing an instrument called the bells.
I destroyed Gustav Mahler's "Fourth Symphony"
by mishitting an instrument called the sleigh bells. I dream about that from time to time, and wake up covered with sweat.
It's a funny answer, but I think it's true.
Question: I think Truman Capote was an interesting man. Did you meet him?
Tell us something about him, please.
George Plimpton: Well, I wrote a book about Truman Capote,
which came out last year. It's an oral biography, which means that
I spoke to dozens and dozens of his friends, and enemies, and arranged what they had to say in chronological order. I knew him myself.
He lived down the street in Sagaponack, Long Island.
A good friend for awhile, though he felt toward the end of his life that I had made fun of him in a story I wrote which was a parody of Ernest
Hemmingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." But I remember him as a wonderful storyteller. Many of the stories were a bit overboard, but nonetheless,
fascinating to listen to.One of them I remember was a story
about a locust horde that landed on a farm in Alabama and ate a farm hand right down to the gristle. Not to be believed, but extraordinary to hear
in that high voice of his which Gore Vidal, one of his
enemies, said could only be comprehended by dogs. His life was a curious one, coming from a small town in Alabama, Monroeville.
Short, with that high voice, and yet became a friend of the very highest levels of society, only then inexplicably to bite the hand that fed him
with a famous story published in Esquire, "The Côte Basque,"
and from that point on, a descent through drugs and
alcohol and disenchantment to his early death.
A remarkable arc, very suitable for biography.This great curve from lowly beginnings to extraordinary heights and then the descent.
Question: How did Ali change the sport of boxing?
George Plimpton: Well, I think no ring experts had ever
seen anyone quite like him in the ring because he made so many mistakes, according to them. Rather than slip a punch -- that is to say,
letting it slide by your head one side or the other --
he would lean backwards from the waist, his hands down and that was thought to be suicidal. But he was so quick and had such wonderful vision.
His eyes, if you watched him on television or saw pictures of
him in the ring, very wide, as if to take in any offensive moves on his opponent's part. He was also very fast in the ring, as fast as middle-weight.
fighters like Sugar Ray Robinson, who was his idol.
He kept his hands down and had an extraordinary offensive weapon in the jab from that position. If you saw a newsreel of him at his prime,
I think you would be almost sure to mistake him for a very fancy middle-weight fighter. Also, I can think of few fighters who used
psychology better than Muhammad Ali. He was a master at that.
I've often thought that his victories against Sonny Liston
were because he got into Liston's head. I was going to fight him once,
in an exhibition match, obviously. All arranged for the time of the Kentucky Derby. But I remember him calling me on the phone
at 2 o'clock in the morning and I heard his voice say, "You was gonna fall during the ring instructions." And then he hung up.
Unfortunately , our fight was called off because Ken Norton broke his jaw
in San Diego, and our fight never took place.
But I'll always remember that phone call.I'm not sorry that it didn't take place, though.It would have been a wonderful thing to write about, though,
if I had survived.
Timehost: We're getting down to our last few minutes...
Question: Mr. Plimpton, what is going to be your next project?
George Plimpton: I really think I've probably come to the end of the line
in participatory journalism. Having done almost every sport, certainly the major ones, and written about them in various books and articles,
I suppose the last great adventure would be going into space.
I tried to apply for that years ago, but the Challenger disaster made that impossible. But perhaps something will come along that
will be worth trying.
Timehost: Thanks for joining us...any closing thoughts?
George Plimpton: I think that very few people know that what
I really do in life is edit a literary magazine called
"The Paris Review," dedicated to bringing the works
of new writers into focus and interviewing great writers on how it's done.
And that's what I spend most of my time doing while I think
that maybe I'd like to make it as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. And, playing basketball for the Boston Celtics on the side, as well as quarterback for the Lions - the dreams never cease.
Timehost: Thank you very much for joining us tonight.
We hope you'll come back to join us soon.
George Plimpton: Thank you very much.
TIME 100: Heroes & icons
