In Robert Kolodny’s remarkable faux documentary, The Featherweight, covering former lightweight boxing champion Willie Pep on his way to a misguided comeback attempt, the two key relationships in Pep’s (James Madio in a career-making performance) life are with his wife Linda (the startling newcomer Ruby Wolf) and his son Billy (played with no sentimentality by Keir Gilchrist). Pep is on his fourth marriage when we meet him and his much younger wife has designs on becoming a starlet. His son Billy is a junkie. Robert Kolodny’s direction perfectly captures the “you are there” style of the film, and Steve Loff’s screenplay hits the ear just like real life. Director of Photography Adam Kolodny also deserves plaudits for the immediacy of the visual look of the entire film, which is well displayed here.
In the exclusive scene below, we see Willie’s son show up unannounced and the distinct tensions between Billy and his father’s new wife. The sequence also includes one of the most startling moments in a movie full of them–that of Billy pulling down on the boom mic to demand a cigarette. The scene gives you a taste of how little control Willie Pep has over his life. He was a boxer, a fighter, the toughest guy in the ring, but inside his home, he’s not much more than a bad referee.
