Actor James Madio plays legendary boxer Willie Pep in The Featherweight. (Photo courtesy of Pep Films, LLC)
Premiere night in New York City. For filmmakers, this is make-or-break time. But for actor James Madio, the only person whose opinion mattered was his father, Gerard. And when The featherweight ran his final credits, dad approved.
“Jimmy son, you might have something here,” father said to son. “You did great.”
“It’s his approval,” laughs Madio, satisfied that, yes, he’s done a good job with the film that’s in select theaters this week. “At the end of the show, the first thing I said when I got up for the Q&A was I let him stand and I thanked him from the bottom of my heart, and they gave him a gave him a standing ovation. And he humbly, sheepishly, just waved and sat down. And without him pushing me, it would never have happened.”
This is not a son who thanks his father for being in his corner over the years. Literally, without Gerard Madio, we would never have seen a film that deserves Oscars across the board for his portrayal of legendary featherweight champion Willie Pep. Because he was the one who showed his son a picture of Pep years ago and said that this was the role he was born for.
“My dad is an old-school Italian guy, always worried about my career,” James recalled. “His son is in an industry that’s not structured or that doesn’t bring stability and can’t bring longevity, depending on what you do. So he was always worried – ‘What are you doing? How do things work?’ And then one day I was in California, and he said, ‘Jimmy boy, you’ve got to look this fighter up. He is amazing. Willie Pep. He looks just like you, you should do his movie.’ And I don’t want to say I brushed him off, but I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll look into it. I have a lot of things going on. I can’t start producing a new movie right now.”
Willie Pep, circa 1955. (Photo by Stanley Weston/Getty Images)
Out of respect for his father, Madio sought out Pep, printed out a picture of “The Will ‘o the Wisp” and put it on a board above his desk.
Enter screenwriter and friend Steve Loff, a fellow New Yorker (Madio is from The Bronx) who lived in Los Angeles. He visited Madio and saw the Pep picture.
“I’m a casual boxing fan, maybe even a little above that,” Loff said. “I love the sport, I follow all the big fights and fighters, and I’m just like, ‘Who is that?’ And he said: “That’s Willie Pep.” And I heard that Willie Pep was a young kid in Brooklyn, but I didn’t know much about him. He’s like, ‘Yeah, it’s Willie Pep. He has the most wins in boxing history. And my father said this is the role I was born to play one day. I want to make a movie about it.’ He just keeps walking and talking, and I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m out here. Let me help you make this movie.’ And that’s when it started.”
Loff recalls that this conversation took place in February 2008, and by the time cameras started rolling The featherweightit was november 2021.
Madio’s physical resemblance to Pep is striking, but he also nails him on a human level. (Photo courtesy of Pep Films, LLC)
“It’s been 13 and a half years,” he said. “And then we had the premiere in Venice in September. I think it was September third 2023. That’s almost 15 and a half years later. Fifteen and a half years of me saying, ‘Hey Jim, who’s this guy on your bulletin board?’ And now we’re coming out in theaters a year after that. So we are 16-plus years after this theatrical release of The featherweight.”
That’s a lot of years to do anything, but let’s face it, Hollywood probably wasn’t knocking on the door for a Willie Pep biopic, especially one depicting him in the time before his 1965 comeback. It’s not a feel good, the good guy wins the big fight at the end of the movie film. Done in a documentary style, it feels as real as it can get. The boxing scenes, interspersed with actual footage of Pep’s fights, aren’t the usual “guy takes 100 unanswered shots to the head, then comes back with a haymaker to win the fight” take on the fight game. It’s fiery, and it portrays boxing as it really is. That authenticity is evident from start to finish, and maybe Hollywood doesn’t want something that doesn’t feel like The Avengers. Whatever the case, Madio and Loff were determined to get the film made.
“At some point in anything in life you realize you’re going to fail and you cut your losses, right?” said Loff. “But I always believed that if we could pull it off, it would be a beautiful film. I also always believed that if we could pull it off, it was the role Jim’s father told him he was born to play. I believed Jim’s father was right. He was born to play this role.”
Madio and Steve Loff on day one of production. (Photo courtesy of Steve Loff)
All the while, the duo remembered the phrase Pep used to sign his autographs with: “Keep Punching.”
“When we had a setback, we were like, ‘Okay, we have to keep hitting,'” Loff said. “So I kept it in my head. It’s also crazy… February 11, 1949 he beats Sandy Saddler to regain his title. This is the biggest win of his career. He was the first featherweight to ever regain a lost title in the history of the sport. So 2/11 is his biggest fight and a number I always had in my head.
“I’m going to meet Billy Papaleo, Pep’s son, for the first time in my life, many, many years ago. Billy died about a year ago, maybe less. He had cancer and was about 76, 77. He was my closest link to Willie. And we got close over the years. He was addicted to heroin, as you see in the film, and he struggled with it all his life. But the point is, I’m going to see him for the first time and his apartment number in his complex is Apartment 211. You can’t make that shit up. Every time I thought, okay, we’ve got to pack it in, we’re not going to make this movie, I saw 211, whether it was on the clock, whether it was an out-of-state highway number or wherever. I would walk down the street and say, ‘Fuck this movie.’ And I look up and I’m standing outside 211. I swear to you, I don’t believe in stuff like that, but then I do.”
Loff laughs, and he can do it, now that the film is in space. But it took a little more intervention to get across the finish line from an unlikely source. An old co-star of Madio named Leonardo DiCaprio.
“One day, after six, seven years of trying to get this made, I was just in one of those moods in the morning of ‘what the hell am I doing?’,” recalls Madio. “And I texted Leonardo DiCaprio, who was my partner, and I was like, ‘Leo, I’ve never busted your balls about anything in my life. Never asked you anything. What do you think of this story?’ And he never came back to me. But his company got back to me in less than 60 seconds. So, he must have forwarded my message to Michael Hampton at Appian Way right then and there. And I got a message from Appian Way, kind of like, ‘Leo just messaged me, tell us about this film.’ And they were on board as producers.”
Also Steve James, known for his seminal documentary, jumped on board Hope Dreamsand rising star director Robert Kolodny, and finally there was a film.
And what a film it is. From top to bottom, the cast, which includes Ruby Wolf as Pep’s wife, Linda; Keir Gilchrist as Pep’s son, Billy; and Ron Livingston as his manager, Bob Kaplan; is brilliant, and Madio deserves Oscar consideration for his portrayal of Pep because he took someone who was a superhero for so many and showed the human side, warts and all. Again, it’s not pretty, but it’s the reality for so many boxers, past, present and future.
“(Pep)’s thing was ‘first go your legs, then go your friends, then go your money’,” Madio said. “He’s got to borrow money from somebody, he’s got to get back in the ring, and you want this guy to see people at a restaurant where he’s eating. He has to save face here. I know this as an actor. Even when I didn’t have a good year or a bad year, I still had to walk around. I’m good at what I do and I do well and I still have it, even though I’m like, ‘Shit, I’m struggling.’ Willie had to do it at such a higher level, a champion of the world type level when he walked into a room. And if you think about Willie, Willie was a winner inside that ring, an absolute winner, an assassin to some degree with his mastery of defense and his footwork. But outside the ring he lost everything. All the wives he lost, all the houses, he lost his relationships with his family. Its contrast is so stark. And that’s how boxers are going to relate to that, I think. At least, I hope.”
Madio as Willie Pep in The Featherweight. (Photo courtesy of Pep Films, LLC)
They will. And they will also see someone who is Willie Pep at the end of the film. Of course Madio, being a perfectionist, wondered if he had hit his mark, but I will say unequivocally that he did.
“Well, the first reaction is that as an actor you always try to do better and wonder what you could have done better and how the audience will see you,” said Madio. “And we’re talking about a monumental guy who’s in the spotlight. There’s a lot of footage about him, people know him, so for me the initial reaction was, ‘Could I have done better? Could I have done better with my presentation of Willie, with the way he spoke, his cadence, the character of Willie, could I have done better with the box?’
“The guy was so damn special in the ring. How do you imitate it? I don’t try to do my style. If you put James Madio in the ring, I push you up against the ropes and I stomp you like the old-school Italian, Mexican types – hit you like a brick and chop you down – and Willie is the complete opposite of my instinct . So, the box meant a lot to me. The way Willie worked the room meant a lot to me. So I was super focused on that. But my initial reaction was, ‘Have I done enough, and can I be better?’ And then after that settles in, you kind of say to yourself, ‘It’s good, man. You did it. You made the Willie Pep movie after a decade. You made the Willie Pep movie and you did well.’ And everyone involved all did a great job of finding lightning in a bottle. This is what it takes to make a good independent film, is lightning in a bottle. And that’s what it was.”
