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Says Bruce Weber, “In the summer of 1983 at the Colorado Sports Festival, I was photographing all the young athletes who had a chance to go to the Olympics.
One day a light weight boxer, Andy Minsker, came to he photographed. He looked like a young Chet Baker when he was playing his trumpet in Rome. We asked him why he came He said "They told me that I was forbidden to come meet you. They said that you'd give me a weird haircut and make me wear skimpy see through clothes, and who knows what else, and I thought, I'm on my way.
The film making debut of renowned fashion photographer, Bruce Weber (the man famous for his seductive Calvin Klein ads) is a beautifully conceived, imaginatively shot documentary on boxing. But this is no ordinary documentary, as anyone who knows Weber's portfolio can imagine At the centre of Broken Noses is 25 year old boxer Andy Minsker, the former National Golden Gloves Boxing Champion.
Deftly avoiding most pug pic cliches - this is no 'Kid Galahad' or 'Golden Boy' Weber, using a mixture of colour and monochrome, concentrates less on Minsker the pro fighter than on Minsker, the dynamo coach at the Mt Scott Boys Boxing Club near Portland, Oregon.
He unleashes the camera on his subject, creating an effect like leafing through a scrapbook, underscoring scene after scene with the aching jazz of musicians like Chet Baker and Julie London. Weber describes the film as an 'experimental film about being macho. Andy has this kind of originality "
Between lyrical moments of horseplay and training, Weber searches to discover what makes Andy tick. Interviews with his father who taught him to box, his mother, and his stepfather who beat him when he was a child begin to suggest the psychological depths behind what on the surface is just another smalltown story.