Tough Guys Documentary

Frank Caliguri, Bill Viola, and Frank Caliguri created a contest that pitted barroom bigmouths with wrestlers. Format File: [1 MP4 ] File Size: 2,192GB

Tough Guys Documentary

It was 10 years ago that the first version of the
Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Frank Caliguri and Bill Viola created a new form of competitive fighting in 1979. It was billed as a no-holds barred contest that pits barroom bigmouths against boxers, wrestlers, fighters, brawlers, and martial artists. After the fights were more successful than they could have imagined, they were caught up in a series that led to the nation’s first ban on mixed-martial arts.
“Tough Guys” chronicles the inception of Caliguri and Viola’s first bouts and the colorful, crazy cast of fighters who made them a hit as well as the politicians who brought it all crashing down. This film captures a time when national martial arts was at its peak. At the same time, Pennsylvania’s steel towns were experiencing unprecedented unemployment. It also shows desperate men who are looking to make a living in the ring.
THE FACTS
It happened like this…

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39 days of filming
42 interviews
12 meals at Denny’s
18 locations
1000 frames per second
52 Terabytes worth of footage
1 film
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Two years ago, my brother Robert Zullo sent me a photograph in a text. He was then a reporter at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It was a flyer that featured a muscle-bound, hand-drawn man advertising a product. “Battle of the Tough Guys” An event in Pittsburgh in 1980.
“So these Pittsburgh steelworkers and biker dudes fought an anything goes tough guy contest in a Holiday Inn and claim to have invented Mixed Martial Arts,” He spoke in a phone conversation.
When I was considering potential projects, his instinctive sense for a great story was something that I never doubted. This story had everything: unique time and place, machismo wild characters and, finally, tragedy.
When we started our research on Bill Viola, a promoter of karate, and Frank Caliguri’s pioneering fights in karate, all the possibilities merged into what seemed like an obvious project: a documentary. Let these fighters tell the story, in their own words.
One of the fight posters was taken to Craig DiBiase while I was on set in New York City. DiBiase grew up in Pittsburgh and took one look. He was so intrigued that he stayed up the whole night researching the matter.
Realizing the potential visual impact of the story, I hired Henry Roosevelt, a New York-based director to assist me in my duties as director.
Just like the subjects in “Tough Guys,” To do something different, we created a team. To create a documentary as original, entertaining, and groundbreaking as the mixed-martial art events and fighters that were captured.
We shot on a combination RED Dragon, Phantom photography at super high frame rates, aerial drones and Kodak Super 8 film. Our goal was to combine cinematic visual storytelling elements with the wealth of primary sources such as archival fight footage, print news, still images and local TV.
It’s a story about a place and time where men were out of work and willing to risk injury, pain, and even death to put food on the table and prove their own self-worth. It’s a story about martial arts, about politics, about how much individual risk the law should allow and why men fight. It’s a story about Pittsburgh and a blue-collar way of life that has all but vanished in the Rust Belt.
But most importantly, it’s a story you’ve never heard.

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