On March 8, Woodstock’s legendary documentary filmmaker, Leon Gast, succumbed to Alzheimer’s with his devoted wife, Geri, at his side. He was 85.
Instantly Hollywood was eulogizing the winner of 1996’s Oscar for Best Documentary, When We Were Kings, which immortalized Mohammad Ali’s against-all-odds victory over George Foreman billed in 1974 as “The Rumble in The Jungle.”
Leon’s triumph that year actually provided Woodstock a king, but it took the creation of the Woodstock Film Festival to fully realize that.
“I moved to Woodstock with my family in 2000 to start the Woodstock Film Festival,” remembers Meira Blaustein. “Leon was one of the first to join our advisory board. He introduced me to Barbara Kopple, whose film My Generation would — thanks to Leon — close the festival. Then he introduced me to D.A. Pennebaker who also honored our fledgling festival at Leon’s invitation. That first year Leon helped me put together a documentary panel consisting of himself, Barbara and Pennebaker — all Academy Award-winning filmmakers and legends in their field. I remember standing in the back of Utopia Studios in Bearsville during the panel discussion, looking up at our stage and asking myself if the audience knew they were in the presence of giants. I fell in love with Leon that year and over time that love and admiration only grew.”
But Leon wasn’t born to greatness. He earned it. And like his hero, Ali, he triumphed against all odds.
Beginnings
“I was born in Jersey City.” Leon told me 2016. “My father wanted me to be a lawyer. But all that changed the day my cousin Peter invited me to his history of film class at Columbia. We saw the all-time classic, Nanook of the North. I had that: ‘this is what I want to do!’ moment. The only problem was: ‘How?!’”
Gast enrolled at Columbia film school and devoured everything he could.
“In the end the guy who put it all together was Kubrick. They weren’t docs but his films felt like docs…Paths of Glory, yes!”
Leon dreamed of blazing his own such path. “Little did I know that 40 years later the world would know it as When We Were Kings.”
An instantly likable youth with athletic hustle in his body and speech, Leon did well at cocktail parties. Initially, he charmed himself into a job as driver for film VIPs. One of them, Lowell Thomas, had a hit show on CBS, High Adventure. Leon became assistant sound engineer on the program. Next, he scored a job shooting commercials. At another cocktail party he broke into garment photography. “I’m shooting hats for $7.50 a piece. Wedding gowns pay the best. Soon I’m shooting for Vogue, Esquire and Harper’s Bizarre.
“Another cocktail party and I exchange cards with a guy from Fania Records who gives me my first album cover: The Fania All Stars Live at the Red Garter, followed by…Live at The Cheetah… then? …Live at Yankee Stadium. ’Til I say, ‘Hey wait! You’ve got amazing performers and a guaranteed audience. Why not make a movie?’”
Becoming a filmmaker
In 1971, Gast filmed Fania’s All-Stars in NYC clubs and street festivals. Nuestra Cosa is released in 1972 and in English-speaking theaters as Our Latin Thing. As a result, he gained instant street cred and carved out a niche by directing, shooting, and editing another Fania All-Star film, a BB King doc, and a Pointer Sisters doc. He moved into an office on 58th street where a local motorcycle gang, aptly named “The Animals,” piqued his curiosity.
Leon befriended the gang’s leader who allows him to film their activities — that is, until the Hells Angels initiated the Animals and a large biker is sent to collect all Leon’s footage.
“I could have taken him — at least gotten in a few good shots — but he sucker-punched me at the door,” remembered Gast. “I went down. He grabbed my working reel, dropped it in my office garbage can, dosed it with lighter fluid and tossed in the match. But I had a back-up copy. So? Much of that footage actually made it into Hells Angels Forever (1983).”
Meanwhile in a plush, Rockefeller Center office, Mohammad Ali’s infamous manager, Don King, was negotiating a comeback bout for Ali against Foreman in notoriously corrupt Zaire, Africa — to kick off with a soul music festival. He hears about Gast, who is gutsy and has a good eye and ear for music docs. At their meeting King is impressed with Our Latin Thing but bug-eyed at Leon’s triumph over the Hells Angels. “If he can handle those crazy motherfuckers!” King ranted to cronies, “Then he can do this here!”
Leon meets Ali
King created a tight contractual leash on Gast, but Leon managed to finesse a visit to Ali’s training camp in Deer Lake, Pa. They hit it off and Ali agrees to a filmed interview. Leon shows up with a black director of photography — Ali takes notice. The shoot is a great success and Ali declares that this white man will document the greatest comeback in boxing history. Essentially, Leon has leapt over Don King’s block. Even more profoundly than Howard Cosell before him: he has won the ear and the mouth! of the one and only Mohammad Ali.
“We arrive in Zaire and the odds are gigantic against Ali because Foreman has knocked out all the fighters who’ve given Ali a problem,” remembered Gast. But Foreman suffers a gash on his forehead while sparring that requires stitches and pushes the fight back six weeks. In the meantime, Ali trains harder while Foreman’s routine slackens. (The delay also allowed Leon to fly to San Francisco to direct The Grateful Dead Movie.)
Back in Zaire, Leon’s crews filmed the long-delayed soul music concert unofficially billed “the black Woodstock.” Coincidentally, it was also declared a “free concert,” even though proceeds were earmarked to pay Leon & crew.
Shortly before the fight on Oct. 30, Leon filmed Ali jogging along roadsides lined with fanatical Zairians shouting: “Ali Bumbayay!” (“Ali—kill him!”) But Ali doesn’t kill Foreman. Nor can he beat him by traditional means. Instead, after realizing the younger, stronger fighter will destroy him in open combat, Ali improvises (or has pre-planned!) “the rope-a-dope.” It confounds Foreman, diminishing the power of blows thrown harder and faster, until Ali bounces off the ropes in round 8 to knock out his exhausted foe in— yes, the greatest comeback in boxing history.
Leon should have returned from Zaire in 1974 with the 300,000 feet of film, several hundred thousand in compensation, plus a hefty budget to edit. Instead, it was just the start of a 22-year saga including a lawsuit against the-holder-of-funds: an off-shore company sheltering the Liberian minister of finance, his subsequent highly suspicious death, a never-fully-disclosed “re-negotiation” with Don King, a drug deal gone bad, and at last…
To Woodstock
Leon doesn’t talk about his first marriage, except to brag about his kids. True love came later. In 1989, Leon delivered the eulogy at his best friend’s funeral, capturing the spirit of this man so eloquently as to also capture the heart of his grieving widow. Inside of a few dates Leon and Geri realize it’s mutual. Two years later they’re married. That’s in 1991, the very year they buy their dream house.
“Leon’s aunt and uncle had a house up here,” Geri recalls. “So Leon visited as a kid. We started dating and he brought me up here to meet his friends. I’d been here a few times in the late ’60s. When we turned onto 212 from off of 375 I said to him, ‘I remember this place,’ and then I said, ‘this is where I want to be.’”
Leon didn’t need to hear it twice. Five years after moving to Woodstock When We Were Kings was crowned at the Oscars, with Ali and Foreman joining Leon on stage. How he got there? That would take a book to fully describe, one certain to include how Leon stayed close to Ali until shortly before the champion’s death.
Fame fueled the filmmaker. Next? Smash His Camera, about controversial paparazzo, Ron Galella. And others kept coming.
“Leon’s films were acclaimed around the world,” said pal Robbie Dupree, “but to me kindness and generosity will be his legacy.”
Michael Lang, Impresario of the Woodstock Festival, hammers it home.
“Leon and I have been friends for over 50 years and things were never dull. He lived fully and 25 years ago found the love of his life in Geri. His passing will leave a big hole in my life as it will in many, but that’s where the memories will go. He is so loved.”
In 2016 Leon received Woodstock Film Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award. It took a place on his mantel, next to his Oscar and Emmy. “A couple of years later we showed what Leon called his Love Song to Woodstock,” WFF’s Meira Blaustein recalls, “And what a wonderful evening it was, with Leon beaming joyously while acknowledging that so-well-deserved standing ovation.”
Leon is survived by his wife, Geri Spolan Gast; sons Daniel and Clifford Gast; step-daughter Sara Marricco and six grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, please contribute to Hudson Valley Hospice (hvhospice.org). Announcements for a memorial in a post-Covid world awaits such.
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