Jack Huston Went 12 Rounds to Get His Boxing Movie in Theaters

If you’re going to make a black-and-white boxing movie, there is one man whose blessing is paramount. So it speaks volumes that Martin Scorsese, who directed the quintessential entry in the genre, Raging Bull, hosted last month’s buzzy New York screening of Day of the Fight, the screenwriting and directorial debut of actor Jack Huston.

“He got an early cut of the movie and has been a huge supporter, which is just massive for us because we understood that the obvious comparisons are going to be Raging Bull,” Huston told me when we met in October at the Virginia Film Festival, where he had just been presented with the Achievement in Screenwriting Award. “It’s just lovely to hear from Marty’s own voice, ‘This is nothing like Raging Bull.‘”

In fact, despite the film’s protagonist being a boxer and a prize fight serving as the climax, Huston doesn’t consider Day of the Fight to be a boxing movie at all.

Taking place over the course of one day, the film, which hits theaters Dec. 6, centers on Mikey, played by Huston’s former Boardwalk Empire co-star Michael Pitt, as he gears up for his first fight after a stint in prison for his role in a traumatizing accident he won’t forgive himself for. On the way to the ring, he makes a series of stops, confronting his past, his mistakes, the people he hurt, and the people who hurt him. He’s not going 12 rounds for the prize money; he’s doing it to make amends—with others, and with himself.

“The amount of people at different screenings at different festivals who come out and say, ‘I hate boxing. I f---ing hate boxing movies, but I love this film. I love it. Oh my God, I love it so much.’ And I’m like, this is great because this is the message,” Huston said, before his lips curl up into a grin and he starts laughing. “I don’t think we’ve done ourselves any favors by calling it Day of the Fight.”

Until now, Huston’s career has been as an actor. Before his stint on Boardwalk Empire, his big break was in the limited series version of Spartacus. He’s starred in Kill Your Darlings, the remake of Ben-Hur, American Hustle, The Irishman, The House of Gucci, and, most recently, the Prime Video series Expats.

His lineage could have its own Wikipedia page. Relevant to the film world, his aunt is Oscar-winner Anjelica Huston, his uncle is revered character actor Danny Huston, and his grandfather is legendary director John Huston. Huston said that a part of him always knew that he wanted to be a director, but he also has been around the industry enough to know that he needed to wait until he had a project that he felt passionate enough to devote that energy to.

“I’ve sat as a student behind some of the great filmmakers and just watched in rapture and tried to soak up as much as I possibly could, but I didn’t feel rushed,” he said. “I was always told: Wait for the right one.”

Day of the Fight had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September of 2023. Over a year later, it’s finally hitting theaters.

It turns out that it’s not easy to find a distributor, no matter how positively festival audiences respond, when your project is a black-and-white film about a boxer in the ’80s. (I loved Huston’s answer when I asked him why the film is in black-and-white: “We didn’t have much money. Today’s New York is a completely different palette to 1989 New York. Black-and-white, not only being beautiful and giving you a timeless texture, it’s also incredibly forgiving.”)

“We nicknamed the film Fight of the Day, because every f---ing day was a fight,” he said.

When we met, at a charming café in Charlottesville that had been retrofitted into an interview room, Huston’s voice was notably raspy. That, it turns out, is a casualty of that fight. He advocated so passionately for the release of Day of the Fight that he sustained a vocal injury.

“I developed a polyp on my vocal cord because there was a moment when we were right on the edge, about to get this release date, distribute the movie, and everything fell apart, as it does multiple times. I was on the phone for 17 hours straight just doing everything I possibly could,” he said. “But by the end of it, I went to the doctor and he was like, ‘OK, yeah, you’re going to have to have surgery now because like your vocal cords are f---ed.’ Now this is my voice. I’m Nick Nolte.”

Throughout our conversation, we spoke a lot about the film’s themes of forgiveness, atonement, and reconciliation. Huston told an amazing anecdote about how Joe Pesci, who plays the boxer’s dad in the film, not only showed up—a prayer answered from a casting standpoint—but rewrote the film’s final act to reflect his own personal experience; to say more specifics would spoil the film, but I teared up when I heard the story.

Huston also had a lot to say about casting Michael Pitt, his former co-star from Boardwalk Empire, who he wrote Day of the Fight with him in mind to play Mikey, the boxer on a redemption mission. Pitt was arrested and hospitalized in the summer of 2022 after an incident in New York City. “Getting him cast was almost an impossibility,” Huston said. “But I did put myself and my name down and said, it’s either Michael or no movie.”

They lived together for 10 days leading up to the film’s shoot, “talking about the light and the dark and what led us to this place,” Huston said.

As every fighter knows, who you have in your corner is as important as the rumble itself.

When it comes to a first film, that includes a cast—Steve Buscemi completed the Boardwalk Empire reunion, with his supporting role in the film—and its advocates. You’d think the grandson of one of the greatest directors of our lifetime would have an easy time getting his own film released, but, as Huston learned, that’s not the case.

“The reason we’ve persevered and prevailed is because we’ve had the support of filmmakers who have stuck up for this film,” Huston said. “Ridley Scott picked up the phone, personally called A24,the head of it, and said, ‘If you don’t run to release this movie—not walk, run to release the movie—then you’re a f---ing idiot,” Huston said, not shy about humble-bragging. “He was the sweetest. He said it’s the best first film he ever saw. Having to support people like Ridley, Martin Scorsese, Gus Van Sant—these guys come up and turn up and have really been pushing. So thank God that we still have filmmakers who believe in this stuff, because if I didn’t have those guys, we wouldn’t be anywhere.”

At the Virginia Film Festival screening of Day of the Fight, audience members wiped away tears and stayed to chat with Huston about the movie and the long journey to its release.

“That’s the beauty of film—the art form isn’t lost on those people who really do still care,” Huston said. “And I thank God because these companies, we wouldn’t have cinema anymore if they had their way. It’s unbelievable. I just can’t. It’s chilling how difficult it’s been.”

This round, at least, cinema won.