Packing a punch

Filmmaker Evan Beloff on entering the world of the Montreal boxing scene for his doc Underdog Plaza

As a boxing fan, filmmaker Evan Beloff says he learned that Montreal was becoming a boxing capital of sorts. “A number of boxers who were doing well had come out of the city,” he recalls noticing.

At first, Beloff thought he might explore the entire boxing milieu in a documentary film. But then he was struck by how fascinating one boxer’s story was, after learning of Dierry Jean.

“There was an interesting arc to his life,” Beloff says. “He was terrible with money and was struggling with not having enough of it. He doesn’t always treat women well. He struggles with his demons. But he’s very charismatic and has also known success in the field.”

The result is Underdog Plaza, a fast-moving doc that will begin making the film-fest rounds in the spring. In the film, we watch as Jean trains extensively and forges a strong friendship with another boxer, Mo.

Beloff says he wanted to avoid clichés whenever possible, but also concedes he thought of two famous boxing movies while making Underdog Plaza. “I wanted the footage to look dirty and gritty. I shot a lot of it myself, and wanted to capture the grittiness of the fight sequences in Raging Bull. But thematically, I also wanted some of the feel-good that we saw in Rocky. In that movie, he’s fighting to be with his woman too.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Beloff reports that the camera did alter the behaviour of the boxers he captured. Thus he had to work hard to get them to let their guard down. “Getting authen­ticity out of the boxers was tough, in large part because of the machismo of their culture. I had to say, ‘This is not a corporate video for you! Act fucking real!’ It was tough to get at that aspect of their lives, because they don’t want to appear as anything but tough.”

Underdog Plaza is produced by Frederic Bohbot of Bunbury Films. “Fred is extremely demanding,” notes Beloff. “But in a very good way. He was always challenging me to make the film bet­ter.”

And Beloff says he went through an evolution himself during filming. “I’m much less of a boxing fan after watching it live. You don’t really understand how hard they’re hitting each oth­er when you watch it on TV. It’s sort of shocking—it’s like Gladiator, a real bloodlust. The impact of each blow is incredible. I’ll never watch it live again.” ★

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