At a loading dock in Cleveland in 1937, supervisor Mr. Gant hires a new worker, Polish American Lincoln Dombrowsky. Gant tells Dombrowsky that he will be paid for his regular shift only even if he must work overtime, and that any merchandise he damages will come directly out of his pay. When Dombrowsky drops a few carts of tomatoes, his pay is docked and another worker is fired for helping him collect the fallen merchandise. Resentful of these unfair labor practices, Hungarian-American worker Johnny Kovak leads a riot. The laborers go to the office of Boss Andrews, where Kovak believes he negotiates a deal for the workers, only to find out the next day that he and his friend Abe Belkin have been fired.
Kovak and Belkin are approached by Mike Monahan, who was impressed by their leadership. He offers them positions in the Federation of Inter State Truckers (F.I.S.T.), where they will be paid according to how many members they can recruit. Kovak is given a car to use while recruiting, which also allows him to meet and soon start dating Lithuanian-American worker Anna Zarinkas. Kovak is successfully recruiting new F.I.S.T. members, which attracts attention from business owners. When Kovak turns down their offer to recruit new workers to their non-union trucking firms, the shady owners have him physically attacked. Kovak rises into a leadership role through his union recruiting, causing competition with hothead F.I.S.T. leader Max Graham.
Soon Monahan, Kovak and Belkin begin working to get the F.I.S.T. members at Consolidated Trucking covered by a labor agreement. When management refuses to deal with them, the F.I.S.T. workers strike. They set up camp outside Consolidated Trucking's gates, but are pushed out by strikebreakers and hired security. Monahan tries to ram the gates in a truck, but is shot and killed. At his funeral, Kovak decides to "get some muscle" and accepts help from Vince Doyle, a local gangster. Doyle's men attack trucks trying to make deliveries. Local mobsters and the members of F.I.S.T. join forces to storm the gates of Consolidated Trucking. The president of Consolidated Trucking finally signs a labor agreement.
Building on this success, Kovak and Belkin travel the Midwest to recruit more workers. Kovak becomes wealthier and marries Anna. A new crime figure, Babe Milano, comes on the scene and wants a piece of the action. Kovak meets Milano with Doyle and, although reluctant to involve him in his business, decides it will be best for now.
By 1957, F.I.S.T. has become a large and important union, with about two million members. When Kovak visits Max Graham at F.I.S.T. headquarters, he is displeased to see how luxurious the building and Graham's offices are. Kovak visits with Belkin, now leading F.I.S.T. business on the West Coast, who explains that Graham has made money unethically off the union. In his investigation, Kovak finds that Graham used his influence to steer union businesses and funds to shell companies owned by him or his wife, and has used violence against the wife of a trucking company owner who resisted the union.
Graham is a strong favorite to be elected F.I.S.T. president. Belkin suggests to Kovak that they turn Graham in to the authorities, but Kovak is too worried about the damage to the union from the scandal. Kovak confronts Graham with what he knows, convincing him to support Kovak's run for union president.
Now the newly elected president of F.I.S.T., Kovak is investigated by Senator Madison, who suspects Kovak of ties with the Mafia through his work with gangsters Doyle and Milano. Belkin urges Kovak to cut off Milano and make the union "clean again", but Kovak ignores his request. When Doyle later tells Kovak that Belkin plans to testify against them, Kovak insists that Belkin not be harmed.
Subpoenaed to testify before Senator Madison's committee, Kovak is told that Belkin has been killed and the senator believes Kovak is responsible. Shocked, Kovak has an emotional outburst and storms out of the hearing. He returns home to find Anna and the children are missing. He gets his pistol but is shot and killed by Milano's men. The movie ends with a shot of a bumper sticker on a truck which reads, "Where's Johnny?"
Anthony Kiedis, who became the founding lead singer of the band Red Hot Chili Peppers five years later, appeared in a small role using his stage name Cole Dammett, a tribute to the stage name Blackie Dammett used by his actor father.
Production
Development and writing
United Artists hired Joe Eszterhas to write a screenplay about the labor movement in 1974 after studio executive Gene Corman read his articles on the subject in Rolling Stone. Eszterhas, who had never written a screenplay before, wrote a 40-page-essay on the history of labor unions in the American Midwest. Arthur B. Krim hired Norman Jewison in the position of director and offered him a $4 million budget if Jewison could match it with another $4 million. He eventually failed to find another studio to co-finance the film and received a full $8.1 million budget regardless.[5] Eszterhas originally envisioned the role of Kovak with Jack Nicholson (who would later play Jimmy Hoffa, on whom Kovak was loosely based), but Sylvester Stallone was cast instead. Sylvester Stallone rewrote Joe Eszterhas' script, saying "Joe Eszterhas wrote a script that was nearly 400 pages and was more of a novel than a shootable screenplay. A great deal of work was done by myself, along with Norman Jewison, to hammer it into shape, but Joe had conceived a great idea."[6]
Eszterhas was reportedly paid $85,000 for the script. Stallone received $350,000 for acting and $150,000 for writing.
Most of the filming was done in Dubuque, Iowa. Dubuque was chosen firstly because the older sections of the town looked more like Cleveland of the 1930s than Cleveland did at the time, and secondly because of the absence of roof-mounted television antennas due to most of the homes having cable television. Because of the large bluffs, over-the-air television signals had problems reaching homes in the low-lying areas, so a cable system was developed in the mid-1950s, which was considerably earlier than many other municipalities.
The film premiered as the Gala Opening Night film at Filmex on April 13, 1978, at the Plitt Theatre in Century City and was released in 100 theaters in the United States and Canada on April 26, 1978, before expanding to 350 on June 21.[1]
Reception
Box office
The film was a success, grossing $20,388,920 on an $8 million budget, though it was not as successful as Stallone's previous film Rocky (1976).[citation needed]
Critical response
F.I.S.T. received generally positive reviews from film critics. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote: "F.I.S.T. is a big movie that benefits from the accumulating of small, ordinary detail than from any particular wit or inspiration of vision....Like ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ and ‘Rollerball,’ Mr. Jewison’s last three films, ‘F.I.S.T.’ is a massive, essentially shapeless film, but because it’s about a terrifically interesting, complicated subject, shapeliness doesn’t doesn’t seem especially important. There’s not a moment in it to compare with the intensity of feelings contained in such documentaries as ‘Union Maids’ and ‘Harlan County, U.S.A,’ yet it's encouraging to hear Hollywood talking about such things at a time when play-it-safe is virtually industry policy.” [7] Another positive review came from TV Guide, which gave the film three stars out of four. They praised Stallone's script and acting, saying that "Stallone likes to depart himself from his muscles, it usually doesn't work. But, with F.I.S.T. it works well as he cares more about the character than anything else, something we'd like to see more of."[citation needed]
A negative review came from Richard Schickel of Time magazine, who said that the film "stands for nearly 2+1⁄2 hours of almost unmitigated boredom—a misfired would-be proletarian epic with Sylvester Stallone misplaying the Jimmy Hoffa part with a self-confidence that borders on the sublime."[8]
On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a score of 67% based on 12 reviews.[9]
