James Madio, Ruby Wolf, Keir Gilchrist and Robert Kolodny – Requiem for The Featherweight

James Madio, Ruby Wolf, Keir Gilchrist and Robert Kolodny

Requiem for The Featherweight

by Jay S. Jacobs

There are certain people who shine so brightly in their fields and yet over the years they are not remembered. Take, for example, boxer Guglielmo Papaleo – better known by his ring name Willie Pep. Willie Pep was a two-time featherweight champion of boxing, who fought professionally from 1940 to 1966, and whose career record of 229–11–1 with 65 knockouts gives him more wins than any other boxer in history.

There are a lot of complicated reasons that Willie Pep is somewhat left behind by history. First of all, he was a featherweight, which was never nearly as revered as the heavyweight class. And frankly, he tried to hold on for too long, continuing to look for bouts after his skills had eroded and tainting his legacy. Also, boxing is not nearly as popular in the modern world as it was in the last century.

However, for people who are boxing aficionados, Willie Pep is still a legend. More importantly he had a fascinating life. Actor James Madio (Band of Brothers) learned of the fighter and became obsessed with bringing his story to the big screen – but not necessarily the glory days.

Instead, the film The Featherweight would be filmed as a fake documentary, surveying an aging Willie Pep (Madio) who is still trying desperately to hold on in the fight game, at the same time with dealing with money problems, issues with his fourth wife Linda (Ruby Wolf in her first film role) and the fact that his son Billy Jr. (Keir Gilchrist of It’s Kind of a Funny Story) is both bitter about his relationship with his dad, and is dealing with an out-of-control drug problem.

A few days before The Featherweight was due to be released, we got the chance to chat with film stars Madio, Wolf, Gilchrist and director Robert Kolodny about their film.

What was it about Willie Pep’s story that intrigued you to be a part of this film?

Robert Kolodny: Willie Pep in his time was as big of a sensation as any of the great sports heroes of the 20th century. We all felt it was fascinating that he is relatively unknown outside of the boxing world now, although he is still to this day the winningest fighter in the history of the sport.

James Madio: It all started with my father telling me, “you should go look up Willie Pep,” which I did. I realized how similar we looked physically. Then I dove into who the man was; East Coast, Italian American, fought on the streets, trying to make his bones any way he can. Fighting to be something. Sports outgrew him. What's he going to do with his life? So he used his hands, and I gravitated to that. Any actor needs something to chew on, and Willie’s story was definitely something to chew on.

Ruby Wolf: I am not what you would call an enormous boxing fan. I actually had no idea who Willie Pep was when I was originally approached about the script. I approached it as I would with any script that comes to me, through the lens of how do I feel about this character? I fell in love with Linda on the page immediately.

Keir Gilchrist: Yeah, likewise, I'm not a boxing fan. I had never heard of him. I think it was even like a tagline or something was in there that was like, “the best boxer that ever lived that you wouldn't know about,” or something like that. Then I looked into him, and I was like, wow, how is it that he doesn't have the same kind of name [recognition] like Muhammad Ali or something, where you're like, “Okay, I know who that is.”

Ruby Wolf: I ended up having a conversation with my grandfather, who was alive, and really a huge fan of Willie Pep when Willie Pep was at his prime. My grandpa told me this story. He said, “That's the best boxer that ever lived. One time I threw a party so that people could come over and watch the fight on our little, itty bitty, tiny television. People hadn't even arrived when the fight was over, because Willie had knocked the guy out in one punch so quickly.”

Robert Kolodny: I think that was an inception point for why the film needed to be made. Once we investigated further, he is just a fascinating, nuanced character who lived an incredible, deeply American life. But the origin of the story really began with James Madio.

James Madio: I'm a big boxing fan. I've always been a boxing fan. So [I] just dive deeper, dive into his life. When we're going to fall upon his life is in 1965, when he's trying to make a comeback. He's got no money, lives with his mother. On his fourth wife. Son's addicted to drugs. His father is not well. He doesn't look so well. He can't get a job, but he's still trying to save face. We've all been there, maybe not you, but I've been there as a person. I've been on top and then I fell. These roller coaster rides we've been on. So I really felt like I could sink my teeth into Willie and show the world who he is, and at the same time as an actor flex and show my job. Show what I can do.

Keir Gilchrist: I also thought it was cool that he was a featherweight. As a very small man myself, the idea of a very small man beating people's asses was kind of cool. Once you read the script and all the other layers of his life, and I was like, wow, this is fascinating. I've since told people that I'm in this Willie Pep movie, and people who know boxing are like, “Oh my God, they're finally making a movie about him,” so that's cool.

Ruby Wolf: I remember hearing that story from my grandfather and being like, wow, so this is really such a huge, culturally significant athlete to a whole generation of people who have been lost to time, in a way. It feels really cool, to be doing justice to his legacy and giving people a lot of information about him that they wouldn't necessarily otherwise have.

Which parts were harder to film, the boxing matches or the more personal fights and things that Willie was having to go through in his life?

James Madio: I'll go first on that one. I would say that they equally had their obstacles. Obviously, the fight. It's incredibly difficult to move like Willie, no matter how hard you train, no matter how many years that I've watched video and footage of him and tried to emulate him. It's incredibly difficult. The guy was special inside the ring. His jab was special. This feint was special. Just everything about him.

Robert Kolodny: They're two very different languages. When we're working on the fight scenes, it's like, it's almost like working on a ballet. There are special sequences of moves that we're trying to hit. The fight choreography, which is brilliantly directed by Ernie Reyes Jr., who's an amazing fight choreographer. Just for safety reasons, for the illusion that we're trying to sell to the audience, of it being real, it has to be done in such a specific manner, so that was difficult in so far as the adherence to those facets.

James Madio: Then the dramatic parts were difficult because the way it was shot, right? I mean, it is shot knowing that there's a camera around at all times. So when can Willie be himself? Or when is Willie playing to the lens? When's he playing to his audience? Because he did like an audience, obviously. So, thankfully, Robert was there to walk me through certain elements of it and protect me, in a sense, with all that. I think they were, in short, equally challenging. But like Robert said, we were up for the challenge. We knew we were making something special.

Robert Kolodny: The interpersonal relationships in the film were more like pre-versing poetry. We're trying to find an essential truth. As I'm directing the actors, we're drilling down to look deeper than, “oh, it's a relationship problem,” or “it's a drug problem,” or “it's a toxic masculinity problem.” We're trying to go even deeper than this and say, what is the human root of why this character is acting this way? What is their motivation? What is the nuance within that? It's a different kind of challenge, but one that I feel like the whole team together was able to surmount and really hone in on.

The family story here is very complex. Willie and Linda, while they obviously seem to care for each other, they're having problems at this point in their relationship. And Billy Jr. is very bitter about the whole thing, and his addictions are just adding fuel to the fire. Was that dysfunctional place difficult or fun to play with as an actor?

Ruby Wolf: What made the script exciting to me when I was reading it were those messy and complicated relationship dynamics. Willie and Linda's relationship, obviously, there has to be a foundation of love and tenderness there, or else, why would you care about what happens to these people? But when you meet them, at the point where the story begins, a lot of the shine has worn off for Linda. Her expectations… she thought as an aspiring actress, I'm marrying this famous boxer who has promised me this incredible, exciting life in New York City. Then in the first year of our marriage, he moved me back to Hartford, Connecticut to live in a duplex with his mother. He has no money and he's not working. I have no opportunities here. It sort of feels like I was sold a bill of false goods, right? I think that that was a really interesting jumping off point emotionally for her as a character. It was really exciting to get to explore that with James.

Keir Gilchrist: As an actor, I love doing stuff where you drop right into something where there's already all this history and all this shared trauma. Getting to show people that, without having to show them the whole story, is fun. Rob really made sure that we all knew as much as we could about where we were coming from, what we wanted out of this.

Ruby Wolf: The natural antipathy between Keir and myself as Linda and Billy, I thought was a really interesting dynamic as well.

Keir Gilchrist: For Billy, he literally drops back in unannounced and unwanted, like halfway through this documentary shoot, and essentially attempts to sabotage the documentary and his father's image in the documentary. But it's also an interesting dynamic because he also really is seeking his father's approval. That's something that I definitely got, even meeting the real Billy. Even though I think one could argue his dad wasn't necessarily the best – especially in his younger years – as a father, separating him from his mother, and he was living in his shadow. He still, to this day, I think, really just admires his father, and looks up to him. Interesting dynamic for an actor to work.

I’ve got to say that the film does a really incredible job of recreating the 1960s. Was it fun to immerse yourself in a different era and basically act in a different world?

Ruby Wolf: Yeah, that was one of my favorite parts. As an actor, that's one of my favorite things in general, getting to explore different times and places. I think the Department of this film that I was the most blown away by consistently is wardrobe and set decoration and set dressing and set design. We had a 360-degree playing space because it was being shot as a documentary. The camera needed the flexibility to be able to shoot us all the way around and follow us if they wanted to. What the set design team did was they built out these sets in 360 degrees of coverage.

James Madio: Once you're in a set that's designed by wonderful designers, and you're dressed in the wardrobe, and you've got the hair and makeup, and you feel like you look like a boxer. The dialog is written that way, and everything you do just the way we shot it seems like you are placed in 1965. It's an incredible asset and help to any actor to be able to do that.

Robert Kolodny: I'm obsessed with the esthetic of the 1960s from the music to the new Hollywood cinema movement to the direct cinema movement and documentary. So to be able to weave those languages into something that we were building and put a physicality to it was such a joyous playground to be in. We had incredible department heads – Sonia Foltarz on the production design team, and Naomi Wolff Lachter and the costume design team – that really took that assignment, ran with it, and made everything as authentic as possible.

James Madio: It's really cool to do a period piece the way we did it. Everything is stylized the way Robert shot it. It's always on you to some degree, you feel it's intrusive at times, but the same time you welcome it. Willie probably liked the camera, and at times he doesn't want it there. So a lot of fun, a lot of freedom as an actor.

Ruby Wolf: I was saying earlier, there was a vanity set in Willie and Linda's bedroom. You'd never see it in the movie. It didn't get shown one single frame of the film. However, there was a diary in one of the top drawers that had handwritten diary entries for Linda, so that if I wanted to in a scene, I could sit at the vanity and I could open it up. There would be cigarettes and a lighter and all of this rich, textural stuff, of all of these period appropriate props and everything.

Keir Gilchrist: It was really cool. Clearly, I missed the 60s by a bit. But as Ruby was saying, it's just wild to walk into this set where you don't even have to ask for anything. They'd be like, “play with whatever you want to play with.” They'd be like, “do you have cigarettes?” Yeah, that's right there. Oh, right. It is right here. Then it becomes really easy as an actor.

Robert Kolodny: Just the body language of the camera, our Director of Photography, Adam [Kolodny], did an incredible job just making it feel truly indicative of the observational cinematography style of both nonfiction films of the era like DA Pennebaker and the Maysles brothers, as well as fiction films of the era. We were very influenced by John Cassavetes movies.

Keir Gilchrist: I think the only thing I really had to worry about was, I'd be like, “Is this phrase right? Did they say that?” Because there was so much improv, I'd be like, “Is this period?” They'd be like, “No. No one was saying that in that time.” That was pretty much the only thing we had to worry about. It actually just made it really easy to just live in that space. A huge, huge amount of work [was] put into the set and props and everything.

Ruby Wolf: It felt so immersive. You could really walk onto that set and completely lose the present moment if you could ignore the lights and the cameras. It was very special to get to have that opportunity to play like that as an actor, because we all do make believe for a living. When it's that gorgeously realized, it's even more of a treat.

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: September 20, 2024.

Photos 1-4 © 2024 Jay S. Jacobs. All rights reserved.

Photos 5-8 © 2024. Courtesy of Pep Films LLC. All rights reserved.